‘Do you mind?’ she said, trying to push past the second woman.
‘Yes. I do mind, actually.’
‘But I was here first.’
‘You went away.’
‘And then I came back.’
They both turned and looked at Chloe.
‘I told you I would only be a moment,’ said the first woman.
‘We didn’t think you were coming back,’ said the second.
‘Well, you were wrong, weren’t you?’
‘It says eight items or less. How many do you have?’
‘I don’t know. I haven’t counted.’
‘I’d say you’ve got at least ten.’
‘In other supermarkets, for your information, they allow twelve.’
‘Not in this supermarket, though. Can’t you read the sign?’
‘That’s rather petty, don’t you think?’
‘You’re the one who’s being petty.’
They both looked at Chloe again, but Chloe wasn’t taking sides.
‘This is outrageous!’ said the first woman.
‘Who do you think you are!’ said the second.
‘I’m going to speak to the manager.’
‘I’m going to write a letter.’
The first woman tried to place her basket in front of the other’s, but the second woman stopped her. They struggled briefly with the basket. In the scuffle, the bag of grapes fell to the floor and the second woman began crushing them with her heels. The first woman took the other’s basket and tipped out all the items. The second woman was about to retaliate when, from inside the store, there was a sudden loud explosion.
Adam was kneeling down, stacking the lowest shelf when it happened. There was a sudden loud explosion, then he fell to the floor and lay there, stunned. When Adam opened his eyes, people were standing over him. His hands and clothes were covered in blood. There was blood on the floor and broken glass everywhere.
‘Oh my god!’
‘What the hell happened?’
‘He’s been shot!’
More people arrived. Customers and staff gathered round him. Judging from their shocked expressions, Adam thought he must be badly hurt. There certainly was a lot of blood.
‘Get a doctor!’
‘Call an ambulance!’
‘Try not to move!’
‘Don’t worry, Andy. You’re going to be OK.’
‘Try not to speak.’
Adam felt faint. ‘Louisa?’ he murmured.
‘Quick! Someone get Louisa! She’s a nurse!’
Louisa arrived and knelt down beside him. She took out her handkerchief and gently began wiping the blood from his face. When he looked up and saw her, Adam knew everything would be OK. Louisa would save him.
‘I can’t feel a thing,’ he said.
‘You’re going to be fine,’ she assured him.
‘What I mean is, I’m not hurt.’
‘It’s just tomato sauce,’ said Louisa. ‘One of the bottles exploded.’
There was no sickroom, so they took Adam to the manager’s office and sat him in Graham’s chair. Amanda found him a clean shirt, then she went to see Bev about a form he would need to sign before he could be sent home. Adam was rapt. He was safe, uninjured, and now he and Louisa finally had a reason to be alone together. He thought about asking her to re-examine him for broken bones.
Louisa shut the office door. Adam took a deep breath.
Now was the perfect moment.
‘How are you feeling?’ she asked.
‘Lucky,’ he said.
Louisa took Adam’s wrist and felt his pulse.
‘You’re very flushed,’ she said. ‘You’re probably still in shock.’
Adam felt Louisa’s soft cool fingers against his skin. He remembered the daisy she had given him. He had taken it home and put it in water, and as the petals began to wither he had counted them, one by one. She loves me . . . She loves me not . . . At the end, it was hard to be certain. There was a gap with one petal missing.
Louisa let go of his wrist.
Adam hesitated. He was letting the perfect moment get away. Adam watched the perfect moment pack its bags. He followed it as it walked out the door and climbed into the back seat of a very fast car. He stood there as the perfect moment wound up its window and waved goodbye. He did nothing as it sped off into the distance. Adam let it go. The perfect moment was miles away now, and it wasn’t coming back.
‘You’ll make a good nurse,’ he said instead.
‘If I ever finish my course,’ Louisa sighed.
‘You only failed one subject.’
‘They want me to repeat the whole year.’
‘That’s not fair.’
Louisa shrugged. ‘I got put ahead at school, so I’m really too young to be at uni, anyway.’
Adam sat up. ‘You got put ahead? You’re . . . still seventeen? We’re the same age?’
Louisa nodded. ‘Our birthdays are in the same month.’
Adam tried to stop himself grinning. ‘How do you know when my birthday is?’
‘I’ve been helping Bev with the pay slips. I hope you don’t think I was nosy. Actually, I’m three days younger than you.’
‘You’re three days younger than me?’
By the time Amanda returned, Adam was completely recovered. He wanted to go back to work, he said, but Amanda insisted he take the rest of the day off. He signed the form Amanda gave him. She offered to drive him home in her car, but he said he would be fine. Outside, in the carpark, he collected the shopping trolleys, then he helped an elderly lady onto the bus.
When Adam got home, there was a message on the answering machine to say that his TV had been fixed and was ready to be picked up. Instead of phoning them back, Adam went out into the garden. The trees were singing, the flowers were humming, and there were countless petals all over the grass.
AISLE
fifteen
PETS
It was a hot day. The airconditioning plant was working overtime. Amanda the acting store manager stood by the sink with the envelope in her hand. Beside her, stood Cameron the acting grocery manager, Scott the acting produce manager and Nicola the acting trainee manager. The workers were seated in front of them or standing with their backs to the wall. The tearoom was so crowded, there was no room to move.
‘It gives me great pleasure to announce our new Employee of the Month.’
Amanda reassured the workers that as far as she was concerned, they were all Employees of the Month. The most important thing in any workplace, she said, was teamwork. With teamwork, there was nothing that couldn’t be achieved. Without it, their achievements would be limited. Amanda was excited about the future, she said. She was proud of the company she worked for and proud of the people she worked with. She had great dreams, she said, of a better, more productive workplace.
Amanda spoke in a clear, confident voice. She established eye contact with all the people in the room. Her hands reached out to convey the importance of what she was saying, but the words she chose were dull and repetitive. Future achievements. Productive teamwork. Future teamwork. Productive achievements. Teamwork achievements. Productive futures. Amanda’s words were like a box of wet matches, a lighter without fluid, a bulb without a filament. The workers had heard them all, too many times before. It didn’t take long for each of them to drift away and become lost in their own thoughts.
Dylan worried that there weren’t any windows. He wondered how long the oxygen would last with so many people crammed into such a small space. Rahel thought about how many of her cousins she would need to invite to her wedding and if she would remember their names. Abdi wondered which country Rahel was from and what language she spoke. Chloe tried to imagine if Scott and Cameron had ever compared their dates with her and in how much detail. Wyn recalled the appropriate numbers in the Dewey Decimal System: 343—Industrial Law, 344—Labour and Welfare, 326—Slavery and Emancipation. Jared counted the minutes on his watch, to calculate how much he was getting pa
id to do nothing. Emma imagined the Academy Awards, the nominees’ brave faces and the smile of the winner. Louisa wondered if there was enough available staff for the registers. And Adam noticed how her face looked even more beautiful since he had found out she was three days younger than him.
When Amanda had said all there was to say about productivity in the workplace, health and safety issues, career opportunities, having the right attitude and the people who worked in a supermarket being like ‘one big happy family’, she tore open the envelope and took out a piece of paper.
‘Some people dream of worthy accomplishments,’ she said. ‘Others stay awake and do them. And there is no other worker I can think of who is more deserving of this month’s award. It gives me great pleasure, therefore, to announce that the Employee of the Month is . . . Andy! I mean . . . Adam!’
Amanda pinned the badge to Adam’s shirt. She gave him his movie tickets and his plaque with the picture of someone standing on top of a mountain. Scott the acting produce manager took a polaroid photograph and everyone clapped because they had to.
‘Congratulations!’ said Amanda, shaking Adam’s hand.
‘There’s something I want to say,’ he told her.
Amanda looked at him oddly. No one had ever made an acceptance speech before.
This was Adam’s big chance. In his mind, it was the perfect opportunity to declare publicly how he felt about Louisa. After all, Louisa was his inspiration. She was the reason he had been named Employee of the Month.
He cleared his throat and took a deep breath.
‘I would just like to say,’ he cleared his throat again. ‘On my first day in this job, I was in trouble,’ he glanced at Amanda. ‘I thought, This is stupid. What am I doing here? And it is stupid, I know.’Adam looked at the now-familiar faces of his co-workers. ‘But then I started meeting people and I realised . . .’ He glanced at Louisa who had tears in her eyes. ‘I realised I could learn things. I thought I knew it all, but I was wrong.’
Amanda tried to cut him off. ‘Thank you, Adam, for those . . . words.’
Then, to Adam’s great surprise, everyone cheered.
Adam was in Aisle Fifteen, re-stocking the shelves with Doggy Treats, when Louisa came up to him.
‘Need a hand?’
Adam knew the box was almost empty. The job was almost done.
‘That would be great, thanks.’
Louisa placed the last packet of Doggy Treats on the shelf, then stepped back to look at it. ‘It seems a bit messy, don’t you think?’
‘It does a bit.’
‘Do you think we should start again?’
‘If you’d like to.’
Together, they took down the Doggy Treats and put them back in the box.
‘I hope I’m not being bossy,’ she said.
‘Not at all.’
Adam watched Louisa restack the shelves in a different way, shuffling packs of Doggy Treats as if they were playing cards.
‘How did you learn to do that?’ he asked.
‘It’s just experience.’
‘Are you really going to work here full-time?’
‘Of course not.’
‘But I thought . . .’
‘My mum called up the Faculty of Nursing and made an appointment to see my course co-ordinator. I have never seen her so angry. In the end, the co-ordinator agreed to let me sit a supplementary exam, which means I won’t have to repeat. If I pass, of course.’
‘Price check on Register Six . . .’ came an announcement. ‘Price check on Register Six . . .’
They both ignored it.
‘Why do you stare at me sometimes?’ asked Louisa.
‘I don’t stare at you, do I?’
‘Yes, you do. You stare at me as if I’m doing something wrong.’
‘You never do anything wrong. If I watch you sometimes, it’s because I admire you.’
‘You admire me?’
‘Professionally,’ Adam explained. ‘As the Employee of the Month.’
‘Could I PLEASE have a staff member to Register Six to do a price check!’
‘So now I’m allowed to stare at you,’ said Louisa.
Adam smiled. ‘It’s pretty silly, isn’t it?’
‘The movie tickets are good.’
‘Yeah. The movie tickets are good.’
‘I haven’t used mine yet,’ said Louisa. ‘I’ve been too busy.’
‘What will you go and see?’
‘I don’t even know what’s on. Do you?’
Adam took a deep breath. ‘We could . . .’
‘There’s a customer waiting, so could someone please come to Register Six RIGHT NOW, if it’s not too much trouble. THANK YOU!’
‘I should go and see what they want,’ said Louisa.
‘No, you shouldn’t.’
‘It sounds important.’
‘More important than this?’ said Adam, holding up a packet of Doggy Treats.
Louisa smiled. ‘Do you think I work too hard?’
‘You could have more fun,’ said Adam.
‘More fun?’ Louisa stopped smiling.
He could have kicked himself. ‘I didn’t mean . . .’
They finished re-stacking the shelves together, then she turned to him.
‘Have you taken any more photos?’
Adam shook his head.
‘What about that one of you, beside the river. You said you would get me a copy, remember?’
‘But you said . . . I didn’t know . . . I threw it away.’
‘But it was such a good photo!’
‘It was?’
‘You looked so deep and meaningful.’
‘I did?’
‘And not at all like a complete idiot.’
‘You’re teasing me, aren’t you.’
Louisa grinned. ‘You said I should have more fun,’ she confessed.
When Adam looked at her, he knew the perfect moment had returned. A bus had just pulled up and the perfect moment had stopped off it, looking scruffy and reckless.
‘There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you,’ he said.
Louisa smiled.
‘What are you doing after work?’ she said.
Shelf Life Page 12