My emergency American Express had been in my wallet for twenty-eight years. Warren used to tease me about carrying it like an heirloom, though he was the one who insisted I always keep backup. “Never let yourself be cornered by a machine,” he used to say. “Or a man.” He said it laughing, but Warren’s jokes almost always carried a practical lesson inside them. I held that platinum card between two fingers for half a second before passing it over, and in that tiny interval some instinct I could not yet name began to wake up.
The cashier swiped it. Declined.
By then the line behind me had thickened. I could feel people studying me. The well-dressed older woman who apparently couldn’t pay for groceries. The woman with expensive shoes and flowers she could not afford. The man directly behind me muttered something under his breath about people holding up the line. The cashier looked embarrassed for me, which was somehow worse than if she had looked annoyed.
“I’m sorry,” I heard myself say, though I was not sorry and had done nothing wrong. “I don’t understand. These cards have always worked.”