to the entrance.
Somboun was standing outside alone, smoking. When he saw her coming, he dropped his cigarette and put it out with his shoe. Then he blew into his palm to check his breath and yelled out, “Hey, Dang!” Dang was what people who knew Red called her. It means red in Lao. It wasn’t her real name, just a nickname she got because her nose was always red from the cold. She hated that he called her by a nickname. It made things feel intimate between them in a way she didn’t want. The way he said “Dang,” it was like a light in him had been turned on and now she had to be responsible for what he could see about himself.
Wherever she was in the plant, if he was around he would head straight toward her, excited and hopeful for something to happen between them. He was there when she punched in her time card, there at the end of the day when she punched out. He followed her around as if she were carrying feed. She wondered how he never got tired of smiling so much. She would look away from him, uninterested, but he would follow her gaze. He had seen her interest in the girls who got nose jobs, had seen her taking in how everyone else was noticing them too.
“I just don’t see what the big deal is,” he had said. “Why go and do that to your face for?”
“She’s beautiful.”
“But it’s not real.”
“It’s real to her.”
“I don’t see it. I just don’t.”
“I want to get one too, you know,” Red had confessed, before she realized she should not have said that to Somboun. Now that he knew she wanted something for herself, he might think he was some kind of friend to her.
“No. Not you. Not you. No way.”
“Why not me? You think I don’t want to be beautiful?”
“Why in hell would you do that to yourself! You’re already beautiful.” Somboun said this with such sincere conviction that she was embarrassed for him. How naked and bare, his want.
“How would you know. You don’t know about girls.”
Somboun lowered his head and quietly said, “I don’t got to know anything about girls to know what’s beautiful.” He was so proud, and all for nothing. He’d worked at the plant the longest. Started when he was in high school, thinking this was something that was going to get him to college. Ten years later, he was still working at the plant doing the same thing. He was the one who slit the necks in the other room before they got to Red. He saw the chickens when they were still alive. She shuddered at the thought of doing anything with Somboun. What kind of gentleness could a man who did that for a living be capable of?
Still, after that, nose jobs were the one thing Somboun could manage to get Red to talk to him about. Who had got a nose job and when and if it was a good one. Red told him she was going to get a nose job too as soon as she saved up enough. She always said, “Next year, for sure. For sure.”
When Red saw Somboun standing at the entrance that morning, still smoking even though he often talked about quitting, and wearing the same drab uniform and the same haircut all these years, he reminded her of all the things she wanted for herself but still didn’t have. Day after day, the sight of him in the same place and in the same clothes and giving her the same greeting each morning showed that, for them, nothing had changed. Nothing had happened.
“I didn’t get one!” she yelled at him.
“You look fine the way you are,” he said, as if they were just picking up a conversation where they’d left off. As if the only time that counted for him were the ones they spent together, talking.
Walking quickly past him, she said, “Thanks, Sam.” Red knew he hated to be called by his English name. “Not Sam,” he would insist, “Somboun,” pronouncing the tones of the vowels the way Lao people would, refusing to make it easy. But he took what she said as if she was teasing and he smiled widely. To know someone’s dislikes was to be close to them.
“Hey, Dang?” Somboun called after her, trying to hold her attention and to keep up with her as she entered the plant.
“What is it?” Red said irritably,