Finish Me

Finish Me

The grocery store was on the corner of Hawthorne and Emerson. It had a dark green facade with white lettering. There were bikes parked outside, leaning against one another, blocking the sidewalk. Women in designer jeans and sunglasses pushed shopping carts with toddlers hanging on, as though children could be fashion accessories. Just outside the main door, traffic waited for the crosswalk to clear before passing through, impatient to get out of the bottleneck formed by this store and its clientele.

This was where all the well-to-do people in the area bought their food, if they bought their own food at all. Inside, you could also find people wearing shirts that said 'personal shopper' roaming through the aisles, filling carts, checking items off lists. They represented another class of people entirely – those too self-important to buy their own milk, people who had lost touch with what it meant to take care of themselves.

At aisle nine, the checkout closest to the open side entrance of the store, there were two men. One tall, black, muscular. He was the cashier. When women and children came through his checkout line, he smiled easily and gave organic snacks to the children who smiled back. The women averted their eyes and blushed when he spoke to them, especially when he told them that they looked nice in their [insert garment here, however plain. He found beauty in all things female.]

“Dave, why the hell do you have to flirt with every single fucking woman who walks through here?” said Matt.

Matt worked in Dave's checkout aisle and bagged groceries. They had been deemed a high performing team by the management of the store. It was true, they could scan and bag faster than any other pair of workers in the store. But it also meant that they also always ended up working together. The bean counters wouldn't have it any other way.

“You need to understand something, my man,” said Dave. “I talk to these women because they all bring something beautiful to our little corner of the world. You ever wonder how many times they hear genuine, kind words at home? I guarantee you it isn't very often.”

“You're full of shit.”

“Maybe.”

“No, you're definitely full of shit.”

“Hey, ok. Maybe a little bit. But just take a look. Over there, for example,” said Dave, making a subtle gesture pointing across the store.

Matt turned and looked toward the bread aisle. There was an older woman, perhaps in her late 50's, wearing a white cap and tight black yoga pants. She had the ass of a thirty year-old. She reached up to get a loaf of bread from the top rack, and her taught calves responded by changing shape, lifting her the remaining distance with ease.

“OK, so yeah, that's a milf, or a gilf, whatever. What's your point?” said Matt.

Dave raised his eyebrows. “You telling me you've never had a taste of the sweet ripe apple?” he said.

“You're a sick fuck,” said Matt.

“Then you're a fucking age discriminating sonofabitch,” said Dave. “I'm serious, these older women are some of the best, most beautiful lays around.”

Matt shook his head. A blonde woman approached. She had a toddler riding in her grocery cart and another child walking next to her. She didn't look up at Matt or Dave. She seemed to be drawn into the glowing screen of her phone, slave to the fear of missing out.

“Did you find everything you were looking for?” said Dave.

“Yes, thanks,” she said.

Her eyes never left her phone.  Dave passed the groceries over the scanner, and it made its regular, most unpleasant beep with each item that passed over the infrared beam. Matt pulled out two paper bags  (these rich women always liked having their groceries double bagged, even if they were only buying a bag of tortilla chips) and began to pick up the woman's items and place them in the bag. 1% milk ($3.29). A bottle of probiotics ($32.99) from the vitamin aisle. Organic fruit snacks ($4.99). A bottle of wine from the top rack ($42.99).  And so the beeps continued.

Matt had worked in that store for three years, but he still couldn't comprehend the sheer amount of money that people shelled out for their so-called wholesome, local,
organic
food. Someone was getting rich off these people. And it wasn't him.

“That'll be $234.58,” said Dave.

The blonde woman never looked up. Her hand swiped a card through the reader and she entered her code as though there were an invisible wall between her and the men who had touched her food, the food that would be passing between her lips and those of her children. That was something Dave had always wondered about, how some people could ignore the human connections that were in front of them every day.  It didn't make sense to him. Life was
all
about connections.

“Have a wonderful afternoon,” said Dave.

“Thanks,” said the woman.

She turned and walked away, pushing her cart, the toddler in the cart reaching for a package of strawberries just out of its reach, the other child walking just behind her, and the woman still stealing glances at the screen that formed a larger part of her world than the flesh and blood life all around her.

“You didn't have much to say to her,” said Matt.

“Some people are a lost cause,” said Dave. “That one was too far gone. She'll be on that phone when she gets home, when she puts her kids to bed, and when her husband wants to fuck her. She might as well be dead,” he said.

“That's a little harsh,” said Matt. “It's just a phone.”

“It's the absence of awareness,” said Dave. “Isn't life just awareness? Making sense of what's around us? And what happens when we let our awareness shrink to a three and a half inch screen? We become less alive.”

“The way you talk, it sounds like you went to college and studied philosophy or some shit,” said Matt.

“Hell no,” said Dave. “You don't need school to tell you what's alive and what's not. That's just the law of life.”

Another customer approached their line. The grey and silver hair, pulled back tight into a bun. The tight black yoga pants and fitted white cap. A wide mouth and eyes that took in everything. She was a beauty, even with her age, the fine lines around her eyes accentuating her grace.

“Hey, it's her,” said Matt as she approached.

“Yes it is. And watch this,” said Dave.

The woman pushed her grocery cart toward them. Inside it, there was a large order from the meat aisle, some vegetables, a French sourdough baguette, and a bottle of red wine.

“Did you find everything you were looking for today?” said Dave.

His classic line. It was part of
the script
, what the store had trained every cashier to say, but Dave had made the line his own. It was all in the way he made a soft smile after he said it, the subtle inflections in his voice, the full bodied baritone that women somehow found irresistible.

The woman looked up at him, her eyes looking into his, searching.

“I think so,” she said. “Did you?”

Dave laughed as his hands moved over the conveyor belt, scanning her groceries.

“No one ever asks me that,” he said.

“I'm asking,” said the woman.

From where he was standing, Matt thought her lips looked soft. Dave paused for a moment, searching for an answer, then shook his head.

“No, I don't think I found everything I was looking for,” he said. He flashed her a quick smile, more with his eyes than his mouth.

“That's too bad,” she said. “Maybe I can help.”

Dave looked at Matt. Matt kept bagging the groceries. Beeps. The number on Dave's display slowly increased. Dave had hit on women before, but it was a rare event to have one be so self-assured, so intense.

“I've never said no to a little help,” said Dave. “What were you thinking of?”

“Dinner,” she said. “And bring your friend.” She looked toward Matt. Her hand reached into her purse and she pulled out a business card and a pen. She wrote her address on the card.

“Seven o'clock. My place. Will you boys be off then?”

“Yes, our shift ends at five,” said Dave.

“Wonderful, I'll you see both then,” she said.

Matt and Dave watched the woman walk away, her hips moving with a suggestion of what was to come as she rounded the corner where the tulips were displayed and walked out of the store.

“Dave, what the fuck did you just sign us up for?” said Matt.

“You heard the lady. Dinner.”

“You're an idiot,” said Matt. “A total fucking flirt and an idiot. Do you have any idea how fucking old she was?”

“You, my friend, are a foul-mouthed skeptic and a well-meaning friend. Remember, the sweetness of nature's fruit is greater in the Fall than the Spring.”

“You're telling me you want to fuck someone's grandmother,” said Matt.

“Oh no, not want. I will. Now come on, let's have some fun,” said Dave.

“I don't know why I hang out with you sometimes. You're a fuckhead and a perv.”

“Hey, to each his own.”

They finished their shift, continuing their bickering, which you could only call good-natured if you realized that it characterized every interaction between them, and rode to the woman's house in Dave's old beige Cadillac.

They pulled up to the curb in front of her house, a ranch-style affair in Palo Alto, built in the late 50's and a little worse for wear, and Dave parked the car in the street.

“This is it,” said Dave. “Just you wait.”

“You drive a pimp-mobile. You do realize that, right?”

Dave flashed a toothy smile to Matt. “Hell yeah,” he said.

They walked up a tiled path, the tiles spider cracked and worn from the years. Her grass was overgrown by at least two weeks.

Dave stepped up to the door and knocked. He and Matt waited, then they heard footsteps and a voice.

“Be right there,” she said.

A moment later the door opened and Matt thought that, perhaps, Dave had been right about beauty being everywhere. The woman was wearing a black cocktail dress. To say that she had a timeless beauty would be too easy. Perhaps a better description of her appearance and demeanor would be elegance. She wore a white pearl necklace around her neck, and her lips were painted red.

“Please, come in boys,” said the woman.

Matt noticed that she was holding a drink in one hand, some clear liquid. She took a sip of it.

“May I offer you anything to drink?” she said, looking at both of them.