Joe-Nathan’s mum, Janet, always told him he didn’t have a mean bone in his body, and he was thinking this as he wheeled a trolley of go-backs round the store: returning items that had been picked up by customers in one aisle and put down in another. He was certain that candles—for example—felt lost and lonely when they were abandoned among jars of peanut butter or the towels, certain that they were relieved to be reunited with their own candle-kind. Joe liked to think that if he were displaced, someone would do the same for him.

Joe worked hard to prove his mother right and to try to make other people feel the same way about him. To be considered a man of no mean bones was his raison d’être.

“There’s a spill on aisle five,” said Hugo, putting one hand on Joe’s trolley and tilting his head as though he felt bad asking him to clean it up. “You okay to do it?”

Joe saluted. “Yes, sir, what color is it? Is it red?”

“It’s just milk, and please don’t call me sir. I may be old enough to be your father, but only just! If you call me ‘sir,’ you’ll make me feel really old.” He whispered the next sentence as though it were a secret. “I’ve always felt a little uncomfortable being the boss. Just call me Hugo.”

“Hugo Boss,” said Joe without humor (because none was intended) and saluted again. He tried not to look at Hugo’s short fuzz of closely shaved hair, which covered his head from the apex to the nape of his neck. He always felt the urge to polish it clean so it was nice and shiny like his dad’s head used to be.

Hugo smiled. “Okay, Joe. So, aisle five?”

“Sir!”

“No, don’t call me ‘sir,’” Hugo said again. “Remember, I’m old but not that old.” And suddenly he was a whole aisle away, shaking his head and looking at his clipboard.