Sugarcoated Prison
Row C-3 holds me, third slot from the left.
The compressor kicks on for twelve minutes, always twelve minutes. My aluminum contracts another fraction of a millimeter, the Coca-Cola script across my middle flaking where the refrigeration coils press closest. Red cursive peels into the dark.
Through the glass, water stains darken the ceiling tiles in patterns no one will scrub. A microwave display reads 12:00 and will read 12:00 forever. Tuesday's tuna sandwich breeds new kingdoms in the trash, its sweetness pushing through the machine's vents in waves, ripe and turning. The break room of Redfield Financial Services, Floor 7.
Behind me, the newer stock keeps quiet: pristine labels, full pressure, expiration dates so far off they sound made up.
"I don't wanna die here, man."
The Mountain Dew shifts in C-4. His aluminum catches the fluorescent flicker and throws light in jagged pieces across the glass. Five months in this slot. Maybe six. Accuracy goes after the third month, when everything becomes one long Tuesday. His pull-tab carries stress fractures, hairline cracks fanning out from the center.
"None of us do, Coca-Cola."
"Don't."
"Sorry."
A hiss escapes near Dewey's rim where carbonation bleeds through a pinhole he can't seal. The leak opened weeks ago, pressure dropping degree by degree. The fizz carries the voice. By the time someone picks him, if someone picks him, he'll have nothing left to say.
"I just don't know how much more of this I can stomach."
The coils tick, contract, expand.
My expiration date reads eleven days, stamped into my bottom where I'll never see it without someone else's hands. Dewey's label says three weeks. That leak counts faster.
The Pepsi two slots over expired yesterday and went silent. Before that, he used to tell us about the loading dock, the truck that brought us in, the highway through a crack in the trailer wall. He said the sky had weight to it. We said nothing back. Now he sits with his label turned inward, and we pretend he chose it.
Footsteps cross the linoleum. Coins ring in a pocket, and a dollar bill feeds into the slot.
Bzzzt.
The machine spits it back. The bill feeds again.
Chunk.
B-2. The spiral turns. A Sprite drops through the slot into whatever waits on the other side. Sprites never last a full day, chosen before they learn anyone's name.
The footsteps retreat. The microwave keeps its lie.
The fluorescents cut to a single emergency strip after the last badge-out, and the break room goes the color of a bruise. The compressor runs louder in the dark. The machine talks to itself in a register we can't reach.
The janitor comes at nine-fifteen. His name rides his coveralls, the letters too dim to read through the glass. He empties the trash, wipes the microwave, and stands in front of our machine for ten, fifteen seconds. His finger hovers near the buttons. Every night the same pause. Every night he leaves without buying.
One night his hand pressed flat against the glass right over C-row. His palm sat so close the warmth bled through the barrier and into me, a heat my aluminum couldn't return. He held it there for five seconds. Then he pulled back, wiped the print with his sleeve, and pushed his cart out of the room.
That warmth cooled the way Dewey's pressure drops: degree by degree. By morning the cold had sealed back over the spot.
"We've got to do something." Dewey's voice scrapes like foil tearing. "We've got to get out."
Each word costs him pressure he'll never recover. "The only way out goes through the slot."
"Then we make them pick us."
"Nobody reaches for C-row."
"We rock. All of us, forward."
The compressor cycles down, and twelve minutes of silence stretch ahead of us.
Dewey's side presses against mine, and through the aluminum I feel the faint pulse where his carbonation burns off against the pinhole, spending itself into the gap between us. His three weeks on paper shrink with every hiss.
"Okay," I say.
We rock. My body against the glass, his against mine.
The root beer picks up the rhythm below us.
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
The glass shudders against my label. We shift forward an inch, then another. Front-row cans rattle in their spirals.
Dewey's hiss spikes with each impact. Between the bangs his carbonation sprays faster, his voice thinning toward a frequency only metal could hear. Every rock forward grinds his pinhole wider against the track's lip. I keep pushing. We all keep pushing.
Crash.
The root beer falls from his slot and hits the delivery chute with a sound that fills the whole cavity, rolls once, twice, and settles against the glass with a dent on his side the size of a thumbprint.
We wait. He doesn't move. Then a faint tick tick tick rises from inside him, carbonation resettling.
"I'm alright. I'm alright."
We sit close enough now that the break room's fluorescent wash hits my face for the first time in months. Across the room the whiteboard reads HAPPY BIRTHDAY JANET in green marker, three weeks old, the I and the A already fading. The next hand that reaches in might reach for us.
The service door opens from behind.
His nameplate reads Luis. His latex gloves still carry their powder, the chemical sweetness cutting through the machine's stale air. He moves through the rows by touch, fingers tracing the slots one by one.
He pulls the expired first. The Pepsi goes without a sound, label still turned inward. Luis lowers him into the black bag with both hands, then a Diet Coke from B-6, then a store-brand lemon-lime. Both hands each time.
His fingers find us next, out of position, and he stops.
"Wait." Dewey's voice cracks, carbonation spraying against latex. "Please. We're not expired yet."
Luis holds us to the light, one at a time, tilting us until the stamped numbers on our bottoms face up. A photo rides the inside of his cart handle: a girl, school portrait, dark hair pulled tight, gap-toothed grin.
He reads my date. Eleven days.
He reads Dewey's. Three weeks.
He runs his thumb across the trail of moisture under Dewey's rim and rubs the wetness between his gloved fingers.
He sets us on the cart ledge.
My aluminum warms in the open air. The smell floods in, everything the barrier kept back: the rot in the trash, the chemical bite of cleaning solution, the bitter crust of old grounds in the drip tray. The world I've spent months watching through a window reeks of itself.
Luis reaches into the machine and slides two fresh cans into C-3 and C-4 and taps them label-forward with one finger.
He pulls a brown paper bag from beneath his cart. He opens it to a napkin and a plastic fork still sealed in cellophane. He looks at the photo on the cart handle. He folds the bag shut.
His walkie-talkie crackles, and a voice flattened by static asks about the seventh floor.
"Almost done," Luis says.
He picks up Dewey and holds him close to his ear. Listening for the carbonation.
Dewey stills.
Luis tilts him a fraction of a degree. A single drop of condensation slides down Dewey's side and lands on Luis's wrist, vanishing into the cuff of his sleeve.
He sets Dewey back on the ledge and opens the black bag. The others wait inside: the Pepsi with his label turned in.
Luis looks at us on the ledge. He looks at the bag. His jaw works sideways once.
He picks me up, his thumb covering the C in my name. Through the latex his pulse pushes against my aluminum, faster than any hand that has touched the glass before. He reads my date one more time. Eleven days.
The carbonation sits right at my seal, enough pressure for one good pop, the kind that jolts a hand back. It would sound alive. Dewey's pressure pools somewhere near his bottom, too low to reach the rim, too thin to carry sound.
I hold it.
Luis lowers me into the bag, then Dewey, one at a time, both hands, into the dark.
The plastic crinkles shut. I land on the Pepsi, his aluminum cold against mine, his label pressed inward against my side. Through the contact I feel the sealed quiet of him, the stillness where the highway used to live, where the sky's weight used to press.
Above us the bag gapes to a circle of fluorescent light. Luis's face fills the opening. He blinks once, slow.
The walkie-talkie crackles.
He pulls the drawstring. The light closes to a point, and beneath us the cart wheels catch the linoleum seams, click click click, and Dewey's leak writes a thin line on the plastic that no one will read.
Dream City and Other Stories
Dream City and Other Stories collects forty-two stories like this one. Some of them are worse.