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My fingertips were dry and shiny then from the magazines. I'd sit and rub them against my thumbs while I was at red lights. One day a week, 7 am to 3 pm, I was delivering Auto Trader magazines to 39 convenience stores through Southeast Austin. I got four dollars a stop, and they classified me as an independent contractor, which meant no taxes, so I got a hundred and fifty-six dollars a week for eight hours total work. And the work was, as Phil this other driver put it, "nothin' but robotics" after a couple weeks. You grab your invoice off the passenger seat, pop the trunk, slit open the stacks and take them in order: Heavy Equipment Trader, Big Truck Trader, Cycle Trader, Antique and Sports Car Trader, Boat and RV Trader, Auto Trader. You wait till there's not a customer at the register and count off the old issues you're taking and the new ones you're dropping off, add the totals and subtract--you take back the difference. You get watched closely by the clerk, sometimes double-checked even though you use a calculator.
I guessed it was the thumbing through of the glossy covers that did it to my fingers. Counting them off by feeling their edges, carrying the stacks, pretty soon the tips were tingling and red. It must have been some chemical in the ink or something, but they started burning when I picked my coffee out of the holder. Then I'd rub them together and the tips felt smooth, like when you rub double-sided silk between your thumb and forefinger real fast. I started to look close up at the swirls in my fingerprints and they weren't as deep, like my fingerprints had been sanded off.
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