Shopping Cart Lover Read online

  Shopping Cart Lover

  Dean Wesley Smith

  Shopping Cart Lover

  Copyright © 2013 Dean Wesley Smith

  Published by WMG Publishing

  Cover design copyright © 2013 WMG Publishing

  Cover Illustration by Cristian Andrei Matei/Dreamstime.com

  Smashwords Edition

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  I called her my “Shopping Cart Lover.”

  It was Tuesday.

  A hot Tuesday.

  Middle of June.

  The parking lot to my local Safeway Grocery Store was full and I should have realized there would be a problem right there and just went back to my small apartment overlooking Interstate Five, one of the best apartments in all of Southern California. It’s a nice place, one bedroom, and the rumble of trucks and cars going by remind me of the ocean.

  I love the ocean, how the waves crash on the beach, the wind always blows, the smell of brine and fish fills the thick air. I didn’t often make it to the ocean due to my living circumstances and no job and not having a car, but living near the freeway reminded me of the ocean all the time and I liked that.

  My ex-wife used to say I could make a silk shirt out of an old cotton rag and a vivid imagination.

  I would always say, “At least I have a silk shirt.”

  If she hadn’t left me for that manager of the hardware store last year, I wouldn’t have had a chance to meet my Shopping Cart Lover.

  Lucky for me my wife left.

  I only go to my local Safeway Grocery Store once a month, when my card is refilled from the State of California. I do maintenance around the apartment complex to pay my rent and I save most of unemployment except for a few dollars to buy my Pabst Blue Ribbon beer.

  Today California refilled my food allowance on my card, so I could stock up on food that would last for the month. And maybe by next month the application I had put in three months ago at the local bike shop would work out and I would get hired. The store owner liked me and said I did good work, but with the economy he just couldn’t hire me yet.

  I had told him I would wait.

  I had always wanted to work on bikes, the peddle kind, not the motor kind, ever since I was a kid, maybe even open my own bike shop. But out of high school I had ended up working construction instead and then had gotten married and the bike shop idea sort of went the way of those old cotton rags my ex-wife used to always talk about.

  So when she left me and I found my nifty apartment overlooking Interstate Five, I decided that I would work for a bike shop now and just wait until an opening came around or I had my own shop.

  I saved as much as I could so that if I got the chance I would start my own bike shop. But until then I fixed a few of the neighbor’s bikes for their kids and tried to watch the dumpsters for old bikes and bike parts. My apartment was pretty full of bike parts now, so I had lots to work on and fix up for the time I had enough for my own shop. It kept me busy at night, listening to the ocean of Interstate Five and fixing bikes.

  Life was pretty good.

  The bike I rode to my local Safeway grocery store I had put together with parts of about seven others. I had built a sidecar on it made out of parts and baskets from kid’s bikes to carry my groceries and more bike parts when I found them.

  It really was amazing what a guy could find in dumpsters.

  I locked up my bike in the bike rack near the front door of the Safeway Grocery Store and went inside.

  It was much cooler inside, which instantly felt good and put me in a good mood for my afternoon of shopping. It was always better to be in a good mood when shopping. I knew it never did much good to buy food angry. The food just never tasted the same.

  My ex-wife thought that attitude was weird, but I tended to always get good food when I shopped happy.

  Inside, by the produce section, was a big empty room where hundreds of grocery carts were normally stored in rows jammed into each other. The shopping carts were always hard to get apart like they resented being wheeled once more around the store they knew so well.

  There were no grocery carts in that large area.

  None.

  It was cool in that grocery cart room, much cooler than the hot afternoon outside, but still there were no grocery carts.

  It seemed that when California filled everyone’s cards with money for food, the store got real busy.

  I went back out into the parking lot and the heat to find a used cart there, but two kids with Safeway uniforms were already doing that and by the time I watched them push the rows of carts into the store, the hordes of shoppers waiting for a cart had grabbed them all.

  I was left standing next to the produce section near the main door without a cart, waiting.

  It was cool there, so I didn’t mind. A cart would come to me soon enough.

  A woman with brown hair, glasses, and a long nose stood beside me, also waiting.

  She didn’t look annoyed at all, which my ex-wife would have been. This woman had this calmness around her that attracted me to her and I looked at her even harder without actually looking at her and being rude and pervert-like.

  She wore an old, blue-cotton tee-shirt with a light-blue cloth jacket covering it, not because it was cold, but because the tee-shirt was torn slightly from what I could tell. The jacket and shirt together still looked nice.

  She had on faded jeans and well-worn leather sandals that showed toes with blue-painted toenails. She clearly was no better off than I was, except more than likely I had a nicer apartment with my ocean sounds of Interstate Five.

  Her brown hair was long and pulled back and tied. Her skin looked well-washed.

  A kid with greasy hair and a nose ring who worked for the store came in with one cart and pushed it toward us.

  I laughed and turned to her. “Want to share?”

  “That’s all right,” she said, he voice soft and wonderful. “You go ahead. I’m in no hurry.”

  “Neither am I,” I said, smiling at her.

  People used to say back ten years ago in high school that I had a good smile, a smile that made people feel good, so I gave her my good smile.

  For the first time she actually looked at me over the shopping cart waiting to be claimed by one of us.

  I wasn’t a handsome man, but I had showered. I also had my long brown hair combed back and tied out of my face. And I was thin. Besides that, running around looking in dumpsters for bike parts kept me tanned.

  My ex-wife said that my staying thin as I got near thirty was one of the best things I had done for myself. I don’t think I gave it much thought. I just didn’t eat much and now couldn’t afford to drink more than two Pabst Blue Ribbons a night if I wanted the Pabst to last the month and still save money for my bike shop.

  Besides, more than two and I screwed up the bike part I was working on every time. Two was my limit.

  I guess that kept me thin.

  “You go ahead and take it,” she said, smiling. “But thanks.”

  I smiled back and nodded, but didn’t touch the cart.

  “To be honest,” I said, “I thought it would be fun to share a shopping cart again. I haven’t done that since my wife left last year.”

  “It’s been two years for me,” she said, smiling. “Although for the last year he didn’t shop with me much.”

  “Come to think of it, I did all of the shopping the last year of my marriage,” I said. “So I guess it’s been longer than two years for me as well.”

  “Who knew a person could miss joint shopping,” she said, smiling, a sort of wistful look in her eyes.

  I really liked her smile even though she had one chipped tooth on the right side. It gave her character and made her even more unique.

  “You sure you don’t want to give it a try again?”

  She hesitated, looking at the door to see if another cart would roll to her rescue, but there wasn’t one in sight that wasn’t firmly attached to another shopper’s hand.

  “You have a lot of things to buy?” she asked.

  “Just basics,” I said. “They don’t give me a lot of money on my card every month.”

  At that she smiled even wider. “I don’t get much either,” she said. “It would feel nice to actually have a full shopping cart for a change.”

  “If we combine forces, we might just do that,” I said, again giving her my best smile.

  “You are very nice,” she said, nodding. “Let’s do it.”

  “We’ll trade off pushing,” I said. “You first.”

  I bowed like I had seen some movie star do in a movie once and she laughed and took the position behind the cart.

  At that point I suppose I should have asked her name, but I just liked the idea of not knowing her name and she clearly didn’t want to know mine either.

  It was a great adventure.

  An adventure in the aisles of the Safeway Grocery Store.

  Who knew going to the Safeway Grocery Store on a hot Tuesday would be an adventure.

  It is a wonderful world.

  She picked up a bag of oranges.

  I picked up a bag of potatoes.

  Then she picked up some lettuce and bagged it and weighed it.
br />   “How do you keep that fresh for a month?” I asked.

  “I don’t,” she said. “I come back and buy more oranges and lettuce in two weeks. I use part of my unemployment for that.”

  “Where did you work?” I asked.

  “Construction firm office,” she said. “Bookkeeping.”

  “Construction as well,” I said. “The driving nails department.”

  Suddenly, besides a shopping cart, we had something else in common. That felt good.

  She kept track of what she was spending on a small calculator. I had one of those tiny spiral notebooks and an old pencil and I marked down each dollar.

  “I hate to get to the register and not have enough on my card,” I said, indicating the notebook in my hand.

  “Yeah, I did that once,” she said. “Had to leave stuff I really wanted.”

  Now we had three things in common. I had more in common with my shopping cart lover than I did with my ex-wife.

  We kept going, me talking about how I loved to work on bikes, the peddle kind, not the motor kind, and she talking about how she was slowly trying to set up her own accounting firm.

  “When I get my bike shop open, I’ll hire your company to do my books,” I said.

  She beamed at that. “Thanks.”

  Finally we both had run out of money on our cards and our shopping cart was almost full.

  Wonderfully full.

  I had been pushing it the last few aisles, so I said, “You want to push it the last distance to the check-out line?”

  “I would love to,” she said. “Thanks.”

  She pushed it like it was the most important job on the planet and I followed along proud of the moment.

  In line she sorted out her groceries first, then put that rubber thing between our stuff, which felt odd to be honest. We had shared so much in the last hour.

  Now we were divided.

  A simple strip of hard rubber indicated the wonderful adventure was almost over.

  The clerk checked her out and she stayed under her card limit by two dollars.

  A bagger with good hair and no nose ring at the end of the counter had found another cart and was putting her groceries in that.

  Now we were very separated, in two carts.

  And we had stopped talking.

  When she was all done and had her receipt in her pocket, she turned to me. “Thank you for an enjoyable day.”

  I could tell she was nervous and didn’t know what to say. We had shared a great deal in the last hour.

  “It was my pleasure,” I said. “How about next month on payment day we meet right here again at two o’clock and share a cart again.”

  Her smile returned, chipped tooth and all. “I would love that.”

  “So would I,” I said, giving her my best smile again as the clerk worked at checking out my groceries.

  “Until next month then,” she said.

  “Until then,” I said.

  She turned with a smile and pushed her own cart out of the door of the Safeway Grocery Store.

  I watched her walk away like watching the end of a good movie. It felt good to have happened, but sad that it was over.

  Usually I didn’t feel conflicted, but for the moment I did.

  I smiled at the clerk who just shook her head and finished my groceries and the bagger put them in the now only half-full cart.

  My groceries looked small and sort of sad sitting in that cart all alone. It seems my food had shared the same experience I had. My food would taste great.

  “Next month,” I said to my groceries as the clerk handed me my receipt and I headed out of the store toward my bike.

  I had a date with a wonderful woman in one month.

  A date with my shopping cart lover.

  I smiled and almost started to whistle.

  Between my shopping cart lover, fixing bikes, and listening to the ocean sounds of Interstate Five, life just couldn’t get much better.

  About the Author

  Bestselling author Dean Wesley Smith has written more than one hundred popular novels and hundreds of published short stories. His novels include the science fiction novel Laying the Music to Rest and the thriller The Hunted as D.W. Smith. With Kristine Kathryn Rusch, he is the coauthor of The Tenth Planet trilogy and The 10th Kingdom.

  He writes under many pen names and has also ghosted for a number of top bestselling writers.

  Dean has also written books and comics for all three major comic book companies, Marvel, DC, and Dark Horse, and has done scripts for Hollywood. One movie was actually made.

  Over his career he has also been an editor and publisher, first at Pulphouse Publishing, then for VB Tech Journal, then for Pocket Books. He is now an executive editor for Fiction River.

  Currently, he is writing thrillers and mystery novels under another name.

 

 

  Smith, Dean Wesley, Shopping Cart Lover

  Thanks for reading the books on GrayCity.Net