Express Lane

A story on pushing the limits at the express checkout line

Express Lane

Justin Chen woke up besides his girlfriend Helen and sat up and checked his phone on the night stand. It was eight in the morning. Usually he would have had to be in at work by eight thirty, but today was Saturday. Laying back in bed, he pulled Helen into his arms, and as he felt her lungs press against his heart, he smiled at his fortune.

Helen was the kindergarten teacher of Eastdale Elementary. For the girls she was second only to their own mothers, and to the boys, why, for the boys her smile seemed to have the effect of shattering the arguments of kings, for kings they thought they were, and kings they were treated as such by the proper upper-class parents of Eastdale Elementary. Holding Helen in his arms, he studied her soft skin and faint freckles and imagined how great the day was going to be with her. They would watch a movie, do some yoga, go for a walk, maybe even pick up some satsumas from his neighbor Angela. Helen loved satsumas. Justin like them too, soft pillows of juices Angela called them. But he didn’t care what fruit Angela gave him. She could give him rotten lemons and he’d still be the happiest man alive, as long as he had Helen holding his hand. Neighbors handing out free satsumas, man, that was too much, life can’t get much better than that.

Yes, life had been going quite well for Justin Chen. Eleven months ago, he met Helen at a Chinese New Year party. She was the only white girl there and he was the only Chinese guy with the guts to point it out to her. He got her number just before the clock hit midnight and the year of the monkey kicked off into some of the happiest months of his life. Their relationship was the rare occasion where the two deserved each other, yet like many a man who finds themselves lying with a beautiful woman they feel utterly terrified of, Jason thought perhaps he needed to do more. Helen was the woman, she had proven it to him, but had he proved it to her? He knew she was a woman who would not sleep with a man for long if he did not eventually prove himself worthy, and this was partly the reason he loved her so much. Grazing his fingers down the nape of her neck and across her back, he thought of how he ought to prove himself. It needn’t be much, but it had to be something. He caught a whiff of strawberries in her hair, and it was in that intoxicating and heart-crushing scent that only a woman can provide that he glimpsed of how he might prove his love. He would give her all the fruit she wanted, a whole damn orchard if he could. The idea was simple, but he felt it was great, and he knew she would love it. He gave her a kiss on the shoulder and crept out of his apartment feeling like the luckiest man in the world. That’s how Justin Chen started his Saturday morning, with a heart bursting of love.

It was a gorgeous December morning in Baton Rouge, not wet nor humid, but cool and clear, and the few clouds which drifted in the sky were not in their usual mammoth gray proportions, but instead bales of heaven which sailed in a sea of blue. Watching the sun burst through a cradle of white, he felt that providence was in motion. As he drove his white Corolla to Albertsons with the windows rolled down, he turned the radio to NPR and listened to finance gurus debate if the stock market would keep rising to record highs. It was the longest period of growth on record, and if you weren’t getting your fifteen percent, then buddy, you weren’t doing something right! Justin smiled at his own conservative and steady eight percent and decided to forget his budget and go all out for the orchard his Helen deserved.

Helen had many fruits she loved. Her favorite were strawberries. Strawberries were always expensive at Albertsons, but Justin didn’t give a damn. He was prepared to drop a fortune on strawberries, and when he found out they were on sale for only $1.50 a pound, he took it as another sign that he and Helen were meant to be. He got six pounds of strawberries, three pounds per package. Next were the apples, little pale worlds of red teeming with rivers of juice and mines of sugar. He usually went with the Fuji because he thought they were the best bargain, taste and affordability. Today he went with the Honeycrisp, larger and sweeter than the Fuji, and a dollar extra a pound for it. He picked three of the most beautiful apples he had ever seen, weighed his apples on the scale, and behind the scale spotted the grapes. Helen particularly enjoyed putting her grapes in the freezer and letting them evolve into the frosty marbles they were meant to be, as if their tissue were not earthly, but had been scooped out of some hidden valley of angels and fjords, she herself snacking on them as if she were the queen of spring, daughter of winter. Two heaping bags of grapes, red and green, he would get, and he wouldn’t even look at the price. He always thought grapes were overpriced so cared not to look. The last thing he needed to get were blueberries. Helen loved the flexibility of blueberries, always looking for new ways to incorporate them. Whether it be freezing them and dropping them into yogurt, or mixing them in with pancakes and oatmeal, she was determined to reach the mighty potential of the tiny blueberry. Dropping two boxes of blueberries into his cart, he looked in, and was still unsatisfied. Believing it needed more color, he dropped in a stem of bananas, two oranges, one pineapple, and one watermelon. His cart bursting with fruit, and too excited to do anything else but get home, he rushed to the checkout.

The first lane he saw was the express lane, fifteen items or less. Counting his fruit diligently, he saw he had two boxes of blueberries, two packages of strawberries, two bags of grapes, three apples, two oranges, one pineapple, one watermelon, and one stem of bananas. Although there were five bananas, they were connected to the same stem, and so he counted them as one, and the bags and boxes, they were bags and boxes. Who counts each individual berry and grape as an item?

Strolling into the express lane, he stopped behind an old lady in front of him buying a gallon of milk, cat food, and litter. He placed his fruit on the conveyor belt and looked up to find the old lady struggling to find her credit card. The clerk across from her was a young girl. Her name tag said Nyesha and she had all the enthusiasm of a teen who got up at six in the morning on a Saturday to work the register. Across from Nyesha’s zombie eyes, the old lady continued to struggle. Her wallet full of coupons, receipts, cash, cards, and pictures of each of her twelve grandchildren. As she filed through this cluttered mess, her faced blushed of red as she repeatedly looked up to Justin and Nyesha, apologizing for her tardiness. Justin gave her a smile and nodded his head at each of her apologies, but after quickly tiring of this, he turned to gaze over the tabloids. While perusing who were the latest creeps from Hollywood, he saw a tall man in a leather jacket walk into the express lane.

The man had two items. A tub of Folger’s Colombian roast and a handle of Firefly sweet tea whisky. He looked to be in his forties. His face beamed of red and his nose bulged like Rudolph. Holding the whisky in his left hand, and the coffee in his right, he gave a nasty look to Justin. Justin nodded his head in response and gave an attempt at a smile. The man grunted in reply and crooked his neck.  Thinking it better to ignore the man, Justin turned his attention back to the nice old lady. She had found her card and was entering her pin into the card machine. The cash drawer popped open and Nyesha took out the twenty dollars she had requested (all in fives) and the receipt along with it. As the old lady slowly counted her money, Justin heard shuffling behind him.

He looked over his shoulder and found the man in the leather jacket shoving his blueberries and strawberries with the divider stick. It wasn’t a gentle brush either, but an angry slapshot that rolled and squished the berries into the apples and oranges. The man’s face was crimson too, his neck streaked in purple.  

“Is there something wrong, sir?” Justin asked.

“Yeah,” he said, with a musty gruff. “You got more than fifteen.”

Justin stomach turned. He went over the numbers again and knew he had counted his items correctly before entering the express lane. “No, I have fourteen.”

The man took in a snort of air through his nostrils and started to shake and mumble to himself.  “I count a goddamn forest,” he muttered among other things, his hands twitching and his lips quivering.

“I counted the banana stem as one,” said Justin.

The man’s upper lip curled.

“Would you just like to go in front of me?” Justin asked.

The man stared at one of the oranges as if it had murdered his daughter. After registering Justin’s question, he looked up from the conveyor belt. He noticed that Nyesha and the old lady were looking at him. “Fifteen or less,” he muttered.    

“Yes,” said Justin, motion his hand across the belt. “Look. I counted right. Hey, would you just like to skip ahead of me? I don’t mind.”

“FIFTEEN!” The man yelled, the veins in his neck now extending into his cheeks and coloring his face purple and maroon. “FIFTEEN!”

“Sir, if you would like-.”

“FIF-TEEN!”

Justin wanted to move, but he couldn’t. Behind him the old lady stood watching the interaction. To his right the conveyor belt, and to his left shelves of candies and tabloids. And ahead him, of course, the tall man who wanted to murder a blueberry.

“Sir. Please, just go a-”

“FIFTEEN!” The man shouted again, slamming the tub of Folgers into a box of Snickers and then tossing it indiscriminately over the shelves, the bottle of whisky

“Young man!” The old lady shouted behind Justin, “Behave yourself now!”

“FIF-TEEEEEN!!!” The man screamed again. This was far louder than any other of the previous screams and could be heard from every corner of the store. The old lady turned to Nyesha. Her expression was easy to understand. She was not getting paid enough to deal with this shit.

Justin gazed around frantically, looking for options. He was no Achilles nor Patroclus, and was not ashamed of that, but what he decided on next sure made him feel like a coward. He turned to the old lady.

“Mam, can you head on through, please, so I may get out and let this man go ahead of me?”

“Of course, sweetie,” the old lady said, then turning to stare at the man, “you are one rotten apple, you know that?” The old lady placed her wallet back in her purse, and as she began to push her cart out of the express lane, the manager arrived.

The manager was a fat and sassy woman and she stepped to the end of the express lane like a linebacker, blocking the old lady’s path. “Who the hell is throwing coffee into my daffodils?”

Nyesha rolled her eyes and nodded her head over to the man, still shaking and mumbling with rage.  

“Sir! Is there a-”

“FIFTEEN!” The man screamed, throwing a fist into the face of Brad Pitt, crumbling his perfect jaw line.

“I’m getting security.”

“FIF-TEEN!”

“I know, fifteen. I can read dumbass.”

The man then erupted into a terrible yowl, smashed the bottle of whisky on the edge of the conveyor belt, lifted it behind his head, and chucked it at the manager. The throw was a heater but sailed left of the manager and into the brand new Starbucks Café behind her.

“Mother-fucker!” The manager screamed.

 “FIFTEEN!” The man yelled back, his arms raised towards the roof, his fist shaking in fury. “FIF-TEEEEEEEEEN!!!!!!”

Justin was done. Attempting to squeeze past the old lady, he saw her wrinkly hand pull out a small pink bottle from her purse. He knew exactly what it was. Just last week he discovered Helen had the same one. Already clenching his eyes for what was to come next, the old lady pushed him aside and unleashed her septuagenarian fury.

The pepper spray flew out in a bright orange liquid and the man screamed in agony, but he stood his place, his feet not moving an inch. More terrified than when she had started, the old lady sprayed and sprayed, keeping her finger on the trigger as she waved the bottle from side to side, painting his face into the orange fruit he so despised. But his eyes did not shut, but instead grew wilder and wilder with each passing second, each ounce of misty venom bringing forth the demon lying dormant within him.

“FIFTEEEEN!!!” he screamed, his tongue black and wiggling as he inhaled the orange mace. “FIFTEEEEEEEEN!!!!!”

Crouched beneath the old lady, Justin winced and prayed for it to stop, and eventually it did, for he heard the spraying stop, and then the screaming shortly after that. Peeking open his left eyes, he saw the man still standing.

His face was dripping orange, his eyes bleeding. His head shaking uncontrollably. At the point where it looked like his head might pop off his shoulders, his face locked up, and he started to puke. 

It gushed out his mouth like a rain gutter, brackish as the Mississippi. His body had turned to stone and his lips were now the only flesh moving, flapping against his cheeks and drooling over his chin as he hosed down Justin and the old lady. The sludge reeked of liquor and moved like grease, and when it had smothered every hair and pigment of Justin and the old lady, he aimed his mouth over to the conveyor belt.

Justin had felt that his own drenching had ended, but he could still hear that awful sound. Wiping the muck from his face and blinking through the stench, he opened his eyes and looked to the conveyor belt. Every ounce of fruit he had bought for Helen was being drowned in the gushing vomit.

“FIFTEEEN!!!” The man screamed at the end of his barf, howling to the ceiling and shaking his hands at the lights as if he were challenging the gods. “FIF-TEEEEEEEEEN!!!!!!!”

Justin stared in horror at the puke seethe into the cartons of blueberries. A subtle glimmer blinded him the eyes and pulled his attention away. On the conveyor belt there lied a large shard of glass. He saw the man pick up the shard bare-handed and step towards him, blood beginning to trail down the man’s forearms as he clenched the glass.

Justin flung himself up to his feet and yanked the old lady up with him, but he quickly stumbled into her cart and slipped on the whisky and puke. Fallen, he looked up and saw the fluorescent lights shining through the shard of glass that now hung above him. Like some prism from hell, the man’s face peered through. His eyes bloodshot, puke dripping from nose and chin in long, stretchy gobs. A green foam oozing out the nostrils. Curled, quivering lips that laughed maniacally.

“FIF-TEEEEEEEEEEN!!!!!!”

The man lurched forward to strike, but before he could lay a finger on Justin, an explosion erupted behind him.

Justin shut his eyes in an instant felt like it had been hit in the face by a water balloon. After nothing else was felt, he opened his eyes, and saw a headless corpse falling through a mist of red. He shuffled backwards from the corpse patting himself for wounds and looked up.

At the head of the express lane was an obese woman sitting in a mobilized shopping cart, full of cookies and soda. She was wearing a George Strait t-shirt and clutched between her hands a smoking revolver.

“Y’allright?”

Justin looked around him to find an answer. The express lane covered in blood, gore, and puke. Not a berry nor grape left untouched.  

It took three hours before he could find time to himself. He went to sit on the edge of the curb behind the ambulance. They wanted to take him to the hospital. They thought he needed to go because his answers to their questions didn’t make sense. He told him he had a lot of thoughts going through his head, but one thought was truly messing with him. He pulled out his phone and saw four missed calls from Helen. They had planned on going to 11 A.M. yoga. It was now half past noon. He sighed and hung his head and stared at the cracks in the pavement. A dandelion had grown there. He watched it get pulled and tossed away into a gust of wind and followed it until his eyes fell on the old lady from the express lane. She came and took a seat next to him.  

 “Do you like persimmons?” She asked.

“The fruit?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve heard of them. I’m not really sure what they are though.”

“Hmm,” she pondered, scratching her chin. “When they’re right, they’re sort of like a peach.”

“Peaches are good.”

“Yes,” she said, smiling and looking off into the sky. “My granddaddy used to can them in a factory. Downtown it was. Back near the old state capitol.”

“Oh. That’s nice.”

“I guess. Anyways,” she exclaimed, patting him on the leg, “why don’t you come by my house sometime. You can pick out some persimmons from my backyard. I have some grapefruit too if you like that. And you know what, I’ll make you a meal, maybe even fix up some bread pudding to go with it. How ‘bout it?”

“That sounds great. There’s just one thing.”

“What is it?”

“May I bring my girlfriend?”

The old lady beamed with joy. “Does she like fruit?”