Every nine minutes, in the stores that still bother, a fine mist descends over the lettuces for eight to eleven seconds, audible as a soft percussive hiss just before the nozzles engage, so that anyone standing near the kale gets a half-second warning and anyone not paying attention gets a light misting of their own forearm, a sensation identical across four grocery stores in three states. Stand by the spinach for the better part of an hour and six cycles arrive on schedule: 9:02, 9:11, 9:20, 9:29, 9:38, 9:47, near enough to a metronome that a person starts, embarrassingly, timing a breath to it. The spray does not appear to be for the produce's benefit in any measurable way; misted lettuce wilts faster than it would dry, loses a day, maybe two, and everyone in produce logistics seems to know this and mists anyway.
What it is for, most likely, is the fifteen seconds after the mist clears, when the leaves catch the overhead light and look, briefly, like something photographed rather than something merely sold. Anyone who has waited a long time on a telephone knows the trick already: the beeps and looped intervals that mark time when nothing is actually happening exist to prove someone is still on the line. The misting spray does the same work in produce. It is not really there to keep anything fresh. It is there to say, every nine minutes, that someone is still tending the place.