It did not matter how many times Steve said he didn’t care about celebrities, he was always captivated by the tabloids. The magazines at the check-out were baiting him, luring him and seducing him; stories of people he would never see or meet were somehow credible and concrete. The real value was probably in how truly fucked up these people were, especially the people who wrote for the magazines, the paparazzi who took the photographs of cellulite-riddled legs and then took time to criticize. Nothing good could come of this hypnosis, but that was the point, wasn’t it?
It did no good to look beyond the magazines, to try to stare past the colorful ocean of names and faces, because all that lie beyond was candy and impulse buys. Steve allotted himself two candy bars per week, sometimes three if the days were rough, or the weather too extreme, or the kids being assholes.
Steve allotted himself three candy bars per week. Each little bite was a step outside of his life and into a moment of over-indulgence that always made him feel guilty afterwards. There were funny Twix commercials where time would stop when eating a Twix bar, something about “need a moment?,” that meant “look how you royally fucked up this moment, so eat this candy and feel better.” Oh and Steve did feel better. Once when Arnette was giving him the biz about how he forgot milk, he just ripped open the Twix and thought how perfect he would be for TV commercial work – drowning out the harpy altogether.
He inched forward in line, one patron shuffling outside to let the next greet the cashier, “How are you today?” followed inexorably by “I’m doing fine, I would like paper bags, double bagged and then put into plastic bags, please.” Like adding “please” onto the end of that made it any less ridiculous. Not that Steve was any better, bringing reusable bags and then asking the minimum wage zombie to do him the honor of fillin’ ‘em up! Whatever, he saved a tree or two.
“That’ll be two-fifty eight, forty one.”
Jesus! Steve had a paltry six items on the black moving belt and looking at the staggering sum of the customer in front of him was far more satisfying than the star-spangled bibles and chocolate shelves. The duo in front of Steve practically rolled down the check-out aisle – if not rolling, waddling – and gladly paid no attention to the cashier as they took advantage of the black credit card reader.
“Press ‘cancel’ for credit.” The couple obliged. Probably saving up Points for a George Foreman.
Steve’s turn. “Good afternoon, how are you today?” The brown-shirted cashier had the dead eyes of a fashion model, the world around him was a dull assembly line that only produced unbearable cretins like the 258’ers.
“I’m fine,” Steve glanced at the plastic badge that labeled dead-eyes, “John.” It was clear that base-level attempts at socialization would not break the surface of dead-eyes John. He began expertly flipping the six items over the glass-faced box with the retina-killing red lasers inside and didn’t even look up as he was passed the fabric bags, breaking the boundary between them. His practiced fingers did not stop reaching for items as he gently placed the bags in front of him and dropped one box at each end and the remaining four items between. ‘Artful’ would be the word Steve used to describe the bagging.
Beep, click, whiz. The din of a machine, dead-eye John’s computer slash register told Steve he’d managed to spend twenty dollars and 11 cents. This was a small moment that left him closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. Of course it was 11 cents; Steve had thought to bring his one dime out of the car in the event he could use the change, but no. Instead he would have more coins. Arnette told him to keep a jar to put his change in, to save up for a goal – vacation or college for the kids or something equally impossible – but, the bitch she is, kept taking the quarters out! What good are pennies, nickels and dimes? Together all three don’t even add up to a single quarter.
Steve extended a twenty and a fiver across the boundary,
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