Bananas. Beef. Beer. Bread. Butter. I only shop for “B’s” on the first Tuesday of the month.
Olson’s Supermarket is located exactly 0.8 miles down Main Street from my two- bedroom townhouse, and it is nearly eleven o’clock at night on Tuesday, February 7th. I will make it to Olson’s at eleven o’clock exactly, park on the side of the building in a space usually unoccupied and walk eight yards to the entrance of the store, where I will take the second shopping cart, gently sliding the first cart to the side. I will then proceed to the produce section located on the far right side of the store, working my way across each aisle to the next item on the list. It just so happens that each of my items is alphabetized and corresponds with the various aisles that progress toward the left side of the store. I buy bananas first and butter last, and it just so happens that butter and bread are on opposite sides of the same aisle. This system has worked for me for the last seven years, and I find it very comforting.
Rising from the sofa, I put on my lucky red Adidas warm-up jacket and lace up my matching red tennis shoes. I am now ready to go.
I step outside the back of my townhouse and begin walking towards my black Jeep Cherokee when I hear a voice call out in my direction.
“Raphael, hold on for a moment.”
As I turn my head, I see my neighbor Gus walking slowly in my direction. I continue walking toward my Jeep, slowing just a little so that he might see that I have somewhere to be.
“Raphael,” he says again, a bit winded from his attempt to move his slothful mass more quickly toward me.
As I open the door to my vehicle, I respond, “Yes, Gus. How are you doing?”
“Oh, I’m fine. Just wanted to let you know that I read your last book, the one about that treasure hunter.”
“Thanks. I’m glad that you bought one of my books.” I say, lifting my leg to enter the vehicle.
“Well, actually, I didn’t buy it. I’m reading my girlfriend’s copy.” He reaches in his back pocket and pulls out a battered, dog-eared mass-market paperback book. It appears to be held together by a large bone colored rubber band, and I scarcely recognize it as a book at all.
I nod at Gus, attempting to excuse myself. I look down at my watch and see that it is 10:55 p.m. I have exactly five minutes to get to the grocery store. I take a seat in my Jeep, and as I reach to close the door, Gus runs around to the side of my vehicle and asks, “So maybe you could sign this book for her—or me, since I’m your neighbor.”
I reach in my pocket to find one of the three ballpoint black pens I keep there. He hands me the mass of pages, and I remove the rubber band. “What’s your girlfriend’s name, Gus?”
“Shelia. But make sure you put my name down there too, and say something about us being neighbors. That would be really cool.”
I hurriedly scribble “to Shelia and Gus, the best neighbors” and hand it back to him.
“Gee, thanks,” Gus says. “So how’s the new book coming?”
I glance down at my watch again, and I have a little over two minutes to make it to the store.
“Gus, you’ll have to excuse me. I have to go now.”
“O.K. We’ll talk later,” he says, but I barely hear him as I am already closing the door and backing up the Jeep.
It’s people like Gus who drive me completely crazy! I was once married to a woman for all of three months before we had to file for divorce. Truthfully, I’m surprised we lasted that long. (I guess that’s what happens when you marry someone you meet off of the Internet.) We cited irreconcilable differences, but the truth was that she couldn’t deal with my need to maintain a certain type of order around me at all times, and I couldn’t deal with her always threatening to mess up that order every time I looked up. She called me an obsessive-compulsive asshole. I called her a sloppy gold-digging bitch. To me, order promotes productivity, and with my occupation, I need a lot of order. Personally, I don’t understand how anyone would want to go about his daily routine without some kind of structure.
Still bothered by Gus’s slowing me down, I whip out of the parking lot with my foot pressed down on the gas, headed down Main Street. Up ahead of me, I can see the stoplight starting to change to yellow. I push down on the gas, and as the light turns red, I zoom through, nearly clipping a guy walking out into the middle of the street wearing dark colors. Can you believe that? Walking out in the street with dark colors on at night? What in the world was he thinking?
I arrive at my usual parking spot at exactly eleven, my heart still racing from the panic of nearly arriving late. I take a moment to catch my breath, but I can’t wait too long because I have to be in the checkout line by 11:30, back home after that, and have everything completely put away by midnight. It has to be that way because I go to bed at midnight every night so that I can wake up at six o’clock in the morning to work do my ten pages for whatever book I’m working on.
I lock my door and walk briskly toward the entrance of the store, and as I enter, I reach for the second shopping cart. I’m still thinking about the fact that I almost didn’t make it on time because of Gus and that guy out in the middle of the road. Oh well, no harm, no foul.
I re-center myself.
Bananas. Beef. Beer. Bread. Butter.
I push my cart over to aisle one, Produce. Because I allow myself exactly thirty minutes to grocery shop for these items, I can take my time and find the absolute best products on the shelves. Tonight as I stand by the bananas, I move the ones on the top out of the way quickly. Too many hands have probably touched those. I find some greenish-yellow bananas that look to be very firm. They will ripen well over the next two or three days. Grabbing a plastic bag and tearing along the perforated edges, I slide the bundle of connected bananas into the bag, twisting the bag three complete revolutions to seal it. I place them in the cart and continue on toward the end of the aisle.
Beef is along the back wall, and while I could easily jump across the store to grab items, I tend to push my cart past each aisle, curious to see who else does their shopping this late at night. Often time it is college students or people getting off work from factory jobs. But as I pass aisle two, I notice that it is empty. No one getting pasta, rice, or spaghetti sauce tonight, I imagine.
I continue pushing my cart, and as I pass aisle three I notice a couple of teenagers making out by the canned soup. At the end of the aisle, near the front of the store, is a dark skinned, bearded old man facing in my general direction. I divert my attention back to the next item on my list, beef.
Reaching the refrigerated meat area, I sort through various packages of meat, looking for the leanest and finest cuts. Again, I find what I am looking for in a matter of minutes, and I am off in search of the next item.
Next is beer. Aisle seven.
As I pass aisle five, I glance down it. I see the old man again, this time standing next to the coffee section, eyes looking toward my end of the aisle. He looks at me and nods. I nod back. His frumpy blue Member’s Only-style jacket is zipped tightly over his bulging stomach, and his large ears look as if they could have been slapped onto the side of his dark, hairy face. His beard is bushy and runs into the thickness of his nappy gray hair, leaving only his nose and eyes to be visible. I push on to the next aisle.
Standing closer up the aisle, I see the man again, this time standing next to the potato chips. I stop for a moment, shaking my head. Only then does it occur to me that this guy might be following me. Is he a fan or a person with too much time on his hands? Maybe I’m still shaken up about nearly arriving late and I’m imagining this whole thing. The man, however, pulls down a bag of chips from the shelf and looks in my direction again, nodding. It is only at this point that I realize that he doesn’t have a shopping cart or basket. I nod uneasily in his direction and continue pushing on.
I turn on to aisle seven for my Budweiser (if it were my “M” day, it would be Miller). There again, standing roughly ten feet down the aisle, is the old man reaching for a case of sodas. I grab a six-pack and pretend not to see him. To nod at him a third time would be extremely awkward. None of this makes sense to me. All I know is that this man is making me deeply uncomfortable, but I have to stick to my list though because time is of the essence. Both the bread and butter are two aisles over, so I push my cart back up the aisle to the back of the store and make a left.
Passing aisle eight, I see the old man again. This time he is much closer. I stop my cart dead in its tracks, and before I realize it, my heart is now racing in my chest. The man looks up from the magazine he is holding and nods at me. This time he smiles, peeling back his thick, cracked lips to reveal dingy brown teeth.
I quickly back up my things to the previous aisle, and glance down the aisle to find the same man on that aisle but possibly farther away. I back up another three aisles and the man is still there, farther and farther toward the other end of the aisle. By the time I make it back to the produce section, the man is nowhere to be found.
I glance at my watch. It is 11:20 p.m. I have exactly ten minutes to get my bread and butter and make it to the checkout line. Although the grocery store is open twenty-four hours, I find it much easier to stay on my schedule. Already I am in danger of being thrown off, but I sense that once I make it to the last aisle, I can make up for lost time and still make it to the checkout before 11:30.
For a brief moment, I ponder taking the items that I have already picked up to the checkout, but I can’t do that. I either get everything, or I get nothing. And getting nothing is not an option because I shop for my “C’s” tomorrow at three o’clock p.m. That would destroy my entire schedule for the month if I left out of here tonight empty-handed.
I look across the store and realize that I am the only one on the rear aisle. I only have two items left to pick up, and as I look at my watch, I realize that I don’t have the time to put off completing my task. If the man is going to be there, then, dammit, let him be, because I need to get in the checkout line by 11:30 p.m. It is already bad enough that I won’t have the time to go through the bread like I want to, but getting to the checkout at the right time is really taking priority.
I gear back and start pushing my cart forward, slowly at first, and then faster, until I’m almost running with it across the store, straining to avoid glancing down the side aisles. I reach the end of the store and turn my cart left onto the last aisle.
It’s empty!
I quickly grab the second loaf of whole wheat bread from the second shelf from the top, pushing the first one aside, before turning around to get the butter. When I turn around, I find myself staring face-to-face with the old man. His breath spills out from behind his wicked smile like garbage baked on a rock during the hottest day of summer. His skin is so dry that cracks run along his face into the depths of his matted beard. His eyes are a cloudy grey with a thick puss oozing out of the corners, and they are locked on me like some type of war missile.
I quickly jump back, straining to pull the cart between us to serve as a barrier, but the man blocks me and pushes me into the bread. I fall back, shocked. As I try to catch myself, my hand hits a soft loaf of bread and loses grip, causing me to fall onto the floor. The man quickly stands over me, and I find that I am too afraid to move. His bulk towers over me like a huge dark mountain, and before I realize it, he is reaching into my shopping cart, removing things. When he takes my choice steak and slings it down the aisle onto the floor so hard that it snaps loose of its plastic and lands facedown on the floor, my chest tightens.
Next, he hurls the bananas over the aisle onto the floor of the next aisle. I hear the thud of them hitting the ground. Now I can feel my breaths shortening.
All I can think is that I don’t have enough time to replace the items before I run out of time.
The man takes my six-pack of beer out of the cart and tosses the cans on their sides, denting them. One can pops open and sprays the cookies next to the bread.
My cart is nearly empty, and as I try to stand up, I find that I can’t catch my breath at all. I reach behind myself to find a shelf for support, but the old man takes my wheat bread and begins pelting me with it. The bag of bread slaps across my face like a backhand. Again I fall back. As I try to stand, the man slaps me back down with a gnarled, bony hand that feels like a brick wrapped in crusted flesh. The pain bolts across my cheek, burning into the side of my face.
“Help!” I yell, not wanting to surrender to the madness of what is going on around me but having little choice in the matter. I can barely hear my own voice, but I don’t have the air to yell out again. The old man looks down at me, and fear races over me when I realize that for the first time in seven years I won’t make my schedule. My head swimming, I fall back unconscious.
When I come to, I find a pimply-faced redheaded boy, who could have been no more than twenty years old, kneeling down beside me. He’s trying to assist me in sitting upright. The whole time I see his lips moving, but I can’t make out what he’s saying. The Olson’s nametag on his shirt reads “Rusty.” I look at him, straining my eyes against the fluorescent overhead lights of the aisle.
I watch his lips move, and I start to gradually make out what he is saying. “I’m sorry, mister,” he repeats over and over.
My mind is muddled with thoughts of the old man and wondering what time it is. As I sit up, I frantically look around for the man. Rusty and I are the only ones on the aisle though. I look around for my bread and the dented cans of beer, but they are no longer there.
“I’m so sorry,” Rusty says again.
“Rusty? Rusty, look, what’s going on here? A man just assaulted me with food from my cart.”
Rusty stops for a moment and looks at me, his eyebrows raised in an arch of curiosity. He doesn’t seem to understand what I’m talking about, so I repeat it.
“Rusty, an old man just assaulted me in this store. I need for you to notify the authorities right now!”
“Sir,” Rusty says. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“What do you mean?” I rise to my feet and look for my cart. It is resting off to the side of the aisle with a small bag of tied-up bananas, a package of choice steak, a loaf of bread, and a six-pack of Budweiser.
“There’s no one else who’s been over here. I had just finished mopping the floor, and I forgot to put the sign down. I just started working here last week, and I can’t take it if they fire me. I have a kid at home. Please, mister, if you’re OK, let’s just leave this between us.”
I look at Rusty, and I can see in his eyes that he is genuinely scared. I touch my back and twist my waist to see if I’m all right. I don’t feel any pain, but when I glance at my watch, I see that it’s now 11:40 p.m.
My heart is aching now. I reach for my cart. “You know what, Rusty? I just want to get my stuff and get out of here. No harm, no foul, right?”
“Y-yes, sir,” he responds and stands back from me.
I grab the first package of butter I come upon and push my cart toward the checkout. My stomach is all out of sorts, and my head is starting to hurt like hell. There is no line on the only open checkout lane, and when the cashier recognizes me, she tries to weigh my bananas and ring me up as quickly as possible. It’s too little, too late though, and I’m already frustrated and upset, so I just reach in my pocket and pay her from the twenty I had folded three times and placed squarely across the bottom of my front right pocket.
My head feels like fireworks are going off inside my brain, and now I only want to go home and sleep off this night. I grab the paper bag, tucking it in my arms like a toddler, and I walk out the store into the cool night. Each step I take is heavy and my vehicle seems so far away. The cars drifting randomly through the night don’t even register to me.
I place the bag on the backseat of my Jeep, plopping myself down in the driver seat. I feel as if all of the wind has been snuffed out of my sails. I can’t explain why I feel so dejected. I just do. I feel dirty and worthless. I only want to get home now and be inside the safe confines of my own home. Everything just feels totally out of sync.
I crank up the vehicle and pull out of the parking lot. My eyes are heavy, and I find myself almost completely consumed in disappointment, so much so that it takes me a moment to recognize the heat and stench rising from my backseat, signaling that I am not alone. I look in the rearview mirror and am horrified to see the old man, sitting hunched over, quietly tossing my groceries out of the window into the dark street.