09: it never had that

I'm medicated. I want that on the record before anything else, because I'm about to write down some things and I need whoever reads this later to know it wasn't a 3 am version of me. 6:50 am, every day since Thursday, six days straight. Slept. Ate. Small.

It didn't matter.

Wed 4/8, 7:41am, corridor. Four doors. Clock seven slow. Crack where it lives.

Wed 4/8, 9:20am, floor, men's basics, fixture 31.

Okay. Fixture 31 is a four-way with a header card, a sign holder on top with the brand logo in it, and we get a fresh header every season from the vendor because they fade. I have swapped that card out maybe eight times. I know that logo. It's got the fruit, the grapes and the leaves, and it's got the basket behind them, the woven horn thing, the cornucopia. That's the logo. That's what I've been sliding into that sign holder for three years.

The card that came in the vendor box this morning doesn't have the basket. Just the fruit. And that's fine, brands change their logos, except I went to the sign holder to swap it and the OLD card, the faded one, the one I put in there in October, doesn't have the basket either.

I stood there with both cards. Old and new. Just fruit.

I asked Marisol. She was doing go-backs on the run next to me, humming, she's always humming, big brown curls held back with a claw clip that's losing the fight, and she looked over with those cheeks, she's got the kind of color in her face that people pay for. Twenty-two. Saving for school, she talks about it, she's got a number and a spreadsheet and a boyfriend who works at the tire place and helps out. She's the one person at the store who seems like she's actually fine. I said hey, didn't this used to have the basket thing behind it, and she looked at the card and looked at me and said "it never had that." Not mean. Just, factual. It never had that. And I said I've hung this card eight times, and she said "okay," the way you say okay to somebody who's telling you about a dream.

I checked the vendor site on my phone in the break room. No basket. I checked the box the cards come in, the shipping label, the packing slip. No basket anywhere. I went back to the sign holder and I stood in front of it for long enough that a customer asked me where the fitting rooms were.

Here's the thing I want to be honest about. I looked it up. I typed it into my phone, and there's a whole thing about this. Lots of people remember the basket. It's got a name, there's articles about it, it's a known thing that people misremember, and the explanation is always the same, memory is bad and we fill in details and everybody fills in the same detail because brains are similar. That's a good explanation. I would have believed it two months ago. I'd have said huh, weird, and gone to lunch.

But I'm the one who hangs the card. I'm not remembering the logo, I'm remembering the job. I'm remembering the corner of the basket catching on the sign holder lip because the card's a hair too wide there. I'm remembering that. And there's no corner to catch anymore.

I logged it. I put it in the column I've been calling "probably nothing." That column is getting long.

Wed 4/8, 3:35pm, floor, women's contemporary.

A customer. Woman, forties maybe, nice coat, standing at fixture 14 in front of the mannequin on the left, the one that had the nails. She wasn't touching anything. She wasn't looking at the mannequin. She was looking at me.

I noticed because I was doing a walk and I felt it before I saw it, the way you know somebody's behind you, spidey sense. I looked up and she was already looking. Not the ping pong. Not the thing the stranger at the bus stop did, the checking, the back and forth. This was the other look. Dead still. Eyes locked just, on me. On my hands, actually, I think, and then my face, and then my hands again when I moved them, like she was reading what I was doing rather than who I was.

I did what you do. I smiled and said can I help you find anything, and she said no thank you, and she didn't look away. She didn't look away. I looked away, because I'm the one who's bad at this, I always look away first, and when I looked back she was still looking, and then she turned and walked out. No bag. Didn't touch a single garment. Marisol said she'd been standing there maybe ten minutes.

I want to be really careful here because I'm medicated and I know that when I'm on my meds I trust myself and I need to keep not trusting myself. Customers are weird. People stare. Maybe she thought I was somebody. Maybe I had something on my face.

But I've been thinking about Dave from receiving, looking at me for a second when I came out of the back. And the tech at the pharmacy. And I think there's two kinds of looks I've been getting, and I've only been writing down one of them.

I got home and Kate was in the kitchen and she said "how are you feeling?" and I said fine, good, and she said "good," and made me a plate.

I want to note that on Sunday she said "how are you feeling?" and I said fine, good, and she said "good," and made me a plate.

I'm not saying anything. I'm saying I wrote it down both times and I'm reading it back and the sentences are the same sentence. Same words. Same order. Same little pause before "good." I have a memory for how things are supposed to look, that's my whole deal, and those two conversations look like the same conversation hung in two different places, like a re-used party decoration. It’s probably nothing, but goes in the column.

I looked at the laminated sign on my way out tonight. The lifting one, the faded one. It's not faded. It's red. Bright, fresh, new-laminate red, like it got printed this week. I asked Deb if somebody replaced the sign and she said "what sign," and I pointed, and she said "that's always been there."

It has always been there. I know that. I said that in my first entry. I said the red had all but faded.

I'm going to go to sleep. The pill wore off around six, which is normal, and I feel it thinning out, and I'm going to write five more words here before it goes and then I'm going to stop, because I can’t get them out of my mind.

They can see me now.