He liked the quiet. He liked the smell of sanitizer in the cutting rooms, the glow of the battered off-white cutting boards propped up against the floor. All the stuff in the back was stainless steel—the tables, the carts, the sinks. Sometimes he wandered into the refrigerator with his bike helme...
Kids tossed pop cans down its maw, waiting to hear them clink. Some of the older tenants whispered that there was no bottom to the hole. I watched its edges spread, swallowing the courtyard that used to stand between the four apartment towers they built to keep us from messing up their city stree...