Samantha, 25, on October 31 (sample)
It was well into the last full week of October before Samantha figured out the truth: it wasn’t ever gonna feel like Halloween at Esterbrook’s Natural Market, and any attempt she might make would at a maximum satisfy herself. The afternoon of Thursday, October 28th was a busy one at Esterbrook’s, which meant that the store had a customer. Samantha recognized the oldish man—she had one of those memories for faces—and knew he’d take his time to browse the aisles before buying the same brand of rice he always did, but all the same she stood up straight behind the counter, in shopgirl stance, to preserve presentability. Nothing happened. That was how it was at Esterbrook’s. She listened to scrapes of the oldish man’s hand against rice bags keeping serendipitous time with Anne Murray’s take on “Daydream Believer” ringing over the in-store stereo. It was one of Samantha’s favorites of the station’s selections, the 4/4 drums pushing empty time forward in a roseate tick-tock, and if she’d chewed gum she might have blown a hopeful bubble. The man bought his grains. “Happy Halloween,” Samantha told him, her azure eyes wide. She’d been trying this conclusion all week, the way people said “Happy holidays” early. It wasn’t catching on. Or, at least, she couldn’t make it. She was trying so hard. And she wished—not for the first time that week in October, or any other week—that something exciting would happen, something good, something anything, because she was twenty-five and still thought life might work that way. She gazed out the window, past the kale chips display, to the playground just across the avenue. At least there were a few kids having fun. At least she wasn’t sliding too much further into debt. At least she hadn’t had to open—on Thursdays, she slept in. She rarely remembered her dreams. Samantha Wilcox was twelve and a half on her last Halloween—not her last Halloween but the last that she spent as a child would, chasing candy on leaf-laden streets. She’d dressed as a cat. Not a whole furry cat, just the ears, the cute makeup, black spangly clothes. And a tail. The next year she hadn’t even bothered with the tail. Her cleverest costume, growing up, she’d always thought, had been Maddie, the candy girl from Suite Life—recognizable, affordable, achievable (her father had a passable tie), outside the box. She thought of it, fondly, for a moment, then realized she’d dressed as a girl who sold food behind a counter. “Oh,” she murmured. The music switched over. The Lovin’ Spoonful asked her if she believed in magic.
Unlike many, Samantha found it hard to explain why she hated her job. The customers were kinder than most, if listicles recounting the horrors of retail were any indication. The work was not overdemanding. Her boss did not berate her. She had, despite feeling alone, some co-workers, who held up their ends of their shifts, if not conversations. “It’s not hell,” she told her friend Bree once. “It’s purgatory.” Bree knew from the mystic and approved the parallel. “Especially since people go in there to purify themselves,” she’d pronounced. (They’d been outside the store.) Bree was not one of Samantha’s co-workers; she’d have loved a friend on staff to pass her days with, but Esterbrook’s didn’t need two clerks—it barely needed one. It merely needed someone to be there, and that someone was Samantha, leaning closer to thirty than twenty, with a history degree. She wondered if anyone there knew her major. She suspected that she was forgetting it herself. She did not think anyone she worked with knew how long she had worked there, or her college, where she lived, favorite movie, favorite health food, even. She was neither irreplaceable nor useless, a prop to fill a vacuum, a thing of no quality that needed to be had and accounted for as surely as orders would be placed and shelves stocked. She was there. And she would do. She was simply Samantha, as scheduled through Sunday, and able to cover a shift if someone needed. And deep down she knew that if she died, nothing much would change at Esterbrook’s. Or anywhere, really. It was simple mathematics, applied with dispassionate eyes to how much of her adulthood had passed behind this counter. Mathematics had never been Samantha’s strongest suit, but she knew, of course, how well it added up, a history major in want of a future.
“I like what you did with the two cardboard things in the window,” said Bree, shuffling in. Bree was not one of Samantha’s customers; most people weren’t. Bree worked caddy-corner-not-really-ish in a pet supplies shop that would die on Halloween, a place that hadn’t seen in-person retail bounce back, post-pandemic. Bree was taking it well. “Yeah, I found those in the back,” said Samantha, scratching at her shiny, straight hair. (She was a redhead, but not, she didn’t think, the fascinating kind.) “Pumpkin. Very healthy-food-ish. The skeleton has joints. Decoration’s got a lot of possibilities.” Bree nodded and leaned against the counter and pointedly unwrapped a meatball sub. “Is that Subway?” asked Samantha. Bree shook her head. “Anyway, shop local.” Samantha winced. “I’m sorry.” “Like I give a shit.” Bree stretched and tried and failed to drape herself on Samantha’s counter in a languorous way. “Nowhere-going job anyway. But I’ll miss the little critters.” “It’s weird that a go-nowhere job can go away.” Bree clicked her tongue and then looked up, a little. “That’s the way it is.” (Bruce Hornsby was playing.) “You know that song’s not about us, right?” Bree nodded, bobbed her head and let the music wash over her. For a moment, she closed her eyes, got lost in the delicate mourning, the nimble figures, skipping—then it passed. “Try and sneak away and visit me on Halloween,” she said. “We’re still doing the dog costume contest.” Samantha breathed. The solo piano, intricate, not so much a sad sound as clear in its assessments, drove on. “Did you ever think there was more than this?” “The dog costume contest?” “The whole… thing.” Samantha traced an ellipse with her hand. “Look, I know I’m speaking out of privilege. I’ll still have a job next week and lots of people don’t and I should be more grateful.” “Now stop,” Bree shushed her. “We can play that game all day. People died. I’m alive. So I really can’t get mad.” Samantha nodded sagely. Bree munched a meatball. “Wrstng ththpns isimvng bkn wimyfok sinnwrk.” “What?” Bree swallowed. “Worst thing that happens is I’m moving back in with my folks in Newark.” Samantha nodded once again. “What’s Newark like?” “It’s what you think, but better.”
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