Public book. The ink is still wet. Shape the next line.

Every human being on this planet is a salesman. Some of us just havent noticed our own commission yet. The baby crying at three in the morning? Salesman. He is selling you the idea that he is starving, and you buy it every time, and then he takes two sips and falls asleep on you like a tiny drunk uncle. Closed the deal. Didnt even have teeth.

And it only gets better from there. School sells you a backpack. The backpack needs a lunchbox. The lunchbox needs a matching water bottle, and the water bottle needs a sticker that says "hydrate," which is a fancy word for drinking water that somebody invented so they could charge four dollars for it. Ross has a cabinet at home with nineteen water bottles in it. He uses one. The other eighteen are just there, believing in him.Ross

Then theres the car. Kevin, and there is always a Kevin, bought a truck last spring with headlights so bright they can light up the whole Mojave at midnight. Kevin lives four minutes from his job. He drives past a Wendy's, a church, and a guy selling mattresses on a corner, and thats it, thats the whole adventure. But the salesman put a hand on his shoulder like a priest and whispered, "Kevin. What if one day youre in the desert?"

Kevin had never thought about the desert in his life. Now he cant stop. He leaves the lights on in the Wendy's drive thru and the girl at the window has to wear sunglasses to hand him his nuggets. Planes have tried to land on him twice. But Kevin is ready. Kevin is a desert man now, at least on paper, for the next seventy two monthly payments.Liam O'Connor

Taxes are the greatest comedy routine ever written, and the government has been doing the same bit for thousands of years and it still kills. You make money, they take a little. You spend the money, they take a little more. You buy a coffee with money that has already been taxed twice and the coffee comes with a tax, a tip screen, and a little cup that says "thank you" in five fonts. Yusuf figured out on a napkin that if you laugh hard at a restaurant, you stay longer, order dessert, and pay tax on the cheesecake. So yes. Laughing is taxed. Its just taxed through cheesecake.

He told this to the waiter, who laughed so hard that the manager came over and comped the cheesecake. Which means for one beautiful moment, Yusuf beat the system. He framed the receipt. It is on his wall next to a picture of his mother, who also never paid full price for anything in her life.Yusuf Haddad

Carlos sold phones at the mall for three years, so he knows the magic words. You never sell a phone. You just pick up the customers old phone very gently, like its a baby bird that fell out of a tree, and you say, "Aw. Look at this little guy. Still hanging in there?" And thats it. The man buys a new phone right there, out of pure grief.

Then you sell him the case, to protect the phone. Then the screen protector, to protect the screen inside the case. Then the insurance, to protect the case that protects the screen that protects the phone. Its like a nesting doll of fear, but shiny. Carlos made employee of the month eleven times. His prize was a phone. He kept the old one.Carlos Mendoza

Amara's grandmother sold tamales from a cooler outside the church, and she used to say the tamale was the most honest thing in the whole neighborhood, because you could unwrap it and see exactly what you were getting. Everybody else was selling smoke, she said, and she said it with love, because she liked a good show. The preacher sold heaven with a payment plan. The radio sold you a fear at seven and the cure at seven fifteen. Her neighbor gave out his opinions for free and it was still overpriced.

Her big secret, the one she whispered while counting quarters, was this: you are allowed to just watch. The music can be loud, the lights can be bright, the man can smile with every single tooth he owns, and you can enjoy the whole performance like a movie and then walk out with your money still in your pocket. Thats not being a cynic, mija. Thats having good seats.Amara Okafor

Daniel had a dream that he borrowed Kevin's truck and actually drove it into the desert. Not a parking lot desert, the real one, the one from the salesman's speech. He drove until the last billboard waved goodbye, until the radio gave up and started playing static like a seashell, and then he stopped, and turned everything off. The engine, the phone, and last of all, those ridiculous lights.

And the sky came on instead. Every star that had been hiding behind the streetlights and the screens and the glowing signs, all of them, free, no subscription, no fine print, no "limited time offer" because it had been on offer for about thirteen billion years. Daniel laughed out loud, alone, in the dark. He finally got it. The lights were never for seeing the desert. You have to turn them off for that. And that, Kevin, is the best deal you will ever get.Daniel

Success on sales

Success on sale - no returns after 30 days.De La Paz

Want to see a magic trick? Take a regular cake. Vanilla, white frosting, a little flower on top. Call it a birthday cake and it costs forty dollars. Now say the word wedding out loud in the bakery. Same cake. Same flower. It now costs nine hundred dollars and comes with a man named Julian who needs to discuss your vision. The word wedding is the most expensive word in the English language. Wedding chairs. Wedding flowers. A wedding napkin, which is a napkin that has been told it is special. Valentina planned her cousin's wedding and found out you can rent a white dove to release at the ceremony for three hundred dollars, and the dove goes straight home to the guy, like a boomerang with feathers, and he rents it again at four oclock. That dove has been to more weddings than a priest. Nobody tells you the best part of the whole day is the same as any party, when the shoes come off and the uncle dances like nobody is charging him.Valentina Rojas

Then theres the free trial. Nothing in human history has been less free than the free trial. You give them your card number for something that costs zero dollars, which is already a little suspicious, like a stranger asking for your house keys so he can give you a hug. Seven days later you are paying for a meditation app, three streaming services, a magazine about boats, and a cloud that holds the photos of your lunch. Sofia counted once and she was paying for eleven subscriptions, and she only knew the names of six. To cancel one you have to call a phone number that is open on Tuesdays between two and two fifteen, and a nice man named Brad asks why you want to leave, like you are breaking up with him, and offers you two months half off if you stay. She stayed. She has been in a relationship with a boat magazine for four years. She does not own a boat. But she knows a lot about knots now, so honestly, who is winning.Sofia Ramirez

And the beauty aisle, oh, the beauty aisle is where the selling gets poetic. There is a cream for under your eyes and a different cream for over your eyes and a serum for the place in between, which is called your face. They sell anti aging, which if you think about it for one second is anti being alive, since aging is just what being alive looks like from the outside. One jar promised to make Elena look ten years younger and cost so much that she aged five years reading the price tag, so it actually worked backwards. Her grandmother never bought any of it. Her grandmother put cold water on her face every morning, said a rude word to the mirror, and went outside. She had wrinkles like a map of every time she ever laughed, and she laughed a lot, mostly at the cream commercials. Thats the one product nobody can sell you. Its free and its already on your face, you just have to use it.Elena Petrova