The alarm went off at five in the morning. Frank didn't hit snooze. He never hit snooze. Snooze was for people who had somewhere to be and wanted five more minutes of the luxury of staying in bed. Frank had somewhere to be at six, and five more minutes would mean missing the bus by thirty seconds, which would mean waiting twenty minutes for the next one, which would mean starting the day twenty minutes later, which would mean twenty minutes fewer hours in which to make money.

He got up. He put on the same work clothes he had worn the day before and the day before that and the day before that. The shirt was blue and the pants were gray and both were thinning at the elbows and the knees. He walked to the kitchen, where Linda was already awake, already sitting at the table with a cup of coffee that had been brewing too long.

"Morning," he said.

"Morning," she said. She didn't look up. She was staring at the wall, which had a water stain on it that looked like a map of a country that didn't exist.

Frank opened the refrigerator. Inside was a jar of pickles, a container of leftover spaghetti, and a carton of milk that was probably bad. He closed the refrigerator and opened the cupboard. Inside was a box of cereal and a bag of bread. He took the bread and put two slices in the toaster and waited.

The toaster was old and uneven. One slice came out darker than the other. Frank ate the lighter one and gave the darker one to Danny, who was still asleep in his room down the hall. Danny was twenty-two,和社区学院的学生, and he worked nights at a gas station, which meant he slept during the day and was half-asleep during the night, which meant he didn't notice when his father gave him the burnt piece of toast and said nothing.

Frank finished his coffee, put on his jacket, and walked out the door.

The bus ride to downtown Cleveland took forty minutes. Frank sat in the front row, near the driver, and watched the city pass by. Cleveland in 2019 was a city that had been forgotten. Not destroyed—destroyed would have been honest. Destroyed implies violence, and violence implies that someone cared enough to do the destroying. Cleveland was simply forgotten, which was worse. It was a city of empty storefronts and boarded-up windows and parks where the grass grew tall and untended, like a house where nobody lived.

Frank had worked in a steel factory for twenty-five years. He had started when he was twenty-five, fresh out of the Navy, looking for work that would make him feel useful. The factory had made him feel useful. He had lifted heavy things and moved them from one place to another, and the heavy things had become buildings and bridges and cars, and Frank had been part of that, and that had been enough.

Then the factory closed. Not dramatically—not a bang, not a protest, not a union strike. Just a letter in the mail: Dear valued employee, due to changing market conditions, we regret to inform you... Changing market conditions. Frank had read that phrase a thousand times in his life, in different contexts, and it had always meant the same thing: somebody, somewhere, decided that your labor was worth less than it had been worth yesterday.

He found work as a forklift operator for a logistics company. That lasted six months, until the company outsourced the operation to a country where forklift operators made two dollars an hour. He found another job driving a truck. That lasted eight months, until he had a minor accident—a rear-end collision at a stoplight, nobody hurt, just damage—and the company dropped him because his insurance rating went up.

And then there was The Gig.

The Gig was an app. You downloaded it to your phone, you created a profile, you waited for someone to need something done. Something small. Something that didn't require a real job. Mowing a lawn. Moving a couch. Cleaning a garage. Delivering a package. Each job paid between ten and twenty-five dollars, depending on the difficulty, and you had to compete with other Gig workers for the right to do the job, and the algorithm decided who got the job based on a rating system that Frank didn't understand and didn't trust.

He had been on The Gig for three months. In that time, he had made enough to pay the rent and buy groceries and keep the electricity on. He had not made enough to save anything. He had not made enough to help Danny with tuition. He had not made enough to fix the leak in the roof.

The bus arrived at downtown Cleveland. Frank got off, walked three blocks to a coffee shop, and opened The Gig app on his phone. There were five jobs available. He looked at them:

- Mow lawn, $15 - Move couch, $20 - Clean garage, $12 - Deliver package, $8 - Paint fence, $18

He selected the couch move. It was on the East Side, which meant a bus ride over, a bus ride back, and forty minutes for the actual moving. Twenty dollars for two hours of work, minus the bus fare, minus the wear and tear on his jacket, minus the fact that his back would hurt for three days.

He accepted the job. The client confirmed. Frank drank his coffee, watched the city, and waited for the time to leave.

The couch was in a building on East 55th Street, a building that had once been elegant and was now just tired. Two men were supposed to help him move it, but only one showed up, and he was late, and when he arrived he was smoking something that made Frank's nose wrinkle.

"Let's move it," the smoker said.

They moved the couch. It was heavier than it looked, and Frank's back protested, and the smoker didn't help as much as he should have, leaning against the wall and smoking and watching Frank do most of the lifting. When they were done, the client—a woman in her thirties with tired eyes and a polite smile—handed Frank twenty dollars and said thank you, and Frank said you're welcome, and he walked to the bus stop and rode back to downtown Cleveland and sat in the coffee shop and looked at The Gig app.

Four jobs available.

- Clean garage, $12 - Deliver package, $8 - Paint fence, $18 - Walk dog, $10

He selected the fence. It was in Lakewood, which meant a bus ride over, a bus ride back, and two hours of painting. Eighteen dollars for two hours of work, minus the bus fare, minus the paint that he would have to buy himself because the app said the client would provide materials but the client wouldn't show up until after he had already started.

He accepted the job. The client didn't confirm. The app said confirmation was optional. Frank rode the bus to Lakewood, found the house, and started painting.

The fence was a white wooden fence that had once been beautiful and was now gray and warped. Frank painted from ten in the morning until four in the afternoon. The sun was hot. The mosquitoes were worse. He drank water from a bottle he had brought from home and ate a sandwich from the convenience store down the street.

At three-thirty, his phone buzzed. It was an app notification: Your rating has been updated. Your new rating is 4.2 stars.

Frank stopped painting. He stared at the phone. Four-point-two. He had been four-point-five last week. What had dropped his rating? He scrolled through the notifications and found it: the client from the couch move had left a review. One star. The comment read: Worker was slow.

Slow. Frank had carried a three-hundred-pound couch up three flights of stairs while a smoker watched from the wall. Slow.

He looked at the fence. He looked at his phone. He looked at the sun.

He painted for another thirty minutes, put the brush down, and went home.

When he got home, Danny was asleep on the couch, his laptop open on his chest, a textbook slid onto the floor. Frank picked up the textbook and put it on the table and looked at his son's face—the same face he had had at five years old, at ten, at fifteen, and now at twenty-two, and the face was changing, slowly, like all faces change, and Frank was changing too, slowly, like all faces change, and they were both changing in a city that didn't notice, and that was the strangest thing of all: not that the city didn't notice, but that Frank had expected it to.

He went to the kitchen and made himself a plate of leftovers—spaghetti from the jar, cold and congealed—and sat at the table and ate it while Linda watched television. The television was loud. Linda didn't seem to hear it. Frank didn't ask her to turn it down.

After dinner, he sat in his armchair and looked at The Gig app. Three jobs available.

- Deliver package, $8 - Walk dog, $10 - Clean garage, $12

He selected the garage. It was across town, which meant a long bus ride, but twelve dollars was twelve dollars, and the bus was air-conditioned, and air-conditioning was worth two dollars, so the real value of the job was fourteen dollars, which was still not enough to fix the leak in the roof.

He put the phone down. He sat in his armchair. He closed his eyes.

His back hurt. His hands hurt. His feet hurt. But it wasn't the hurting that bothered him. It was the not-seeing-the-end of-the-hurting. In the factory, the hurting had a purpose: you hurt because you were building something, and at the end of the day, you could point to something and say: I built that. This garage cleaning, this fence painting, this couch moving—these were things that disappeared. The garage would be dirty again tomorrow. The fence would warp again next year. The couch would sit in the living room and nobody would remember that Frank had helped put it there.

He opened his eyes. He looked at his hands. They were the same hands that had lifted steel beams and operated forklifts and driven trucks. They were strong hands. They were useful hands. They were hands that had supported a family for twenty-five years without complaint.

And now they were hands that moved couches and painted fences and delivered packages, and the world had not ended because they stopped doing the things they used to do, and that was the most humiliating thing of all: not that he had lost his job, but that nobody had noticed when he lost it.

His phone buzzed. The garage client had confirmed. Frank picked up the phone, accepted the job, and got up from his chair. His back hurt. His hands hurt. His feet hurt. But he had work to do.

He put on his jacket. He walked to the door. He looked back at the living room, where Danny was still asleep on the couch and Linda was still watching television and the water stain on the wall still looked like a map of a country that didn't exist.

He opened the door and went out into the night.