Eight Thousand Gallons of Milk and a Small Blue Ledger

past one, I was sitting in the employee breakroom with Wayne.

A half-eaten sandwich sat on the table between us, alongside two paper cups of coffee that had gone lukewarm.

“We have the backup mold,” I said, looking at the pencil behind Wayne’s ear. “If we can run one hundred cases of the old design, we can prove the cheap plastic is the only flaw.”