The Grocery Store Fight

“Oh my gosh, I just thought!” Holly stopped dead and clapped her hands to her face. “We went to this without Mason! I can’t believe he missed it. Oh, he would love this movie. I hope he won’t be mad.”

Rob snorted, and Holly looked back at him. “He can go with us next week,” he said mildly. His spirits slumped. It had been a great movie, and, according to Holly, that meant a good omen for their relationship. Yet, here she was talking about Fuckwad again. Forgive and forget, what kind of short memory did this chick have? In the supermarket’s fluorescent lighting, the bruise on her face showed green, blending to yellow at the edges. By the time Mason got back, all physical evidence of his deed would likely have faded.

“We forgot the s’mores stuff. You guys go get that, huh?” Rick and Lisa took off for the produce section.

Pacing down the aisles, Holly grew pensive again. “You know the guy next to me in the theater? He never laughed once, through the whole movie.” She stopped and looked up at Rob, genuine concern on her face. “How could he not laugh, even once?”

“Maybe he didn’t think it was funny.”

She shook her head. “Everyone thought it was funny. The whole crowd was laughing! He just sat there. I watched when we left, and I think he was all alone.” She piled boxes of graham crackers into their cart.

“So?” Rob looked up and down the aisle for marshmallows. Why couldn’t they stock things that obviously went together next to each other?

“So, don’t you think that’s sad? Going to a movie all by himself and feeling so low that he couldn’t even enjoy it? They’re down here.” She wheeled the cart to the end of the aisle and tossed in bags of marshmallows. “I just wonder what was wrong.”

Maybe his girlfriend keeps talking about her fuckwad ex-boyfriend. “I don’t know.”

She paused, looking at a bag of pastel-colored marshmallows. “They don’t have enough white ones. I guess these’ll do.” She sighed. “It was just weird. I couldn’t help but be aware of him. I was sitting there, loving the movie, caught up in it, and this guy next to me was basically on another planet.”

“A galaxy far, far away.”

Holly plopped the rest of the marshmallows into the cart. “Are you being sarcastic?”

“If you were so worried about him, why didn’t you just ask him what was wrong?” Rob grabbed the cart and steered it around the corner into the next aisle. Holly hurried after him.

“I should have, shouldn’t I? I’m a dunce!”

Rob was exasperated. “For god’s sake, what would the guy think if a perfect stranger asked him what was wrong in a movie theater? He’d think you were a psycho! Or else that you were hitting on him. Maybe you should be thinking more about yourself. If you ask me, you think way too much about others.” Rob began grabbing packages of hot dog buns and flinging them in with the groceries, squashing the baked goods in the process and enjoying it.

“What are you doing? We got those before.” Holly put the buns back on the shelf, tsk-ing at their condition. “Oh, Rob.” She hugged him. He grudgingly hugged her back. “I mean, maybe God placed that man in my path. Maybe the poor guy just needed someone to talk to.”

“Are you for real? You think God sends depressed people to Holly Barcelona when they need therapy?” Rob pulled away and wondered where to find Hershey bars.

Holly either didn’t realize he was baiting her or didn’t care. “Not all of them. I’m saying this was a special case. A depressed person goes to a movie to escape, to cheer up. But this guy couldn’t forget his troubles even for a couple of hours. And how did I happen to get seated next to him? Just a coincidence? I never sit on the end of our group, I’m always in the middle. So why, this time, was I on the end?” She gave him a look that Rob recognized from law school, the look of someone who thinks she has won her case with irrefutable evidence. However, no one in law school had ever added a head-tilt and cute-as-a-kitten nose wrinkle. It made Rob even angrier.

“Chocolate bars. Candy aisle?” He took off without waiting for directions, leaving Holly to trot behind him once again. “I’ll tell you why you were sitting on the end this time. Because your little group was different. I was there instead of Mason, and I had no knowledge of your routine seating arrangement.” He threw his words over his shoulder at her. “And who says this guy was depressed, anyway? Maybe he’s just not the type of person who laughs out loud. Maybe he doesn’t speak English and didn’t get the jokes. Maybe he thought the movie was crap. You know, there is no film in the world that is universally loved, not even this one.” He spotted the Hershey bars a moment after he passed them, whipped the cart around, and nearly crashed into Holly.

She staggered and grabbed the end of the shopping cart. “Rob, what is your problem?”  She shook the cart till it rattled, and the pile of graham cracker boxes toppled. “You wanted to go to the movie, we went, what is eating you?”

“How many of these do we need?” Rob shoveled packages of chocolate bars into the cart, emptying the shelf. “Is that enough?”

She stared at him. “What are you mad about?”

“I hope Mason won’t be mad,” he said in a sing-song soprano. “Because then he might hit me again and – “ He stopped. The blood drained from Holly’s face and her knuckles went white where they gripped the shopping cart.

“Go to hell.” She shoved the cart at him and walked away.

Shit. “Come back here!” Abandoning the cart, Rob dashed after Holly and caught her forearm, swinging her around to face him, gripping her elbow against himself. “All right. I’m sorry! But will you quit talking about him? He’s a fucking jerk-off! I can’t stand that you act like he’s still your friend when I want to beat his head in!”

Holly’s eyes sparked like flint. Her jaw line swooped in a clean angle as if drawn in ink on a white comic book page. “Let go,” she said through clenched teeth.

Mind racing as he debated whether to obey or not, he remembered Rick’s order. “I can’t. You can’t leave me. You have to be with me every second, remember?”

“Go to hell,” she repeated, and pulled.

He could hold on and risk hurting her, or give up and let go. He decided on a third option. He loosened his grip, and as she turned away and started off, went with her, keeping hold of her forearm but offering no resistance and allowing her to pull him. She lifted her arm and glared. He raised his eyebrows at her. She pulled her arm crosswise in front of herself; his arm followed. No matter how she twisted or jerked, he just moved with her. They marched down the aisle and through the store in this manner to the meat counter, where Rick was arguing with an annoyed-looking butcher while Lisa leaned over her grocery cart’s handle, one foot propped on the undercarriage, slowly rolling the cart back and forth. She straightened up as Holly and Rob approached.

“Rick, this is ended. As of now.” Holly planted herself between Rick and the meat counter, and crossed her arms, leaving Rob to turn sideways in order to keep his grip without spraining his own arm. His shoulder twisted painfully.

Lisa’s eyes widened. “Rob, what are you doing? Let her go.”

“What is? What?” Rick eyed the two of them.

“Your punishment. I mean, my punishment. I am not spending another second with this …” Holly paused, as if she could not think of a word horrible enough or could only think of words too horrible to utter in a supermarket. She glanced at the butcher, whose face had brightened with interest, and finished by waving her free arm at Rob.

“She’s trying to abscond,” Rob said. “Like this morning.”

“Your Red Owl store will be closing in ten minutes. Please bring your purchases to the checkout at this time,” the P.A. system yowled, then clicked and buzzed before the muzak returned. Shoppers around them hurried to make their final selections.

Rick took in the situation, his eyes traveling from their faces to their body language and Rob’s grip on Holly’s arm. His manner altered, undergoing that eerie transformation from guy-next-door to imposing monarch. “Release her.”

Rob hesitated, then let go and stepped away, rotating his shoulder. Holly rubbed her arm.

Rick looked at each of them in turn. Rob found himself feeling ashamed, unable to hold Rick’s gaze. Holly, too dropped her eyes. “It is ended when I say it is ended. Sunday evening.” He spoke a few words in that weird language.

Holly’s face reddened. She opened her mouth, and Rob heard her draw breath to speak, but she stopped and pressed her lips together.

With a grin, the butcher said, “You still want that meat order?”

“Yes.” Rick eyed the two up and down and waved them away before turning back to the butcher.

“I’ll go with these guys,” Lisa said. Propelling Holly ahead of her, she fell into step with Rob. As soon as they were out of Rick’s earshot she wheeled on Rob in fury. “What do you think you were doing? Don’t you ever lay hands on her like that again!” She jabbed his chest with her finger. It actually hurt.

“Oh, here it comes,” he said.

“Dragging her around like that! You think you can physically force her to do whatever you want… pig!”

Holly rounded on Lisa. “Stay out of it,” she hissed.

“I didn’t drag her. Did I drag you? Tell her I didn’t drag you.”

“He didn’t drag me. And stay out of it!”

“All I did was hold on.”

Lisa was spitting mad. “All you did! You did enough! Don’t you know one of the worst things you can do to a woman …”

“Where’s our cart?” Holly interrupted.

They looked around in confusion. “Did we go down the wrong aisle?”

“Your Red Owl store will be closing in five minutes. Please bring your purchases to the checkout at this time. And, as always, thank you for shopping at your local Red Owl.”

”Shit.”

“Crap!”

Racing through the now nearly-empty store, they found an employee restocking the marshmallow bags from their cart. The Hershey bars were gone, but the graham crackers remained. “Excuse me, we need those!” Holly said.

“I’ll go back and get the candy bars,” Rob volunteered.

“I’ll go back and get them, you idiot! You’re supposed to stay with her!” Lisa stomped off.

They rescued the cart, grabbed the marshmallows, and raced to the checkout, meeting Lisa with an armful of Hershey bars on the way. She dumped them into the cart and ran to find Rick. Rob steered the cart into a checkout lane and glanced behind him at Holly, who crossed her arms and inspected The National Enquirer headlines. Under cover of reaching for a pack of gum, he tried to see if he had bruised her arm. He couldn’t tell. He didn’t think so. Holly ignored him.