by Brian Hodge
With vague ideas of coming back to scour a Tupperware container, where he could air-seal his purchase, Adam slipped out into the late afternoon streets.
Excerpt from FOOD HELL – Internet Journal
“At eleven o’clock is when the bright, daylight grocery changes to full fledged ‘food hell’. The lights in the store that are still lit are dimmer, and about ¼ of all the lights in the store shut off. The store never closes, but they apparently are too cheap to run the lighting 100% all evening. When it happens, I feel like I’ve just come down from some sort of drug. (Or just took one for that matter...) Everything turns a shade darker, and that bag of Doritos doesn’t shine like it did an hour before. Everything looks like it’s been bronzed. I imagine that this is what a goldfish sees when someone pisses in its tank. “
Five and a half hours after he left home, Adam was still standing outside the front doors of the grocery store. He’d made a handful of assaults on the interior, each time making it a little closer, but never quite bringing himself to enter. He felt as though he was being watched, and, after hovering outside the building for as long as he had, he probably was. He’d been over it all in his head a thousand times.
He didn’t need to walk the aisles. He didn’t need to think about the history of each can as it moved from field to factory, to cannery, to trucks and greasy, disgruntled drivers, who would deliver entire pallets to even more disgruntled grocery workers, who would do whatever they could to take their lives out on the food before it left the building. He didn’t have to do that.
He could enter at the right side of the front doors. The deli case was just to the right, past the produce. Once inside he could carefully filter the air near the fruit and vegetables by breathing through his outer-layer shirt to avoid any lingering pesticides being washed away in the constant sprinkle of water. Water he would not think about because you had to trust something, and he would trust water. If he could do that, he could be at the freezer racks, where most of the things he feared would surely be dormant in the frozen depths of the show cases. He could pick out a large tub of potato salad, make his way to the check-out and through, and get home. He knew he could do it. He’d mentally rehearsed every step.
At 11:12 PM, he finally worked up the nerve, possibly because hunger was robbing the last of his failing strength, and he stepped through the front doors. He waited for the moment when a customer slipped out, and he could get through without touching the handles, or the glass. He had gloves in his pockets, but it wasn’t cold outside, and he didn’t want to attract attention by wearing them. He’d wanted rubber gloves.
Adam’s hands shook, and he jammed them into his pockets, slipping to the right of the shopping carts and into the store proper. The produce racks loomed, and he gritted his teeth. It was just like the journal had said. The overhead fluorescents were dim, and if you counted along the length of the roof, every fourth or fifth light was out completely. The vegetables had a set of dim lights directed straight down on them, but even these were seemed dim. It gave the rows of perfectly aligned grapes and oranges an otherworldly glow. To Adam, it seemed as if they were alive with some sort of pulsing light. He averted his gaze, tucked his nose down and breathed through the cotton of his shirt. Another twenty feet, and he’d be at the deli counter, another five minutes, and he could be outside and on his way home.
He stepped past the bananas and a rack of pre-prepared salads, sealed in plastic. He wondered, briefly, who had sealed them. Where had they been “freshly made” and by whom? Under what conditions? Did the person preparing them have a good day? Did they cut themselves while chopping? Did any of their blood seep into the lettuce, or mix with the tomato juice?
He stopped, closed his eyes, breathed deeply, and turned to the deli. There was a girl working near the back of that section, shuffling from table to table with white-wrapped meat packages. The scent of that afternoon’s fried chicken, cooked so long under heat lamps that it resembled jerky more than dinner, permeated the air. A line of ready-to-buy cakes proclaimed “Happy Thanksgiving” and sported any number of variations on the theme of pumpkins, turkeys, and autumn leaves.
He scanned the racks quickly. There were a number of pre-sealed tubs near the center. Baked Beans. Pasta Salad. Three Bean Salad. He looked again, making his way quickly to the end of the case, and then back even more quickly. Nothing. No potato salad.
Around the corner, he knew, waited the large vats of food from which these containers were filled. There would be stainless steel bins filled with fried chicken, steamed vegetables, baked beans and, of course, potato salad. He turned quickly and gazed down the aisle at the self-serve salad bar. It had been closed for the night. The stainless steel glimmered in the dim light, empty. With a soft moan that he did his best to stifle, Adam slipped around the counter and stared down through the smudged, greasy glass.
The potato salad was bright mustard yellow. Splotches of white showed where the potatoes had been sliced and blended in. Adam could almost taste it, and this caused a watering in his mouth that wracked his frame with a series of deep shivers. He fought through the dual waves of hunger and nausea and stepped a little closer to the counter. Raising his eyes, he caught the girl behind the counter staring at him oddly. He tried to smile, failed, and stood there, waiting for her to speak.
For a moment it seemed she’d go back to what she was doing and ignore him, but at last she turned and stepped closer.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
Adam didn’t answer. He searched her face. He knew about herpes, knew about all sorts of STD he’d been taught about in school. He scanned her lips for sores. He watched as the low-wattage lights shifted yellowy across what should have been the whites of her eyes. Or were they really yellow? He glanced at her hands, but they seemed clean enough, wrapped in a clear layer of latex. But what had the gloves touched? What sort of meat had she handled, and when? How long would the fluids from that afternoon’s chicken take to sicken and fester?
“I…” He started to speak, clamped his mouth shut, biting his tongue painfully and jerking at the pain.
“Are you alright?” she asked, stepping back a bit from the counter. “If you’re sick, you shouldn’t lean too close to the food …”
She didn’t seem to know how to handle the situation, and that is probably what saved Adam from having security called.
“Potato salad,” he whispered. She stared at him blankly, obviously not hearing him, and he repeated it, louder and with as much force as he could muster. “Potato salad. I need … potato salad.”
She stared at him a moment longer. He was watching her again, analyzing each movement. Disease was a tricky thing, and you could not be too sure. She reached for the large spoon stuck like a blade into the mass of potatoes and mustard.
“How much?” she asked.
Adam glanced at the price, eyes wild. Questions, more questions, and why should she ask him how much? The price was clearly marked and …
He stopped. He breathed. “One quart,” he said simply. To himself, he added, Jesus, are you losing your mind?
The girl grabbed an empty tub from the top of the pile beside her and began scooping the potato salad in. She obviously figured that her best bet to be rid of him was to get his food prepared as quickly as possible. Adam watched carefully for the spoon to touch any other surface, for her to touch the food with her gloved fingers, or run them around the inner rim of the tub. She did not. It was going to be okay. In moments, the seal was in place, properly burped, and she slid it across the counter top to him. On top of the tub she marked the price, $4.58 cents, in black magic marker. Adam nearly panicked, then realized the chemicals could not seep through the plastic tub. He could remove the lid with no danger.
He pulled the gloves from his pocket, put them on carefully, and reached for the tub. All the while, she watched him nervously. He watched her just as closely. She was a pretty girl, late teens. She wore a touch of makeup, perhaps a bit more than the job demanded? Sh
e was well-built, but had a sort of worn, frazzled look. A look that Adam loosely associated with street people. Prostitutes. Dancers in late-night sleaze-bag bars. He wished he could remember the name of the girl in the journal. It was on the tip of his tongue, and though her name tag clearly read “Tina,” he knew it wasn’t the real name that mattered. It was the nickname, the name the other store employees gave her behind her back. The name earned by the flaunting of disease and the peddling of naked self-photographs. He watched, her, and suddenly, he knew. It was her. It was this store. It had to be this store, and this girl, and he couldn’t eat this potato salad. He wanted to have children. He and Gail had plans, and this – this tramp – this rotted, diseased – thing – would not prevent that with a dose of Chlamydia.
“Could you put that in a bag, with a photo?” he blurted suddenly. He was angry, so suddenly angry that the vein just over his eye was pulsing, and he could feel it, could feel the hot blood coursing through in short heavy beats.
“Excuse me?” she said, stepping back a bit further.
“A photo,” he repeated. “You know what I mean. The ones you sell – the good ones. I like lots of lace.” He leaned clsoer. His hand gripped the tub of potato poison tightly. “I like it if I can see the sores. You do have sores, don’t you? All over, I bet. I would like a photo of you, naked and oozing, to show the manager. To show the world.”
“You’re crazy,” she whispered. Then she screamed.
Adam whirled. He still gripped the tub of potato salad in one gloved hand. The small scattering of people still shopping at the hour turned to gape at him, and at the girl, screaming behind the counter. One aisle over, a young man in a black t-shirt with his hair spiked at an odd angle and a blue store badge pinned to his shirt had pushed his pallet truck out of the way and was coming at a run. From the manager’s office, a metallic voice crackled.
“Alpha twenty – Deli.”
Alpha twenty? Something from the journal itched at his mind, but Adam had no time for it. They were converging on him now, several young men in blue work shirts, the spike-haired kid with the name tag, and at the far end of the aisle, he saw a fat old man in a grey security uniform round the corner. The guy had one hand resting on something at his belt – a night stick? A gun?
The doors might as well have been a million miles away. Adam tried to run, but his legs ignored him until the first of the young men was within about ten feet.
“Now, take it easy,” the kid said, hands held out in front of him. His jeans were filthy, covered in so many stains and foods that Adam was sure they were swimming around the boy’s legs, alive with filth.
Adam moved. He lurched to his left, toward the front doors, clutching the fouled potato salad to his chest like a football and praying it wouldn’t pop open. The boy made no move to stop him, and he breathed a little more easily. Then he saw why. Two others had blocked his way, and from behind him, heavy footsteps approached. Wheezing, heavy breath – diseased breath, he thought.
He glanced over his shoulder. The security guard was drawing near with surprising swiftness. He had one hand wrapped tightly around the handle of a slick, black nightstick hanging from a loop on his belt.
‘Just …” the man labored with each breath, obviously unused to physical exertion. “Just a minute there,” he wheezed. “You just stop where you are.”
Adam turned, saw the two young baggers closing in on him from the front, and did the only thing that came to his mind. He drew back one arm and launched the potato salad at the guard. It was a good shot, not too low to do any good, or high enough to hit the face. It struck the older man’s chest, bursting open in a yellow, viscous explosion. The man started backwards, caught one foot in the slick salad, and went down hard.
Adam turned, slipped down the length of a fruit rack, and made a dash for the parking lot. He might have made it, but the kid from the back, the one with the spiked hair, launched a running tackle that brought him down just inside the doors. Adam felt the greasy, filthy floor against his cheek and wrenched around, trying to get away from it, trying to keep his clothing between himself and any surface. His shoulder was ablaze with pain, dislocated, or broken, but he couldn’t worry about that He had to move.
Hands grabbed him roughly from behind. Many hands. Filthy hands. He felt something cold encircling his wrist and yanked to free himself, but the pain in his shoulder drew a scream of agony. He tried to speak, tried to breathe, but then, he saw their faces, looming so close, thought about their breath – about where those lips and teeth had been – the air above him suddenly aswarm with germs and bacteria, a whirling cloud that dragged his mind, thankfully, into darkness.
The steady click click of heels on cement drew nearer, and Adam listened in alarm. His arms were secured tightly by the sleeves of the straight jacket. His shoulder had been set back in place, but it throbbed, and even the heavy dose of painkiller they’d forced down his throat could only dull the pain. The sun streamed through a window down the hall, but Adam’s cell was dark. He eyed each shadowy corner warily. Who had been in this cell? What diseases might they have had? Who cleaned it?
They had offered him a phone call, but how could he call anyone? The phone had been used by whores, by drug addicts, by filthy, crawling, diseased men and women, crawling with god-knew what. How could he bring such a thing so close to his own lips?
The steps drew abreast of his cell door, and a round, red face appeared from the gloom, pig-close eyes staring at Adam from beneath the brim of a guard’s hat.
“You okay in there?” the man asked.
Adam said nothing. It was a stupid question, and he didn’t want to encourage more. He had to get out of this place.
“Heard you had you some trouble over at the grocery,” the man continued, stepping closer. He was fat, and his voice was nasal. Everything about him made Adam think of pigs.
“I been to that place,” the guard chuckled. “Been there plenty. When you get out, you go back and check out that chick at the deli. The man was leering, and Adam was afraid he’d begin to touch himself, right there. “That girl,” the guard continued, “Tina? She’s hot. Sells pictures, too, if you get to know her. I work extra hours as a security guard, been in the freezer with her a couple of times, you know what I mean?”
Adam squirmed. He imagined the filth crawling over the fat guard’s body. Imagined the diseased blood flowing so close – only a filthy layer of skin between them. The jacket was too tight, and he couldn’t move. With a growl, Adam smacked his head into the wall. It was heavily padded with canvas and matting, but the pain felt good. It cleared the images of cold sores, rimming the guard’s mouth. It cleared the image of the girl, Tina, and her sore-crossed skin and yellow eyes.
“Hey, the guard called out. HEY NOW … you stop that!”
Adam did not. He pounded, and he pounded as the world faded to gray. The guard opened the door, and Adam nearly went wild, trying to pull away into the corner, away from the man’s touch. He stopped pounding his head and glared, drawing his legs in tight to kick. Anything to escape. He trembled as the guard retreated.
“I’m gonna go get someone,” the man muttered. “Crazy as a squirrel at a nut farm. Damned psychos anyway.”
The footsteps receded, and then stopped. Adam kept his eyes closed. He pressed his lips together, determined to wait until the air had cleared as much as possible before breathing. He thought, for just a moment, of Gail, and the potato salad, but he couldn’t worry about that now. He had to get out.
The guard’s voice floated back a last time.
“Hey, fella,” he said. “I almost forgot. It’s Thursday. Happy Thanksgiving.”
As the footsteps receded and the cell fell silent, Adam began to crash his head into the wall once more, praying the padding had been washed. Wondering who had sewn it in place, how many others had touched it, where the jail bought its food and who prepared it. Wanting to eat, and certain he could not. Ever. Pain exploded in his head, again and again, wiping the image
s away. For this, he was truly thankful.
The Lost Wisdom of Instinct
"Welcome,” the woman said, bright luminous eyes glittering in the dim, yellowish light of the huge hallway. Behind him, Alex felt the heavy dampness of the storm. His hair was matted to his forehead, and he reached up self-consciously to brush stray drops of rainwater from his eyes.
He didn’t speak immediately. She was beautiful, despite being almost ten years his senior, and he was soaking wet; he'd hardly prepared himself for such an ignominious first meeting.
“I'm Alex Beauchard,” he said at last, stepping inside and letting the huge door close behind him. “I've come to study the professor's papers."
“I've expected you, Mr. Beauchard,” she said with a warm smile. “It's good to see that my late husband's work is still interesting to someone. My name is Madeline. Let me show you to your room so you can get dried out. Then, would you like to join me for tea?”
“That would be nice,” he answered. Her eyes were intense, dark and compelling, and Alex realized he was staring. Thankfully, she didn’t seem offended, nor did she make an effort to avert her gaze. Turning away and breaking the contact with an almost audible snap of energy, Alex reached for his bags.
“This way,” she said, motioning to the gloomy interior, an odd little smile forming on her lips. “For convenience's sake, I've put you in the room next to Robert's study.”
Feeling a hit dazed, and still dripping from the deluge outside, Alex followed her up a lushly carpeted stair to the building's upper floor. The walls were hung with tapestries and ancient portraits, only dimly illuminated by small, flickering bulbs mounted on ornate, mirrored sconces. For a long, strange moment, he felt like he was climbing into another world.