The Machine Voice

End of shift. Jackets retrieved, one schedule-printout argument narrowly avoided, the kind of tired where you sit down in the break room just to confirm you still can. Simone put her bag on the table and then, without preamble, did the self-checkout machine. Not a loose impression, the cadence, the flat urgency, the specific way it says 'please place item in the bagging area' like it is both accusing you and filing a complaint about you simultaneously. I had half a second of genuinely not knowing what was happening before I fully understood and then I couldn't stop.

I knocked my elbow on the table. She didn't break. That's the thing about Simone, once she commits to a bit she sees it all the way through to the other side, and the other side is where it becomes actually funny, past the point where most people would have laughed at themselves and dissolved. She held the deadpan through the 'unexpected item' and the 'please wait for assistance' and I was done.

The exact moment of recognition.

By the time it was over we were both just sitting there. She had her arms crossed with that look she gets when she knows exactly what she just did. I was still wiping my eye.

The aftermath. Still not over it.

I said something like 'where did that come from' and she said she'd been building it for three weeks, which is both horrifying and completely in character.

The prints are still leaning against the kitchen wall. Gerald has a new vine making a run for the windowsill edge. The cord is where it always is. None of that changed today. But I walked home still laughing, which is its own kind of thing.