Page 39 of Check Me Out

Lost In

Kim Fielding

“Dental floss,” mutters Joe Becker.

He blinks under the too-bright fluorescents in the grocery store foyer, and as he tries to decide whether to grab a cart, an employee appears and hands him a basket with wheels and a telescoping handle. The employee is dressed all in white, like an old-fashioned milkman or butcher. Joe thinks it must be hard to keep that uniform clean at work, but it is so utterly pristine that the guy almost glows under the lights. His smile glows too and looks genuine, and he has kind brown eyes and softly waved golden-brown hair.

“Can I help you find anything?” His name tag readsHan, which reminds Joe of his adolescent crush on the pilot from the old Star Wars movies.

Han is very handsome, but Joe is too tired to flirt and is bad at it even under the best circumstances. “Just need to pick up a few things.” Then a thought hits him. “You’re not closing, are you?”

He has no idea what time it is. His watch battery is dead and so is his phone, which he left back in the hotel to recharge. His temporal sense is tangled in time zones. But he has the feeling that it’s very late.

Han’s expression is reassuring. “Take all the time you need. We won’t hurry you.”

Joe gives him a polite nod and, shopping basket rattling faintly behind him, wanders through a second set of automatic sliding doors and into the supermarket itself. His first emotion is a pale cousin of despair. He can tell by looking up that the building is vast, and by scanning around that the aisles aren’t laid out in orderly rows with cross-aisles, like well-planned city streets. Instead this supermarket is apparently replicating an Ikea-like maze. So even if he knew where the dental floss was,he’d have to meander through the entire place to get to it and then wander some more before paying.

And he is already so incredibly tired.

If he turns around and goes back to the hotel, he won’t have any dental floss, or the salty snack he finds himself suddenly craving, or the particular brand of tea he likes to drink in the morning. Or the soft,realKleenex to replace the scratchy cheap substitute that hotels always provide. Another option is to leave and search for a smaller store, a less intimidating store, but there might not be any nearby and he doesn’t have a car. Or they may all be closed. That leaves him only the third choice, which is to traverse the supermarket.

Sighing, he begins.

The shelves in this first section don’t contain food or hygiene items but rather a hodgepodge of items that seem seasonal—but he can’t work out which season. There are portable grills and bags of charcoal, Easter baskets stuffed with fake grass, cookie tins with images of Santa and polar bears, rubber Halloween bats and skeletons, and miniature national flags that he can’t pair with a particular country.

Joe pauses in front of a display of cheap Valentine’s Day cards, the sort that parents buy for their kids to give out to the whole class. When he was in second grade, he’d begged for a Mickey Mouse–themed set and spent an entire evening painstakingly taping a Tootsie Pop to each one before writing the recipient’s name and his own on the provided blanks. The next day in class, Mrs. Valenti instructed everyone on how to weave strips of colored paper together to make heart-shaped baskets that they hung on their desks. Then all the students walked around, distributing their cards before lunch. When Joe returned from recess, the basket he’d hung on his desk wasmissing, and all the cards he’d handed out were crumpled in a trash can, along with the candy. He remembers the hot shame of his tears—and the comforting hugs from his best friends, Danny and Krista. Joe’s family had moved that summer. He wonders whatever happened to his old pals and hopes they’re both happy.

Joe turns a couple of corners and finds himself in a long aisle with bottled waters and juices on one side and an array of something that might be energy bars on the other. He doesn’t recognize the brand name, which looks foreign; he also doesn’t recognize the language. It strikes him suddenly that this supermarket has almost no odor, apart from the faintest whiff of floor cleaner.

When he was a boy, his maternal grandmother had lived with them. Sometimes she took him shopping at her favorite Eastern European market. A lot of the signs and labels there had been in Cyrillic, which he couldn’t read, but he recognized his baba’s favorite items and would pull them off the shelves for her. The market was tiny and crowded, boxes and bags sometimes almost blocking the aisles, and the entire store smelled of cured meats, pungent cheeses, and baking bread. While Baba chatted endlessly with the shopkeepers—Joe not understanding a word—he’d enjoyed ogling the display of fancy cakes. She rarely bought any pastries but usually got him a packet of little fruit-flavored candies.

“Would you like to try a sample?”

Startled, Joe whirls around and discovers Han grinning at him from behind a small table with rows of white paper cups. Joe hadn’t seen Han walk past him from the entrance and had no idea how the guy had set up the table so quickly. Maybe somebody else had, and he’d just now taken over.

“Dental floss?” Joe asks stupidly.

“Not in this section, sorry. But I do have samples if you’d like one.” Han lifts one of the cups in offering.

Although Joe doesn’t really want anything, he takes the cup, which proves to contain a single brown rectangle. He pops it into his mouth and then cries out in surprise. “Baba’s!”

Han keeps on smiling, as if Joe’s reaction is completely normal, and Joe feels obligated to explain. “My grandmother used to have these—or something just like them. I hated the taste.” They were soft candies with a strong licorice-and-menthol flavor. “But sometimes I’d steal one and eat it anyway because it was candy, and because I thought it might magically help me be more grown-up.”

“Did it?”

“Not noticeably.” Joe chuckles.

“Do you want another?”

Does he? He’s still not certain whether he likes them, but nonetheless he holds out a hand and, when Han gives him a cup, eats the second candy. “Thank you. Are these really very popular?”

Han shrugs. “Some like them. That’s good enough.”

“And it’s pretty late. I haven’t seen anyone else in here. But you’re still giving out samples?” Joe isn’t sure why he’s interrogating the poor guy, but Han doesn’t seem to mind.

“We like to serve our customers, whenever they arrive.”

Under other circumstances Joe might have decided that was a double entendre. There is a certain sparkle in Han’s eyes. But Joe is on a mission. He needs to find dental floss, get back to hishotel, and get some rest. He has somewhere important to be in the morning.

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