Electronic stores pinching out electronic shit to keep us tracked, distracted, and disconnected. Pharmacies in cahoots with doctors dealing drugs for corporate cartels.

Strip malls, liquor stores, coffee shops, sports bars, rent-to-own centers, payday loan sharks. Isn’t it hilarious how dystopian literature is always set in the future? 

Across the Nash Street bridge and down another mile, you get out of the rottenness a little bit and into a working-class area. Directly behind the Garden of Eatin’ supermarket was E-Z Storage and my next appointment. I pulled in and sat there on the asphalt. I was supposed to look for a white SUV this time, but my mind wandered to food. I imagined my belly button sucking up against my spine. Donuts, egg rolls, hamburgers, pizzas, potato chips, omelets, big blocks of cheese paraded through my mind pornographically. I was going to have to eat, and soon. There was a romance in delaying, though, I was finding.

Someone pulled in behind me and I looked in the rear-view mirror and saw that it was the white SUV. A middle-aged woman got out holding a large set of beautiful shiny keys.

"Are you the gentleman who wants to see the units?"

"I want to see the units, yes."

She began walking toward the buildings, manipulating the beautiful shiny keys. “We have two available,” she said, “a full-size garage and a smaller one. Which one were you interested in?”

"The smaller one, probably. I don’t want a garage door"

She walked quickly, like she was in a hurry, and instead of keeping up, I lagged behind on purpose. The faster she clicked and clacked across the asphalt in her heels, the slower I sauntered along behind.

She got about fifteen yards ahead of me, then paused and waited. “The smaller unit is just in this building here,” she said as I wandered up. “We’ll look at that one first.”

"An idea both reasonable and efficient," I said.

"Excuse me?" she said and began walking again.

Like Self Storage, these were long rectangular buildings, but unlike Self Storage, which were concrete, these were metal, yellow-brown metal, and certain to be deafening in a rainstorm.

We went down a narrow walkway made by the back of the Garden of Eatin’ and the side of the storage units, turned, and walked up one unit. “This is the smaller one,” she said. She removed the padlock and stepped back.

I went in and said, “This will work.”