A fluorescent light flickered in the back of the convenience store.

Laraine yawned to release her boredom like a benign bloodletting procedure, minus the blood and the letting. She had another half hour until she could even start to think about mopping the dingy vinyl floors, and an hour beyond that until she could lock the doors and count the cash. She hadn’t seen a customer in forever; gas prices were supposed to drop by a couple of cents per liter overnight, and everyone was probably waiting until the next day to head to the pumps.

It made for a shift that dragged. Even after darkness fell over the world outside, Laraine remained alone with the cloying glow of the fluorescents.

She pressed the home button on her phone, a device old enough it still had a home button proper. Her screen lit with images once she typed her passcode in, and her glazed eyes fell upon them. Nothing new. No one posted that late at night, even in the other time zones. How unlucky.

A cool gust of air crossed through the store, and without looking up, Laraine knew that meant the door had opened. “Let me know if I can help you,” she recited, the same way she had recited it hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of times in the past couple of years.

She looked up. The customer was tall, with heels that clicked on the floor and a long black trench coat, the fabric of which was not very thick, and must not have been very warm. “Good evening,” she said, and there was a particular elegance to her voice Laraine thought to be out of place in a little convenience store that smelled of gasoline and corndog grease.

“Hey. What would you like?”

The woman smiled, her dark red lipstick curling upward with her lips. “Maybe a winning lottery ticket.” She laughed, a smooth and rich sound. As rich as she would have been had she really had that lottery ticket. She leaned on the counter, the end of her elbow resting right beside the credit card processor machine connected to the point of sale system.

“And I’d like a flight to the moon,” Laraine replied. “What can I do for you?”

“I’d like to ask a couple of questions. You see, I lost a necklace in here earlier.”

Laraine hadn’t seen the woman earlier, else she would have remembered.

“It was before you got here. So, my first question is, have you seen a necklace around here anywhere?”

Laraine shrugged. “No one left it behind the register, but that doesn’t mean one of my coworkers didn’t find it before my shift started.” Six hours ago. It didn’t mean the necklace hadn’t been kicking around the store, somehow un-stolen in that time, for six dreary hours.

The woman pouted. “Mind if I have a look?”

“We don’t close for a while yet. Go for it.”

When the woman stepped away from the checkout counter, Laraine returned her attention to her phone.

One minute turned into five. The only thing that kept Laraine aware of the woman’s presence was the click of her heeled shoes on the floor; she was otherwise silent. Six minutes, then seven, passed. Laraine put down her phone, having caught up on her friends’ posts on her social media app of choice. Not that there were many to catch up on.

She felt like the whole world was asleep, except for herself and the woman in the trench coat.

The woman approached the counter with a small silver object in her black leather glove. “I’ve found it,” she said, holding it out in front of Laraine.

“Where was it?” Laraine asked out of a detached curiosity.

“Near the potato chips. It must have fallen off of my neck. I should have the magnetic clasp replaced with a spring ring or a lobster clasp, don’t you think?”

“Sure, if it will keep you from losing it again.” Laraine’s eyes fixed on the necklace’s pendant. It wasn’t a very heavy thing. What it was was oval in shape, hollow, and engraved with a frame-like pattern. A notch on the side revealed it to be a locket. “It looks pretty sentimental, after all.”

“Do you like it? I think it’s beautiful. Look for as long as you’d like.”

With a twitch of the woman’s hand, the pendant fell into a gentle sway on the long and delicate chain.

Laraine smiled. “If I didn’t know better…”

“That would be ridiculous.”

“I figured as much.”

The woman placed the necklace down on the counter. Laraine could look at it more easily, then. She noticed the surface was scratched.

“What’s inside?” She didn’t know anyone below the age of seventy who wore a locket. She just didn’t seem to know people who did things like that. Locket wearers and convenience store cashiers didn’t exactly run in many of the same circles in her city.

The woman pried it open. “Do not restrict your desire to know, Laraine.”

Laraine glanced briefly at her name badge. It always did throw her for a loop when customers used her name when they had no reason besides the badge to know it.

“I will not mind if you are curious about this. It’s quite a fine thing to be curious about. After all, a locket is a window into someone’s life. Do you know people’s lives very well, Laraine?”

“I guess, sure.”

The woman suspended her hand in front of Laraine’s face again, the pendant, suddenly open, dangling from it. There was a photograph inside, but Laraine couldn’t immediately even pinpoint what it was, let alone if it was a picture of somebody.

“Watch closely. The photo has faded. Meanwhile, I’d just like to talk to you. You see, it’s not often a person takes such interest in my locket, and I’m really quite a sentimental woman. I honestly had no expectations we’d make such a connection in a store like this.”

Well, thought Laraine, it wasn’t like she had anything better to do, and nosiness did start to take her over. If her friends weren’t posting anything to temporarily give her attention to, a customer’s locket story was the next best thing. It was better than watching her phone battery slowly draining down point by point until it was time to mop the floors.

“You look like a good listener, Laraine,” the woman continued. “It surprises me. Not that such an assumption has anything to do with you, but look at you. It’s dark. It’s late. You’ve been here alone for quite a while now.”

“How did you know that?” asked Laraine. She didn’t take her eyes from the photo, still trying to figure out what the hell it was besides sepia, but wondered if the whole time there had been a mystery car parked outside in the lot with a mystery woman in a mysterious trench coat inside. The thought was fantastical, but not impossible.

“You are listening to me, and you’re doing so well. A busy cashier would hardly have the time to talk about anything more than the transaction at hand. Have you figured out what’s in my locket yet? Look closer.”

Laraine leaned forward. Her head grew tired on her neck with the additional strain.

“I’ll tell you. There’s a woman lying in a field. Did you think I’d know her? I bought this from an estate sale. I don’t know the woman, but I do know the field. Not that exact field, but I think we all know a field. Do you know a field, Laraine?”

There was a field outside of town, near the farm Laraine had gone on a class field trip to when she was an elementary schooler instead of a convenience store cashier, which made a difference of a thousand years. Or twenty, but a thousand felt more like it. She nodded to confirm she did, in fact, know a field.

“It’s a lot nicer to lie in a field than it is to stand behind a register,” the woman said matter-of-factly.

Laraine tried to make out the details of the field in the photo. The woman was right beyond a doubt. It was a lot nicer to lie in a field than it was to stand behind a register.

“Maybe you can imagine yourself lying in a field like that now. Like this one, here in the photo. Do you see it? Pardon its movement. I just can’t seem to keep my hand quite steady.”

Was the woman trying to give her hope? Pass the time for her? Was she just happy to have found her locket? Whatever the reason for the conversation, Laraine wasn’t too eager to end it just to have more nothing to do.

She watched the field in the picture, though her eyes grew weary. She tried to pretend the air around her was the soft cushioning of June grass, except devoid of bugs, because lying with bugs wasn’t very relaxing at all. Laraine didn’t mind bugs; she was used to the silverfish under the paper towel display. But she liked when they stayed away from her.

A frown twitched in the corner of her mouth.

The woman nodded in some sort of understanding. “Are those fluorescent lights bothering you? Not very pleasing, are they? You’ve had a good look at the photo of the field now. Why don’t you close your eyes? The image will still be with you.”

Relief flooded Laraine as her eyes shut, and she could imagine better she was in that field.

“That’s it, isn’t that pleasant? Sink down into the grass, won’t you? No need to be delicate with it. Keep sinking until it holds all of your weight and you hold none of it.”

Tension released from Laraine’s shoulders. She swayed like the pendant had, just slightly, drifting on her balance.

“One thing I also enjoy about fields is how open they are. And an open field always has fresh air. The air couldn’t be fresher. What do you think, can you picture yourself breathing in the fresh air? I suppose you haven’t felt fresh air in hours.”

Laraine took in a deep breath. The air of the convenience store wasn’t fresh, and Laraine nearly coughed, but because of the woman’s recollection of the air around the field, it seemed just a bit more crisp and clean than it had all evening.

“And the more you keep breathing deeply, the more the fresh air fills your lungs, and the more peaceful you feel.”

Laraine breathed in, out, in, out, slowly, pace even. The escapism was more than welcome.

“Have you ever fallen asleep in a field? It’s okay, you don’t have to answer aloud. You know your answer. I know mine. It’s a comfortable thing, and lying there in your field, after such a long day, it would be so easy to…”

The woman leaned in close to Laraine’s ear. With a snap, she whispered:

“Sleep.”

Laraine loosely fell forward. The woman caught her, holding the sides of each of her arms in her gloved hands.

“That’s it. Just sleep deeply in the field. You don’t need to wake up yet. You’ll do exactly what you need to. Sleep. Deeper and deeper you go. That’s perfect.”

Laraine heard the woman’s voice like it was a distant hum from an airplane overhead. She was so far off, so comfortable in her field, so unable to be disturbed.

Even the click of the woman’s boots did not disrupt her as the woman crossed around behind the counter to stand right next to Laraine. Neither did the rattle of the keys in the cash register drawer, or the clunk of the drawer popping open.

“Reach out, Laraine. Take a fistful of soft, green grass in your hand. Right here. It’s smooth, isn’t it?”

Laraine’s hand fell on a verdant stack of twenty dollar bills.

“I’d like to feel it too. Pull it up and hand it to me, won’t you? It’s only grass, after all, and it will grow back.”

Laraine placed the money into the woman’s hand. In her field, she let a fluttering fistful of spring green blades rest in the waiting glove.

“Good. Now sink down for me. Your legs don’t need to hold you.”

Laraine sank to the dirty floor. Had she realised it was the floor and not the field, she wouldn’t have done it, but Laraine was not fully in the convenience store.

The woman shut the cash register drawer. With her free hand, the one devoid of the money, she picked up her necklace from on the counter, snapped it shut to conceal the photo, and clipped it around her neck. “Sleep well, Laraine. You’re lucky the cameras here don’t work. Your boss wouldn’t like to see you falling asleep on the job.”

When the door shut and a cold gust blew through the convenience store, Laraine rose from her stupor and the floor. She wasn’t sure exactly what had happened, except that she had dreamed about a woman with a silver locket and lying in a serene field. But there was no field in the store, and Laraine figured there was no woman either. She brushed her clothes off with her hands, scolded herself for sleeping at work — at least, outside of the staff room — and prepared to mop the floors.

When the store finally closed and she counted the cash in the register that night, there were three hundred dollars errant.