James Hynes - Next

“It’s got subtle highlights of black pepper and sour cherries and beeswax,” says the Gaian, clasping his hands before him like a New Age sommelier. “It has a good attack with a roundish body, and a hint of tannin.”

Kevin rolls his eyes: this is why he’d rather shop at Wal-Mart, where none of the harried minimum wagers is likely to treat him like a rude mechanical, where the only question they ever ask him is “Paper or plastic?”

“Thanks anyway,” he says, and replaces the bottle with a glassy clank. The boy shrugs, and Kevin edges past him, deeper into the magic forest, after Joy Luck. He sees her swaying up the aisle, which isn’t as crowded as it would be on a Friday evening or a Sunday afternoon. One thing you have to say about Gaia is just how good-looking its clientele is. Even in Ann Arbor, in the gloomiest months of winter, when everybody’s swaddled in bulky parkas and padded boots and ugly woolen caps, the women and men Kevin sees at Gaia are clearly an order of magnitude more attractive than the wide loads he walks behind at Kroger. And here in sultry Austin, where everybody dresses year round like they’re at the gym, Kevin passes a svelte young woman with a midriff like a gymnast; a guy his own age with the bulging calves of a bicycle racer; and a couple of fantastically fit women, anywhere from thirty-five to fifty, in capri pants and tank tops, whose upper arms are better defined than Kevin’s — and Kevin works out twice a week with the free weights at CCRB. With a guilty pang he realizes that Stella would love it here. She drags him to Gaia once a week at least, dressing for the occasion like he’s taking her to a restaurant. At Kroger she wears sweatpants and wraparound sunglasses like a movie star hoping to go unrecognized, but to Gaia she wears her work blouse and skirt, her earrings, her heels. Stella loves where she shops. When he launches involuntarily into his I Hate Gaia rant, she rolls her eyes like an impatient teenager.

“Yadda yadda yadda,” she says, waggling her fingers. “Who cares, if everything here is so yummy? ”

But it’s not just Gaia, she’d love Austin, too. She’d settle into the subtropical heat like a sauna, she’d shed her Midwestern pelt and show off her own firm midriff and muscular calves, she’d drag him every Friday to happy hour at Molotov. She’d be in Gaia two or three times a week asking for samples from every flirty young Gaian at every specialty counter. Suddenly Kevin’s wondering if he’d even be able to hang onto Stella in a town like this, full of fit, yummy guys her own age or younger who make ten times more money than he does, who drive the high-performance automobiles in the garage below, and who could chat knowledgeably for hours on end about Chilean fucking wine. Of course, if he gets the job he’s interviewing for today, he’s planning on leaving Stella. Though he hasn’t said it out loud to a soul, hasn’t even formulated it in so many words in the privacy of his own head, leaving Stella is half the reason he wants to move from Ann Arbor. But still, the frisson of guilt he feels sparks into a little flare of righteous anger, that she would dare follow him here, even if only in his imagination, and then dump him for a younger, richer, fitter guy! The nerve! That bitch! No way that’s happening to me twice, Kevin thinks, and just for an instant, the mellow sylvan light of Gaia turns a little red at the edges. It doesn’t help, of course, that the last time he saw Beth was in the Gaia in Ann Arbor, when he was with Stella.

It was the only time Stella and Beth have ever met — after work one frigid February evening. Gaia’s lot was nearly full, and everything glittered under the halogen lights: the luxury cars and SUVs where they weren’t streaked with slush; the gouts of exhaust from salt-rimed tailpipes; the heaps of plowed snow; the twinkling motes of new flakes; the air itself. Even their streamers of breath glittered as Kevin and Stella crunched across ridges of refrozen slush. They held hands like schoolkids, her trim leather glove in his vast Gore-Tex mitten. Stella’s woolen cap was jammed like a helmet over her hair, and Kevin breathed from within the hood of his parka, the opening cinched so tight that Stella said he looked like Kenny from South Park. But inside the hood Kevin felt like Darth Vader, seeing only through the narrow aperture of his helmet, hearing only the rhythmic rasp of his own breath. On the sidewalk in front of the store the crunch of their steps became the Styrofoam squeak of packed snow, and inside the Gaia airlock they performed the Michigan clog dance, stamping the snow off their boots on the squishy entry mat.

As always, Kevin pushed the cart while Stella tapped up and down each aisle in her high-heeled boots, her quilted coat billowing after her like a cape. By now he had learned to keep his mouth shut—“Would it kill them to sell a little Diet Coke? Some fucking Ruffles?”—and to admire instead Stella’s consumer ruthlessness. He had no doubt that if civilization collapsed and they were reduced to living like australopithecines, it would be Stella who’d pluck up her spear and go out hunting, while Kevin tended the fire and sewed together the skins of the animals that she dragged back to their cave. Leaning wearily on the handle of the shopping cart, he had to admire the way Stella rocked on one sharp heel and briskly peeled off her leather gloves a finger at a time, the better to squeeze a kiwi fruit or an avocado, or spear a sample ball of marinated mozzarella. She’d offer him one first, putting it right in his mouth, then expertly spear another for herself with the same toothpick, watching for his reaction with a raised eyebrow. If he nodded, she’d brighten at the kid behind the counter and order a pound of the stuff, and if he didn’t, she’d crinkle her nose and waggle her fingers ta-ta and they would march on to the next counter. And even when she raced ahead of him and he ended up stranded with the cart, feeling simultaneously like an abandoned child and old enough to be Stella’s father, she often surprised him by coming up from behind and slipping her hand through his elbow, nuzzling him, ruffling the hair at the back of his neck. Right there in the condiments aisle, she’d kiss him on the ear.

“Love you,” she’d whisper, and then, “Oh! Capers! I love capers!”

That night, though, the bitter cold had chilled her effervescence somewhat, and she left her gloves on in the store. She moved a little more quickly than usual, and Kevin found himself hustling to keep up with her. Finally, at the prepared foods counter, she squeezed his wrist and said, “Wait here, okay? Don’t move,” and then marched away. Luckily the young woman behind the counter was busy with other customers, so Kevin propped himself on his cart, sweating in his parka, and surveyed the astonishing heaps of glossy foods under the glass: Grilled chicken breasts marinated in lemon. Mushrooms stuffed with spinach and feta. Smoked salmon crostini. Squares of pecan-encrusted tofu like Rice Krispie treats. Turkey meatloaf with hatch chilies, sliced crosswise for easy service. And none of it for under twelve bucks a pound. In his head he writhed with mixed emotions like a gaffed fish: Who can afford to eat like this? and I could make my own salmon crostini for half that — assuming I knew what salmon crostini was and Don’t they know there’s a war on? and And a recession? and I’d kill for a Blimpy burger right now and Okay, the salmon really does look yummy. He thought of McNulty, laughing his ass off at the sight of Kevin, middle-aged, middle-class, docile as a neutered spaniel, waiting to pay $15.99 a pound for salmon on behalf of his much younger girlfriend. He saw his mother, dipping her pinky into her highball glass and licking it, then looking at him over her half-glasses. Pecan-encrusted tofu?