The next day I’m at work standing opposite Greek Martin Sheen, plugging lids, thinking about this lady I met at FoodWorks maybe two hours ago.

I needed blueberries and coconut juice because I wanted to make a smoothie.

The lady walked around the aisles as the guy behind the counter watched her on his camera.

Then the lady came to the counter and said, ‘Quick, I need a prezzy for me daughda.’

And the guy behind the counter said, ‘Meat pie.’

The lady said, ‘Cum ’awn! Ya kan’t be gettin a gurl a meat pie for ’er burthday!’

I was at the counter and I said, ‘Get her a corn lentil.’

The lady said, ‘Yeah, corn lenntullllll.’

Like, really considering it.

Like a corn lentil pie might change her daughter’s life.

The guy behind the counter said, ‘Oh yeah, corn lentil could be good.’

And the lady said, ‘Yeah, mmm, give us one of ’em corn lenntuls.’

The guy behind the counter got a brown paper bag and put a corn lentil pie into it.

The lady said, ‘Betta sorse me.’

And the guy behind the counter coughed.

He poured a bunch of sauce onto the lady’s corn lentil pie while staring at the lady.

And it seemed really sexual.

The way he held it.

This pie.

Like he didn’t want to give the pie up because then the moment would be gone.

The lady said, ‘Wat’s wrong wif ya!’

She grabbed the corn lentil pie from the guy’s hands behind the counter.

And the guy behind the counter said, ‘Oh, sorry.’

Raising his hands and lowering them again.

Looking around.

The lady left the store shaking her head, saying, ‘Meat pie.’

Laughing.

And as I went to leave, the guy behind the counter said, ‘Seriously, but, girls love meat pies — like, every night when I’m working they buy them.’

And I said, ‘I know.’

And he said, ‘Every night.’

Looking wounded.

I removed my bankcard from my wallet to pay with EFTPOS.

And I watched the guy rewind the footage on his camera screen, and he watched himself talking, not saying anything for a while.

The EFTPOS machine blipped: approved.

And I wondered, if he had the ability to transpose space and time, whether he would exist within that tiny moment, the looping thirty-second clip, forever remaining the same with some possibility of a great thing about to happen.

I pulled my card out and said, ‘Well, see ya.’

And I left the store thinking: we are the sum of everything that has ever happened to us or maybe ever wanted to happen to us.

I push plugs into lids.

My phone lights up as Bear calls, but I don’t answer.

Greek Martin Sheen says, ‘Remember The Land Before Time?’

I nod.

He says, ‘I used to love that shit.’

And I say, ‘Yeah, me too.’

He says, ‘Used to fucking love that shit.’ Pushing a lid down onto a cup. ‘Mum’d put it on when she went out. I didn’t even notice she’d gone half the time ’cause I loved it so much.’

I laugh and say, ‘I remember watching it too, man.’

One Christmas, before we left for Texas, everyone was in Queanbeyan: all my immediate family and extended family. We stayed at my grandparents’ house that sat atop all this farmland, a thousand-acre estate, and inside their house was this massive pine tree that we’d cut down and placed in the middle of their lounge room, and I remember the smells — how everything smelled fresh from the pine leaves on a stone floor — and my cousins and I ate dark chocolate while we watched The Land Before Time, picking splinters from our feet that we’d got from running on the verandah, watching Ducky say, ‘Yep, yep, yep!’ And sometimes during our stay Grandpa would take us out on his ute with all of us in the back, sun shining through the dust as we made our way to the base of the valley, and one time Grandpa pulled over and we got out and there was a platypus hanging out by this log — just a platypus staring back at us — and Grandpa said, ‘Gee, that’s rare.’

It seemed like a sign.

Like some rare thing had come to greet us and say, ‘Good things happen.’

And Greek Martin Sheen says, ‘But, fucking hell, that actor who played Ducky, that girl — her dad shot her when she was like ten years old, man. Just fucking shot and killed her.’

Mick says, ‘Smoko.’

And we walk outside.

Greek Martin Sheen taps the bottom of his cigarette pack, trying to flick out a cigarette like they do in the movies, but nothing comes out.

I hand him my cigarettes, thinking: I’m a cunt with tobacco.

And I sit on a seat beneath some boxes, focusing really hard on the barcodes stuck to the boxes that are sort of balancing on the ledge above my head.