I get recognized all the time, and my being seen without being seen is something I'm used to, but not used to, you know? I never signed up to be their bogeywoman. Run out of things to say in my line, right Coach? When Brian sees it's me dragging that bag of oranges over the scanner, me wondering which orange Julie will eat, sees it's me asking if he has a Big Y rewards card, and I ask it smiling and snapping my gum, daring him to say something, anything, he can barely look me in the eye. From across the street I'll walk by the fields sometimes and try to pick out Julie, but it's hard when I don't even know what color jersey her team wears. I'm not supposed to go to her games, so I don't.
He'll cut them into wedges like those soccer coaches are supposed to. Brian isn't paying attention to what he's doing, lost in his own head like everyone else, and he gets in my line with his Gatorade, cereal, Nutter Butters, toothpaste, and basketful of other shit he can't live without. Always easy with the small talk with everyone in town but me.
Brian Jenkins, a townie like me, five years older but looks five years younger, a tall and skinny school-teacher type even if he only clerks for the town Department of Public Works, wearing those hipster glasses he doesn't need and khakis, never jeans. We've never met or anything, but Julie's youth soccer coach, I know who he is. Not that today's baggers are worth a whole heck of a lot. It's an early afternoon Monday shift and I'm working the twelve-items-or-less register, which sucks because it means I don't get a bagger to help me out. "The officer said the police don't know why the mother headed south." I keep one of the clippings folded in my back pocket. I followed those, carefully, like our lives depended on them. The dotted lines in the middle of the road were white the whole time. The trees had orange leaves when we started and green ones when it was over. The trees on the sides of the road were towers reaching up into the sky, keeping us boxed in, keeping us from choosing another direction. What I remember from that day is the road.
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