Hot Dog, $1.50

The economy failed, the landlord wrote again, my car makes a sound like a question. Still: the hot dog. Still: the drink, refilled without asking, without comment, in a cup the size of a small municipal reservoir. I sit on a metal stool bolted to the floor beside a stranger doing the same math I am, and for eleven minutes nothing is wrong, and the ceiling is forty feet up, and the light is the same on both of us.