The supermarket checkout line. She was white-haired and frail. Her buggy was filled to capacity so that it looked like she was pushing a coal barge up the Mississippi. The first item she placed onto the conveyor belt was an extra-large case of Coors.
“That’s a lot of beer,” said I.
She smiled. “On sale.”
“Are you the one who drinks it?”
She nodded. “Two beers a day keeps the doctor away.”
“I don’t think that’s how the saying goes.”
“Yeah, well, I hate apples.”
Her voice had the same timbre as a tuba. She wore a pink silk jacket draped over her shoulders, buttoned at the top, á la 1952. She wore green polyester slacks such as I haven’t seen since Florence Henderson was on primetime. You could have smelled her floral scent from across the county lines. Ea du old lady.
“Get over here and help me,” she said to me, as she struggled to unload her buggy.
She didn’t say please. She didn’t say, “Young man, would you be so kind…?” She told me to “get over here.”
So I helped her.
“You’re a
nice guy,” said the woman, watching me labor beneath the weight of her 1,439-pound bag of Pedigree dog food.
“Tell that to my wife,” I said.
“So you’re married?” she said.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I was married once.”
“Is that right.”
“Yep. I was happily married for ten years. Ten outta fifty-three ain’t bad.”
Then the woman cackled and told the bag boy to fetch her a carton of cigarettes. Marlboros. Menthols.
After which she dug into her purse and removed a stack of coupons roughly the size of a Tolstoy novel and gave it to the cashier.
The cashier girl accepted the coupons hesitantly and flashed me a look indicating that she was not enthusiastic about her career path right now.
“What was his name?” I said.
The woman looked at me. “Whose…