“I need you to organize the shelves tonight,” my boss says an hour before the end of my shift.

“All of them?” I say.

“As many as you can.”

I think of the immensity of the project. Payroll keeps getting cut. Some of the sections haven’t been organized since before Christmas—Literature bleeds into Romance, the Atheist and Catholics infiltrate Islam/Sufism. “Why?” I ask.

“Because we’re having a corporate visit tomorrow and the boss wants the store looking good.”

“Really? Are you serious?”

“Yup,” she says, and she’s gone.

I wander onto the sales floor, head towards Psychology. Face out one or two books, then think, Fuck this, let corporate see what a store looks like when hours get cut to nothing and you put all your managers out on the street. I spend the next hour pretending to shelve fiction, wondering why everyone likes David Sedaris so much, and then go home.

I spent eight years in the army and six so far out of it. There ain’t much difference between the army and Frontiers (you’ve never heard of Frontiers because it’s a made-up name for a real place). Except that Frontiers can’t throw me in jail when I don’t do what they tell me to. They probably wish they could, but they’re going to have to feed me three-squares a day and give me full medical/dental before I let them do that.