It seemed like the right thing to do, to scan the alcohol first, since the girl was standing right there, at her station, barely six feet away.

            Beep.

She came right over. “I.D.?” Ridiculous; but Bruce showed her without making the joke. “Cool…” she said. She tapped the date into the device hanging from her belt, and his screen reacted immediately. “You’re good,” she said. “So, how are you doing today?”

            “I’m okay,” Bruce told her. He had been trying to punch in his rewards number; but when he spoke, he messed it up.

Back-back-back-back-back-back.

            “Cool.” She sounded disappointed. She spoke to someone else, briefly, and circled back. “Why would you go somewhere and complain about what they don’t have?”

“Huh?” Bruce asked.

“Like, if we don’t have what you want here, go somewhere else. Know what I mean?” She was an incredible waif, this girl. So small. Drowning in a giant, rainbow sweatshirt that frankly seemed unnecessary to Bruce. What he could see of her face in the gaps between her glasses and her COVID mask was bone white, except for a couple of moles; and she had crimpy Irish hair that was not quite red, and not quite black, but somehow both at the same time. No tattoos that he could see, but Bruce was sure she had some.

“I’m sorry to gripe,” she said.

            “No, you’re good,” Bruce told her, unintentional mimicking what the girl had just said to him. It sounded stupid coming out of his mouth. “I understand…” He looked around, trying to figure out who she’d been talking to; but didn’t land on any likely suspects. “Was it paper towels you guys were out of?” he asked, just before she walked away. Idiot. If she had started moving a second earlier, he would have let the conversation drop.

“No. Why? Are we out of paper towels now, too?”

They had run out of paper towels when the plague began; and still were most days, even eight months in. But this time, Bruce hadn’t looked. He’d picked some up from Walgreens the night before. “I’m not sure,” he said. “But… You have been in the past, I know.” He had stuck his card into the slot, but he’d done so out of sequence – forgetting he needed to touch the credit card icon on the screen first. Now the card machine and the checkout robot were at war.

The girl breathed through her nose in a way that meant typical.

“Sorry,” Bruce said. “I messed it up.”

The girl startled, and her eyes flashed over to his screen in a way that made it perfectly clear that she hadn’t been paying attention to what he was doing. She snatched the device back off her belt and thumped at it until his screen normalized. “There you go,” she said, letting it drop back down to her side.

“Thank you,” Bruce said.  

“No problem,” she told him, but she didn’t walk away.

He finished paying and snatched the receipt. “Free at last,” he joked, as he stuffed it into one of the bags – and immediately cringed. Why would hesay something like that? He tried to think of something better, something less potentially offensive, and came up with: “Got any big plans this weekend?” God, but that was worse. The exact sort of thing some old fucker might say to a girl who was maybe in her twenties.

“Not really. Nothing to do,” she said. “Everything’s fucked, you know?”

He knew. Boy, did he.

“Well,” Bruce said, as he gathered up his groceries. “I’m sure it will get better.”

“Absolutely it will,” the girl agreed. “Everything vibrates into its spot.” A light flashed over one of the other Choose Your Own Adventure checkout stations, and she smiled politely at Bruce with her eyes. “Have a good night!”

“You too,” Bruce said, but he didn’t think she heard. She had already darted off to check the other guy’s ID. A guy who looked like he deserved the scrutiny a whole lot more than Bruce. He left the store and loaded the stuff into his car.

When he got home, he kept the dog at bay with one knee. “Alright. Back up, Luna.” Luna did as she was told. She followed him into the kitchen; and watched him set the groceries on the stove. When he turned around, she sat pretty, looking stately in her graying browns and blacks. “Good girl,” Bruce told the Airedale Terrier– and her mouth immediately popped open, tongue lolling. A little ghastly, these days, with all the missing teeth.

He put the groceries up, grabbed the little carton of wine he’d bought at the store, took it into the living room, and turned on the TV. While he waited for it to load, he looked up at the swords that hung over the fireplace. A pair of 18^th century-style cutlasses his wife had given him for their One Year Anniversary. Battle-ready, if you believed the catalogue that she’d purchased them from. Sharp, Bruce could tell you from experience. She’d had to ride his ass for years to get him to hang them up there, out of reach. “Almost ten,” he said out loud, grinning. It hadn’t been until one of the kids—

I’m sure it will get better.

Why had he said that?

The TV found its stride and a commercial blared, startling Bruce off the thought like a vulture off a corpse. He brought the remote up and thumped at it until he could think again. Good God, he’d had the volume up to twenty. Funny how it always drifted upwards as you watched.

Everything vibrates into its spot.

What did she mean? Had the girl meant to imply that if you just ignored things long enough, they would turn out how you wanted them to?

Bruce opened the carton of wine and drank directly from it, as the day’s news came back on and washed over him like the liquid form of a poison pill. “I dunno, Luna. I don’t think that’s the way it works…” He always stood up in front of the TV at this time of the evening, knowing that if he sat down, he wouldn’t want to get back up. He turned around and looked at the dog, who had already claimed her favorite spot on the couch.

Luna flopped her tail but didn’t pick her head up.

Bruce tried to pay attention to the news, but there really wasn’t much point. He knew what was going on. Same thing that had been going on for the last four years. Now, on the night before Halloween, there was only four days left for the country to decide how it wanted to move forward. His mind kept drifting back to what he’d said to that girl. Hovering over it, the way that vulture might have, wings spread, ready to make the thing a meal. “Do you think that she thinks that I think that things just happen the way they’re supposed to?” he asked Luna.

Confused by the syntax, the dog said nothing.

“Like fate?” Bruce clarified. “Like the arc of history just effortlessly bends toward justice? Like… Well, like everything vibrates into its spot?” An image of a pinball board filled with little silver bearings that all found their stations over the course of a minor earthquake filled Bruce’s mind, and he grimaced. “Does she think I cosigned that horseshit?”

Or had he put the idea into her head himself? Was it actually his fault? Young people could be impressionable, and some of them were actively looking for someone to impress on them what to do. How to act. How to be. How to look at life. Reaching out like many tentacle monsters searching for connections. Was there someone at home who cared enough and knew enough to warn her about the dangers of magical thinking? As if just watching the news these days wasn’t all the evidence anyone should have needed.

I’m sure it will get better, Bruce had told her. Like the world would simply healitself.

And she’d said: Everything vibrates into its spot.

And he’d just…   

He went to take a sip of wine, but the carton was already empty. Normally, it took him a lot longer; but in all fairness to him, those little boxes only held about three glasses. He usually brought home two, just in case; but today, he’d shown restraint.

Always a bad idea.

But maybe it had happened for a reason. A sign from the universe.

Luna barked, startling Bruce from her revere again – this time so badly that he let out a little shriek. “Stupid dog,” he grumbled. She’d started doing that in her old age, yipping at him whenever he paced in front of her, too lazy now to hop off the couch. As recently as a year ago, she would have been flopping all over him, twinning between his legs like she was trying to trip him up; and if Bruce complained about it, his wife—

“I’ll be right back,” Bruce said, suddenly sure what he needed to do. He didn’t want to; but that was life, wasn’t it? Sometimes you had to do things you didn’t want to do in order to save the ship from sinking. He tossed his empty wine carton in the trash on his way through the kitchen. “Don’t chew up anything up while I’m gone,” Bruce called back to the dog. Ridiculous – she almost never did that anymore – but she didn’t make the joke.

Bruce dug the beach cruiser out of the garage, not wanting to drive after he’d been drinking. He was aware that riding a bike was illegal, too; but he thought he’d be safe enough, if as long as he stuck to the neighborhood. He checked the air pressure in both tires before he hopped on. It had been a while since he had ridden the bike – and as his wife, Penelope, no doubt would have testified had she been there, Bruce had never been the type of man who kept up with the regular maintenance of things he rarely used.

But he’d been trying to do better.

And he thought they felt pretty good, actually.  

He hadn’t made it to the first stop sign, though, before he realized that was wrong. The back tire was almost entirely flat. Funny how you could never tell until you got a little way down the road. Bruce pumped and pumped, standing up so he could peddle even harder. The tire made a mighty sound that reminded Bruce of when his sons used to play toy cars, making engine noises with their mouths – VROOM-VROOM-VROOM – but each time he stopped peddling, the limp rubber killed his momentum as effectively as if he’d stomped on the brakes.

He considered going back; but decided against it.

He had already come too far.  

Bruce tried to concentrate on something else. Something other than the incredible exertion, and the annoying fact that it was still felt like eighty-five degrees on October 30^th. The neighborhood was quieter than it would have been in a normal year, but not entirely still. It was early, and it was Friday, and people were getting home from work. Having barbeques that he could smell. Fixing decorations in their yards for the big night tomorrow. The fire bug who lived somewhere behind Bruce was taking this occasion as they did so many others – Flag Day, St. Patrick’s Day, every single major holiday, and sometimes random Tuesdays – to shoot off bottle rockets. They showed up over the trees every now and then in burning reds and blues. He counted yard signs as he zig-zagged his way to the store, some that gave him hope, others he wanted to kick the fuck over, or split in half with one of his swords; and when he arrived he found he had more hope than anxiety.

But not by much.

Bruce strapped on his mask and went back into the store. Seemed, from his perspective, almost to float through the automatic doors. He glided to the cooler, pulse racing, sweat streaming down his neck and back, grabbed another little carton of wine, and a bottle of water. Trying to catch his breath. Trying to remember what he wanted to say. What he wanted to tell the girl, just in case she had been reaching out, probing him for answers, and he had given her the wrong one. In case he’d changed something. Flipped a switch he hadn’t meant to flip and turned the light off in the room that needed light the most right now.

Maybe she already went home, he thought, and a species of cowardly relief washed over him, like the antidote to all the poison pills. A reprieve. Wouldn’t that be something? A little gift from the universe. Nothing he could do. But no, he saw as he rounded the last blind corner, and the Choose Your Own Adventure registers came into view. Of course. There she was. Same station. Same device hanging from her belt. Same rainbow sweatshirt now tied around her waist. Same empty station not six feet from where she stood.

Like a sign. Like fate.

Like everything vibrating into its spot. 

Bruce stepped up to the register and scanned the wine.

She came right over. “ID?” Bruce dragged his wallet out of his pocket, along with his keys, and showed her without making the joke. “Uh oh,” she said about the keys, and then “Cool,” about the date. She thumped it into her device, freeing the checkout robot to ring up Bruce’s bottled water; and then bent with a fluidity that was almost offensive, scooped up his keys, and held them out for him to take. “Here ya go.”

“Thank you.” She was taller than she had been in his memory. Not tall, not towering, but at least as tall as he was. She had more color in her cheeks, as well. Vibrant red. And this time he noticed that she had a little line shaved into her right eyebrow; and that she wore three earrings in each ear: one plain silver ball, one purple jewel, one evil looking spike. “You can’t just wait for things to happen,” Bruce told her.

“Huh?”

The confusion in her eyes unmanned him, and he lost his train of thought. She probably thought he was hitting on her, he realized, suddenly. “I’m not hitting on you,” he said, but it sounded lame and untrue. All his blood had puddled in his brain, and she didn’t look convinced. The checkout robot made a noise, prompting him to keep scanning, and Bruce jumped, saving himself from an embarrassing shriek only with a great force of will.

Great, now she’d think he was on drugs.  

“Alright…” The girl stared at him. Eyes crawling over him with him a shrewdness that reminded Bruce of the way that oncologist had looked at his wife on the day they found out how she was going to die. “Sir, are you okay,” the girl asked him.

“I’m fine,” Bruce said. “I wanna tell you about my sword…” He barely got the words out – he was suddenly out of breath – and now that they were, Bruce cringed. He must’ve looked a mess. Sweaty and red-faced. Spouting nonsense, not making any cogent points – but he couldn’t seem to course-correct. Everything he thought to say got jumbled in with something else. How he had ridden over here with a flat tire. How his wife had died, not of the virus but of cancer, and they hadn’t been able to have a funeral because of COVID. How his oldest son had had to learn the hard way how the world really vibrates. How he had been the type of boy who would cross the street to step in a pile of dogshit; but had eventually turned out alright. Full grown now, with four kids of his own. The girl was still staring at him, concern stamped plainly on what he could see of her face. She probably thought he was having a heart attack. Young people always thought the elderly were having trouble with their hearts.

“I’m not having a heart attack,” Bruce told her, but saying it out loud only seemed to alarm her more; and at this, the manager finally stepped over.

“Is there something we can help you with, sir?” the manger asked.

The wine, Bruce thought suddenly. It had to be the wine, and the over-exertion. It must’ve caused the alcohol to rush to his head.

He ignored the manager and spoke directly to the girl. “I just wanted you to know that if you were thinking that I thought that…” Lord, now he was lost in the syntax. It was really getting on his nerves not being able to communicate. “Everything doesn’t always just vibrate into its goddamn spot!” He shouted this, his volume drifting upwards the way the volume on his TV always did; and the girl took a step back, recognition mingling with confusion in her eyes.

The manager moved to fully take over.

“No, it’s—” Bruce started, meaning to tell her it was okay; but before he could argue any more, he slipped. Some idiot had dropped a bottle of water, and it had burst, soaking the floor between his feet. He landed hard on his boney, old ass. “Well, that figures…”

The girl darted past her manager; and knelt so she was just as tall as he was. “It’s okay,” she said, her cheeks burning. Eyes darting back and forth behind her glasses. Alive and right there. “I’m with you. Okay? I get it. I hear you.” She held his head as he laid back, so he didn’t slam it on the floor. “Please calm down.”

Bruce supposed he could do that for her. He shut his eyes and tried to ignore everything on the other side of their lids. He wasn’t having a heart attack, he knew – but he was passing out. Right there on the floor, and there was nothing he could do about it. The manager barked something into her radio – probably calling the police or an ambulance – but Bruce ignored that, too. He had done what he had come here to do. And he would do the same tomorrow. He had acted. He had tried. He hadn’t just waited for change to vibrate itself into existence. Had he fixed it? He wasn’t sure. But he was going to sleep now, one way or the other. And that was okay, Bruce thought, opening his eyes just a squinch to see the girl still hovering over him – very much like a bird, ready to make of him a meal.   

Because she was with him. She had heard him. She got it.