The Grocery List

DiGiorno Pizza

Soy Sauce

Milk

Carrots

Beer

Ranch

Bagels

Bananas

Deli Meat

Deodorant

Asparagus

Cheese

“Oh shoot, almost forgot the Sriracha,” he said to no one but himself in his cluttered, one-bedroom apartment. He pulled the phone out of his jeans, opened the Notes app, and added it to his grocery list, which resembled that of the common recent college grad, both in its contents and its nonsensical order.

And now Sriracha rounded things out nicely. He had a week of job searching planned ahead of him, and he was going to need to fuel up on some quality food. He could hear echoes of his mom telling him not to forget the fish, for, of course, they were full of those Omegas that everyone is talking about these days. So he added fish sticks to the list, which would go nicely with the Sriracha.

Just then his girlfriend-- or soon to be ex-- called. They’d been dating a few months now and things were getting serious. They had known each other all through school. Even made out at a Boston University football game after a big win. But why oh why he had decided to ask her out just before graduation was beyond him. He had always looked forward to that twenty-something single life. Focusing on career and learning to be an adult. He didn’t want a girlfriend getting in the way of this rite.

He silenced the call.

He knew, however, that he would have to give her the news at some point. After all, wasn’t that the adult thing to do? Without thinking, he added Val’s name to his shopping list and headed out the door.

###

The Fresh Finds grocery store was just a few blocks away from Jake’s apartment. And although February blustered a 20-degree wind chill in Boston, Jake thought it better to brave the elements than pay the outrageous Uber fees. The green neon Fresh Finds sign blazed in the parking lot under cloud darkened skies, giving an ominous, falsely optimistic greeting from the store against the blackish gray background of the clouds billowing behind it.

He unknowingly narrowed his eyes to the point of disappearance, seeming to naturally repel from that green glint. He pulled his hoodie tight over his head and plunged into the grocery store. Instantly, he felt better inside. It was, of course, much warmer in the safe confines of the grocery. But he also couldn’t help but think that the eye of the sign was no longer on him, glaring.

He pulled out his cell and began down the list, going in no particular order other than what happened to be right in front of him at any given time. And for some reason, everything seemed to appear before him. Jake couldn’t remember the last time shopping had been this easy. Every aisle and corner he’d turned down had magically sprouted his desired product. This couldn’t be right. The DiGiorno Pizza was nowhere near the other frozen pizzas. It had been placed among the frozen vegetables. The Sriracha had been found among the canned tuna, far up the aisle from where the rest of the hot sauces sat waiting. And he found the beer and the milk side by side in the vegetable section, just a few spaces away from the asparagus.

This is madness, Jake thought.

He wasn’t complaining, but he was a little uneasy about this strange and subtle fortune. But what had his father always told him? Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Jake had no idea what that phrase meant, word by word, but he got its general gist.

He began toward the checkout stand and then he saw her, standing in the very same Express Checkout line Jake had intended to proceed through. Valerie. It was Valerie. And she was holding a bottle of wine and a few other nondescript items. What was she doing here? She lived roughly three miles and seventeen grocery stores from Jake. And they’d both made it very clear early on in their relationship that the unannounced pop-in, drop-by, hey-there, whatever it was called, was unacceptable.

“Val?”

“Jake?”

Both confused. Valerie visibly happy. Jake pretending to be.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“Just some light shopping.” She caught him looking down at the bottle of wine. “Girls night,” she said, holding up the bottle in a little presentation.

“Cool. But Val, why’d you come all the way to this Fresh Finds? There’s gotta be like three that are closer to your apartment.”

She looked off to the side for a moment, searching. She looked confused, like she was trying to remember something. “I, uh, I honestly don’t know. I got in the Uber and somehow ended up here.”

“Sure,” he said in ho-hum confirmation. “Val, you doing okay?”

“I’ve missed you. I feel like we never see each other anymore.”

“Listen,” his face went solemn but his heart was pounding a million miles a minute now, “I didn’t want to do this at a place like,” he looked around the store, “this, but I think we should slow things down.”

“Oh,” her eyes widened but understood. She looked around. “Okay.”

“Okay,” he said, faked a smile, then stared off in a different direction.

Then they proceeded to stand awkwardly in line, never making eye contact or uttering a word for the next three and a half minutes.

###

Clouds continued to mount their attack on the city and a light dusting of snow began to drift down to the now lonely streets of Boston, artificially wiping away the dirt and grime and grease stains that decorated the city.

Jake got back to his apartment and felt like an asshole. He really had meant to break up with Val in a more tactful way. He cared about Val and legitimately hoped they could continue to be friends, if that was possible.

He looked out his window to see the snowfall. It was beautiful and serene, at least when you were inside a warm apartment. He peered out to see the people quicken their pace to find the same solace he had. He noticed a green light and realized that he could actually see the Fresh Finds neon sign from his apartment window. Suddenly he felt like he could hear its mind-numbing buzz and felt the weight of its gaze upon him.

He closed the blinds and turned on the TV. On it, the newscasters were in a tizzy about the storm of the century. It was gonna be a doozy, apparently. One that would last for the next four or five days. Where the hell did this storm come from?

He sat on the couch and opened a beer, mindlessly tuning out the sensation of the news. Jake began to wonder if he should go back to the grocery store before the storm got so bad he was stuck inside. Did he have enough groceries to get through the next few days?

He pulled out his cell phone, opened up the Notes app again, cleared off his last grocery list, and began writing a new one.

He had a passing fancy. Strange and shifting in his mind like the dark clouds that bellowed and rolled overhead. What if my grocery list brought Val to the store the same way it brought every item I wanted right to me?

Crazy? Sure. But his experience at the store was beyond normal. Like a forward-facing deja vu. He seemed to materialize these things himself. And her confusion about why she was at the grocery store, what was that all about?

Whatever it was, it was probably just in his head. Call it aftershocks of a broken relationship. He chuckled, as he thought of his melodramatic high school angst.

Just in case, Jake decided to run a little experiment this time. After making another grocery list, this time with much more nutritious food, like Snickers bars and Gatorade, he added the final line, “Free Beer.”

“Well, this should be fun,” Jake said to himself. The clouds answered with a crash of thunder. He saw the green neon light from the Fresh Finds sign through his window and began his dreary trek back to the grocery.

###

This time when Jake arrived at the store, the scene was much more chaotic. The frenzy for food and supplies before the storm led to its own form of danger, perhaps even more threatening than the impending doom from the sky. The clouds continued to swirl in their hypnotic, insidious dances, spitting snow and thunder in antagonizing bluster. But the people inside Fresh Finds were immediately and physically violent as they fought one another over water and toilet paper and beef jerky.

Jake witnessed an old woman shoved to the ground by a man in a suit as they fought for the last gallon of milk. He looked down at her in sorrow but without regret as he put the gallon in his cart where a toddler sat at the edge of tears. He saw two women dancing a jig while pulling each other’s hair as a third made off with the ham that they’d both been after. And he saw a young black man, roughly his own age, lying unconscious on the ground. God knew how he’d gotten there.

And this was all near the entrance of the store. He was worried but thought he could slip in and out without confrontation.

Everything Jake was looking for seemed to be the next place his eyes focused, and nowhere near where they should have been on the shelves or in the freezers. The only thing on his list that he didn’t encounter, somewhat unsurprisingly, was the free beer.

Jake looked at the grocery list on his phone and chuckled, “I’m an idiot.” Self-deprecation had always made Jake endearing to his friends. And at times, even to himself.

He made it out of the store with all of his bones intact and only one brown bag full of groceries that should get him through a few days of heavy snow. As he trudged through the already few inches on the ground of the parking lot, being careful to avoid the over-excited drivers trying to get home to their families, the green neon Fresh Finds sign seemed to grow louder, asking Jake to look up at it. He couldn’t help but oblige. It beamed and seemed to brighten as its power intensified through the storm. The dark backdrop of clouds magnified its horrible beckoning.

A haggard, middle-aged man ran past Jake, puffing heavily and holding several items in his arms. From one arm slipped a six-pack of Jake’s favorite beer. The haggard man didn’t even look back. The six-pack of beer sat perfect and pristine atop a small bump of snow that almost certainly cushioned it from breaking the glass bottles within. It was too perfect.

A security guard ran past Jake, chasing down the haggard man, without any regard for the beer that had just fallen from the probable thief’s arms. Jake bent over and picked up the beer with his free arm and proceeded home.

###

A few days passed and the storm intensified to the point of no return. Power lines broke down and water pipes froze and burst. Jake sat miserable in a cold apartment, bundled in coats and blankets, and still, his teeth chattered. It was morning but he’d barely slept all night due to the cold. Even through the dumping snow, he could still see that green neon Fresh Finds sign from beyond his window.

His mind moved to Val. Maybe it was a bout of depression. Maybe it was even a bit of hypothermia. But he missed her and longed to see her. Sleep deprivation made him sure of his next move.

He pulled out his phone, opened the Notes app, deleted all of the items on his grocery list and replaced it all with just one word.

Dressed to the gills and armed with necessity, he made his way to the grocery store on foot. It was a level of cold he’d never experienced. As he walked up to the front of the store, the neon sign seemed to mock him. It was brightening and darkening, as if laughing through light. And then he saw her. It was Val. Again. This time she was wearing pajamas. She sat, tranquil, still, if confused, at the foot of the shuttered grocery store door. Her eyes were bright and glistening with a layer of ice covering them. Ice covered her whole body. She was as frozen as an icicle. Jake could only stare in horror as he, himself, began to slowly but surely freeze to death.

The green neon light continued to buzz. The snow, in tiny, fluttering fractals, kept falling.