The cafeteria is closed by midnight but the vending machines stay lit. There are three of them along the wall by the freight elevator. Two sell snacks. The third sells drinks. The middle one has been out of cheese crackers since Tuesday and the little spiral that should hold them is empty in two slots, looking like a broken curl of hair.
Wendell stands in front of it at three-fifteen. He has a dollar and seventy-five cents in quarters that are warm from his pocket and a single in a pocket of his coat that he forgot was in there until just now. He has been standing here long enough that the machine has dimmed its display once and re-brightened it when he moved.
He wants the trail mix. The trail mix is in C-4. C-4 is one slot from where the broken cheese cracker spirals are. He doesn’t trust C-4. The trail mix could fall into the loop with the crackers, and he would have nothing.
He picks the peanut butter crackers in B-3 instead. B-3 has worked for him before. The crackers drop. He catches them at the slot the way you catch something you don’t want to drop on the floor — fingers under, palm up.
He opens them in the elevator. They are dry. They are always dry. He chews each one carefully and slowly because he is not in a hurry and because he has eight floors to go.
He gets out on six. The crackers are gone by then. The wrapper goes in the bin by the nurses’ station and he turns left, past the hand sanitizer dispenser, toward the room he came down from.