Inventory of the Lost

The fluorescent hum of the big-box store at 3 AM was its own kind of purgatory. Maria adjusted the brim of her security guard hat — regulation black, stiff with years of sweat and resignation — and watched the overnight stocking crew shuffle down aisle seven like the walking dead.

"We're all zombies, you know," said Lenny, pausing beside her with a box of discount dinnerware. His hair was thinning, the strands fine and colorless as spider silk, catching the merciless light. "Dead people who forgot to lie down."

Maria had heard this speech before. Lenny was forty-five, looked sixty, blamed the job. She was twenty-eight and already developing the same translucent complexion, the same dead-eyed stare that came from existing entirely during hours when the rest of the world slept. She should have been at law school. Instead, she was here, counting someone else's merchandise.

"That's the job, Lenny. Go stock your plates."

"You ever think about just"— he gestured vaguely with the box —"walking out? Leaving your hat by the door, never coming back?"

The question hit harder than it should have. Maria's ex had asked something similar two years ago, before leaving HER. He'd said she was already gone, just a body going through motions, hair pulled back in the same tight bun every day, eyes fixed on some horizon she couldn't name.

"My mother needs the insurance," she said, which was true but not the truth.

Lenny nodded, understanding. He set down the box, and for a moment they stood together in the fluorescent-lit tomb, two people who had somehow forgotten how to want things. Then he picked up his box and moved on, his shoes squeaking against the linoleum like joints that had forgotten how to bend.

Maria adjusted her hat. Somewhere beyond the automatic doors, dawn was beginning to break over a world where people still knew how to be alive.

Here, in aisle seven, she rearranged boxes she didn't care about and waited to feel something again.