The metro card ran out as I was running through the turnstile this morning. One day too early, darling, I muttered in my head; the train raced by while I dug for my wallet. “This is your last mid-morning break,” Jeff said at eleven. “This is your second-to-last time walking up the stairs,” Jeff said at one. They took me out to lunch: Leila, Garth, Kate, Lindsay, Jeff, Jeff, NP, and Andreas; it was so nice.

In between Scott’s Prose Works, volume eight, and Hallam’s History of Europe, volume two, I cleaned out my tissue drawer and my Remay drawer and my blotter drawer and all the rest. I held up my tools one by one in offering to Nancy (take the spatulas, leave the knitting needles) and then offered the rejects to Andreas (always the short end of the stick). The drawers are so empty now, the table clear of books, the shelf missing its collection of scrap book cloth. I left the bulletin board for last.

I cut fifty-three window mats for RBML and I was hinging them together when Leila came in to trick me into coming to a surprise party that Erik made me, the sneak. The pieces fell together into the cheesecake and strawberries: random people knowing I'm leaving, Andreas' nonchalance when he ought to have been leaving for the day. Speech, speech, their faces clamored while I stood in the middle of the circle clutching the lid of my present, trying to think of something to say more poignent than, "Oh, you guys!"