He’s wearing a baseball cap with an M on it, and suggests that I wear a hat that looks like a pig’s head. Because I sell pork. Or, the man says, I could have different hats for different meat, like when I’m giving someone a steak I would wear a cow hat, and when I’m giving out lamb I could wear a lamb hat. “It might make you easier to look at,” he says. And then he laughs. If I could speak, I might argue that he himself is not so exciting to look at. I might say that there’s nothing particularly enthralling about the way his stomach swells over his pants, or the way his nose is so round it looks like a lightbulb. I might mention that his eyes are so close together it looks like his head has been caught in a vise—but I am not an angry man. In fact, sitting here in my lawnchair, out in the open air, packages of meat passing from palm to palm, I think it’s fair to say that ever since I left the farmhouse and moved into this bus, I’ve only had one single, throbbing emotion: Her name is Dr.
