The smell of quiet desperation doesn’t really cover it meaningfully; it is more of an after-the-desperation, subtle aura wafting through the air that catches you as you walk in the door, transporting you like a quiet subway into a tunnel on the lower level of conscious choices. Turns out, the choices were all bad, and now you are here to pay the consequences. You could get a nosebleed from the higher-than-mighty, heady feeling you get when you see the others pushing their carts through the aisles, the kind of uppity, smug feeling that says you really don’t have to shop here. You can take your chances anywhere; you were just stopping by to see how the “other half” really lives. And boy, do they live. The smell of old sweat, quiet tears, and gnawing hunger mark it well.
Back of all this is a feeling that somehow you might find a true treasure. One they somehow missed, not once, but twice, and then again and again. Not that anyone was looking when you noticed it. It was too late then. Some other lucky stiff had already robbed them blind, the way so many other golden chances were stolen; snatched away, one-by-one, just another of the many lost opportunities that led them, inescapably, here.
The words are big and shiny on the sign. “Good,” meaning all that is blessed, and pure; and “Will,” somehow substituting for something that those who made better choices have to offer those who did not. Joined together, they are married for better or worse. Benevolence be damned, it is all about dollars and sense here, and the roughage and plunder of closets stuffed to the breaking point and finally cleared out by the maid is here for the taking. Hopefully, the accountant can wrestle a decent tax deduction from it, and there’s a thin balm for the conscious to boot.
So you wrangle the rusted grocery cart loose, and the search is on. “On” meaning you will spend an hour or so perusing the refuse of society, among the refuse of society, in search of something you can hold on to, something that brings some sense of satisfaction. Maybe it is something colorful, a bit too loud, but just the same, it will seem like some joy came home with it and somehow, it might give hope to the utter beige-ness of living in your world. Maybe you find something you can put on the table to remind you of a place you have never traveled, something to transform that empty void and somehow comfort you in between the awful nights.
Trying to make sense of what has ended up in your basket is futile. You self-consciously count the items, one-by-one, pretending to be concerned that there may not be enough cash in your wallet to pay for it all. Maybe you will be embarrassed badly enough you have to select an item to put back on the shelves. You hope they notice the sheepish, almost angry look on your face when you realize that there really isn’t enough. You watch their faces and hope to find approval there, something that for just one moment, makes you feel like you are a part of their world. You need the color, you need it just a bit too loud, just a moment of satisfaction, and God knows, you need the comfort it would bring. Just to be a part of something human; something that cries, and sweats, and bleeds, and feels real.
