Alison Lurie - The Nowhere City

“That’s the spirit,” Skinner said. “Keep up the cost figures.” The plant buzzer sounded, a metallic, penetrating hum. Paul stood up, and began to straighten his desk.

The Joy Superdupermarket covered nearly a whole block. It was brilliantly lit; noisy with piped music, with the screams of children and the jazz clang of twenty cash-registers; and packed from wall to wall with pre-Thanksgiving shoppers.

“This is really a great place,” Ceci said as the photoelectric doors swung open to coax them in, and they entered the maelstrom of consumption. “It’s got everything.” People surged up and down the aisles, buying not only food, but gin, shampoo, life-sized dolls, Capri pants, electric frying-pans, and photomurals of Yellowstone National Park. “All the cats come here.” Silently Paul imagined, among the men and women and children, a number of large cats of all colors, walking on their hind legs and dressed in beatnik clothes. “Come on, here’s a cart.”

Paul followed Ceci as closely as he could so as not to lose her in the crowd. She was difficult to follow—unobtrusively quick, as at her job in the coffee shop—rounding a corner suddenly, sliding her shopping cart between two others, reaching out as she passed to take something off a shelf: a kind of dance.

Luckily he was tall enough to see for some distance ahead, and Ceci was easy to spot: she was almost the only person here dressed entirely in black—tight black sleeveless jersey; full black cotton skirt. “Now I know what you are!” he had exclaimed as she got into his car. “You’re a beatnik.” Ceci had made no reply, but when they were on their way to the market she had said, “You have to have names for everything, don’t you? First you tell me I’m not a waitress, and now you tell me I’m a beatnik.”

“Well, hell, you’re dressed like a beatnik,” he had replied agreeably. “And this A.M. I was dressed like a waitress.” Her voice was still flat. “Yeah, but; damn it—” Paul smiled, shrugged his shoulders and put out his hands in the gesture of a simple man bewildered. The car swerved to one side; but he caught it. They both laughed. “I don’t pick up on you yet,” Ceci said, smiling directly at him for the first time that day. “It takes a while,” Paul replied. Suddenly he felt better, even euphoric. The depression that had come over him during the brief, disappointing cultural discussion they had just had in a noisy restaurant—a shouting of conflicting reading lists, really—had lifted.

He was standing still, and Ceci had disappeared again. People pushed against him and bumped him as they passed with their loaded shopping carts; being without a cart himself, he was particularly vulnerable. He started walking down the aisle past shelves of pet food, ranks of brilliant cans and boxes in front of which stood pet lovers selecting from among the full-color portraits of eager, affectionate dogs and sensuously cute kittens.

He rounded the corner. There was Ceci over there, beside a pyramid of canned fruit. She saw him and waved. God, she was pretty enough to make one dizzy. But more than that; her manner towards him, at certain moments, seemed to promise a rather immediate intimacy. She looked at him right now, as she had in the car, as if she wanted and expected to get into bed.

“It’s really great of you to bring me here,” she exclaimed as he came up. “Shopping without a car is such a drag. I only wish I had the bread today; I’d clean out the whole store.”

“Don’t overdo it,” Paul said, smiling. “I’ll take you shopping again.”

“You will? Big.” Ceci put her hand on Paul’s wrist and looked up at him with eyes circled in black like a kitten’s. “You really are a good guy, aren’t you?” she said.

“I hope so,” Paul replied, covering his sudden sexual excitement. “I don’t know.”

“I’m nearly through. I only want to grab some melon for our dessert. Come on.”

Our dessert? Does she think I’m coming to dinner? But I can’t do that: I have to go home. Or has she got someone living with her?

Ceci let go of his wrist. Released, but still caught, he followed her down another aisle and out into the fruit and vegetable department. Paper turkeys and pumpkins hung from the ceiling, in celebration of Thanksgiving; but the counters below were heaped with summer fruit: apricots, damp red plums, and melons cut apart and sweating lusciously under cellophane—cantaloupe, honeydew, watermelon. The time of year gave them a special glow, as of forbidden fruit, out of season. He looked directly at Ceci, and she looked back. Yes: it was going to happen.

Paul had never thought of himself as slow; in fact he prided himself on his ability to seduce, or let’s say persuade. But he was used to girls who, however much they might like it later, had at first to be convinced. Katherine, for instance—Ah, shit; that was it—Ceci didn’t know about Katherine. She had no idea that he was married.

All right, what could he do? He could decide not to tell her, eat the forbidden fruit, and let her find out later, or maybe never, that he was married. Or he could be honest, and if so the sooner the better. He was really a good guy, wasn’t he?

“What d’you dig the most? Watermelon or cantaloupe?” Ceci asked. She looked very young with her hair down, much younger than he had thought—not over twenty-five.

“I don’t know,” he mumbled. “The watermelon looks good.” And then, deliberately. “I mean, my wife likes cantaloupe, but I guess I really prefer watermelon.”

“Okay.” Ceci lifted up a section of it, heavy, red, dripping juice.

“You didn’t hear me,” Paul said.

“Yeah, I heard you.” Holding the melon, Ceci looked at Paul, but did not smile. “You’re married. O.K. So am I, if you want to know.”

“Oh,” Paul said, while she lowered the melon into her cart. So it was for the husband, not for him. He felt stupid. But if she didn’t mean anything, she had no right to look at him that way.

“There’s just one more thing I’ve got to have for this dinner,” Ceci said. “Wild rice. I think it’s over here.” Paul followed the tail of gold hair, brooding. Wild rice as a sop to her husband and her conscience, maybe; but he was going to have her first, whatever she thought. Still, wasn’t it rather—“Jesus Christ, one seventy-nine for that measly little box! Oh no, uh-uh. Hey, Paul.” Using his name for the first time, Ceci also moved a step nearer to him, so that their bodies were touching.

“Put it in your pocket,” she said in a low voice. “Come on, you’ve got lots of room.” Leaning up against him as they stood side by side in front of the shelves, Ceci began shoving the box of wild rice down into Paul’s jacket pocket.

“What’re you doing? For God’s sake.” Paul pulled the rice out of his pocket. “You want me to go to jail?”

“Aw, don’t be chicken. Nobody’s going to see you.” Both Paul and Ceci continued to hold the box of rice. It had a picture of an ugly Indian in a canoe on it. “I thought you were a good guy,” she went on. “What’s the matter: haven’t you ever lifted anything before?”

“No, I haven’t,” Paul said. “And I’m not going to start now.” He put the box back on the shelf. Not only is she married, he thought—she’s a kleptomaniac. How did I ever get into this? Her kitten face, soft mouth and snub nose answered him.

“Listen, you shouldn’t steal from stores,” he said. “You’ll get into trouble.”

“You run your own life, pal.” Ceci took the box off the shelf. “Don’t look if it scares you,” she added, pressing more closely up against him, and began to pull her black jersey out from the wide leather belt.

“There.” Holding her sweater up, Ceci shoved the box of wild rice down between her skirt and the soft, white skin of her stomach. “Okay.” Paul dared to look along the aisle; no one seemed to have noticed anything.