She reached to snatch away the divider just as he was heaving the pumpkin onto the conveyor belt, and it landed on the tips of her fingers.

He could tell by the way the way the third shopping cart in the train squeaked and scraped that it wouldn’t last much longer. The back right wheel was barely moving, gunked up with years of parking lot dirt and sludge. Bruce leaned hard into the train of 10 carts, navigating them around a tired looking woman loading plastic grocery bags into her car and squinting in the soft October sun. He had to keep his arms stiff and grip the handle until his knuckles whitened in order to keep the creaky old carts jerking along. These were the last remaining carts from the old set, rusty metal things with a 70s style Acme logo on the handle and decrepit wheels. Glenn, long-standing manager and resident grump at the supermarket, insisted on keeping them, even after the greater franchise powers forced him to order the new models. The new ones were a breeze to push – the metal caging was covered in a softer synthetic plastic, the handles were ergonomic, and they had the now-obligatory cup holders, which held lattes for harried professionals or sippy cups for equally harried mothers. The new carts weren’t designed to latch into the old model, so Bruce had to collect the old ones on a separate trip, shoving them together and screeching them slowly up to the front entrance.

He spied the last straggler, tipped over behind a scraggly shrub, and jammed it into the train, accidentally clipping his thumb between two of the bent metal wires. He yelped, then cursed loudly, ignoring the mother in the minivan next to him who pointedly rolled up her windows. There was little blood but he could feel his thumb throbbing, and almost thought he could see a bruise lurking just under his rough skin. He inspected his hands together in disgust. His hands had become farmer’s hands: thick, cracked, perpetually grimey, and with bruises and cuts in various stages of healing. His first month at Acme had been invigorating except for the constant ache in his hands, which were unaccustomed to pushing long trains of carts and lifting bags of potting soil into trunks. But Doc had been right – the exposure to the outdoors, the new routine, and the sense of purpose he felt every time he helped load groceries into someone’s car were slowly bringing him back. Their biweekly sessions bolstered his mood, especially since they’d recently started to focus more on his new job than on unraveling the sequence of events that had led him, at 62 and recently widowed, to seek solace in a bottle of Jim Beam and sleeping pills.

The month he’d spent at the John George Psychiatric Pavilion had been the first time in his adult life that he’d been free of responsibilities and, eventually, and gradually, free of the constant obligation to mourning.  Dr. O’Neal had harangued him daily, with his soft manner and slightly effeminate voice, to talk about the past – not just Ruth’s fading away to stomach cancer, but also her affair with a coworker, discovered as he was sorting through her office after her death, and, even further back, the death of their son in a drunk driving accident in college. That’s what he had seen in the murky, pungent depths of the Jim Beam bottle. Ruth’s withered hand, more skeleton than flesh, laying on the white silk of her casket. John’s body, crumpled on a sidewalk on the UCLA campus, sprinkled with shards of glass like glitter. The words “I love you” in Ruth’s decorous, perfect handwriting, on a letter addressed to someone else. All of the miserable events of his life had latched into each other, creating a massive resistance to living, or even enduring. Doc had slowly helped him force his past aside, helped him move on a little bit each day, until he’d been ready to look unflinchingly at the outside world again. The next step, Doc claimed, was to find a job where Bruce could be outside, reconnect with the world and society, yet still have time for his own thoughts. With no more medical bills or tuition to pay, Bruce had quit the job he’d hated for 34 years, and donned the deep blue Acme polo shirt.

The job was perfect, except when it came time to round up the old carts. Something about the way they resisted movement, wheels spinning around on their own manic trajectories, brought back little ripples of helplessness, which echoed around Bruce’s still delicate brain.

Bruce pushed the row of carts up the incline to the front sidewalk and could feel the extra resistance the busted cart was adding to the already Herculean task of steering them inside. He pulled it out of the sequence and screeched it back outside the automatic doors, where he could inspect it without interrupting the steady stream of shoppers flowing in and out of the massive building. He bent down and tried to spin the back right wheel, which held tight to its spot, glued there by copious amounts of rust. Probably fixable, he thought, but being a mechanic was not part of his job description.

Back inside, he ducked into Glenn’s office to, once again petition him to get rid of the old carts. More closet than office really, it was littered with papers, old coupons, and crinkled discount circulars, which Glenn insisted on holding onto for his records. Glenn was sitting at the desk, counting clipped coupons and patting his bulging stomach.

“Hey Glenn, I think we might have some sort of problem outside with the carts,” Bruce said tentatively, toeing his way through stacks of circulars toward the folding chair in front of Glenn’s desk. The last time Bruce had brought up the dingy old carts, Glenn had run off on a 20-minute rant about how the carts wouldn’t be so banged up if Bruce took better care of them.

“Yeah? Don’t sit there. I’m gonna need that chair in a second. What’d you do to my carts?” Glenn put down the coupons and squinted at Bruce over his tortoiseshell glasses. The disproportionately large fluorescent light on the ceiling cast a giant rectangular glare on his bald head and made his yellow cable knit sweater glow.

“Well...I didn’t do anything. It’s just those old ones. The wheel on one of them won’t spin. I was thinking, we could probably just maybe get rid of that one. It hardly works at all anymore. Might even just annoy people who try to use it. We have plenty of others…” Bruce trailed off, realizing how unconvincing he sounded.

Glenn watched him ramble, dead-faced, then went back to stacking the coupons and noting their expiration dates.

“Listen, Bruce. Would you throw away money? Would you toss out a hundred dollar bill just because it had a few rips in it or some funky lookin’ stains? Fuck no you wouldn’t. So why would I throw out valuable property just because of one slightly slow wheel? How about, instead of wasting my time and throwing me off with my counting, you just go ahead and fix that wheel. In fact, since I’m a pretty laidback guy, I’ll give you an extra five minutes on your break if you fix it. Yeah, that’s fair right? So get to it.”

Bruce glared at the man’s disco ball head, feeling helpless. His boss usually went out of his way to be respectful to Bruce, who was 20 years his senior and didn’t need the job anyway, but when it came to the old carts, he would morph into a raging asshole, as though the carts were some prized souvenir from the good old Acme days.

Bruce slunk out of the office, not bothering to respond. He was definitely ready for a break now, and, as he stepped back out into the cacophony of the front end, his eyes instinctively flitted to checkout aisle 8. Vivian was there, long white hair coiled into a bun, chattering with the woman whose groceries she was scanning. As he watched her, she tilted her head back to laugh at some joke and brought up a hand with bright red nails to her mouth. The woman laughed along too, scrambling to scoop her groceries into paper bags.

            “Let me help you with that. Hello Vivian,” Bruce said, as he approached her register.

            “Hi Bruce, Mrs. Goldstein and I were just laughing about a crazy psychic palm reader she went to. Remember that time I tried to read your palm?” Vivian laughed, still keeping up the steady beep from scanning boxes of Jell-O. Her small hands gripped each one impulsively, twisting effortlessly to flash the bar code at the perfect angle.

            “Yes, that didn’t work out too well,” Bruce said, smiling shyly while rearranging a bag of groceries so the eggs wouldn’t break.

Vivian had only been working at Acme a month, but Bruce had noticed her right away, not only because of her quirky outfits and intense friendliness, but also because she was the only person his age who worked there. The rest of the cashiers and baggers were teenagers or middle-aged single mothers who usually treated Bruce with a mixture of pity and reverence. To them, he was a constant reminder of a dead-end job that could become a lifetime occupation. He hadn’t told any of them that he didn’t need the money, dreading the explanations that could entail. Vivian, on the other hand, had, from her first day, shared her life story: that her husband had died 10 years ago, and she’d blown through the life insurance money, traveling the world and ignoring her bank statements. Without children or a career to fall back on, she’d had to take on a few shifts at Acme to supplement her meager savings. Every time she told the story she’d end with a loud, “And I’d do it again!” and whip out her wallet, to flash pictures of the Great Pyramids or the Taj Mahal.

Last week she had tried to read his palm, tracing the lines on his hands that swooped into each other then pulled away, but, when she took too long to declare his future he pulled back, mumbling something about manual labor making his palms unreadable. At therapy that day he’d finally mentioned her presence to Doc, downplaying the giddy and alien feeling he’d felt when she’d touched him. Of course, Doc had suggested that Bruce pursue the friendship, as another way to reconnect with life, but Bruce had only grunted and changed the topic.

Bruce placed the last loaf of bread into a bag and loaded a cart, keeping Vivian and Mrs. Goldstein in his peripheral vision as they waved goodbye to each other. Since he was on his break, he wandered back into the aisles of the store to scope for something to buy.

Vivian’s line was long so Bruce knew he could loiter around a bit, find something extra special to buy. Unconsciously he’d begun to analyze the items he bring to her to ring up, not admitting to himself that a copy of Sleepless in Seattle or The New Yorker were not items he’d typically buy. She always made a comment on his selection, lately expressing increasing approval as his purchases became more sophisticated. He’d started buying obscure Indian teas and strange canned goods with labels in Spanish, sure that she would be able to relate it back to a traveling adventure. Back at his apartment, the tea would make his kitchen reek or the slop inside the can would make him retch, but, in a way, it cheered him up too, like they were coconspirators in an adventure.

Today, he’d been eyeing the display of pumpkins outside. There was every size, stacked on bales of hay, with the necessary side display of pumpkin carving tools. He searched for the biggest, least mottled one, grabbing them by the stem and spinning them to check for bruises. Looking at them, he imagined carving one with Vivian; her small hands would struggle with the carving tool and he’d slip it out of her hands, flexing imaginary muscles as he hacked a toothy grin into it. He wondered if she was the type to carve a silly face or a scary face. For sure she’d do the detail work, her hands honed for graceful movements from endless bar code scanning.

He finally found the most attractive pumpkin and hoisted it into his arms. Back inside, the lunch rush had died down, and Vivian was at her register, fingers thatched together under her chin, reading a gossip magazine. She heard him walking up her aisle and tossed the magazine aside, smiling expectantly. She reached to snatch away the divider just as he was heaving the pumpkin onto the conveyor belt, and it landed on the tips of her fingers.

She yelped and pulled her hand back, cradling it in her other hand.

“Geez, wow, I’m so sorry. Let me see it, are you okay?” Bruce stuttered, immediately flushing red. He could feel himself breaking out in a cold sweat and he suddenly became very aware of his arms and wondered what he should do with them. He leaned them forward onto the check writing platform, trying to catch a glimpse of the damaged fingers.

“It just pinched a little, it’s fine really.” She inspected her fingers carefully. “Didn’t even chip my polish! Really, it’s fine Bruce.” She looked directly at him, smiling a little, massaging her fingers, and standing so close, and he felt even more flustered, then felt embarrassed about being flustered.

“Y’know, I don’t even want this pumpkin. Forget it. Sorry.” He muttered quickly as he hefted the pumpkin off the belt. He darted out of her aisle and back outside, abandoning the pumpkin on its haystack.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so embarrassed. Sixty-two years old, with more life lessons shoved in his brain than the average person, and he was acting like a self-conscious 12 year old. The worst part was that it heightened the feeling of helplessness he’d been battling all day – he couldn’t stop himself from damaging her beautiful hands, or even from freaking out unnecessarily. He sat on the bench outside and put his head on his hands, trying to recall some of Doc’s advice, but recalling only the look on Vivian’s face right after he’d dropped the pumpkin. It had resembled something like stifled pity, or maybe very generous compassion.

Bruce sighed, trying to rein in his disappointment with the day. He pulled himself to his feet and walked over to the forlorn cart, slowly lowering himself to his knees to inspect the wheel. It was still stuck. With no real tools and no handyman experience, Bruce was incapable of fixing it. He couldn’t even complete this simple task. He couldn’t even act like a grown man around a woman. Each of the day’s small disappointments accentuated his powerlessness, making the stuck wheel seem like a hopelessly daunting task. His mind wandered back to each of his life’s major tragedies, ever present in his thoughts, and he could feel himself slipping into the despair he’d been fighting so hard. He sat on the floor and stared at the wheel, willing it to degunk itself.

“What are you up to down there?” chirped a voice above him.

Bruce looked up and saw Vivian looking down on him, her hair loosened from its bun so it fell in silver waves around her face.

He suddenly felt ridiculous sitting on the floor and got up, jarred out of his depression spiral.

“Glenn thinks I’m a mechanic and that I can fix shopping cart wheels,” he said, giving the cart a kick.

“Is it just rusty? I don’t get why he won’t just throw these carts out, they’re an eyesore. The customers complain about them to me all the time.”

“Yeah, the wheels are rusty on almost all of them, and this one just completely stopped spinning. I think it’s hopeless.” Bruce said glumly, still staring at the wheel.

“Nothing’s hopeless; in fact, I have an idea.” Vivian began digging in her purse, then pulled out a small bottle of lavender scented baby oil. “It makes my skin soft like a baby’s bum, it’s my secret. Might loosen up that wheel too.”

She squatted down and squirted some of the oil into the ball bearings of the wheel. Bruce squatted next to her, pushing at the wheel until he could ease it into movement. It finally spun. A reluctant spin, but that was the best that could be expected. They both stood up, victorious.

“Thanks for that. How’s your hand?” Bruce said.

“It’ll survive, don’t feel bad. See for yourself.”

She extended her hand out to him and, even after he had clearly finished inspecting the damage, she kept her hand in his.

"Acme" by Maria Ribas.