“It’s a sustainable, farm-grown replacement for pollack.”
“Never heard of that either.”
“It has the texture of steak,” Alonzo offered.
The man took a bite. “This?”
“I think it tastes fabulous!” I said. “I’ll take five cartons.”
The wary customer shook his head as I grabbed my stack.
“See you next week?” I said to Alonzo.
“Same Bat Time.”
“Oh,” I said. “What’s our next poem?”
“‘At the Fishhouses,’ by Elizabeth Bishop.”
“But of course,” I said.
Sometimes victory knocks on your window even though you never sent out an invitation. This is what today was supposed to be about! I had been present. I had been kind. I had radiated happiness. True, I’d completely forgotten to apologize to Alonzo. But I did turn what might have been an awkward situation into a respect-filled exchange bobbing with wit and sophistication. Chalk one up for me, leaving the world a better place than I’d found it.
But first, what to do with this goddamned steak fish? I made sure nobody was looking, nestled all five boxes in a bin of loose T-shirts, and got the hell out.
I stepped outside and got smacked by the sun. Yikes, I’d been gone forty-five minutes. Spencer hadn’t called, which I considered a minor miracle. This middle-aged body would have to do the last thing anyone wanted to see: run back to the sculpture park.
“Wait!” It was Alonzo charging out, tugging at his blue apron as if being attacked by bees.
“Alonzo?”
He finally freed himself from the apron and whipped it to the ground. He crouched for a moment, hands on quads. This was no athlete either.
“I can’t do it. The degradation, the dehumanization, the perversion of the English language.” He pulled out a pack of American Spirits, tapped out a cigarette, and lit it with a mini Bic.
To my enormous credit, I didn’t spend the next five minutes haranguing him for being a filthy, self-destructive smoker.
“It was that look on your face,” he said after the first drag.
“My face was beatific and serene… wasn’t it?”
“That made it worse. Seeing how hard you were working just to look me in the eye.”
“I swear,” I said. “I can’t win for losing.”
“I’m not sure that’s what that means.” Cigarette in his mouth, Alonzo picked up his apron, balled it up, and dropkicked it into a nearby dumpster.
“Oh, Alonzo,” I said.
A motorized zzzt approached, followed by a slurring, high-pitched voice. “You don’t want to do that.”
It was a guy in a wheelchair with a tall safety flag. He wore a Costco name tag. JIMMY. His ear was frozen to his shoulder and his good arm worked a joystick.
“That’s a twenty-five-dollar deposit on that apron,” Jimmy said, scooting into Alonzo’s personal space.
Alonzo kept smoking and listened with an air of amused detachment.
“I seen a lot of people flip out and quit,” Jimmy continued. “Usually they throw their apron in the bin over there. Don’t return it, and they deduct it from your last paycheck.”
“Thank you,” Alonzo said. “But I honestly don’t give a rat’s ass.”
“Hey,” I said. “You’re a poet. Talk like one.”
“They empty that trash at twelve, three, and six,” Jimmy said. “I seen a lot of folks have second thoughts, come back but it’s gone.”
“I stand on my little mat flogging my fish story. Fresh from Alaska! On the box there’s an icy, roaring stream jumping with sassy fish. Really, it’s antibiotic-pumped tilapia farmed in Vietnam that maybe makes a stopover in Alaska. But hey, the price is right! Americans. You can see it in their walk. If they find something cheap, it puts a disgusting little bounce in their step.”
“Okay!” I said.
“And yet, it genuinely pains me when people like you spit out my samples.”
“I didn’t spit it out!”
“I saw you,” he said. “Yesterday was worse. Yesterday they gave me ostrich jerky.”
“That was you?” Jimmy said, his chair leaping back with a zzzt.
“I didn’t kill the ostriches. I didn’t hang them up to dry and hack them into strips! I just handed it out. I’m a poet!”
“Do you mind if we do this in the shade?” asked Jimmy. He put his chair in reverse and zzzt’d backward.
“Do what in the shade?” I watched him recede farther away from where I needed to be, and yesterday: the sculpture park.
“Our talk!” Jimmy shouted from under the eave of Costco.
“We’re not having a talk!” I said.
Alonzo lowered himself onto the curb, a three-step process accompanied by a fair amount of grunting.
“No, don’t sit down!” I said. “Ugh! I’m telling you, I don’t know whether to shit or go blind.”
“Shit,” Alonzo said. “It’s hardly Sophie’s choice.”
He was now cradling his head in his hands. “Costco’s the only insurance that pays for in vitro. My wife’s going to kill me. But nothing is worth another hour of that place.”
“Come on, Alonzo.” I patted his back. “All work has dignity.”
“She’s right!” called Jimmy from the shade.