Only hours ago, Henry’d popped into this very Walmart to buy a birthday present, right before picking Junior up from school. Walking in, he was greeted by death herself’s obese cousin, wearing a blue vest that clung to her with the tenacity of a bungee harness. Behind her, that vast cathedral of plenty was pulsing with a fluorescent sneer. Henry didn’t bother with a cart or basket. Waved away the proffered smiley-face sticker.

He’d deliberately parked on the opposite end of the store, away from the supermarket to spare himself the taunt of groceries, though this never squashed the question of how many hundreds of pounds of produce and meat and pastries and deli leftovers would wind up in the padlocked dumpsters out back. From this entrance, there was no avoiding the home and pharmacy sections to get to the toys. The main thruway to the back of the store was an obstacle course. Dazed, heel-dragging shoppers. Abandoned carts piled high with mundane loot. Signs shouting Everyday Low Price at every endcap and atop each squat tower of bargains that clogged the main lane. To the left, he passed domestic items he didn’t need or want, but nevertheless couldn’t afford.

To his right was the pharmacy section, aisle after aisle of makeup and soaps and shampoos and toothpastes and meds and shaving kits. By now his razor was so old its blade was brittle with rust and gunk, so over the last few weeks he’s been letting his wispy beard grow unchecked into something between Fu Manchu and pubescent lumberjack. For Junior’s sake, before falling asleep in the stuffy truck cab, Henry applies a nighttime coat of deodorant and has been going through Old Spice sticks at an expensive rate. He would need to replace that soon, too. Wanting to save his strength for tomorrow’s interview, he hadn’t arranged a Craigslist gig for tomorrow morning. There would be more cash to be made, not that it was ever enough. With any luck, once the paychecks started coming in and he’d paid off the remaining back rent, utility bills, association dues, sanitation bills, cleaning fees, and the New Year’s Eve movers, simply having a home would remove purchases like razors and deodorant from the edgy plane of conscious budgeting.

The toys were way in the back. Henry coasted the aisles in a nauseous trance. Past an aluminum avalanche of bicycles stacked three high up to the ceiling. Through a hall of Nerf guns and Lego sets. Around a pigpen of bouncy balls. Without Saturday-morning cartoons, the action figure characters in the next aisle existed without context, except for the reboots of the G.I. Joes and Ninja Turtles he’d played with as a kid himself. But these plastic dolls were twelve, fifteen, others twenty bucks apiece—when had these fuckers gotten so expensive?