Page 11 of Nora Goes Off Script
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I pull mystation wagon into the Stop n’ Save parking lot and kill the engine. “Do you have any idea what you’re getting yourself into?”
“I do not. That’s why I’m here.” He gives me a youthful, expectant smile.
“Midnight in Jakarta,” I say. He looks at me, puzzled. “The smile. It’s the one you gave your parents, the shopkeepers, even the chief of police inMidnight in Jakarta.”
“That’s creepy,” he says.
“That you recycle old movie smiles? I agree.”
“That you notice.” He laughs and gets out of the car.
“Can you just try to fit in?” I ask, gathering my shopping bags from the back seat. He’s in jeans and a white T-shirt and a black leather jacket that probably cost what my car’s worth. “Maybe lose the jacket?”
He takes it off and suddenly he’s all shoulders and abs and I have to look away from the excess of it. “Put the jacket back on,” I tell him.
He wants to know what the bags are for, and I just shake my head. I scan my Stop n’ Save card to use the self-checkout gun, and his mind is blown. “So, it just knows what you’re buying?” He’s turning the gun in his hands, peering into the reader as if he’ll be able to see the tiny men who are making it work.
“Yes, from the barcodes.”
“What about fruit?”
“I’ll show you,” I say.
An older woman who I don’t know is blocking the entrance to the produce section. She is a statue with her hands on her full shopping cart, mouth open. Leo says, “Hello.”
She says, “Leo Vance.”
“Yes,” he says.
“Leo Vance,” she says again, not moving an inch.
“You’ve got me.” When he’s given her more than enough time to speak, he goes on. “Okay then, we have some shopping to do. I’ve got the scanner.” He waves it at her and gives her a smile I can’t quite name, but I’ve seen it before on the big screen.
As always, I approach the produce section with caution. Some shit’s always going down in the produce section—women over-confiding about their marriages, odd confessions, inappropriate confrontations. Don’t get me started. So when I look up and see Anita Wallingford coming my way, I’m not surprised.
Leo has his back to us, auditing the banana selection. He’s mumbling about how cheap bananas are, even the organic ones, as he weighs them and prints out the label. Anita starts right in. “Hey, Nora! How’re you doing?” Pouty face. “I heard about you and Ben. Just awful.” I nod in agreement, hoping we can move on. “I can’t believe you didn’t call me. I mean I had to hear it from someone else, and I just felt so hurt.”
This is a stunner, even coming from Anita. Even in the produce section. I can only repeat the words that have registered. “You’re hurt because Ben left me?”
“You should have called me. I mean, I thought we were...” I feel a hand on my shoulder. Leo has turned around to meet her gaze.
“She’s been super busy. I’m Leo.” He extends his hand with what I assume is a smolder. I want to see it since he’s never smoldered me, except I can’t take my eyes off wretched Anita Wallingford. She looks at him and then at me, and thenat him again. The tiny microcomputer behind her eyes is overheating. She might short-circuit. For a brief moment, I love the produce section.
“Good to see you,” I say, grabbing Leo’s arm and walking toward the deli.
“What’s wrong with that woman? And who’s Ben?”
“Ben’s Trevor. And I don’t talk about him in the supermarket.”
“So it’s a true story?” he asks. “You’re Ruth?”
“It’s mostly true, and I’m mostly Ruth.”
“Badass,” Leo says, nodding his approval.
I’m studying the chicken options. A whole chicken is $3.99 a pound, a whole chicken cut up is $4.25 a pound, and boneless breasts are $3.75 a pound. I swear sometimes the poultry section at the Stop n’ Save feels like the New York Stock Exchange, where prices move randomly and only the most savvy come out on top. I confess that I am a genius at buying chicken.
