regional visit

one person from regional looked at my visor for seven minutes and wrote something down.

i was slicing bread when walt came in. walt had a clipboard, a coat with no crumbs on it, and the face of somebody who had found a dead mouse in a spreadsheet. walt looked at my visor for seven minutes. i counted because the toaster beeped once, the soup alarm beeped twice, and i finished thirty-one slices before walt looked away.

"is that part of the uniform?" walt asked.

"the visor is," i said. "the damage is personal."

walt wrote that down. this was not the answer i meant to give, which made it the best one available. walt left with my name, the store number, and apparently a description of my forehead. i checked the visor in the bathroom mirror. it was sitting straight. the red grease mark above my eyebrow had the shape of a small country that had lost a war.

i wiped it off with a paper towel and made the next chore cleaning the slicer.