The Groceryboy's Name was Andy: a story in many parts.

Part Seven.

I didn't do too much driving after the Music Man fiasco. I was frightened, and rightfully so. And as time wore on, we grew lazy. At the beginning of the summer, we'd held abstract pow-wows to discuss enrichment activities for my Sacramento experience. My mother suggested I attend a church group and meet some nice people. Do you want to? I had asked. She just sort of shrugged.

We dropped it, decided that we already knew plenty of nice people. Woozy satisfaction settled over us. Besides, every moment was occupied. We were so docile in our daily labor. It was as if 2772’s ubiquitous dust was laced with laudanum.

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I did, however, drive to the grocery store.

And this grocery store was not just your average Safeway. No, no, no. Not in Land Park.

This was Taylor's Meat Market. Trim, tidy, polished cement floors, high wood-beam ceilings, wicker baskets. Mysteriously perfect temperature. Pristine pyramids of eggplant, shelves of freshly baked rosemary focaccia, slabs of teriyaki salmon, fancy fizzy exculsive sodas--not sold in any other grocery store in the state.

How, money-wise, were we able to shop here? I can tell you: we ate like birds.

We liked this phrase, and would often work it into suppertime conversation. It got to be ridiculous, actually. One of us would snicker and then, in mock-reverence, exclaim, "my dear, my goodness, you eat like a bird," and we'd both sit back in satisfied semi-emptiness.

My mother and I have always shared a voracious emotional appetite. Enough white cake (butter-cream frosted) will spackle any gash in the soul. Perhaps this sounds overly psychological? Simply put, we adore food. We find it immensely comforting. We're also consistently on a diet.

Our summer solution was to eat little bits of very delicious food. I did most of the shopping. We subsisted on salmon and focaccia, mostly. Oh, and fizzy sodas. Lots of those.

It was the third time I'd done the shopping. I was standing between the fresh-scrubbed yellow squash and a stack of drum-tight watermelon, wicker basked on my arm, when I was startled by a deep voice:

"Do you need any help with that? With anything? Any help finding...anything?"

"No, I'm good," I replied, flipping back my hair (it fell nearly to my waist). I looked up to find, walking away from me, the most handsome grocery-boy I'd ever seen.

He smiled over his shoulder. "Okay," he said, and returned to the check-out.

I recognized my egregious error. I did need help. I must. I floundered for a way that I (or that matter, anyone) might need assistance in the squash aisle. A different type of girl would simply have asked him to pick the ripest watermelon. This never occurred to me. I considered the implications of knocking over the entire squash display...perhaps he'd be charmed by a display of gamine clumsiness. No. Too risky.

He smiled at me, quite intentionally, from his spot at register #2. My eyes hit the floor and remained there throughout the rest of my shopping trip.

I could think of nothing to say. I was the most self-sufficient grocery-shopper in all of Sacramento. But in my defense, I wasn't exactly in the habit of seeing too many people my age. Especially not dark-haired, strong-shouldered, I'm-wearing-a-green-apron-and-still-looking-manly people my age.