He had learned that the seam takes one pass with a fresh blade if the blade is genuinely fresh, so he changed it every box. The condenser microphone sat eleven inches from the cardboard, angled down. Forty-one people were watching on a Tuesday at 9:15. Chat asked him to go slower on the shrink wrap, and he went slower, because that was the part they came for.

The cards went into a three-ring binder he had not opened since March. His wife was asleep upstairs by pack nine. He said good night to the forty-one, ended the stream, and stood in the kitchen with the empty box under the sink light, running his thumb along the cut edge where the blade had gone through clean.