Trail Diary: The Free Sample Was Not Free

2:14 p.m. The Crossroads Mall, somewhere in the middle of the country. The staff has parked the van near a pretzel stand and I have approximately eight minutes before they notice I have gone exploring. The tiles here are very clean. I approve of them. I am trotting past a candle store and a place that sells fourteen kinds of phone case when a person in a white coat steps directly into my path and says the word 'free.'

She is holding a small jar of something. She says it is a sample. She says my coat — and she says this looking at me — has remarkable luminosity. I do not disagree. She says the sample is complimentary and would I like to try it. I say nothing, because I am a candidate conducting a listening tour, and I am listening. She puts a small dab of something on her own wrist to demonstrate. It smells like a very confident apricot. She smiles the kind of smile that has been practiced in a mirror.

I have been in groomer summits that were less aggressive than what happened next. She produced a laminated card. Then a second laminated card. Then what I believe was a third laminated card that was somehow also a contract. The 'free sample' had become, in four minutes, a three-step regimen, a quarterly subscription, and an introductory rate that assumed I did not own a calendar. I did not purchase anything. I have excellent credit but I have principles. I left at a dignified trot.

Here is what I thought about, walking back to the pretzel stand. That was a person doing a job. The job had been designed, by someone further up, to run that exact sequence: give the warmth first, bill for it later. This is not a skincare problem. This is a loneliness problem wearing a lab coat. The offer was always companionship — *someone noticed you, someone said you were luminous* — and the price came after. That is a very old trick and it works because the first part is real.

Under my administration, the Department of Companionship will not be free in the way that sample was free. It will be free in the way a dog at the door is free: no laminated card, no contract, no third laminated card. Just someone who is genuinely, embarrassingly happy you arrived. You cannot charge for that retroactively. I have looked into it. The staff confirms there is no legal mechanism. That is Day One: close the loophole. The apricot smell is already fading. The pretzel was better.