Becker had spent 45 years, one month, and ten days as an employee at the multinational food-processing plant. He knew the dates so precisely because he'd been hired exactly one month ten days before his twentieth birthday—and forced into retirement on his 65th. During that time, he never advanced beyond line operator, although, on his 30th birthday, he would inherit the coveted marshmallow line as a token of their appreciation.

Even though he now stood looking back towards the setting sun and the plant with unfeigned nostalgia, Becker wouldn't be completely honest if he didn't admit that, in the beginning at least, he found working there difficult. It wasn't so much the physical labor but the feeling of wanting-to-be-elsewhere and the ingrained notion he hadn't "tried hard enough to make something of himself." This latter was an expression inherited from his working-class parents who had been drumming it into him since the time he was old enough to sit at the table by himself. It was an idea of progress and evolution, of going from tenement to rented duplex to owned duplex to single-family home to ... to palatial manor in the gentrified countryside. And it was an attitude totally alien for the contented, almost zombie-like assembly-line workers at the plant.

At the time, Becker had come to the obvious conclusion that this contentedness and animal placidity - followed by sudden, unpredictable displays of physical prowess—had to serve as pathetic replacements for a more creative life, had to be the deviant flowering of deeply suppressed wants and needs and desires. Like most original impressions, this one lasted only as long as the observer remained merely an observer. Becker would find himself stretching and altering it, gradually at first and then with increasing speed until, it seemed, he'd done a complete about-face. For how else could he have come to be known as the Don Juan of the Macaroni & Cheese Pallets and the Last of The Jam Jar Gigolos? How else could he have turned himself into the legendary Fork-Lift Fornicator? At the same time, Becker never really did shake the observer's tendency, even during the most frenetic of activity. That made him, one supposes, a margarine assembly line idealist and romantic, a cream cheese dreamer and spiritualist. In other words, his about-face turned out to be a mirror image.

Becker would be hired not two months after dropping out of second-year university and with prospects dim as dusk over a stone quarry. Not that he was dumb or anything and couldn't hack school. In fact, Becker still boasted, when pushed, that he'd once scored 140 on an I.Q. test though admittedly self-administered. And he had been near the top of his class throughout high school, even making his parents proud by winning a university entrance scholarship. But, once there, he hadn't bothered to do any of the work, spending his time instead playing bridge and other games of chance in the common lounge.

So it hadn't come as much of a surprise when he lost his scholarship at the end of the first year—telling his parents it had only been good for one year. And his total academic failure in the middle of his second year wasn't unexpected either. What Becker hadn't taken into consideration was how he was going to inform his parents, who continued letting neighbors, friends and relatives know how much of a genius their son was. So he did the next best thing. In the morning, he pretended to head off to school—home-made lunch in hand and waving back to proud mom on the veranda and then proceed to pound the streets in search of work. And, in the evening, he'd sit at the dinner table disgusted with himself for having to lie, vowing that the next day he'd own up. But, when he saw his parents' eager faces, he just couldn't bring himself to do it.

To make matter even worse, he wasn't having much success with his job hunting. Having started by checking the "Professionals" section of the Want Ads, he quickly worked his way down to "Semi-Skilled Labor." In the end, he managed to land the food-processing plant job through a twist of fate and irony. The "human relations" manager just happened to remember that Becker's father had once worked there briefly in the very early years of their arrival in the new world.

When he finally did tell his parents, he made it sound as if the job was a temporary setback along the way to better things, as if it had been his decision. He planned to go back and finish his schooling, he told his dad, no question about it. Only now he wanted to be out on his own and independent, to discover what "real life" was all about. Plenty of time for school once he discovered exactly what it was he wanted to study. To Becker's credit, it was a plan he mulled over and evaluated almost daily for his entire 45 years at the plant, a plan never far from the surface.

From his first day at the plant, Becker realized it operated on its own strict set of rules. As the "human relations" manager handed him his employee number and lectured him on the importance of cleanliness around food, an office door swung open to briefly reveal two bodies pressed tightly together, knee against crotch, mouths gyrating like two deformed sponges against one another. The manager reached over and blithely pulled the door shut, all the while continuing his pep talk. As it should be in an ideal world, the machinations of the plant itself concerned the manager only as statistics, as the comings and goings of some fairly nonstandard deviations. Except, of course, for a few choice object lessons he reserved for the newly hired.

"Now, see here, Becker," the manager said, rather shyly and all the while stroking his balding pate. "You've just started here and not expected to understand as yet. But you should know the company provides well for those under its roof." He smiled what even Becker recognized as a practised smile. "Or should I say under its wing. For we pride ourselves on being clucking Mother Hens rather than spying Big Brothers."

Becker smiled back one eye on the manager, the other on the office door plate glass window, against which a rapidly-shifting, strip-tease shadow play was taking place: with shadow clothes flying in all directions.

"Let me give you an example," the manager said, sitting down at his desk. "Just one among many, mind you. We had an employee—no, strike that. We have one employee, for he's still with us. Ah, let's see, I'm so terrible at names . . . No. 713 if I remember correctly." He turned and riffled through some dusty files, pre-computer era. "That's it. No. 713. At any rate, he lost both legs in a horrific accident. Under the blades of a cheese-cutting-and-grinding machine. Poor fellow was barely alive when we pulled him out—or a part of him anyway—and the entire production, for obvious reasons, had to be sold as hog feed. But that's beside the point." The manager stood up and advanced towards Becker, hand ready to pat him on the shoulder. "The point is he continued to get full salary the whole year he was unable to work. And we paid all his medical bills and rehab—in those days there wasn't any such thing as Medicare, you know. A man's world. A dog-eat-dog world. Just ask your father if you don't believe me. So what's the moral lesson here? What's to be learned?"

Becker stood there, fully expecting the manager to tell him. But the manager wasn't about to make it easy.

"I'm waiting," he said, swinging back on his chair and placing his hands behind his head so that he ended up staring at the ceiling.

"Uh . . . Don't get too close to the cheese-cutting-and-grinding machine."

"Are you trying to be funny?" the manager said, lowering his chair and staring fiercely at Becker. "Funny doesn't cut it here." He leaned forward. "Now, try it again. What's the lesson to be learned?"

Becker struggled frantically for something to say. He looked around—and then spotted it on the wall behind the manager. A plaque with some writing on it.

"You do well by the plant," he read out. "And the plant will do well by you."

In the men's changing area—long polished rows of grey benches facing graffiti-laden lockers under fluorescent lights that hadn't been dusted in a donkey's age—Becker agonized (as he had done throughout high school gymnastics classes) over the state of his underwear. The problem lay in the fact of his two-day cycle. Every second morning, he showered and his mother provided a fresh change for him. The others, he gathered, were just as habitual—if not quite so frequent or punctilious. In fact, he realized from the pungent scent that their cycle was probably closer to weekly. It perplexed him at the time but he was told later by unimpeachable sources that the women who worked in close quarters actually liked the whiff of old cheese and dried mustard emanating from the men's bodies. Becker solved the problem of the off-day underwear by making sure to always have with him a shirt long enough to reach down to his knees, thereby concealing any iniquities that may have been stamped there. So it came about that, every second day, this shirt was the last thing off in the morning and the first thing on at night.

As the men and women flowed from their rooms—the men upstairs, the women downstairs—to merge on the way to the slate-grey punch-clock, it seemed to Becker they touched an extraordinary number of times, more than was necessary for the purpose of merely passing or lining up. In fact, he usually formed one of the few breaks in the line that moved slowly forward groin to buttock like a dance troupe in a porn flick, laughing, pinching and flirting despite it being six-fifty-seven in the morning. For his part, he found nothing to laugh at—at least in those early days. Could he have been so mistaken? Of course, he had been, the Becker of 45 years later mumbled to himself. Of course.

"Say, do you feel superior? Too good for the likes of us? Do we smell of moral depravity maybe or is it just that you don't like human beings as a whole? Why don't you get a hard-on when that red-head with the huge knockers shimmies by and leans over right in front of us, mounds of suntan salon flesh popping out of her black lace bra? Why don't you place your hand on her—where her hip juts out like a step on an altar—and make the poor thing feel good?"

A superb actor—he'd had to be to escape detection thus far—Becker waited for the day one of his fellow workers would step right up and put these questions to him. Perhaps jabbing him with a rough stubby finger at the same time. Come on, asshole, who d'ya think yer kiddin'? Don't try to be king shit with us 'cause you ain't nuthin' but fart the messenger—ha, ha. But he had the answer prepared, gleaming like a crystal dagger in his mind. Every word, every turn of phrase had been practiced until it seemed natural. Until it seemed the truth. I'm a touch shy, he would say, lowering his eyes. That's all. Nothing to do with youse. Youse, that was a good word. Youse is a bunch a swell folks. I don't know what I'd do without youse. So he walked with shoulders hunched, waiting. He stood with hands in pocket, waiting. He sat with sandwich half-eaten, waiting. The workers, out of naïveté or perverseness or genuine disinterest, took no notice of his behavior. Instead, they insisted on treating him like one of their own.

"Hey Becker," Big Joe De Wop would roar, not seeming to realize Becker had his face deep in a book. "De old lady wouldn't give me what I wanted de udder night. De lousy bitch. So de first ting dis mornin' I get my rocks off wit Betty Lou behind de pallets. Just say when an' youse can have her de same as me. Or Old Red for dat matter. Jus' say when."

Several times in those early days, the "when" almost came out—it would have been a sign that he was truly one of them. But Becker had held back, mainly, he'd told himself, because he wasn't sure about what he'd discover back "behind de pallets." The truth maybe, and he thought, at the time, this was no place for unadorned truth. Instead, he read during every free moment: before the bell rang in the morning, at lunch and the two fifteen-minute breaks, and during shutdowns in the machinery, thinking thus to have both an effective remedy for whatever plagued the others and also a way to make up for not having completed his formal education. After all, as he also told himself, he didn't plan to stay an intelligent-yet-unskilled laborer for the rest of his life. No sir. There were night courses and discussion groups and MBA degrees out there just waiting to be plucked. And, if not something so tangible, so crass, then at least some nebulous distinction such as Doctor of Laws or psycho-linguistic therapy expert for systems analysts.

Aside from reading, his chief concern was to keep down natural good spirits, an urge to open up, to express himself on what others considered abstractions (i.e., the bullshit of life) but which he felt so competent at doing and so very real. As well, he found it necessary but difficult to hold back smiles, to make sure his lips curled into a sneer (at least just below the surface) every time an eruption of friendship threatened. Thus, after a while, only one other person apart from Big Joe disturbed him consistently while he read—an art flick buff whose name Becker never bothered to learn (there was some merit in the personnel manager's attitude after all) and who spent a large portion of his weekly check hunting down foreign film festivals. Somehow, this self-described "two-dimensional creature" and "denizen of the dark flimsy celluloid of life" (no better compliments could he hand himself) came to consider Becker his friend—and confidant. Maybe that was because no one else listened when he talked, turning away to their own, more immediate and profitable, interests. Becker was just as uninterested—but too polite to turn away.

"Hey there, Becker!" the foreign film buff would begin, skin pale, eyes red and swollen from too many nights in too many movie houses (or it may have been the start of a fatal disease as yet undiagnosable at the time). "Mind if I sit?" Becker shrugged and the film buff straddled the chair with his spindly legs. "Fellini fucking floored me last night. Just fucking floored me. Penis versus buttock in a last-gasp attempt to recover classic Greek culture through the lens of Italian ultra-realism. And then these two guys beside me started stroking each other's gonads. I mean, what is real? What is really real? Have you ever worried about turning side-ways suddenly and vanishing? But he's been bought out, I tell you. Fellini, I mean. Sure, he's still got the grotesque fat lady and the priapic dwarfs and the quintessential Hegelian dialectic of nature versus freedom coming to a climactic conjunction on the doggy junk-pile of history, but he lost all sense of perspective when he took the final shot head-on instead of from the side. What business has he got trying to turn film-strips into flesh-and-blood human beings? Probably be more successful the other way around. Say, how come you're not writing all this down? You don't know what an opportunity you're missing and you'll kick yourself later for not being able to quote me verbatim." Instead, Becker kicked himself for having a quasi-photographic memory, for remembering every single word of every single conversation right up to his dying day.

Apart from the women, for whom rumor with its nebulous straw had bloated beyond life-size, beyond caricature even, only one other person really demanded Becker's attention in the factory those first few months. He was a student, working through the summer to pay his tuition. And his name was André. Every day he came to work with new cuts on his face where the razor had sliced through ever-blossoming pimples. When the cuts healed, there were purple scars. Or more pimples surrounded by barely-hidden white pus. He was slightly overweight yet with a look of being undernourished. His hair was blond and wispy, and one could tell it wouldn't last long. As well, there was always a thin line of dirt under his fingernails and a constant drip to his nose. But Becker noticed nothing of that. All he saw were André's eyes, clear green and magnificently huge and so deep-set it looked as if someone had forced them back with their thumbs when the sockets were still pliable enough to mould. From the moment he first saw him standing nervously at the cafeteria take-out counter wiping his nose, Becker yearned for a conversation. But he was one of those people, at least at the time, who know no way of simply walking up to someone and saying hello. Greetings struck him as both embarrassing and impertinent. Besides, he had a reputation to maintain. A simple-but-definite nod might have started the ball rolling. Instead, while Becker went out of his way to find himself in the same general vicinity as André, he always ended up turning his head at the last moment. Or ducking to gulp a salt tablet and a drink of water.

On the other hand—and this was an unending source of vexation for Becker—the art film buff had no such trouble and slipped naturally into conversation with the student. In fact, there was no need for greetings, as his reputation made them unnecessary. It seemed they shared a passion for Marcel Carne and together they walked down the long corridors at the back of the factory—past humid, leaky corrugated cartons and burst bottles of homogenized jelly that had been badly sealed—talking a mile a minute, gesturing amicably, occasionally stopping to underscore some point or other. Without being asked, the film buff took time out from his perusal of art movie magazines to report parts of these conversations to Becker. Becker listened with an air of laissez faire detachment yet hung on every word.

"André's a poet," the film buff declared with a derogatory wave of his hand. "A nice guy, really. Has seen 'Les Enfants du Paradis' just six times less than me. But . . . I don't know. He showed me some of his stuff the other day. Don't know much about poetry and that kind of crap but it struck me as obsolete Romanticism with a capital 'R'. Wouldn't make a good penis-to-buttock movie, not even a half-assed one. Most of it's about the Muses, Fates, Furies, and how love caresses his troubled soul. I tell him there's no way to get that down in black and white but he just shrugs and says he'll keep on trying."

Becker's fascination grew with every report. They had lockers opposite each other and thus shared the same bench. Becker always waited for André to finish changing before he started. There were days when André would sit on his side of the bench with his pants half-down and his shirt half-undone and would stare off into the yellow lights. Becker would fidget and pretend to search inside his locker. Or take out a book to read. Anything was preferable to letting a poet see him in such a mundane state. And yet, at the same time, he knew logically that André the poet didn't notice a thing, didn't give two hoots for his second-day underwear or his ketchup-stained uniform. Or for anything else concerning him for that matter. That was the signal for Becker to get angry, to grip the uniform and slowly tear it down the middle, to hurl his sanitary cap (they all had to wear them to keep hair from falling on to the food) into the locker. But it was all in vain. Andr´ made as if to see or hear nothing. Yet a simple tap on the shoulder by someone wanting to pass was all that was needed to wake him and set him in motion again.

Often, they took the same bus after work. To make this possible, Becker declined rides—several times—from Old Red, who owned a battered sports car so tight men gathered round just to see her squirming into it. At first, he reasoned this would be the best time and place to greet Andr´. After all, they were now two fellow workers on a bus packed with strangers. But it was not to be. Both his own reticence and the film buff were against him. He found himself hovering in the background, listening to peculiar details of the latest foreign releases, snatches of dialogue between unnatural acts (for the sake of art), giggles from office workers who overheard.

Worst of all was the slight quiver of an incipient smile he discerned on André's face as he stared out a window or read. Becker knew he should make fun of him, treat him like the others in the plant. Perhaps write him an anonymous letter to be taped to the inside of his locker: "Dear Pimple-Face Nose-Drip Baldy. The Romantic movement is for those physically capable of sustaining the transition from poetry to their own appearances and actions. To look upon you, one would think the shrew-like and shriveled mind of the Cynic would be much more appropriate and to the point. My bearing is infinitely more desirable than yours. What's more, I'm at least twice as intelligent as you. I'll wager you don't even write poetry. Or if you do, it's nothing but Pope in disguise—arid, terse and pseudo-witty. Or maybe it's like the pus that oozes from your pimples, an absurd joke played by Mother Nature on your image of yourself." To Becker's credit, the letter never got beyond the planning stage.

The factory operated in shifts. One group started at dawn and remained till the late afternoon. A second took over at four and lasted till midnight. Finally, a third, the cleaning shift, went through the night. For several weeks, Becker suffered the frustration of being on the afternoon shift while André worked mornings. He saw him only at the punch-clock. Sometimes one of the more brazen women, a cigarette dangling from the precipice of her lip, teased André and caused him to turn crimson. Then, the tips of his pimples would glow with a violet candor. The women in the factory had a habit of unbuttoning the tops of their blouses as the day wore on. Poor André seemed mesmerized by the colorful bras that proliferated, popped, swelled amid the clanging medallions (some religious, some astrological) and the jokes of the male workers. Those with the tattooed arms and chests were boldest, dropping coins into the inviting clefts or leaning over the women to gaze at warm expanses of flesh. Old Red, in particular, obliged the men by breathing deeply and undoing one more button than the others. Becker could see poor André wanted nothing so much as to snuggle between those two booming delights and suckle like a child never properly weaned. However, he was not held in the same esteem as Becker by those who could make his wish come true. They avoided him. Nor was he offered the Old Red behind the pallets. On the other hand, Becker noted that the only man who really took advantage of the women, pinching their buttocks and sliding his hands under their skirts, was employee No. 713. He hobbled along on crutches, giggling and making eyes. Or hitched rides on the backs of the others so that he could reach down and squeeze the nearest available breast.

After several weeks of this, Becker was able to get himself transferred to the same shift as André. The film buff, notorious for not arriving on time in the morning and being warned that one more late occurrence would lead to his dismissal, switched with Becker. "What the hell," he said, leaning tiredly against the wall and coughing into a handkerchief. "Movies are cheaper during the day anyway."

So Becker arose in the dark and hurried to work each morning, certain that would be the day he finally talked to André, finally asked him how he was doing, finally inquired into the progress of his poetry. On several occasions, he managed to worm his way into the line right behind André, cutting it in two while everyone else mashed forward in conga step. At the moment his chance arrived, however, at the second before his lips formed the words, Becker invariably felt a surge of silliness overcome him. And he would quietly slip his punch-card into the clock and out again without bothering to look up.

Once, they even worked together on the same line, packaging single-slice processed cheese. Becker found the rhythm of cheese-packaging more enjoyable than the other work. Even more enjoyable than discarding bad toffee. The cheese, packed piece by piece, was warm and sticky inside the layers of plastic wrap. Occasionally, one of the wrapping machines misfired and the cheese oozed out, clogging up the line. That signaled time for a break. He longed to tell André how he felt about the cheese and the joy of working with it as an existential experience that could readily convert to an epiphany. Or a poem. But he could find no way to break into the conversation that had started up between the poet and the line operator. They were discussing cameras. He waited for the appropriate moment to slip in with some comment on the beautiful 35-mm Minolta he owned with bellows attachment for taking pictures of objects less that a foot away such as flowers and gold-veined rocks and other such poetic delights. And truly he was about to do so when he spotted out of the corner of his eye a piece of paper on the floor. It was folded and right next to his foot. Quickly, just before the machine resumed operation, he covered it with his shoe and drew it away. He then reached down as if to scratch his ankle, slid it along his pant leg and into his pocket. Conversation now was no longer necessary. He felt sure the object through which their meeting would come about was safely in his possession. Words became useless as events took their course. It was something he'd always suspected.

That afternoon, rumors surfaced of a great orgy at the far end of the factory where the giant machines whipped milk into froth for later use in mayonnaise and margarine. The first story had Old Red caught pants down in the foreman's office and then blackmailed into entertaining the whole salad dressing line. This was modified later ("fucking creep's a fucking faggot") to the redhead performing lesbian acts with Betty Lou on a fork-lift, her body trapped and writhing between the two prongs. But that, too, was dismissed by those in the know. Besides, Betty Lou wasn't even in that afternoon. Finally, the truth came out. Old Red had made a bet she could take a whole jar of raspberry jam inside her. She had won easily. At break time, the cafeteria was abuzz and sizzling with energy. It was as if everything had gained in sharpness and clarity. Or stood for something else. Old Red sat in the corner, legs crossed, like an icon, spreading mustard on a cheeseburger bun. At the table next to hers, Big Joe and a bunch of the other men preened, pulling out their heavy gold chains and folding the sleeves of their uniforms to show off the biceps. Or lifting up their collars and tilting their caps at what they thought was a rakish angle. One of them talk was he'd spent time in an asylum for exposing himself to school children had his fly open and was reaching in to pull his penis out. Big Joe slapped the back of his head and told him in graphic terms what would happen if he didn't zipper back up pronto. Besides, how could he compare to a jam jar? Old Red threw back her head and laughed. She licked the artificially-colored mustard off the bun, slowly, carefully with the tip of her tongue. The men went wild, slapping the chairs with their fists, pretending to make the table rise and buckle. Old Red stood up, did her customary wiggle and sauntered out. The men hesitated a moment, looking at one another, then rushed out after her, practically falling over each other.

"Holy fuck," Big Joe said, clapping Becker on the back on his way out the door. "Did youse hear that? A jar of jam! Shit. I wonder if it was the 24- or 48-ouncer. Come on. Here's yer chance to get some."

Becker scarcely heard him. He was anxious to finish eating so he could unfold and read the piece of paper André had dropped (that André had dropped it was certain). But he needed a place where he wouldn't be disturbed. The bathroom, of course.

He sat on the toilet bowl, pulling the paper out of his pocket as he did so. It came as no surprise that it turned out not to be a poem. Of course not. No poet worth his salt would be that careless. It was, in fact, a recipe for Kirsch au thun. Becker read it several times, hoping perhaps there was a secret message amid the ingredients. But he knew there wasn't so he replaced it in his pocket and was about to return to work when he heard noises in the stall two over from his. Grunts and sighs and wet slurping. Then raps on the door and voices. "Come on, come on. My turn." "What're you doing in there? Making cheese?" "Hurry, the fucking break's almost over." "Oh Jesus, I'm coming. Oh Jesus." "Shit! The bell." There was a flurry of activity, of zippers, of more bodies than seemed possible flying out of the stall and slipping sliding out of the bathroom like silent comedy clowns.

Becker waited till the coast was clear before coming out. He was surprised by the fact the door to the stall two over from his was still closed. He could see a pair of legs and, dangling at the ankles, a bikini panty with the design of a red heart stitched to its front. And there were murmurs coming from inside, ending in little squeals of delight. Becker sneaked closer. He could hear clearly now what the person was saying—but he didn't believe it. It was a prayer. Definitely a prayer. The Lord's Prayer. What the—The door flew open to reveal Old Red seated on the toilet bowl disheveled and partially naked, holding a rosary in her hand and allowing it to dangle against a thick triangle of pubic hair the color of a cardinal's wing. She had her eyes shut as she recited: "Thy Kingdom Come; Thy Will Be Done." Becker backed out of the washroom, the red patch glowing like an after-image in his brain.

The next week, both Becker and André were requested for the night shift to replace vacationing employees. Their task was to clean out the boiler room deep in the bowels of the plant. This must be what it's like in a mine shaft, Becker thought: windowless, damp, stiflingly oppressive, the air heavy and ominously electric—and with little hope of escape should anything go wrong. And yet, twenty-four hours a day, a stationary engineer sat—in various stages of alertness—before the array of dials, knobs and switches, occasionally writing down numbers or making minor adjustments. Using special soap and stiff wire brushes and steaming water that shriveled their fingers and tore away any loose skin daring to get in the way, the cleaning crew scrubbed and scratched at the scud that had become encrusted from years of operation, from decades of the great machinery pounding away, shuddering and shaking the plant's very foundations. At that particular moment, two summer students were crawling along the pipes on the ceiling, dousing them with corrosive cleansing agents that burned their eyes and sizzled when they dripped to the ground. Becker taunted Andr´ by allowing a corner of the paper to become visible, to hang out invitingly from his back pocket. But André was elsewhere, oblivious of the boilers, the heavy air, the dripping—both his and the corrosive cleansing agent. Not to mention Becker's machinations. In fact, Becker couldn't be sure that André noticed anything but the spot directly in front of him. Perhaps, the deep-set eyes led to tunnel vision. He would stand in one place and polish till another member of the cleaning crew nudged him along. Whereupon he'd move down one position along the rusted wall and resume polishing.

At break-time, in the middle of the night, the cleaning crew went outside to sit on the factory grounds. These men were different from those on the day shifts. There was none of the horsing around, the double entendres, the strutting. Of course, Becker thought. That's because there are no women around that need to be impressed. No one talked except in whispers. Some slid the caps over their eyes; others drew on cigarettes, allowing the smoke to escape through their nostrils. Becker watched André, who was carefully inspecting the tiny white blooms that dotted the shrubbery. He then cupped several flowers in his own hand and smelled them. They were odorless. Becker, working desperately to get into a poetic mood with which he felt he could break through to André, marveled at how, under the glow of the moon and stars masked by a foul-smelling haze from the plant chimney, things seemed little more than shadows, little more than projections all form and no body. Most of all André, his head tilted forward till it touched his chest. Becker had the careless, inexplicable urge to hold his hand, to comfort him, and be comforted. Perhaps to escape to a private world where he could talk freely without embarrassment. He was glad to get back down into the solid, illusionless glare of the boiler room, where life was all clanging and shouting.

That was the last time he saw Andr´. The next day, the poet didn't show up for the night shift. Perhaps, they had moved him again, back to mornings. Becker decided to wait until after his shift was over and give him the recipe as he was coming in.

"Here, I found this next to your locker, under the bench. Thought you might be looking for it."

Sweet and simple.

But he stood that morning in vain near the punch-clock, nodding off occasionally and then snapping his head back at the sound of someone walking by or the roar of a forklift. He finally went home.

Several days later, he ran into the film buff, looking paler and more gaunt than ever.

"Hey," the film buff said, looking up from a magazine article titled The Gentle Art of Bondage in the Modern Japanese Cinema. "Did you hear what happened? They fired that friend of mine. You know, the poet. Seems they couldn't take the pus oozing from his pimples any more. He was a nice guy, you know. But a bit of an innocent, if you get my meaning. I had to teach him all I knew about penis-buttock interactions. One thing, though. He sure was a fast learner."

The next day at lunch Becker went up to where Big Joe waited to collect his hot English muffin and whispered: "When."

"Wowee! Hot diggidy!" Joe said, rubbing his hands together. "I'll fix her up fer tonight. She's been askin' for youse, ya know. Seems she don't feel she really knows a fellow worker widout really knowin' him. Know what I means?"

In the dark, behind the stacks of macaroni and cheese pallets, with only faint streaks of light coming down at a slant as if through stain-glass windows, she knelt down before him and struggled to unbuckle his belt, to pull down his trousers. Then she reached around to grip his buttocks, to dig her violet nails into them. Her lips glowed faintly as she brought her head forward to get his body moving to her rhythm. She worked quickly, wordlessly, without a wasted motion. A pro and proud of it. It felt like nothing so much as a suction cup pulling out his intestines, turning them inside out. Or maybe like the removal of venom from a deep snake bite. After a few moments, he arched back and came. At his first spasm, Old Red pulled away and held something up before him, something he couldn't see that took the brunt of his load.

"Ummm . . . now me," she said languidly, lying on the cement and hitching up her skirt. "It's my turn."

It was dark, yes, except where the streaks of light shimmered across her thighs, but he shut his eyes anyway as he lowered himself on top of her and hunted around to insert himself.

"No," she said. "Not that way. I want you to go down on me. That's the way I like it. Can you do that?"

And so he brought his face down between her thighs, guided by her firm hands on the back of his head. At first, he was shocked by the feel of it when he placed the tip of his tongue against her labia. He'd never done this before but he knew they weren't supposed to be cold and metallic. Or possess rough ridges and sharp edges. He was about to pull back when she reached down with her hand and shifted and his tongue encountered flesh, tightly mounded and hot, pulsing with the ever-increasing flow of blood. She started to writhe and dance, to buck up and slam against the floor, screaming and begging for deliverance. The ingredients for a recipe kept going round and round in his mind, kept wanting to make him feel bad. But it couldn't because there was something wrong with it, something missing.

Becker had no time to think about it. As Old Red orgasmed, holding the back of his head down so hard his teeth mashed against her, the lights came on and a group of their fellow workers—including Big Joe, No. 713 and the "human relations" manager—gathered round to clap good-naturedly. Becker looked up grinning, looked up at Old Red who was busy licking clean her crucifix, carefully examining the crevasses of the tiny emaciated body to make sure she had it all.

And Becker knew then the ingredient he'd been looking for, the thing just on the edge that had haunted his life till that moment. He had thought of it as something missing, something to be added like sugar or spice. But in fact it was something to be taken away, something to be removed from the recipe that would forever more determine his life. The truth was Becker no longer felt the burden to be different.

"Thanks," he said, placing his head on Old Red's by no means flat stomach.

"Anytime, kid, anytime," she said gruffly, ruffling his hair. "Now, are we happy?"

He nodded, on the verge of tears, basking in the knowledge he'd found a home at last—even if he could never rid himself totally of the habit to observe and to wax philosophic on his observations.

"There, there," Old Red said, playfully passing the crucifix over the ridge of his spine. "We're all in this together."

The clapping grew louder now—almost deafening—as the others began to undress so they could join in. And the 45 years flashed before Becker's blurry, astigmatic eyes: the caramel-cutting machine that finished doing the job on No. 713; the jam jar that finally proved too big for Old Red; the hubby-wielded knife that permanently re-arranged Big Joe's insides; the hospital bed that ended the film buff's fascination with penis-buttock interactions. The years flashed by so quickly he couldn't distinguish his first impression from the final one.

And when Becker finally handed in his employee badge and stepped outside on that fateful evening of his retirement, it was into a world he no longer recognized. Or better yet, one that no longer recognized him. So who could blame him when he turned and rushed towards the plate-glass doors, when he began to hammer away at them, pleading to be let back in?