A False Start
Fluorescent supermarket strip-lighting lit her blue eyes, though romantically he considered they might have sparkled anywhere. There were other checkouts open, some with shorter queues, but he had chosen hers: There was something about the lines of her hair as they swirled behind her ear to the loose doubled-over ponytail above her neck, and her slimness, not just in her frame but in her precise economical movements that he liked. He stood, watching her serve the customer in front, feeling inadequate with his frozen pizzas and microwave ready-meal.
“Hi,” she said with a smile.
“Hi,” he repeated, reflecting the smile with a quick honest tightening of his own dimples. Their eyes met, momentarily. Blue. Brown. Did she smile like that for all the customers, he wondered. Perhaps that was why they hired her: that smile. A smile like that brightens someone’s day. A girl like that brightens someone’s day.
No, she didn’t smile like that for everyone who passed by, certainly not for the old drunkards smelling of fags, buying own-brand vodka and whisky, in whose eyes glinted a little semi-concious letch; nor for the shaven-headed twenty-something males in tracksuits nonchalantly dropping packs of Carlsberg onto the conveyor belt; nor even for the haughty middle-aged, middle-class women buying pre-packed, adjective laden, fillets of salmon: for these stereotypes, the basis of which had been one or two regulars, but the labelling of which had been applied whole groups that had all blended into that single entity known as ‘customer’, her smile always felt forced, strained. Not that they noticed.
For the young mothers, their children looking up at her either from prams or on tip-toes over the sweets they are desperate for her to scan, her smile was always genuine, as it was for any of the customers who took the short seconds to look her in the eye, smile back and say “hello” or “hi”. But the smile she gave them, her ordinary, every-day smile, was different in quality to the smile she gave now to the young man in front of her now: It was a reinvigorated smile, sweeping away in a moment the endless hours at the checkout, the unbearable monotone beeps of the scanner. She supposed, looking at him, that he was quite handsome. Perhaps he smiled at all the checkout girls. Perhaps not. For a moment she didn’t care: she was glad he had chosen her checkout.
Why? She looked again, the right angles of a pizza box passing between her slender hands. It wasn’t so much him; he wasn’t so unusually good-looking. Sure, there was a pleasing curve to his jaw-line, his nose was well-formed and the slight prominence of his cheek-bones added character to his features, but it was really a very ordinary attractiveness. His hair, to an extent, added interest, with messy irregular spikes and sweeps. She read in his hair an easy-going nature, saw someone who moved easily from place to place, laughing easily at whatever they find. What else? She looked lower and saw a fleece-lined hooded sweat-shirt, hanging open across his skinny chest. That compounded her attraction, more than any of his physical features, for she saw herself in a moment wrapped up in the warmth of that top, her breathing in its scent of him while he walked her home from a party. Their alcohol breath would crystallise in the winter air…
She asked if he needed a bag, but he had brought his own. It was common now for people to do that, but she felt a little sorry, as if she had been denied the small privilege of giving him something, even something so small as a plastic bag. It strengthened her half-formed feelings of admiration for him though: yes it was only that he had brought his rucksack with him, but the independence that this represented might stretch further in his life to the point that he was not so aloof as to be inaccessible, but that if she could get him to notice her she would feel she had achieved something special.
He already had noticed her. On her finger there was a ring with a butterfly on it; cheap no doubt, but she kept it shiny. On the opposite wrist there was a canvas festival bracelet but nothing else. Unadorned, natural: He liked that. He packed the last of his shopping into his bag. She told him the price.
She regretted that the few things she said to him had become so robotic through their repetition. She wanted to say something different, something exciting and interesting, but what? What could she possibly say that might interest him, that might bring his attention to her as a person rather than as a function? There was nothing. People couldn’t just say things to each other in the everyday situations like serving someone at a checkout, couldn’t transcend the exact parameters, the predetermined script of the customer-server bond: That’s what the nightclubs were for, even if the shouted pick-up lines were borne of intoxication and not feeling, even if the music drowned them out anyway. She tried to inject a little life into her sentences by following each one with a smile, but it had been a long day. She watched him pull a leather wallet from his pocket.
From the wallet he removed a loyalty card, grateful for his foresight in obtaining one as it allowed him just a few more seconds at the checkout of this girl whose name-tag said “Sam”. As he passed it to her her fingers might have brushed against his slightly. If they had, she too was aware of the contact. She passed him the card back as he put his debit card into the reader. So impersonal, paying by card. He wished he had brought real money so that she might pass the change, the real physical metal change, from her hand to his, but he only had his debit card. The transaction was complete.
“Bye,” he said.
“Goodbye” she said. Another smile passed between them. Perhaps both their hearts beat a couple of times more than usual. Then he was gone, looking back once, twice, to see that she already had her head turned away to serve the next customer. He wished he had said something, even if he still couldn’t think of what, or if it would have been appropriate. Perhaps he would see her again. Certainly he would come back here to shop, and he could make it the same time another week, but that would be in at least another week, and would he be able to say anything then? No, probably not, and even if he did, it wouldn’t be the same: No longer spontaneous, instead a pre-considered pick-up line stumbled awkwardly over while the next customer waits under fluorescent supermarket strip-lighting.
Tags: Fiction, original fiction, Relationships, two perspectives
