Empty desks have personalities. Mindy is gone. Frida opens the office, stands in the kitchen with coffee still too hot to drink, looks at the desk. Casandra comes in, clocks it: "Yeah." Chloe takes an earbud out when she passes the desk, puts it back, says nothing. The room runs its normal morning. But underneath - the quality of a room that knows something has been set in motion. Melissa comes in from her own Dallas trip at eleven. Sees Mindy's absence, gets the nod from Jayme: *she'll be back.* Opens her laptop. The pitch document is in the third folder, moved there so it's not the first thing she sees. It's still the first thing she notices. She doesn't open it today. But the room is different without Mindy in it. The temperature changed. There's a particular honesty that arrives when the person who was watching isn't there. Melissa closes the laptop and goes to find Jayme - because there's something she wants to say, and today's room is the right room. Featured: Frida Martinez, division lead. Casandra Cass, production. Chloe Dawn, editorial. Melissa Sanderson, strategist. The Marfa Munchies is a daily fiction podcast about a food, beverage, and lifestyle division of a creative agency between Marfa and Dallas. New episodes every morning. Follow the world at @marfamunchies on Instagram, TikTok, Threads, and Bluesky. . . . | ai-assisted fiction

Right is not the same as beautiful. Mindy Carpenter in the back room with the lights off, scrubbing through the selects from the week's clean-label shoot. Frame 0847 is the one. The window light did what it was supposed to do. The frame doesn't lie. Her phone lights up on the desk beside the keyboard. She does not pick it up right away. Something passes across her face in the dark that the monitor light catches and that no one is there to see. She turns the phone face down and goes back to the selects. On her way out she tells herself, in the private voice everyone keeps for the lies they need, that it was a good week and everything is fine. She drives home through the Dallas dark with the radio off. Featured: Mindy Carpenter, creative director. The Marfa Munchies is a daily fiction podcast about a food, beverage, and lifestyle division of a creative agency between Marfa and Dallas. New episodes weekday mornings. Follow the world at @marfamunchies on Instagram, TikTok, Threads, and Bluesky. . . . | ai-assisted fiction