The cling-wrap cobweb of the passenger window offers no sheen, so he angles the side mirror to survey his reflection. He buttons and smooths out the suit jacket, tugs the tie’s knot all the way up, then arranges the two ribbons into a perfect arrow pointing down. He doesn’t bother squatting to check his face. Wouldn’t want to see himself like this, doing this, and so instead just unbuttons the shirtsleeve at his right wrist like a magician backstage, gearing up for the evening’s sleight of hand.

Glass panel teeth slide open sideways, more swallowing than welcoming Henry into the shopping cart atrium. A tongue of scuffed linoleum, a low ceiling pulsing above, and past the second set of doors stands the gatekeeper to these vast, fluorescent entrails: a toenail clipping of a man donning a blue vest and a vacant grin, a roll of smiley-face stickers held out like a collection plate. A train of shopping carts crackles and clacks and seems to cue the store’s thrum, ceaseless and otherworldly. No telling whether elysian or infernal, but it’s undeniably eternal. The promise of so much plenty is dizzying and instantly shrivels Henry down to humbler proportions, a morsel he can only hope might go totally undetected.