grocery characters, part I

She muttered as she turned the corner and entered my aisle. I weighed the risks of swapping semi-sweet chocolate for bittersweet in my recipe.

“I came all the way to Squirrel Hill Giant Eagle for this. Three Giant Eagles. Now all the way to Squirrel Hill.”

She didn’t mutter the way most self-talkers do in the city. The way the older Asian woman had in Starbucks, hunched and mumbling as she patrolled the tables, just an hour before and a block away. She didn’t let her sentence trail off, fishing tentatively—hopefully—for a response.

She was speaking to me.

As if I knew her. As if I knew why she’d been to four stores in one morning. As if I knew what she was searching for. And I didn’t. But I knew she was addressing me the way you feel someone staring at you before you actually see them.

And so I looked up.

“I can’t find kettle corn. I came all the way to Squirrel Hill and they don’t have it either. Even went to a goddamn Wal-Mart.”

Five stores, then. “That’s a shame. I wonder why it’s sold out everywhere.”

For a split second, it flashes across her face: she is surprised I replied. But she recovers instantly. “I sure don’t know. But if I’d known it would, I sure wouldn’t have given all mine to the kids. Woulda saved it for myself.”

“Well, good luck.” I hope for closure. She seems less odd to me now, now that we’ve had a coherent verbal exchange, and I’m satisfied I’ve been polite enough. Semi-sweet won’t do, I decide, so I’m on my way. They’re sold out of bittersweet chocolate.

She continues walking down the baking aisle, talking again, alone.