:: GROCERY LOVE ::

fishnets and vodka

“Clean-up on aisle nine.” A nasally voice interrupted the low drone of soft rock tunes that I was humming along with. “Can we get a clean-up on aisle nine, immediately please.” The second time around, the voice on the intercom spoke louder, enunciating each and every syllable.

Simmer down, I thought to myself. What’s the urgency at eleven o’clock in the evening on a weeknight? I wandered down the chip aisle, running my hands along the cool plastic bags filled with cheese and salt dusted delights. I could hear a commotion on the next aisle over and considered checking it out. Then I looked at my list. Mintz was specific about the list: -black fishnets, size large, -half-gallon of cheap vodka, and he added a gold star sticker next to the words, “Hurry home, Chicken.”

We’d been working on a music video for friends of ours for the past forty-eight hours. Mintz was directing, which really amounted to him supplying the cast and crew with a steady stream of ketamine and booze while he sent me off on errands at the grocery store. Less than two hours ago, I was here picking up eggs and sponges.

Mintz had set-up the cameras and lighting a week ago and invited the cast and crew over for a get-to-know-you, pre-production party. Mintz wanted to capture all the footage “al fresco” as he called it. What he really wanted was to capture the band in various states of being wholly outside of themselves. It was working. We had a house full of wacky with a guitarist groping egg yolks, a lead-singer gluing sponges to his ass, and a naked tambourine player walking around in a tiara with a stuffed unicorn on a leather leash in tow. Mintz was getting great footage.

I knew where the booze was. This was my local store, dimly lit with cluttered aisles, a small market within walking distance from the house, and I already had the fishnets, size large, in my basket. It was just a matter of grabbing the vodka, paying for my things, and making the ten minutes walk back to the film shoot. As I was rounded the alcohol section, the voice on the intercom said, “Chicken, we need you on aisle nine.”

On the one hand, I was mildly annoyed that the voice on the intercom kept interrupting my only chance at listening to soft rock without a diatribe from Mintz about its destruction on the human kind.  “Four-part harmony is the root of all evil,” Mintz would say. On the other hand, I was curious about aisle nine and how the voice on intercom knew my name.

Aisle nine, I knew, was full of soup cans and boxed meals. Worse case, it’d be a spaghetti and meatball spill with slip and stain causing potential. At the very least, I could offer my condolences to the lost dinner and give the grocery store clerk a high-five for his quick and efficient damage control. Neither one of my good intentions had the opportunity to transpire; instead, when I arrived at aisle nine, I forgot how to blink.

Luckily, I was in my finest, a floor length purple gown with a plunging back and neckline. Mintz rented all these thirties era costumes for the shoot and we fought over this dress, guys included, but Mintz stood up for me. “Chicken gets the gown,” he told the crew. And what Mintz said was never questioned.

A string quartet, instruments down, was spooning up Campbell’s chunky soup from the can, tossing their empty tins on a pile accumulating at the foot of a man wearing a tuxedo, watching television on a flat-screen television that took up the top shelf of where one would normally find a wide variety of boxed rice and noodles.

Once the string quartet saw me, they chucked their half-eaten cans of soup on the pile as chunks of processed meat and sauce spilled out in all directions, and raised their violas, violin and cello. They began Luigi Boccherini’s Minuetto from String Quartet in E Major. The tuxedoed man rose from the overstuffed armchair, turned the television off, and held out his hand to me.

I took his assured hand and he swiftly and without hesitation moved me as if we’d been dancing together for years. I could here tiny macaroni noodles and bits of rice cheering us on, tossing themselves up against one another to make noise inside their usually quiet boxes. It was not soon after he took my hand that our bodies began to rise up. I waved goodbye to the basket with the fishnets and half-gallon jug of vodka. Transformed by an unexpected song and dance, my familiar neighborhood market with the dimly lit crowded aisles appeared all together different. From above, it was a pastiche of color or shapes, something not unlike a Cezanne landscape.

The man in the very smart tuxedo wrapped his arms around my waist and twirled me around as I waved, like a parade float princess to the produce and vegetables. Bananas stood up in erect salute, peaches, apples, and oranges rolled around on one another in celebration, and the lettuce moved their leaves back in forth in a slow, romantic gesture.

I thought briefly about Mintz and the cast and crew back at the house, but I was only mildly sad that he was missing my al-fresco moment. This clean up on aisle nine was mine and mine alone. “Chicken gets the dance,” I thought to myself, and there was no grocery list to tell me otherwise.