Back to the kitchen, newly irritated and puzzled.
What’s wrong with her? What was she talking about? I hate when Hen gets like this. When she’s upset, but evasive. Whatever is wrong, she always wants me to pry it out of her, which makes everything harder and worse. It’s brutal behavior. Childish. She needs to grow up. Where do these moods come from? They’ve developed over time like most bad habits.
Terrance is seated at the table. A paper napkin has been ripped into thin strands. He pushes it aside when I sit down. I can tell he’s been listening to us arguing upstairs. He’s trying to hide it, act like he was just on his screen, busy with something else, but I can tell.
“Everything okay?” he asks.
Fine, I say.
“You sure?”
Yes. So what were you saying? You were saying something when I left. About the mill.
“I was going to ask what you think of it when you’re there but not working.”
I’m always working at the mill. That’s what I’m there for.
“But I mean during the downtime. Like on break, or at lunch. Do you use the lunchroom?”
No, I say. Not really. I stick to myself mostly.
“And why’s that?” Terrance asks.
It’s easier than making small talk.
“What about eating? Do you eat alone, too?”
Yeah, usually.
“And why’s that? Any particular reason?
People can be disgusting, I say.
He picks up his screen, turns something on, maybe a recorder.
“How so?” he asks.
I got in the habit of looking at the guys in the lunchroom. Watching them bite hunks of their sandwiches. The bread and filling being ground together into some vile paste. Whatever wasn’t swallowed would end up stuck between beige teeth and infected gums. Sorry, but it’s true. It’s not just eating. I’ve seen a coworker fall asleep during a break with his mouth gaping open. I felt sick at the sight of it. We’re oblivious to it most of the time. And one day, I started to think about why that is, as I watched one of the guys wipe his mouth on his napkin after eating and then blow his snotty nose into the same napkin, which he then balled up and dropped onto his plate, and very slowly the napkin started to unfold from the ball all on its own, as if it wanted to be seen, and that’s when I realized our common seam, each of us, is our own inherent vulgarity. Think about earwax, and fingernails, and pus. I’ve seen guys spit on the ground and walk away. And we do all this stuff automatically.
I take a breath and see Terrance completely focused on me. “You’ve never mentioned any of this before, at least not to me,” he says.
It’s not like I spend my life sitting around obsessing over this, I say. I’m just . . . aware of it. At work, especially, it’s all around.
Terrance begins typing something into his screen.