9.1
Rupert carried six shopping bags into the Pubix grocery complex, a massive, fluorescent-lit, warehouse-size store where everything—from the produce to eggs, from cosmetics to toilet cleaners—was arranged by color. The place was packed full of people oblivious to the fact that there was anyone in the store but themselves, ramming carts into each other, into displays, into store supervisors, children. His body shifted straight into fight or flight mode, and since he’d never punched anyone in his life, his first impulse was to run back out the door. He followed close behind Fulva—she appeared to be familiar with the store’s layout—troubled that he was forced to use this woman as a homing beacon. This woman who, potentially, participated in ongoing relations with a human sociopath’s dislocated Ego-made-flesh in the form of her own doppelganger.
By the number of bags Jesus had collected for her, he expected to be there a long time, which was deflating, as he couldn’t take this kind of torture for more than about fifteen minutes before he involuntarily retreated to a catatonic happy place. And it only got later, the sun beginning its slow descent behind the flat stretch of ragged palms and big box stores. They stopped in an aisle labeled Miscellaneous Items. She grabbed a six-pound can of “heat ‘n’ serve” seasoned mixed vegetables, then headed to the check out. Rupert looked at his bags, baffled though relieved, then trotted to catch up with Fulva. Despite her short stride, she was quick.
As they stood two people back in a self-checkout lane, Rupert still looked perplexed.
“What?” she asked.
“This is all you need?” he asked, regretting it before the third word was out of his mouth. She’d think of something else and make him run to get it.
She looked indignant.
“I’m a vegetarian.”
Rupert had no idea how that was relevant.
“In fact, Rupie, I do need something else.”
Rupert’s stomach tried to escape down through his intestines and he broke into a sweat. He definitely had a preference regarding the level of bowel laxity he experienced in public. This was not it.
She looked around as if she were about to ask him to go find some feminine products, perhaps, or an enema. Then she curled her finger to command him down to her level and croak-whispered into his ear. His bewilderment returned, then he straightened up and looked around to the aisles signs.
Aisle Seven: Canned Fruit; Canned Beans; Canned Dick; Canned Tomatoes; Cooking Utensils.
What?
Anxious, Rupert squeezed his way through the long, messy lines of vexed, entitled shoppers, and missed becoming a casualty of several cart crashes by centimeters. He almost thought their aim was deliberate, as if to thwart his mission. Despite his size, too often (every time) in these situations, he felt too small. Too small to be let out of the house.
Aisle Seven—lousy with shoppers and their carts, blocking sections and set crooked in the center of the aisle. He searched and searched: Where the shit was the canned dick? Finally, he saw it, jailed behind the cage of an old woman’s cart. She stood several feet away examining a can of beans with methodical precision. Rupert looked at the cart, looked at her, looked at the cart, then thought, I gotta get out of here. He slowly, gently slid the cart over a few inches, just enough to get it: Sampson’s Spotted Dick Sponge Pudding.
“Thief!” A high-sandpapery voice came from the bean section. “Porch monkey’s trying to steal my cart!”
“Whoa, hey!” he yelled back. That is definitely racist.
“He’s yelling at me! Help!”
“Lady, I’m just trying to get some dick!” Rupert shouted and shook the can at her. He was no longer talking to himself. For a few moments, all he heard was the sweet, soothing, cottony sounds of Michael McDonald and his fellow Doobies as they kept holding on, minute-by minute, over the Pubix sound system. Everyone had gone silent and stared at Rupert, who turned quickly with the Sampson’s Spotted Dick Sponge Pudding in his hand, wanting to bash everyone between him and the register upside the head, then stalked through the crowd furious until he was again beside Fulva.
“Wow, you look upset,” she said, taking the can.
He looked at her and realized the fight or flight feeling had dissipated despite not having brained anyone with a can of Sampson’s Spotted Dick Sponge Pudding. He handed her the can and she set it in a half-empty display box of Crispy Craps, turd-shaped milk chocolate filled with crisped rice and some artificial flavor that smelled like shit. To be sure, a Florida thing.
“You need to listen more carefully, Rupie. Spot of dick, I said.” Then, a little louder: “I said, I could really use a spot of dick.” She sounded like she smoked four-hundred packs of cigarette a day.
Upon reflection, he had heard her correctly, but denial had kicked in and he’d flipped over to autopilot.
Rupert began to shake. The self-checkout line took forever.
“Rupie, I like you already. Something about you—you remind me of someone,” Fulva said. She made what Rupert thought was small talk. “You got anyone at home?”
“What? No,” he replied, and his heart either skipped or added an extra beat as he thought of Leenda.
“Well, that’s good news. Wow, you’re huge.”
The woman behind them tapped Rupert’s thigh with her cart, he thought unintentionally, but the look on her face indicated otherwise. It wasn’t even Porch-Monkey Woman from Aisle Seven. Rupert decided it was in his best interest to say nothing from this point on. Some nods, some shakes of the head, fine. But not a word. He was shutting down. The line hadn’t moved at all.
Fulva complained about Bill, and how she hated Osceola, which he thought was understandable.
“You know, he’s all sociable with Steve Perry, but that guy is weird. He keeps asking me how old Steve is and how well he is—he is morbidly pre-occupied with my monkey’s health. The guy’s sick. And Bill . . . God, Bill is useless. Do you know how hard it is to manage a useless idiot and a sicko with a HPSP act in this town? Fifty-seven percent of the population here is over the age of forty-five. Thirty percent is over sixty-five. Seventy-six percent, white.”
Rupert shook his head. It was clear she’d done her research, but then, you could probably throw out an accurate guess with those numbers simply by having a look around.
“Oh, and that scar on his head . . . ?”
Rupert nodded.
“Whackin’ Dick. I guess MeeMaw could really pack a wallop with that thing.”
Rupert looked down at her. “Not a gang fight.”
“Duh.”
There followed a lengthy lull.
“Oh, by the way,” Fulva rasped. “Nice man purse.”
* * *
In the parking lot, Rupert loaded the bag carrying Fulva’s six-pound can of “heat ‘n’ serve” seasoned mixed vegetables and the five empty shopping bags into her Magenta 1993 Geo Tracker Convertible that he’d barely squeezed into. In a neighboring plaza, the police yelled and struggled with a full grown man on a child’s bike in a Bean Ringer “Mexican Fast Food” drive-thru. He couldn’t hear what they were yelling, but he was glad he was not that big man on the small bike. Then, in the Pubix grocery store parking lot, he heard, “Freeze! Hands Up!” Rupert looked around as Fulva hopped up into the Tracker, despite having no idea what he was looking for, though he did notice the only other black folks in the lot—a couple—threw their bags into their car, got in, and locked their doors. Rupert then crammed himself into the Tracker and as they pulled away, he saw two black labs disappear behind a Winnebago.
Sock it to me...