You’ve worked attaching buttons to overcoats since you were a young child. You grew up in the factory and everyone knows your name. They call you by the wrong name, but they feel confident that they know your name and you have been answering to the wrong name, so it’s too late to say anything. Sometimes you pretend to be your other self, the one with the different name, your original name. This person would be different, you think. You imagine a life without buttons, a life where buttons are not important. In this life you are alone by a lake, a lake so deep you cannot see its bottom, though the water is clear. You are alone here and you don’t have to wear any clothing. There is no one to hide from. Your body tans and you start to feel relaxed. There’s no rush to do anything, be anything, be anywhere. Your skin wrinkles. You are creased with age, with time. You didn’t even notice it was happening. You were young and now you are old. You can see all the creases in your skin. You spend hours studying these creases. Each day, you develop a new crease or an existing crease deepens. Your skin pulls toward the earth and you are rooted there next to the lake. You never see another person and it doesn’t matter what your name is anymore. It used to matter, but now you don’t even remember. You haven’t tried to remember in years.

But none of that is real. That’s not your story. You are in the factory where you grew up and you are attaching buttons. You’re an expert and you are training other people to attach buttons. Your apprentices model their lives after yours. You are winning awards. You are inventing new kinds of buttons. People didn’t know buttons could be this way. You are shaping new needles. Because of you, there are new and better overcoats. You are successful. Your family is proud. Your mother is proud. Your wife and children are proud. Everyone is so proud. They wouldn’t be proud if they knew about your secret life without them. They would wonder why you didn’t imagine them beside you at the lake. They would want you to put on some clothes. Your wife would urge you to be appropriate, especially in front of the children. She would want you to do something with yourself and with your life. Be productive. Support your family. Spend time with them. You never spend enough time with the kids. They are growing up maladjusted and this is your fault. You should talk to them. Really get to know them. What do you know about your kids? Do you remember their favorite colors? Their favorite games?

You are increasingly terrified your family will find out about your other life. They make you nervous. Your fingers are unsteady. You can hardly grip a needle. You can’t push the needle through the thick overcoat in order to attach a button. The needle slips and you stick your finger. It bleeds on the overcoat. There is so much blood. The overcoat is ruined. You discard it and get a new overcoat, but it is the same this time. Your finger bleeds and the coat is ruined. Your supervisor tells you to go home, but you don’t want to go there. Your family is there. They are waiting. They will know. They will look at your bleeding fingers and they will understand everything. They will be disappointed. They will leave and you will live in the house alone. You will go to work every day and attach buttons to overcoats and you won’t be an expert anymore. You won’t be very good at all. At night you will return to the empty house. Your other life won’t be accessible. Your family has taken that too. They all sit by the lake without you and you stay home and live your life as a button attacher.

You look at your hands, bloody and thick with calluses. In the pit of your stomach you feel something hard and oppressive. Don’t worry. You will forget all this. Maybe you have forgotten it before, any number of times. We will tell you again and you will feel the hardness in your stomach, but you will forget that you know this. You will forget. You are a button attacher. You aren’t sure what your name is. You are very good at your job. It is all you have.