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Cazador prefers to shop at Waitrose. But today, he’s out on business, and there is no Waitrose in – he checks his satnav – Oldham.
So he scowls, braces himself and parks his Jag at Aldi, yes, Aldi, being careful to turn in his wing mirrors and pull in next to the most expensive looking car he can find. After all, people like him do not scuff past each others’ cars like common yobs, smashing their doors into the vehicle in the next bay.
He has a lot to buy, so he strides over to the trollies and finds, to his disgust, that you need a coin to operate them. Presumably to prevent the local louts from throwing them into the nearest canal. Cazador doesn’t even know if he has any coins. He rummages around in his wallet and finds a single pound tucked into a corner behind his National Trust Life Membership card.
About thirty seconds later, he wishes he hadn’t found a coin. The trolley is so bloody rickety, and the thing rattles like it’s made of loose cutlery, pulling to the left, forcing him to correct it every few seconds. He considers abandoning the thing and fetching a basket, but he will be damned if he’s going to have to do multiple trips. He grips the errant handle and marches into the store anyway, knuckles pale as he tightens his grip.
If he must shop here, he will do it with dignity.
The produce section is… acceptable. The apples are stacked in surprisingly neat pyramids, though he notes with a flicker of irritation that the stems do not point in the same direction. He picks up a nice, plump, red one and holds it in his hand.
Obviously, you cannot place raw produce in a dirty trolley.
He walks twice along each aisle, once up and once down. The first pass is reconnaissance. The second is acquisition. Then he moves to the next, nice and orderly, packing more and more of the produce he wants into the beaten trolley.
Milk. Some tomatoes, a juicy cut of steak and a jar of peppercorn sauce that claimed to be gourmet, doubtful, a jar of duck liver pate.
In the middle aisle, he encounters a strange bazaar of nonsense items, that seem to have been selected for a display via a dart thrown at a catalogue. Camping lanterns. Waffle makers. Heated blankets. Novelty socks.
He slows. He doesn’t mean to, but something about the sheer absurdity of the aisle draws his eye. Before he knows it, he’s picked up a chirpy little gadget that claims to spiralise vegetables. The box has a picture of a carrot transforming into elegant orange ribbons. Some sort of medieval torture device for vegetables. He doesn’t consciously decide to place it in the trolley, yet when he looks down, there it is.
When he reaches the checkout to pay for the food, he unloads the trolley methodically onto the belt, cold items first, then pantry, then places the raw produce on top of the cereal to prevent it touching the rubber. Finally, he lays out his non-food items – detergent, dishwasher salt and so forth. Labels facing forwards, edges parallel. Then he breathes deeply, and waits.
At last, he’s at the front of the queue, and he glances down at the checkout boy – and yes, he absolutely is a boy – slouching behind the counter. He is kitted out in the presumably customary blue polo, with a sort of deliberate disrespect for it. It’s half-tucked, the name badge crooked, and a cap is jammed backwards onto pale, artfully messy hair. One bright white trainer is planted on the metal edge of the counter. Disgusting, Cazador thinks. God only knows what horror he has dragged in from the local pavements on the bottom of those shoes. The boy has, he thinks, a lazy kind of confidence in the set of his mouth; the irritating kind of face that looks like it belongs on a cologne advert rather than behind a supermarket counter.
As soon as the previous customer’s receipt prints, he thrusts it at her, and then it begins.
Beep. He seizes the milk and hurls it down the metal chute, slamming into the barrier at the end.
Beep. There goes the jar of olives. The olives aren’t even from the first couple of rows. They’re not cold. He feels his heart pumping in his fingertips.
Cazador frowns, and rushes to the end of the till to try to salvage the situation. He opens up his cold produce bag – beep, beep – and then the pantry bag – beep, beep, beep – and then the non-food bag. By the time he looks up, to his horror, some of raw produce – his carrots, his apples – have been rolled down the ramp, touching the metal surface all the way down, the same metal that has seen raw chicken, leaking bleach and God knows what else, and come to a rest next to the laundry detergent.
He gives a dirty glance to the blonde cashier, and he’s sort of surprised to find the cashier is looking back. Smugly, he thinks. He seems so bloody pleased with himself as he locks his eye contact, continuing to scan his groceries at the speed of light, chucking them with a smirk down into the angry pile of shopping.
He pulls his eyes away from the insufferably arrogant little oik. The pile of groceries grows faster than he can physically bag them.
Cazador feels something tight and prickling behind his ribs as he surveys the growing, disorderly heap, and forces himself to unfreeze, packing the items into his bag one by one, trying to breathe evenly as he restores some fragment of order, committing himself to the ritual of reasserting control over the shopping as he slots them into the bag like Tetris.
Scarcely half of his shopping is packed in his bags before the odious little brat drawls “Cash or card?”
He pauses his packing, reaches into his pocket without gracing him with an answer, flips open his wallet and picks out his AmEx, tapping it on the card reader. The infuriating wretch of a boy watches him the entire time. The boy tears the receipt free and flicks it carelessly across the counter, as though deliberately trying to make Cazador reach for it. He folds it, slides it into his wallet and resumes packing, gathering and filing the remaining items with mounting, tightly contained fury.
Beep. Beep.
He glances up. The boy is already scanning the next customer’s groceries, sending tins and packets flying into his shopping. Something hot and feral rises in his throat. He looks up at him. Suddenly, he has a crippling urge to seize the nearest tin and hurl it at that pale, smirking face.
The boy meets his eyes, and smiles. Amused. Deeply, infuriatingly amused.
“‘Scuse me, mate,” grunts the next customer. Mate. Really.
Cazador shifts half an inch to the side without looking at him and he loads the last couple of items into the bag.
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.
He understands now. This place is not a shop. It is a challenge. And that boy at the till, smirking, lounging, tossing groceries down the chute like litter into a bin, clearly believes he’s winning. Cazador swipes his eyes over the boy’s name badge.
ASTARION
He will come back tomorrow.
For groceries.
Of course.
And tomorrow, he will be ready.