Bill drove up to the job site alone. He was two hours late but there was no one else there. He parked next to the superintendent’s trailer and got out of the truck. It was clear and warm out. Seven o’clock in the morning and it was already almost ninety degrees. He lit a cigarette and walked toward the half finished building. It was a little wood structure that would eventually be a chain sandwich shop. Bill was there to pipe in a fire sprinkler system. All those years of sweating his ass off, hungover and strung-out, had finally come to something. The company put him in a truck. A work truck with a gas card, a stereo with c.d. player, and all the tools and ladders and pipe strapped right to the back of it. He had to work by himself, without an apprentice, but Bill preferred to be by himself. The company only put him on these small jobs, but he ran them himself. He could practically miss a whole day, and as long as he worked extra hard the next couple of days, no one would know.
Bill missed at least five days of work each month. He wasn’t always late, but it happened often enough that people said he was always late. Yet, somehow, they had decided to put him in a company truck. Probably, mostly, because he had never had a D.U.I.  
Nobody, especially Bill, understood how he had never been caught driving drunk. When he wasn’t working he was drinking. He even drank sneaky beers while driving the company truck home from the job site. Everybody knew that Bill had very bad luck. When they spoke about his drinking they always said it was just a matter of time. “He’ll end up killing somebody” they said.
As he was about to step into the building he heard a loud voice.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing, boy?”
He turned and saw a short, bald man standing in the doorway of the super’s trailer. All of the supers on these small jobs looked and spoke exactly the same way. Too much sun, bald, and short. Too much dust and too many cigarettes. They all acted as if they were building the Taj Mahal. They were always angry. This is what puzzled Bill the most. How can people be angry all the time? People were always angry and always called him “son” and “boy.”
Bill was thirty six years old but didn’t look a day over twenty one. That and never having a D.U.I. was the only thing he had left.
“Don’t you dare step on that floor son!” yelled the super.
“I’m the sprinkler guy” replied Bill.
“You’re late.”
“I know, my alarm didn’t go off and I kinda’ overslept…”
“Not YOU boy, your company. You guys were supposed to be here last week.”
“I just go where I’m told.”
“Well you ain’t going in there. I just got that slab sealed and nobody’s so much as breathing on that motherfucker for at least twenty-four hours.”
Bill took a drag off his cigarette. His hand was shaking. The super walked back to his trailer. “Looks like you got the rest of the day off!” he said.

***

Bill pulled into a drive-thru liquor store a couple miles away from his room. Drive-thru liquor stores are the best thing in the world, he thought. He ordered a pint of Jim Beam and a twelve pack of High Life. Starting in at seven thirty in the morning Bill knew this would not last until he passed out, but he thought maybe he would hit a bar. He didn’t have the money for a bar tab but he felt like talking to someone who wasn’t his landlord, a super or a Mexican day laborer. At the first red light he opened the bourbon and had a small sip. He wasn’t satisfied with that and had another. He drove through the intersection enjoying the booze burning its way down to his belly.
He had missed the last two days of work because of a bender that stretched itself from the weekend into the beginning of the week. Screaming and jabbering on and on at someone’s house. Someone he had met at the bar and could not remember now, and would probably never see again. Life stories and hilarious anecdotes that amounted to nothing except missing two days of work, and now this. An extra day off which only meant that there was no way he could make up the last two days, so the company would find out, and he would not get paid for a total of three days. Next weeks paycheck would have sixteen hours if he was lucky. He dug into his pocket for the pack of cigarettes. It was empty. He pulled into a corner store.

Bill walked in and asked the clerk for a pack of GPC in a box. The clerk asked Bill for I.D. He couldn’t have been more than eighteen. Bill noticed a couple of long hairs the kid had missed on his cheek while shaving. Everybody asked him for I.D every time. He wasn’t angry; he reached into his back pocket. Shit. There was no I.D there. He remembered. He had left it on the bathroom counter this morning. He had been rushing because he was late.
“I guess I forgot it this morning” he said.
The kids face twisted into a slight grin. He said “Well I can’t sell these to you then, dude.”
“I’m thirty six years old” said Bill.
“Sorry dude, I’ll lose my job if I sell to you without I.D.”
Bill looked at the missed facial hair and sighed. He walked out of the store.
Bill started the truck and put it in reverse. He started to pull out of the parking space and then stopped. The truck wasn’t rolling. Even before he noticed that the truck was lopsided he knew he had a flat tire. He put the truck in park and shut it off. This was the third flat tire he’d had in two weeks. Later, when he told people that, they didn’t believe him.
He got out of the truck and looked at the back tire, drivers’ side. He walked over to it and crouched down. He saw the piece of metal right off. A big piece of silver metal, probably an inch wide, was buried in the brand new tread. He had changed this same tire not more than four days ago.
Bill pulled the lever to push the driver’s side seat forward. The various parts of the jack were there behind it, along with some coins and High Life bottle caps. He brushed the bottle caps to the pavement and made a mental note of the change. He would definitely need those coins next week. He pulled the pieces of the jack out and brought