Two Short Stories
by Diane Webster

 

 

An Emergency?

 

The woman enters the grocery store doors as if saying, “Open sesame.” And the doors obey. She smiles like the cinnamon swirl on a sticky bun in the bakery. Ignoring the baskets she strides down the main left-to-right aisle accommodating two-way traffic with elbow room to spare or where two customers can park their baskets side by side and gossip about the lady in the bread aisle who is poking all the packages as if trying to awake someone.

The milk is always stashed at the back of the store so customers are forced to push past all the half-price wares displayed in front of each aisle. “What a bargain! I can’t pass this up.” “Oh, thank God, they put that where I could see it. I definitely need one of these.” The woman reaches the empty aisle of the milk case where the cartons line up like concert-goers crowding to the gates ready to open to the flow of customers. Or in the dentist office where all the extracted teeth grit their demise in the back room display cases.

She stands like a guard in front of the emergency exit door no one is supposed to exit from because an alarm will scream that indiscretion as far as the produce aisle where a Gala apple shudders and rolls to the floor in a peel splitting plop. If a customer dares open the door, he’d better sprint with clothes flapping like lettuce leaves around the corner. No, not toward the pharmacy drive-up window! The other corner. And hope no truck driver waits to unload his load and videos you with his phone. But that won’t happen, right?

The woman stands like a cut-out figure advertising something like green bean flavored soda. When she smiles, if people even look at her, they dodge their baskets down the closest aisle or sneak sideways glances as they snatch milk and cottage cheese. They, not so unnoticeably, look for an employee even for the one with bells on her shoes who pushes the broom up and down the aisles because she might be able to slow down that woman standing by the emergency exit door. Is this an emergency?

The woman hands someone a one hundred dollar bill. And then someone else. Then another. Is this funny money? A goofy promotion with the store manager’s face bug-eyed on the bill? The woman sees the look of “crazy lady!” in the customers’ eyes. Bills are held up to the lights hoping they contain watermarks and security strips.

 

“It’s real,” she says. “It’s okay.” A mother telling her son it’s okay to pet the dog.

 

Soon more people and baskets arrive like ants to an unwrapped piece of chocolate on the sidewalk. Baskets shove like cage doors slamming against her hips and stomach. Wheels park on her feet as she struggles like a victim drowning under floodwater debris. Baskets keep pushing like magnets attracted to their mates, and the milk bottles smile their pearly whites.

She flings money in the air, an ATM gone berserk, and escapes the prison of baskets and customers scrabbling for the two-for-one sale items good only while supplies last. In a shriek of emergency door emergency she exits the grocery store like a watermelon seed spit out from puckered lips.

 

And she laughs as her hair flows like spilled milk behind her.

 

 

 

Lady Pink

 

The lady dressed in black has “Pink” stenciled on her sweatshirt.

No, it’s not in pink-colored letters; it’s printed in white.

Like if the lights go out in the grocery store, what little emergency lighting remained would pick up on her shirt, on the letters “Pink.”

No one would see her glide through the darkness except the reflection of “Pink” would slide through eyesight like a magic trick. I keep looking for strings, but no.

“Pink” is unattached.

“Pink” is free to float, drift, slip through aisles, displays, and eyes can’t help but follow “Pink.”

Like a tongue exploring a lost tooth’s hole.

Like staring at a house burn.

Like gawking at a car wreck.

Maybe the “Pink” lady will hold her sleeved arm across her chest and hide her pinkness.

In my mind I can see her shush across the linoleum floor and stand behind a patron either sensing the denser darkness behind him or maybe feeling “Pink’s” breath breeze through his neck hairs.

He feels the space with searching hands wanting to find the source of his distress, not wanting to touch anything.

When “Pink” screams and dashes away, only a shadow crossing a dim light, an eye blink not sure of what it saw if it saw anything.

Grocery store patrons herd toward the outside lit entrance/exit doors and pour out like thick ketchup into the parking lot.

The lady dressed in black with “Pink” stenciled on her sweatshirt shields her eyes with her hand.

A slim smile passes over her lips.

 

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