Friday, 7:40 a.m., coming off a twelve-hour night in the pick aisles, she stopped at the outlet mall because it opened early and she was not going to sleep anyway. The rule was simple and she had never once had to say it aloud: a bad week bought something. The week had been bad. The arithmetic was therefore finished before she reached the doors.

She came out with a robot vacuum, a set of copper pans, and a hoodie for her nephew that she would hold until December. In the parking lot she said I earned this to nobody in particular, the way she always did, and it worked, the way it always did. The pans went into the cabinet above the refrigerator, beside the pans from March.