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I'm still working at a cardboard factory.

It's really quite magical in a way. That's why I keep talking about it, but I don't think anybody realizes. Maybe I don't want them too.

The "quality control guy". He's a riot. Sometimes I get in trouble because I lose myself imagining what his life might be like, imagining what he thinks about on a daily basis, minute by minute. For some reason I imagine him having spent a long time in some cold, large mid-western town, most likely Chicago. His uniform is the same every day: jeans and jacket of some unidentifiable discount brand and a baseball cap that seems to be a naturally occuring outgrowth of his head, so integral it looks on him. He walks around all day with a clipboard in his hands, pausing every once in a while to observe what's going on, making sure cardboard is being cut to the right length, ink printed in the right spot, etc. He doesn't have friends at the plant, even the managers seem not to like him for some reason. One night during lunch break I drove to a fast-food restaurant. As I was leaving he pulled up, got out of his car, and smiled at me. I glared at him, got on my motorcycle, and left.