You study the sides of the metal rectangle reverentially, as if on bended knee deep in the bowels of the Vatican. Every episode that is depicted on it is both instantly recalled and savored. The man himself, Steve Austin—played by the actor Lee Majors—hovering as a large disembodied head over several moments of bionic splendor: racing a horse on foot; bending a piece of railroad track with his bare hands; leaping over an oncoming car. On the backside, he is uprooting a tree and hitting two thugs while his good friend, Oscar Goldman, looks on. You scan the individual pictures that grace the spine of the thing and your knees begin to quiver. You check the girl again, who is now a good fifty yards away behind a tower of board games. Surprising even yourself, you glance toward the nearest exit and calculate the distance. You could make it out of the room in ten seconds, no question, and that would be walking. At an even pace. Something inside forces you to dig into a front pocket for a twenty-dollar bill—you weren’t thinking of stealing the thing, for God’s sake!—as a voice from behind causes you to stumble forward. Bumping your right knee against the wood-paneled counter.

“Hey, gimme my thingy!”

You turn to face a boy of around ten, hovering right behind you. Too close for it to be proper, actually, but it’s no doubt because you’re holding his property. His dirty little fingers reach up toward the item, making impatient half-circles in the air.

“Hi, kid, what’s your name?” you offer.

“Timmy,” he snorts, still with his fists aloft.

“You own this place?”

The irony of this notion is broad enough for even the boy to appreciate and a huge grin spreads over his freckled cheeks like a chunk of watermelon hitting the pavement. “Yep!” he laughs, snorting a touch as he does. His sister shoots a look at him from around a spire of Golden Books—the kind you read as a kid, like The Poky Little Puppy and that sort of deal—and then gets back to helping the ladies. “This here is my store.”

“That’s cool. I thought some guy named Herb owned it, but now I know better.”

“Herb’s my daddy. He’s Herb.”

“Oh, I see, so, you just run it for him …”

“No! I’m a kid,” the boy says, smiling again. “I was just kidding before.”

“Got it. But you do own this lunch box here,” you say, bringing this Norman Rockwell moment back into sharp relief. “This is yours, that’s what your sister said.”

“She’s stupid, she doesn’t even know nothing.”

“No?”

“Uh-uh. I got five of ’em, one for each day of the week!”

“Wow. Cool. That’s really nice. So, which ones?”

“Huh?”

“What other types do you have?”