Box Cutters
IN THE WOMEN’S LOCKER room, MaryBeth opened up the newspaper. A review of Lennon’s Double Fantasy album took up two column inches. That valuable space, instead, should have been devoted to Hinckley’s attempted assassination of Reagan, or, to the actualized murder of Sadat. Even references to the killing of Liberia’s president would have been preferable to what got printed.
Sighing, she finished buttoning her uniform. Minimum wage beat welfare, but her manager’s unrelenting striving for perfection had transformed her burger flipping and restocking responsibilities into serial tortures. Believers knew that ketchup did not have to be spurted in measured amounts and that it was okay to stack heavy pots over plastic cups.
Humming “O Dolci Mani” from Puccini’s Tosca, the worker
