He’s got to focus. Get to the pharmacy, get the meds, and get the hell out of here. Determined to hide in plain sight, he offers the greeter a solemn nod, struts past the proffered yellow sticker, and immediately makes his first mistake. No cart. Not even a basket. Might look suspicious to the black half globes above recording his every move, but doubling back for either would probably call even more attention to himself. Got to act casual, natural, convince himself and everyone else that he belongs here as much as anyone else. He feels a sort of magnetic tug coming from the right, in the direction of the pharmacy department, but he lets himself coast straight ahead amid the trickle of empty carts and shoppers, hoping that rerouting his plan of attack might lead the hounds off his scent. To the greeter’s back is a row of nipple-high pallets. It forms a barricade before the cash registers and funnels the incoming flock into the supermarket. The first pallet is a cube of Vlasic pickle jars, cartoon storks laughing at him from every last cylinder. Next, Jack Daniel’s barbecue sauce. Then Lay’s potato chips—yellow Classic, green Sour Cream & Onion, red Wavy—followed by Pepsi, all Pepsi, until the last one shared by Corona and Corona Light, and in the rafters above the Mexican beers, an American flag dangles from its side, turning its stripes into prison cell bars. In the main lane is a rug of fake grass stapled in place by a cast-iron fire pit, a portable grill, and bags of Kingsford charcoal. After the Fourth of July barbecue ware comes a table holding crinkly plastic containers of dinner rolls, cinnamon rolls, lemon tart cupcakes, bear claws, cornbread, and Everyday Low Price—only $3.98 each. He pivots away from the empty-calorie pastries and toward nutrition, the produce, and trips into a shelf of scrotal avocados. He charges ahead, resists the nourishing lure of green grapes, red grapes, tubs of precubed watermelon, mango, honeydew, apple, pineapple, strawberries, hubcap-sized party trays of celery, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, baby carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, alongside vats of guacamole, ranch, mayonnaise—low fat, regular, zesty—and it’s too much, too tempting. Rubbing his eyes, he bumps into a man in a mesh tank top and apologizes to a plastic crate that’s either half-empty or half-full of cantaloupes the color of brain matter, and his own brain is swelling, about to pop like bubble gum as it absorbs and processes this barrage of stimuli. His vision muddles, smears the organic section into an Amazonian array of greens, until the shelves stop at an endcap freezer full of Eggo waffles and Cool Whip. It’s notably cooler in the frozen food aisle, humming like a choir in a seashell. Along the upper trim of the freezers are green signs labeling the sections to his left: Dinner Breads, Breakfast, Breakfast, Breakfast, Dessert. He misses the dinner breads entirely after a glance at the glass doors flashes back a chump in a floppy suit whose face is squeezed by fatigue and guilt. At the far end of the aisle is a cluster of shoppers bent over their cart handles, a herd of metallic cattle. Henry decelerates to a trot, and slowing down along the first quadrant of Breakfast brings the boxes of Jimmy Dean breakfast sandwiches into focus. The glossy photos of croissants with sausage, bacon, poached eggs, and melted cheddar tantalize him in a way the produce couldn’t. Just imagining the scent of spiced lard and fluffy buttermilk biscuits stirs a shudder of famine as all-consuming as lust. How he’d wanted to suck the CVS cashier’s pretty pecan fingers knotting his necktie, wanted to give the athleisure-wearing mother at McDonald’s a horizontal workout worth remembering, wanted to turn the mousy gas station clerk out and into Michelle—no, to this day nothing roars as feral or insatiable as his hunger for Michelle. Even now he would forgo a thirteen-course orgy for a nibble of her earlobe. He is ravenous. He has to cool off, hurry up, and so the waffles, biscuits, breakfast burritos, canned Minute Maid juices, and Sara Lee pies all smudge into a frosty technicolor before he slices past the shopping cart herd and breaks back into the main lane, lightheaded and short of breath. Junior is waiting, the truck is running, the seconds are ticking, and so he prays nobody is watching as he interlocks his fingers and tips his face to the halo glare above, proposing a silent deal to the rafters: make this lap through the supermarket a successful diversion, and he’ll gladly turn over whatever little he’s got. He swears it, just—please. Amen. Even though Papa had been raised Catholic, he and Mom had always sneered at organized religion and the idea of an omnipotent, benevolent god who nevertheless subjected its creation to such rampant suffering and injustice. Still though, at Mom’s funeral Henry’d spied Papa thumbing the beads of a beechwood rosary, looped over the tops of his fingers like brass knuckles. Papa’s lips squirmed but released no sound, perhaps bidding his wife a silent farewell, or else positing a secret bargain to the void, just like Henry, right here, right now. He thought he’d ironed out the conditions of this absurd pact only in his mind, but now he hears his own voice muttering as he turns into another wide thruway that leads past the women’s clothes. The pharmacy awaits at the end of this stretch, but there’s an obstacle course of sluggish customers and huge racks clogging the lane. He dips into a slight squat, greasing his knees limber for this sprint. He zips past the Energizer and Duracell display, around another wishing him HAPPY SNACKING before he dodges a rack of empty DVD-sized slots and a cube tiled in gift cards for websites and restaurants like Applebee’s, Chili’s, Hooters, Red Lobster, and there’d been a time when he was rich, a moment when he possessed a Bible’s bulk of cash and the divine power to purchase any damn thing in this godawful bazaar, whatever trinket, gadget, or treat that might please or sustain Junior and Michelle—his family. They’d been a family back then, but what are they now? The question rips him to a standstill. He doesn’t have an answer, just thirty-eight cents in his pocket and a glass jewelry case to his left. A yellow CLEARANCE banner runs above the velvet-lined clams, all their jaws locked open to show off their synthetic pearls and pendants and gems and chains and rings and at one point he’d wanted more than anything to marry Michelle. To pamper and spoil and devote his every last everything to her. To write her a motherfucking symphony—ha. And in the end? Ha. In the end, the boy was right: Henry killed her. He’d taken it upon himself to thunder all high and mighty and strike her down. He hit her. He hit her. He hit her. Assaulted, attacked, laid out, sucker-punched—there’s no way to rebrand the violence into something forgivable. If not entirely well, at least she’s alive somewhere in California, but whenever she comes back for Junior, she would never have anything to do with Henry—not after what he’d done—and so her absence from his waking hours would only augment this ocean of alone, this high tide of remorse doomed to never recede. A wave crashes in his mind. He struggles against the undertow, anchors himself to a rack of beach towels rolled into terry cloth scrolls alongside Banana Boat, Hawaiian Tropic, and Australian Gold oils and creams. All this landlocked beach gear, thousands of miles from either coast, but still a shoreline begins unfolding itself down the main thruway so goddamn vividly that it has to be a memory. There’s Michelle walking across the sand, her naked frame opaque and glinting like a dust-coated diamond. The surf sweeps over her feet and leaves cappuccino froth around her ankles. He hustles after her and into a perpendicular lane that cleaves both this made-up memory and the jewelry section. The lane is a bridge to the men’s clothes, its corner rack showcasing Independence Day paraphernalia. Cotton T-shirts of white, blue, and gray depict bald eagles gazing stoically at unoccupied armpits, while others fly the flag, Old Glory either flattened into a rectangle or else curled by an unseeable breeze. Born Free. Freedom Isn’t Free. FREEDOM, plain and simple. God Bless America. 1776. No mention whatsoever of any truths held self-evident or rights unalienable, but that’s hardly the cause of the horror that’s birthed directly above like a boulder on a string. It’s what shimmers in his periphery, there, across from the men’s clothing section: the pharmacy department. He’s here, right here, steps and seconds away from what he’s come to do and better get done quick, because he doesn’t have much of a choice one way or another, or a million. Just has to reach out and take it, but his grip is a liability. Can’t afford another mistake. He wipes his hands over the jacket, but the polyester more squeegees than absorbs the moisture. He passes three teenage girls in the makeup aisle who crane their necks at a high mirror, smacking their lips. Signs at each and every endcap down the way promise a new Everyday Low Price, Everyday Low Price, Everyday Low Price. The next aisle is shopperless but cramped by vitamin boxes’ yellows and purples, greens and reds, blues and oranges striping the shelves with no regard for chromatic sequence like a disgruntled rainbow. Facing it are headless male bodies, seemingly carved out of oak, plastered onto plastic vats of whey protein and energy powders. The shelves clear into an opening before the pharmacy window, beside which is Allergy Relief, across from which is Pain Relief. He pauses to regroup at the nearest end-cap, pretending to examine ingredients on a package of Neutrogena Makeup Remover Cleansing Towelettes while covertly surveying his surroundings. He forces out a yawn, squinting and arching his neck as he scans the ceiling for security cameras, trying to pinpoint a blind spot on the ground. He peeks past the serrated ridge of the periwinkle packaging to track the customers’ paths as they mill from one Everyday Low Price to the next. They’re all potential witnesses or whistleblowers, possibly even secret shoppers with handcuffs hidden in their jorts, for all he knows. None of them walk. They trudge and shuffle down the main lane, as if their rickety shopping cart wheels were propelled by some hidden motor that was actually towing them along, like a tractor hauling off a felled rodeo steer. He comes across a stray cart. Might help him blend in. He casually takes its handle, lets it tug him forward as he studies the shoppers for more camouflage pointers. Every man, regardless of age, race, or size wears a baseball cap, so Henry looks down. Clunky orthopedic sneakers. Once-white socks gone Dijon. A prosthetic leg. Varicose veins. Crisco oozes out of cargo shorts and into flip-flops. Torsos defy elastic waistbands. Bra straps floss into blimpish shoulders. Arms so roped with muscle they look nautical, others so flabby they look edible. Collars stretched into frowns. A trache-punctured throat. Cranberry psoriasis. Lopsided goatees. Wrinkles like gashes or dragonfly wings or survival. Irises like May mornings. Irises like despair. Zigzagging cornrows. A gray cotton candy perm. Hair like braided honey, hair like wisteria, hair like Michelle’s. Pigtails like two chutes of motor oil sway at the back of a girl’s head as she wags a Super Soaker, begging her mother for permission to place it in their cart, which they now realize is missing. The mother spins and catches the culprit, the thief, Henry. His back goes slimy but his throat is parched. Can’t muster an apology. Just crumples into a penitent bow and surrenders the cart. Doesn’t seem right, doesn’t feel fair. Whatever he owns he must inevitably relinquish. Wherever he goes he is universally rejected. He doesn’t belong because he can’t. His exile is everlasting. But is it really too steep an order to be equal to, or simply among, these people? Yeah, he knows he’s done terrible, shameful things, and still does them here and there, but on accident, like last night with the dogmonger, as well as a few sort of bad things, like what he’s got to do now. But this is for his son. The end justifies these petty means, right? Shouldn’t stealing for the sake of his son’s health balance out the ethical seesaw? No denying his three gravest trespasses have sunk the immoral end of the scale deep into the playground muck. He’d attacked and banished the mother of his son. He’d betrayed and effectively locked away his best friend. He’d ignored his last friend’s pleas, let the police trounce and chain and drag him away. He can hardly bring himself to mutter any of their names, but he’s been trying, he’s been fighting, and if he truly is beyond redemption and all hope of ever becoming a good person, is it still too much to ask to be a regular one? While he did something treacherous, he’s never done anything treasonous, nothing against the country. His life sentence to the status of an untouchable seems both cruel and unusual. All he wants is to be like any one of these people, these Americans doing the best they can with the itty-bitty they got, one day and purchase at a time. It’s all right here, right in front of him, mere inches from his fingertips, and so he stretches them into five points and slaps himself across the cheek. The smack sizzles. Flames catch and spread. It’s entirely up to him to put himself within arm’s reach and take it, and so he marches straight past the pharmacy window, his body ablaze and its trail of smoke be damned. The shelves are brimming with options, and Junior deserves the absolute best. An eye-level stream of orange: Equate Daytime, DayQuil, a combo box of Day- and NyQuil, then plain old purple NyQuil, followed by the lime green of Mucinex boxes before the shelves end and give way to a row of metal prongs, shish kabobs of Carmex, ChapStick, Burt’s Bees, below which are boxes with circular tins of balm. Oh, to be more than the boy’s shield but his balm, a salve to alleviate and comfort and—more shelves, more medicines. Pink boxes of Benadryl, blue boxes of Allegra, a grassy knoll for Claritin, and the final half of the aisle is dedicated to Pain Relief: red for Tylenol, navy for Advil, emerald for Excedrin Extra Strength, crimson for Excedrin Migraine, sky blue for Aleve, yellow for Bayer. Each brand name and color comes in a dozen different sizes, varying counts and doses, extended release, instant relief, liquid tabs, gel tabs, and all that matters is that he take the very best one, the most expensive yet in the smallest package, which he can fit under his unbuttoned shirtsleeve. But first things first, he’s got to outwait this lady who’s just parked her cart right next to him. Under a silk hijab, her face turns from a box of Claritin to another of Equate Loratadine. Time is tight. Each second burns another drop of gasoline, every minute hoists Junior’s fever further up, further deathward. Still though, this permits a respite, a moment to breathe, browse, compare. Advil turns out to be the most expensive, which he can only assume is owed to its superior quality. His left hand goes for the largest box, three hundred 200-milligram tablets for $19.98, while the right helps itself to two of the easily concealable Advil Pocket Packs. Two decoys, one target. It’s now or never and he’s ready but needs this lady to make up her goddamn mind and leave him—despite how desperately he craves company, understanding, touch—alone. Waiting, imploding, he feigns concentration and draws the fine print under his nose, mirroring the woman beside him. A full minute passes. The thermometer climbs. The box descends in her hands, and so does the one in Henry’s. She squints, he squints. She sighs, and Henry is broiling. His rage is frothy, savage, but with no turnbuckles to climb or folding chairs to hurl, all he can do is shake the pills into angry maracas, as if that might shoo her away. Instead, it prompts her to examine the Benadryl. As the pills go from maracas to a can of mace, a Molotov cocktail—something, anything repellent or explosive—she looks up and catches him scowling. They exchange the timid smiles that retail decorum demands of shoppers who’ve made eye contact, and he wants to scream. Assessing his options, he knows he’s too racked with anxious twitches to stuff the pills under his sleeve while he’s walking, and moving to another unoccupied aisle totally defeats the purpose of the two decoys that he intends to return oh so innocently to the shelf. Maybe doing it here with this lady right next to him would be the slickest move of all. The sheer audacity of shoplifting in plain sight and only inches from a witness just might clear him of all suspicion. Since he first stepped inside, his every movement has been charged with a furtive, guilt-ridden quake, so this isn’t only the timeliest tactic, but also the most prudent. If it’s now or never, he chooses now. Now—go. He sniffs. A knob in his forehead twists and his focus goes telescopic. A sold-out stadium, its collective breath held, bracing for flying-elbow impact. Now. He sniffs again, clears his throat, and expels a few raspy, hollow-chest coughs to muffle any pill clicks as his pinky presses one of the Pocket Pack vials up his wrist and into his sleeve. It settles in place, secured, unnoticed. It was so easy, went so quick, and relief fizzles through him, because it is done. The tricky part at least. To keep the small box in place, he’s got to keep his right hand folded into an awkward, arthritic claw at his side, and so he uses the left to return the decoys. Apparently the lady beside him is impressed by his shrewd consumer resolve, because she now nods to him, and the smile he deploys in turn is celestial. Even after their gazes detach, the sense of completion stays with him. Turning to make his escape, he forces out another cough to cloaks the pills’ clacking when he lets the bottle slide into the suit’s front pocket. A sigh gusts him out to the main thruway, sailing him down the homestretch past home decor and straight toward the cash lanes, the exit, Junior. This propulsion doesn’t belong to him. It’s as if all that’s left is the chore of treading water, keeping his head surfaced while the flow of Everyday Low Prices and carts and shoppers and white linoleum and even whiter lights carries him closer and closer and he’s so close now. Happily, he defers to the current, a piece of driftwood with purpose, a destination. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, and life is but a nightmare—he’s become a walking, tone-deaf tambourine. Step after step, the pills shout, clack and clack and clack, merrily, merrily, merrily announcing his escape. He tries whistling over the noise, but his lips are too dry since his nervous system has dispatched all water caches to cool the rest of him down. The checkout area is a minefield looming closer and larger now, and he hasn’t devised a strategy for navigating past all these eyes, all the black half globes, one staring down at every single cash register. He dips his head to watch his boots flashing left-right-left-right-left over the floor and immediately realizes this evasive tactic is a fucking flare, a crackling, ruby-red comet tail spotlighting him as he flees a crime scene. Slathered palms mold his face muscles from panic to staid, before he presses his chin up and his shoulders wide, as if strutting back into the job interview for round two. Only a criminal would weasel out through one of the unattended cash lanes, but he’s no novice, he won’t rush into this trap. He opts for the brazen route, dissimulating among the longest line of carts and beneath his faux-bold veneer. Wheels squeak. Items thud onto conveyor belts. Buttons click. Scanners beep. Receipts print. The boom of his heartbeat makes a dance of his skips and sidesteps past the shopping carts, baskets, customers, and cashiers. He’s prepared for any gaze that might hook his own, at the ready to deal counterblows in the form of courteous nods. He’s so close now, so close that he can see a sliver of dusk beyond the sliding doors. A frail old lady struggles to lift a paper bag into her cart. She is the final hurdle and he is so close. In a swoop, he wrangles the four remaining bags off the counter and into her cart and gives a neighborly salute, before breaking free of the checkout lanes and into the airy clearing by customer service. He gulps down a yip. He crams his hands into pockets to restrain them from outstretching as if crossing a finish line. He has to check himself. Take her easy. Down, boy. He breathes in, smooths his lapels like a businessman, exhales. Done deal. Gravy. Triumph. He’s close, even closer now, so close that through the glass doors he can see the rear bumper of his truck. The air beneath it is woolly—exhaust—and so the engine is miraculously still running. Twined so tight, so ecstatically zeroed in on the target, he only notices the security guard after fully rounding the corner and striding sternum first into a stiff extended palm.