The hardware store was a cathedral of things that could become a plan.
I went after work with a list I had not written down, which is how you pretend you are improvising. The automatic doors breathed me in. Cold air. Aisle markers. A man in an orange vest asking if I needed help finding something. I said I was fine. Fine is a password. It opens the store and closes the face.
I put gloves in the cart, then vinyl, then tape, then a shovel I did not need for any garden I owned. Each item flashed a stranger beside it for a second, a throat, a wrist, a back turned at the paint mixer, then I put the thing in the cart and became a man buying supplies for a weekend of ordinary repair.
I stood too long in front of the tape. There are kinds. Kinds imply knowledge. I took the silver roll that looked like what television uses, then put it back, then took a cheaper roll because cheap looks like a basement, and basements are a story clerks believe.
In the glove aisle a woman compared sizes for a child who was not there. I took the yellow pair that looked like the ones under my sink, then put them back, then took black because black does not look like a toilet. I hated that I was thinking in colors. Colors are a kind of fingerprint. I put a package of shop towels in the cart to make the rest look like a weekend of oil.
The paint mixer hummed. A man waited for a yellow that would never match his porch. I did not look at his throat. I looked at the cans. Looking at cans is what innocent people do.
The clerk asked if I was doing a project. I said basement. He nodded as if basements explained the whole species. He asked if I had a rewards card. I said no. He asked if I wanted one. I said not today. Cash. Receipt in the bag. I loaded the trunk as if the trunk were innocent.
On the drive home I caught myself smiling in the rear glass and killed the smile because smiles are evidence. The bag rustled when I braked, vinyl and tape shifting, the shovel’s handle knocking the trunk lid from inside, a heartbeat I had purchased.