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Cooperation | Dec 31 2006

An awkward scene in the co-op. The cashier is someone I had a date with two years ago, just before meeting K. We had soup at a Japanese restaurant and she complained about being chilly—she hadn’t worn socks—so I lent her the thick wool sock I use to store my digital camera. Every five minutes or so she would switch the sock from one foot to the other. It was a scene out of a romantic comedy, and I liked her plenty besides—she was smart, beautiful, and unpretentious—but then we got to talking about the co-op, of which we were both members, and I made the mistake of making up the plot of a film, set in the co-op, in which a character based on her gets a crush on a character based on me. I forget the details, but I believe her character switches her shift to be on same shift as my character, only their hippy fascist squad leader keeps sending her to other parts of the store to do jobs she doesn’t know how to do. Each time she complains about this, the squad leader says, “Co-op means cooperation.” I thought this would make her laugh but instead it made her uncomfortable. The problem, I think now, was that her character gets a crush on my character, and not vice versa, which I believe she found too flirtatious or presumptuous or god knows what. If I had it to do over, I would reverse the roles.

The next day I wrote to say what I nice time I’d had. I didn’t mention the film. She responded, simply and coldly, with the question of why I would write and not call, since I now had her number. If I had this to do over, I would call and not write, but really, if mistakes like these are what matter, there’s no point in trying. I knew this at the time, but just to be certain, I called. She never responded, and then a few weeks later I met K.

Today she was my cashier. Thankfully I remembered her name.

“Hi, Virginia. I’m Michael.”

“I know who you are.”

Her tone was the same as her email. She meant to indicate I’d made another mistake.

I ignored this—what difference does it make now?—and asked if she was cooperating.