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Cashier | Mar 12 2003

I have a thing for the cashier at the health food supermarket. I think it’s because she hates me. I mean, it could be because she hates me. Otherwise it’s because of her body. She has the kind of body that always gets me: a little on the short side but strong, particularly through the shoulders.

Today I went to her line, despite the next line being shorter. Although it wasn’t so short, I told myself, as to make my choice that obvious. She didn’t say hello. She never says hello, nor smiles, nor does anything to acknowledge my existence as distinct from my groceries.

I once saw her sitting outside, alone, at the far end of the parking lot, reading. I didn’t dare speak with her. I wouldn’t dare speak with her. Occasionally I break down and attempt to make eye contact—and always feel foolish for having done so.

Our exchanges, if I may call them that, invariably follow the same pattern. She rings up my groceries and I give her my credit card. She processes the card and hands me a receipt to sign, along with a pen. I sign the receipt and give her the top copy, along with the pen. She hands me my card and another receipt and I say thank you. “You’re welcome,” she says. You’re welcome is the only thing she has ever said to me. Sometimes she doesn’t say it—maybe she forgets—and I end up waiting a split-second extra. That’s especially painful: to stand there waiting for words that don’t even mean anything.

Walking back from the supermarket, I wondered if I’m attracted to her because she refuses to make eye contact with me, refuses to be in any way flirtatious or even kind. I wondered too if she singles me out for this kind of treatment because she finds me attractive. That one made me laugh out loud. She ignores me because she likes me. Ha, ha, ha.

While unpacking my groceries, I imagined that I’d become a famous writer and had approached her as she sat at the far end of the parking lot, reading my famous book. I’ve had this fantasy before, and it’s always the same. I ask her what she thinks of the book and she surprises me by talking about it, by talking about it at length in fact, and with animation. In short she hates it, thinks it’s worst kind of drivel, a complete waste of time, why doesn’t the author shoot himself, she has a gun she’d be happy to lend to him, our culture has become a toilet, she says, an absolute toilet, or if not a toilet then a sewer, either a toilet or a sewer, she can’t make up her mind, sometimes she thinks toilet but then changes her mind and thinks sewer, it’s so hard to decide, toilet, sewer, toilet, sewer, books like this don’t make it any easier, do they, she says, what did you think of it?