Blue Ticket

One Friday when all the work for the week was done, the dangerous chemicals locked up, our supervisors brought out dark bottles of wine as usual. We drank it together out of thick plastic tumblers that marbled the light, sitting on the wiped-down benches and swinging our legs. It was my favorite part of the day, of the week. We had waited for it all through the afternoon. The wine was sustaining as a soup, dark and rich in our mouths, and I could feel it benefitting me from the first sip, setting the wheels in motion, sparking the wildness up or dampening it down.

We changed in the bathrooms into our going-out clothes. My tights