Groceries

I drop three bananas and then a peach, a very ripe one. Sometimes you can be startled by a beauty, she’ll make you gasp for breath. I pick up the fruit, put it into my basket and nervously set about working through my shopping list. The other people in the shop strike me as remarkably calm, as if they haven’t noticed what’s going on. 

I choose my route so that I criss-cross the shop. The more often I pass the checkouts the better. It doesn’t matter that I’m taking longer to do my shopping. Dazed, I bump into people and mumble apologies. 

She’s at checkout number three. Not a cards-only one but the usual, where you can also pay cash. She’s not even like a photo model, more the way dripping candlewax is beautiful, or a giggle that slips out by accident, olives between lips. 

Every time I walk past her checkout she looks at me. And I really do think she smiles. 

I must take off my clothes. That’s better, then she can have a good look at me. I’ll leave my shoes here behind the crispbread, lay my coat next to the biscuits, my sweater near the bread and carry on shopping as if nothing is happening. 

Meanwhile I adjust my shopping list as far as possible to the situation. I buy things I’ve never bought before, leaving boring things untouched. For her only the most expensive honey. 

Now to take off my clothes, if only my coat. 

I shop till I can’t think of anything more and then walk towards checkout three. 

The girl at another checkout sees me waiting. Hers has only just opened and no one has got to it yet, whereas a whole queue of customers has built up at number three. I pretend to have forgotten something, make another round of the shop, walk past the biscuits, past my coat, and arrive back at the right checkout with perfect timing. 

I place the shopping on her conveyor belt item by item. 

I start to polish my fruit, polishing it thoroughly, so it’ll shine. She likes that, I’m sure of it. I have to work quickly; before you know it we’re eye to eye. 

She notices. She sees my gleaming pieces of fruit and licks her lips. She’s certain to want a juicy one. In my imagination I move the flesh to her mouth.  

Step by step I draw closer. She deals with the customers, paying them hardly any attention, looking more at me and my fruit than at them. 

All at once I feel even hotter than I already was. Because although every item of my shopping is perfect, one thing is incongruous all the same. I wait till the man next to me isn’t looking. Then I pick up the bar that divides our shopping and put it down a little further along. I’ll buy the new vacuum cleaner bags tomorrow. 

I’m standing facing her. Her fingers glide over the shopping, graceful as animals. With each bleep she looks up, her eyes gliding over my body, stopping at my lips, my half-open mouth. The price on the display rises, climbing with each new item, higher and higher. The carton of milk. The bananas. Ice creams. 

Then she picks up the peach. She squeezes it. Gently at first. Then a little harder, then harder still, till she makes impressions in the flesh and we watch the moisture flow out. The juice flows over her fingers and her wrists and on downwards and I want to flow along with it all. 

Then she stops abruptly and fixes her eyes on me. 

She reads out a number. 

She asks, ‘Do you want a receipt?’ 

This story is written by Werner de Valk for Het Rode Oor 2018. Het Rode Oor (The Red Ear) is the annual erotic writing contest in the Low Countries, curated by the Flemish-Dutch House deBuren in collaboration with Company New Heroes, Hard//hoofd, ILFU and the Writer’s Guide (to the Galaxy). This story is translated by Liz Waters.