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On impulse, I stopped by the donut shop yesterday, shortly after 2 p.m., meaning to quickly get a donut and leave.

When I stepped through the doors, the burgeoning heat of afternoon sun through all the windows and heat still radiating from the now-quiet ovens slowed me down. I saw that everything was slow.

Behind the counter, a man mopped the same tiles over and over, in long flat oval pushes of a mop. The women in front of me in line carefully read the signs listing the price of donuts, and read them again. One of them asked a question about the price of donuts. The clerk listened, then thought about his answer.

When at last he brought the boxes of doughnuts to the woman, his mouth turned up ever so slightly at the corners in a slow smile. The smell of doughnuts, like a boa, wound around my throat and I was breathless. The doughnuts on trays beneath the glass case became, almost imperceptibly, browner.

I paid for my purchase in exact change and laid the coins into the palm of the clerk in separate piles, dimes and quarters. His skin was warm and dry. I folded the top of my doughnut bag one more time and left.