The Cloth

The shelves stop and the floor opens out, bare cedar the size of a classroom, under a ceiling of boards, with a checked cloth spread across it. The people with the bins sit along its edge and unpack. Cassettes stand up in rows. A paper fan. A jar of pickles with someone else's name on the lid. A thermos with SOUP 1987 in marker down its side.

You kneel and set the postcard down at the edge of the cloth. The man beside you picks it up by the corners, reads the front, turns it over and reads the back, and passes it to the woman on his other side. She tips her head back. Then he does. Then everyone along the cloth is looking up at the boards, and so are you.

Overhead, a footstep stops halfway through.