Track 34
‘CRAZY’ (CEELO GREEN)
Supermarket shopping was the bane of Adam’s life. Eve used to make it more bearable and even fun. These days he favoured shopping later in the evening when it was quieter.
Thursday night was shopping night. The supermarket was a little busier than he was used to and it irritated him.
He was feeling particularly lazy and didn’t want to cook from scratch, so he was standing in the tinned food aisle trying to decide between a Fray Bentos pie or a tin of chicken curry for dinner when suddenly a trolley crashed into his legs, sending him careening across the aisle and onto his side, sprawled on the tiled floor.
Expletives flew from his mouth as the air pretty much turned blue around him.
‘Oh my God! I’m so sorry!’
Adam looked up, lips pursed, into the face of a very pretty young woman. She had beautiful red hair that fell in long waves around her shoulders and vivid green eyes that were wide with horror.
He clambered to his feet. ‘What the hell were you doing? You obviously weren’t watching where you were going!’ he snapped.
The young woman’s bottom lip began to quiver, and her eyes welled with tears. ‘I’m really very sorry. I was, I was texting my mum, and no, I wasn’t looking. I’m sorry. Are you badly hurt?’
His frown softened at the poor woman’s expression. ‘No, it’s okay. I’ll live,’ he chuntered, as guilt needled at him.
The woman cringed. ‘I bet you’ll have a bruise there tomorrow.’
‘Yeah, probably… look, don’t worry… I’m fine.’
The woman sniffed and wiped her eyes and his chest clenched. She was really upset as she stood there, clearly not daring to walk away.
Finally, he smiled. ‘I’m Adam, by the way,’ he informed her, but unsure why that was even relevant.
She smiled back and her features relaxed a little. She breathed out a huff of air. ‘I’m Petra… Petra Millar,’ she said with a shaky voice.
‘Look, Petra, you seem really shaken up. Can I buy you a coffee over in the café?’ He gestured towards the back of the store where the little coffee shop was situated. He hoped it was still open.
‘Erm… erm…’
He cringed. ‘Sorry, sorry… I’m a stranger and it was creepy of me to ask. I just feel really bad about… you know… the poor impression of a footballer diving after a wee tackle.’ He nodded to the floor.
Petra laughed. ‘Coffee would be great, thank you.’
They wheeled their trolleys towards the coffee shop and parked them up at the edge in the trolley park. Adam ordered two lattes and carried them over to where Petra sat fiddling with her fingernails.
After handing her drink over, he sat opposite. ‘Are you okay now?’ he asked.
She pursed her lips and her eyes pulled into a frown. ‘Shouldn’t I be asking you that question? After all, it was me that poleaxed you with a shopping trolley.’
He waved his hand dismissively and grinned. ‘Oh, I’m fine. I’ll speak to my lawyers tomorrow.’
Petra’s face drained of all colour. ‘Oh God, you’re going to sue me?’
He frowned and shook his head slowly. ‘Nooo, no, I was kidding. That was a joke.’
Her eyes were wide again. ‘But you might change your mind… when you get home and your leg is all bruised… you’ll sue me, won’t you?’
He held his hands up in a surrendering motion. ‘Honestly, Petra, I’m kidding. I’m not going to sue you.’
She narrowed her eyes. ‘Are you sure?’
He chuckled. ‘I’m very sure. I was kidding.’
She was a very nervous person judging by the way her hands were juddering. ‘Okay… okay… that’s fine then.’
He took a sip of his coffee, wondering if she was for real. ‘So, Petra, what do you do?’
‘I… erm… I work in the wholefoods shop in town.’
He smiled widely. ‘You work at Nutty As?’
She nodded. ‘Yes, that’s me.’
He couldn’t help chuckling a little. ‘But your trolley was full of junk food.’ He remembered noticing the large amount of chocolate, wine, and crisps in the trolley, not to mention the ready meals and pizzas.
Her cheeks tinged pink and she cringed. ‘Guilty. I work with pulses and oats and tofu all day. All I fancy when I get home is a burger and chips or sweet stuff.’ She bit her lip as a smile worked its way across her face. She really was quite pretty.
Adam laughed. ‘Clearly use of the products is not a requirement of the job.’
She shook her head and briefly covered her eyes with her hand as she joined his laughter.
After a pause she asked, ‘So, Adam, what do you do?’
‘I’m an English teacher in high school.’ He took another mouthful of his coffee.
‘Oh, gosh. Teachers were never that good-looking when I was at school.’ She slapped her hand over her mouth as soon as the words had left it. ‘Oh God, I shouldn’t be allowed out in public, should I?’ she said as she covered her eyes and the pink in her cheeks became a vibrant red.
With a boosted ego, he smiled. ‘Don’t worry about it. It’s a nice compliment. And to be honest, most of the ones I work with are ugly as sin, but don’t tell them I said so.’ He winked.
She giggled as she sipped her coffee. ‘So… are you married, Adam?’ she eventually asked.
‘Yes… well… no… widowed, actually.’ He winced at his mixed-up answer.
‘Oh, that’s sad. I thought you must be married. All the good-looking ones are.’ She pulled her lips in, closed her eyes, and hit herself on the head. ‘Stop putting foot in mouth, Petra.’
‘I’ll take that as a compliment, too, eh?’
They chatted for a while about the Whole Foods shop and some of the interesting characters Petra encountered on a daily basis, and Adam regaled her with stories of his own unhealthy diet.
Eventually, Petra took a deep breath. ‘Look… Adam… I know this is quite forward of me, but as you can see my brain-to-mouth filter is malfunctioning today anyway. Why stop now, I say. Anyway, can we swap numbers? You know, in case you decide you might want to meet up again? You seem really nice, and well, most of the guys I meet are either married, old, boring, or gay… so…’
He reached into his inside pocket and pulled out a scrap of paper and a chewed biro, probably one he had found on the classroom floor.
He proceeded to scribble down his number and hand it to her. ‘Here you go. You have mine. You know, in case you decide you don’t want to hear from me. That way it’s up to you if you contact me or not.’
She took the number and put it in her bag. ‘Thanks. Look, I should go really. I have to get home to feed Grunewald.’
He was the one to narrow his eyes this time. ‘And Grunewald would be…?’
She shrugged. ‘He’s my parrot. I get quite a good deal on seeds,’ she stated as if that was the sole reason one had a pet bird.
‘Ah, of course.’ He nodded.
The two new acquaintances parted company with an awkward handshake.
She said she would call and arrange coffee maybe.
As he walked away, he surmised giving her his number was possibly a stupid thing to have done.
She seemed a bit flaky, after all. She was pretty, but that was maybe where things ended.
As he put his items through the self-checkout, he decided she probably wouldn’t call him anyway.
She’d seemed very nervous, so he put thoughts of Petra from his mind and left the supermarket.
The following day was draining. Chaucer and a group of disaffected fifteen-year-olds was a combination set for disaster.
The language was neither easy to pick up nor did they feel – as they informed him on a regular basis – that it held any relevance to them whatsoever.
Adam had tried every which way to get through to them, but they were behaving very badly and were testing his already stretched patience.
Thank goodness it was Friday at last and not long until the summer holidays.
After running a whole-class detention, Adam arrived back to his car.
The car park was all but empty, and he had a cold beer waiting at home with his name on it.
Well, it quite possibly had Mr Budweiser’s name on it, but he was going to drink it regardless.
As he was throwing his bag of exercise books for grading into the back of the car, he spotted something moving out of the corner of his eye.
He glanced up to see Petra’s face disappearing behind the wall.
What the—?
He slammed the door. ‘Hi, Petra? What are you doing here?’ he called as he approached where she was trying to hide. He heard her cursing and she slowly walked out from where she was badly secreted.
Her cheeks were flushed. ‘Oh… erm… Hi, Adam. I… I just… erm… wanted to check your leg was okay,’ she stuttered and fiddled with her hair as she spoke.
He smiled and tried to ignore the uneasy knot in his stomach. ‘A simple call or text message would have sufficed, you know. You have my number, after all. You didn’t have to come all the way out here, and I didn’t actually say where I worked, did I?’ He asked the question more of himself.
She shook her head. ‘No, you didn’t say where, but well… I figured it out really and I had the day off from work so…’ She continued to fidget.
‘Oh, right, well, that’s nice, but really you didn’t have to come and wait for me on your day off.’
She shrugged. ‘Oh, no, it’s okay. I took the day off especially.’
The sense of disquiet in the pit of his stomach increased and he glanced around to see if anyone else was close by.
‘You took the day off especially so you could come to my place of work to check on my leg? Oh…’ He tried to sound breezy.
‘Well, as you can see, I’m upright and fine, so you can go home and stop worrying now. ’
‘Are you free tonight?’ she blurted out and then covered her mouth with her hand as if the words had escaped by accident.
‘I’m sorry, no, I’m going out with my friend for her birthday.’
Her face crumpled in displeasure. ‘You said you were single.’
He shook his head and narrowed his eyes. ‘No, no, I said I was widowed, but really, Petra, I only met you yesterday. What’s all this about?’
She shrugged again and looked at the floor. ‘I like you… a lot.’