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 helmet still on, dodging the massive sides of beef that weighed more than he did. They dangled from the ceiling on long hooks that swayed in the breeze from the cooling fans. “Abraham’s son, my man, you gotta get your shit together. What is with the shaved head?” Texaco Joe took a pull from a cigarette and pushed his way into the refrigerator. He had a giant purple tuque pulled over his head. His lips were chapped and flaking. “It keeps me cool.” “It keeps you cool? It’s like thirty under out there right now. Under the zero.” Moses began setting up the cutting boards and pulling the knives out of the sink. The blades were still sharp from the night before. Sometimes Moses would test them on his fingernails when he was closing by himself.
