American rust by Philipp Meyer

and the only part- time jobs were fast food, Wal- Mart, or the Lowe's supercenter—all of which required her to use her hands and only paid minimum wage. Not to mention you had to wait awhile to get one. Once people got jobs, even crappy ones, they tended to stay in them. Just to try it, the year earlier she'd taken a second job at Wendy's, but she'd only lasted a week.
    She would take things as they came—her mother had worked three jobs before getting an aneurysm at fifty- six and Grace, unlike her mother, was determined to live with a little dignity. That did not include coming home soaked in rancid grease, getting bossed around by teenagers for five- fifteen an hour. It was a reasonable thing to ask—a life with a little bit of dignity. She didn't take up much space otherwise.
    She came into Brownsville along the river and the road climbed up past the bridges and then she was downtown. It was easy to find parking. The city had once been promising but now it was mostly abandoned, ten- story office buildings and hotels, all empty, brick and stone stained dark by soot. The downtown had a European feel, at least from what she'd seen on the Travel Channel—narrow cobblestone streets winding and dipping, disappearing quickly among the buildings. She liked that. Continuing down the steep hill toward the old warehouse, she passed the Flatiron Building, there was a historical marker on it and she knew there was another one like it in New York City, though she guessed that one wasn't empty.
    By one o'clock her hands ached so much she knew she had to stop. Christ, she thought, it's Saturday. We shouldn't be here anyway. But as always she felt guilty and worked slightly longer, more than she should have, waiting until she'd finished both long seams of the dress she was constructing for a bride in Philadelphia. The dress would sell for about four thousand dollars, the mortgage on Grace's trailer for an entire year. Nervous, she walked across the shop floor to tell Steiner, having the feeling, as she occasionally did, that he might tell her to not come back. But Steiner, thin and unseasonably tan in his golf shirt, his few remaining white hairs combed across the top of his head—he looked up from his desk and smiled and said: “Get better soon, Gracie. Thanks for coming in.” He wasn't angry. He was happy they'd all come in on a weekend to get rid of the backlog. Keep making him money, she thought.
    Walking back across the shop floor she was already thinking about the hot towel she would wrap around her hands when she got home, how good it would feel, her body began to relax just in anticipation of it and a thought occurred to her: this is what it means to get old, you don't look forward to pleasure so much as easing pain. She said good- bye to the dozen or so women at their workbenches, the old wide- open factory floor with its brick walls painted white for cleanliness, it was a space much larger than they needed, cold, they all ran space heaters under their benches. The material they worked with was expensive, it wasn't like they were sewing blue jeans; only Jenna Herrin and Viola Graff looked up to say good- bye, the others nodded or raised a pinkie. They all knew what the dresses sold for but it didn't do any good to talk about it; most of the work they did could be done for a few dollars a day in South America. Not the same quality, but close enough. It was only that Steiner was too old and lazy to go down there and set up shop.
    After taking the freight elevator downstairs, she walked up the narrow street that was permanently in the shadow of the tall empty buildings, finally emerging into the sunlight. By the time she reached the top of the cobblestone hill where she'd parked her car, she was out of breath. At the top of the hill was a big vista, the whole valley was green and full-looking, the gorge, the river cutting between sheer cliffs. She stood a while longer and watched a long tow of barges, a dozen or fourteen of