The checker girl had a hickey that she had muddied with makeup. The purple was now a weird sort of burgundy. Good for her, I thought.

I don’t remember the last time I had a hickey. But I remember when I used to get them, I’d wear them proudly like, Hi, I let boys do things to me.

Her fingernails were maybe two inches long and I wanted to compliment her on them so I tried to figure them out while she was scanning my items. It was hard because she moved her hands fast over my items, blurring any definition I was trying to make out. My pack of chicken breasts tripped her up as they wouldn’t scan. She had to punch in the upc code by hand and that’s when I was able to make a clear observation of her fingernails. They were green and ugly. Nothing I could compliment without being totally dishonest so I didn’t say anything.

She paused a bit on some bagged greens I had bought and then started telling me about an ad she had seen for ‘spiced salad greens’ that were somehow grown already flavored so that you didn’t need to put any dressing on them. “The people in the ad were eating them like chips,” she said. I nodded my head wondering how one eats bits of lettuce like chips. She went on and on about how she’d like to try the greens, but how she felt ‘suspicious’ of vegetables that were ‘genetically messed with.’ I concurred and asked her if she would eat cow meat that came pre-spiced because they fed the cow stuff to make its meat be flavored. She said, “No.”

Then she finished. Then she handed me my cash back and my receipt and my coupons and I left. We told each other to have a nice day. I like grocery shopping.