Today Will Be Different (12 page)

I entered and jogged along the left wall, checking the aisles to my right. When I reached the top left corner, I crossed through wine and hung a left, which landed me in toilet paper. Still no Alonzo.

Last time I was here was a year ago. After an hour spent filling my cart so high it handled like a bumper car and required an arm across the top so everything wouldn’t slide off, I made my way to the checkout line. A wave of misanthropy swept over me. Why did that lady need a whole drum of Red Vines? What would someone even do with a hundred combs? Did that fatso really need a laminator all to herself? Couldn’t she just go to Kinko’s? Or that guy, what was he doing with six gallon jugs of generic scotch? And why must they all wear shorts?

Thank God I wasn’t one of them! Me with my case of highly rated New Zealand sauvignon blanc, my pound of fresh pineapple spears, my salt-and-pepper pistachios, my twelve-pack of dental floss.
My
items painted a clear picture of my sophistication… my superior taste… my sparkling intelligence…

I abandoned my cart in the checkout line and walked out empty-handed. I felt bad for the person who had to return my stuff to the proper shelves. I felt worse when I realized it was probably cheaper for Costco to just throw it all away.

I crossed through produce. Impossibly cheap! Good color! Firm to the touch! What’s the catch? Too many seeds. As good as it all looks on the outside, take it home and it’s filled with a freakish number of seeds. English cucumbers: dense with flat leathery seeds. Lemons: you dull your knife on all the seeds. Cherry tomatoes: jammed with tiny, slimy seeds. Not that I’d ever buy chicken at Costco, but if I did, I could imagine slicing it open and seeds pouring out.

A mob of Seahawks fans blocked the way to the bakery. Racks of cupcakes were being rolled out, a dozen to a shrink-wrapped sheet, each frosted blue with a green
12.
Across the aisle, a bigger mob swarming cupcakes decorated with Pope hats, also with the number
12.
The only thing you need to know about Seattle? Nobody was offended.

I arrived at the gauntlet of food-sample people. They stuck to their script without deviation and avoided eye contact, America’s version of the Buckingham Palace guards. If the Buckingham Palace guards had terrible posture and filled you with existential dread.

“Jack cheese,” said a woman. “In four zesty flavors. Stock up for the holidays.”

“Breaded steak fish,” a voice droned. “Fresh from Alaska and a perfect option for a healthy nutritious dinner. Try it tonight. Breaded steak fish…”

My attention snagged on the slight Southern accent. My head jerked back. My body turned.

There he was, in a blue apron and shower cap, manning a little counter. My poet, with a marigold in the buttonhole of his polo shirt.

“Fresh from Alaska and a perfect option for a healthy nutritious dinner. Try it tonight.”

I was jolted by the mash-up of high and low: the red plastic tray, damp and smelling of industrial dishwasher—his encyclopedic knowledge of the lives of the poets—the toaster-oven door stained brown with grease—

“Eleanor?”

“Alonzo!” I opened my arms for a hug.

He looked down: he couldn’t step off his mat.

“What’s this?” I said, picking up a little sample cup.

“Breaded steak fish.”

“I’ve heard it’s fresh from Alaska and perfect for a nutritious dinner.”

“A perfect
option
for a
healthy
nutritious dinner,” Alonzo corrected.

The whole exchange had an easy grace.

“Don’t mind if I do.” I dropped the morsel of fish on my tongue. Not my favorite.

Alonzo handed me a napkin and pointed to a trash can across the aisle. When I turned back, a man was standing at Alonzo’s station, kicking the tires, so to speak, of free food.

“What’s steak fish?” he asked.

“Tilapia,” Alonzo answered.

“Tilapia?” the man said with suspicion.

“It’s a sustainable, farm-grown replacement for pollack.”

“Never heard of that either.”

“It has the texture of steak,” Alonzo offered.

The man took a bite.
“This?”

“I think it tastes fabulous!” I said. “I’ll take five cartons.”

The wary customer shook his head as I grabbed my stack.

“See you next week?” I said to Alonzo.

“Same Bat Time.”

“Oh,” I said. “What’s our next poem?”

“‘At the Fishhouses,’ by Elizabeth Bishop.”

“But of course,” I said.

Sometimes victory knocks on your window even though you never sent out an invitation. This is what today was supposed to be about! I had been present. I had been kind. I had radiated happiness. True, I’d completely forgotten to apologize to Alonzo. But I did turn what might have been an awkward situation into a respect-filled exchange bobbing with wit and sophistication. Chalk one up for me, leaving the world a better place than I’d found it.

But first, what to do with this goddamned steak fish? I made sure nobody was looking, nestled all five boxes in a bin of loose T-shirts, and got the hell out.

I stepped outside and got smacked by the sun. Yikes, I’d been gone forty-five minutes. Spencer hadn’t called, which I considered a minor miracle. This middle-aged body would have to do the last thing anyone wanted to see: run back to the sculpture park.

“Wait!” It was Alonzo charging out, tugging at his blue apron as if being attacked by bees.

“Alonzo?”

He finally freed himself from the apron and whipped it to the ground. He crouched for a moment, hands on quads. This was no athlete either.

“I can’t do it. The degradation, the dehumanization, the perversion of the English language.” He pulled out a pack of American Spirits, tapped out a cigarette, and lit it with a mini Bic.

To my enormous credit, I didn’t spend the next five minutes haranguing him for being a filthy, self-destructive smoker.

“It was that look on your face,” he said after the first drag.

“My face was beatific and serene… wasn’t it?”

“That made it worse. Seeing how hard you were working just to look me in the eye.”

“I swear,” I said. “I can’t win for losing.”

“I’m not sure that’s what that means.” Cigarette in his mouth, Alonzo picked up his apron, balled it up, and dropkicked it into a nearby dumpster.

“Oh, Alonzo,” I said.

A motorized
zzzt
approached, followed by a slurring, high-pitched voice. “You don’t want to do that.”

It was a guy in a wheelchair with a tall safety flag. He wore a Costco name tag.
JIMMY
. His ear was frozen to his shoulder and his good arm worked a joystick.

“That’s a twenty-five-dollar deposit on that apron,” Jimmy said, scooting into Alonzo’s personal space.

Alonzo kept smoking and listened with an air of amused detachment.

“I seen a lot of people flip out and quit,” Jimmy continued. “Usually they throw their apron in the bin over there. Don’t return it, and they deduct it from your last paycheck.”

“Thank you,” Alonzo said. “But I honestly don’t give a rat’s ass.”

“Hey,” I said. “You’re a poet. Talk like one.”

“They empty that trash at twelve, three, and six,” Jimmy said. “I seen a lot of folks have second thoughts, come back but it’s gone.”

“I stand on my little mat flogging my fish story. Fresh from Alaska! On the box there’s an icy, roaring stream jumping with sassy fish. Really, it’s antibiotic-pumped tilapia farmed in Vietnam that maybe makes a
stopover
in Alaska. But hey, the price is right! Americans. You can see it in their walk. If they find something cheap, it puts a disgusting little bounce in their step.”

“Okay!” I said.

“And yet, it genuinely pains me when people like you spit out my samples.”

“I didn’t spit it out!”

“I saw you,” he said. “Yesterday was worse. Yesterday they gave me ostrich jerky.”

“That was you?” Jimmy said, his chair leaping back with a
zzzt
.

“I didn’t kill the ostriches. I didn’t hang them up to dry and hack them into strips! I just handed it out. I’m a poet!”

“Do you mind if we do this in the shade?” asked Jimmy. He put his chair in reverse and
zzzt
’d backward.

“Do what in the shade?” I watched him recede farther away from where I needed to be, and yesterday: the sculpture park.

“Our talk!” Jimmy shouted from under the eave of Costco.

“We’re not having a talk!” I said.

Alonzo lowered himself onto the curb, a three-step process accompanied by a fair amount of grunting.

“No, don’t sit down!” I said. “Ugh! I’m telling you, I don’t know whether to shit or go blind.”

“Shit,” Alonzo said. “It’s hardly Sophie’s choice.”

He was now cradling his head in his hands. “Costco’s the only insurance that pays for in vitro. My wife’s going to kill me. But nothing is worth another hour of that place.”

“Come on, Alonzo.” I patted his back. “All work has dignity.”

“She’s right!” called Jimmy from the shade.

“Not that work!” Alonzo shouted back. He turned to me. A puzzled look befell his face. “Wait. What happened to your steak fish?”

“Right. Uh. It was delicious, but my son is with a stranger who expected me back an hour ago and the line was really long and—”

Jimmy motored over. “Where did you leave it? I’m not going to turn you in. It’s just, it could thaw.”

“In a basket of T-shirts.”

“Oooh,” Jimmy said. “You better show me.”

“Yeah,” Alonzo said. “Show him.”

“No.” I reached through my legs, pulled up the back hem of my dress, and tied it in a three-way knot. Looking like Gandhi from the waist down, I climbed the rungs of the dumpster.

“My life,” I said, “is with my son, who I need to get back to before someone calls Child Services.”

I snatched the apron and tossed it at Alonzo’s chest. He let it bounce off.

“
Your
life,” I said to Alonzo, hopping down, “is in that Costco.” I tied the apron around his neck.

“Jimmy?” I said.

“Yes, ma’am!”

“Your life is escorting Alonzo back to his steak fish station.”

“Can do.”

“I’m a poet,” Alonzo said. “I’m writing a novel. It’s called
Marigold, My Marigold
. When I came to work, I passed a rack of marigolds. As I did, one broke off. This one. It was a sign. Today is the day my novel comes first.”

“Alonzo,” I said. “Quit tomorrow. I don’t care. Just talk it over with your wife.”

I aimed him in the direction of Costco.

“Go back to your darkling plain,” I said, giving him a helpful shove. “Everything will be fine.”

“My what?” Alonzo asked, turning back.

“Your little standing mat. Your darkling plain… pretend I never said it.”

I’d love to tell you I jogged the half mile back to the museum at a measured and steady pace. Really, I sprinted with boobs flapping, R. Crumb calves wobbling, throat burning, blister on the inside of my right heel forming. And stopped after a hundred feet.

My phone vibrated in my pocket. Spencer must have waterboarded my number out of the recesses of Timby’s mind.

“Yes, hello?”

“Am I speaking with Eleanor Flood?”

I took my phone away from my ear.

JOYCE PRIMM
.

“Joyce, hi! I’ve been meaning to call!”

“This is Camryn Karis-Sconyers,” the voice said. “I’m an editor at Burton Hill.”

Whatever was about to happen, I had the strongest premonition I shouldn’t hear it standing up.

I’d arrived at a small fishing pier. A Native American in a jean jacket sat on a bench with a portable radio. At his feet was a bucket filled with bloody gunk.
BAIT 4 SALE.
He nodded at the empty spot beside him. I sat down.

“Nice to meet you,” I said to Ms. Karis-Sconyers.

“I’m calling because we’re moving our offices downtown. I’ve been going through our files and found one for
The Flood Girls.
I’m wondering what you’d like us to do with it.”

“Oh. Joyce will know.”

“Joyce?”

“Joyce Primm,” I said. “My editor. Let me speak with her.”

“Um, Joyce Primm isn’t with Burton Hill anymore.”

So
that’s
why Joyce had been calling, to tell me she was going to another publisher.

“Where did she land?” I asked.

“At a cheese shop in Nyack.”

“Oh.”

“I heard it’s a really good cheese shop,” Camryn offered.

So it hadn’t been Joyce Primm calling. My phone just
thought
so because I’d entered Burton Hill’s main number in my address book.

What a singular sensation, to have the facts of my career unraveling and raveling back up all at the same time.

“And, so, my book?” I asked.

“
The Flood Girls
?” she said. “It was kind of due eight years ago?”
^*

“Are you my new editor?”

“I edit YA.”

“YA graphic novels? I’m sorry. I’m confused.”

“We’re not doing a lot of graphic novels anymore,” Camryn said. “They were big ten years ago but we got burned by a few. You know, Joyce and her cheese shop.”

“So you’re saying my book is canceled?” I said. “You’re just going to eat my advance?”

“I suppose we could sue you?” she said helpfully.

“That’s okay.”

“I feel bad,” Camryn said. “Maybe this is a conversation you should be having with your agent. Who’s your agent?”

“Sheridan Smith,” I said.

“Right.”

“What?”

“Someone said she’s a homeopath in Colorado.”

“She is?”

“Publishing,” Camryn said. “You might have heard. We’ve been going through a rough patch.”

“Gee.”

“You can still write your book,” she said sweetly. “It probably just won’t be for us. Oh!” She’d almost forgotten. “This file. I’m not sure if you want us to send it to you. Looks like contracts, correspondence, a Christmas card you drew for Joyce where instead of reindeer it’s the
Looper Wash
ponies and instead of Santa it’s that guy with the thing whose name I can’t remember—”

I hung up and dropped my phone into the bait bucket.