The Meet Cute at the Murder Kroger

“You know,” Penelope said, “they say that there are only three reasons people come here: they’re locals, they’re looking for some strange, or they’re looking to get murdered.”Tom set down the orange he was scrutinizing to see the woman talking to him. She was tall and lanky, straight haired, bright smiled. If he’d seen a photo of her, he’d have guessed that this woman was in a permanent state of akimbo, all awkward limbs, but he’d seen her in person before— getting coffee outside the office— and he knew that every movement she made, every outfit she wore, and every angle she took was tight and precise. For the past six months he’d crossed paths with this woman. This was the first time she’d ever spoken to him.She leaned against her shopping cart, which she had brought up alongside Tom’s. Tom wasn’t nearly the incongruous mix that Penelope was. He was sharp featured, pale, brown hair, blue eyes, and, as Penelope knew, the owner of an endless supply of black suits. Tom looked arresting in the courtroom, but like a hapless, lost vampire in the strange, dim, flickering light of the Murder Kroger.And as for the Murder Kroger, it was fair to say that it was a notorious, beloved Atlanta landmark first and the neighborhood’s local supermarket second. The site of four murders and at least one lost virginity, the Murder Kroger sat at the nexus of one of the most blighted areas of the United States and the wealthy neighborhoods of Atlanta that came pre-gentrified. It was strange and disjointed, with gnarled old metal shopping carts impaled on street signs, streetwalkers in the alley behind, and a seemingly unlimited supply of pigs’ feet and red velvet cake mix.“I’m a local,” Tom said.“Me too!” the woman said, holding out her hand. “Penelope. You can call me Penelope, Pen, or Penny.”He shook her hand. “Tom. Nice to put a name to a face.”“No kidding,” she said. “I see you so much you became part of my morning routine, but I never thought to actually say hi.“Yeah, you’re right,” Tom said. “I’d walk in, get coffee, see you, maybe ride the elevator with you— ”“And then we’d both get off on seven. You’d go left and I’d go right. You a lawyer?”“Yeah,” he said. “The law firm sign gave it away?”“That and the suit,” she said, smiling.“Hmph. You’re an accountant?”“Yeah,” she said. “And don’t say anything. I know my outfit doesn’t give it away.”“That’s true. I’d expect it to be covered in numbers or something.”“Oh that. That outfit’s at the dry cleaners.”He laughed. He turned away and ripped a produce bag off of the roll. “I need to grab some oranges.”Penelope watched Tom pick up an orange, stare at it intently, then put it down. He picked up another, turned it over, sighed, and set it down. He grabbed another, peered at it, then looked at Penelope as if to say help me. Penelope took the orange out of his hand and set it back. She grabbed another, looked. No breaks in the skin. She squeezed it and it appeared firm. She handed it to Tom. “This one.”“Thanks,” he said, putting it in the bag.“How many do you need?” she asked.“Three more.”She picked through them. “Are you normally such a disaster at picking fruit?”“So,” he said, “yes? I usually get the prepackaged bags”— she deposited an orange in his bag— “thank you. I just never thought about it.”“Normally,” she said, handing him another orange, “I’d say you’d be safe grabbing any old oranges, but— ”“This is the Murder Kroger, yeah. Who knows how old they really are?”She dropped the final orange in his bag. “That’s a bingo.”“You know,” he said, “you could just teach me how to choose an orange.”She pushed her cart away from him, looked over her shoulder, and smiled: “But then what would you need me for?”Leaning forward on his cart, he chased after her. “Wait, don’t you need some fruit?”“Someone died at work,” she said, stopping her cart for Tom to catch up. “I took home the Edible Arrangements corporate sent our office.”Off of Tom’s reaction: “No, really! Someone died! I didn’t know him, but he’s dead. Right in the loading dock”— she pounded a fist to her chest— “heart attack!”“But aren’t you an accountant?”She leaned towards him, conspiratorial. “It’s an open question as to why he was at the loading dock.” Back to her cart. “Either way, no one wanted it.”They set off again.“Bakery?” he asked.She shook her head. “I’ll take my bread factory made, thank you.”They turned the corner to the first aisle. Tom fished out a list and compared it to the sign hanging above them. “I need some stuff down here,” he said.“Lead on,” she said, gesturing him forward.“So,” he said, tossing a can of green beans into his cart, “what’s the weirdest thing you’ve seen here?”“That’s a lot,” she said. “You go, let me think.”“Hmm.” He stopped moving. She pulled up next to him. He pointed across her. “I need some rice.”“Trade you for some of the black beans,” she said, pointing next to him. They swapped.Tom’s eyes lit up. This was a good one. “Okay, so, this was last week— ”“Fresh weird!”“Oh yeah,” he said. “Alright, I was here late, like 2AM. I saw this woman— she looked like a streetwalker— I saw her passed out, asleep next to the dairy case. Her hand was stuffed into one of those big tubs of sour cream. She had a bunch smeared on her face and she was out.”She grabbed some bouillon and tossed it in her cart. “Bless her heart. Did you tell security?”They began to drift forward again. “Yeah,” he said. “But the guard just looked at her and said, ‘she’ll wake up’ and went back to the front.”Penelope halted, reached out, and grabbed his cart, stopping it too. “Okay, I came up with one.”“Hit me.”“Were you here during the last ice storm?”“The one they made fun of on Saturday Night Live?” he asked.“That’s the one!” she said.“I was still in law school,” Tom said. “Not here.”“Alright, so the whole city shuts down, right? No one can drive anywhere. The smart people came out here before it hit, because they knew the roads were going to get shut down. It’s Atlanta right? It’s what we do. They cleaned this place the fuck out. Like, I can walk if I have to, I live close enough. So I thought there was no rush for me. I came out here the next day. There was nothing. No eggs, no bread, nothing. Except. There were piles of pigs’ feet.”“What?”“Pigs’ feet,” Penelope said. “You’re probably so used to it now that you don’t notice it, but there’s just a huge bin out front, overflowing with pigs’ feet.”“I mean, I get that people eat them.”Penelope shook her head. “No no, Tom, you don’t get it. No one eats these pigs’ feet. They’ve never changed. Ever. I took a permanent marker here a few days later and I marked one of the hooves— ”“Still in the package?”“Right,” she said. “I didn’t take it out, I just marked the plastic. And get this! It’s still there.”“But, that was years ago,” Tom said.“I know!”“Excuse me!” Tom and Penelope jumped. An older lady stood behind them, blocked by their carts. Penelope pushed her cart in front of Tom to open a lane. “After you,” Penelope said. The woman glided by.They watched as she turned down the next aisle.“I don’t know why she’s even here,” Penelope hissed. “She’s a church lady. They always come Sunday afternoon.”“What?”“A church lady!” Penelope said. “One Sunday I was trying out a new schedule and I came here in the afternoon. This place was filled with church ladies and their damn big hats. I couldn’t get anywhere, and that one”— Penelope pointed with such vehemence that her hair fell over her face— “she acted as if I didn’t even exist!”“I mean, just by being here we’re basically pricing her out of her home. Gentrification and all that.”“Pff,” Penelope said, brushing back her hair. “I liked you better two minutes ago.”Tom held up his hands. “Okay, let’s say I accept your vendetta and move on.”Penelope smiled. “Yes, lets.”They resumed their trip down the aisle. “Back to the ice storm?” Tom asked.“Right. Trapped for hours in the Murder Kroger, but coming home with nothing to show for it except a newfound appreciation for pigs’ feet.”“See,” Tom said, “it’s weird shit like coming home hours late with nothing in your hands that gets a guy in trouble.”They turned the corner. Tom pointed to the sign. “Need any Mexican down here?”“Well shit,” Penelope said, “I’m not getting black beans to eat them on their own.”They rolled down the aisle to the tortillas. Penelope shuffled through the stacks of packages, digging deeper and deeper into the pile. “Okay,” she said, tossing a bundle of tortillas aside. “Now, what’s this about trouble?”“Alright,” Tom said. “So, now, imagine, you’re a guy and you go out to get groceries. It takes you hours to get here, because, you know, Atlanta and ice. And then there’s nothing here to buy. Then you go back home, empty handed. Exhausted. My law school girlfriend would have freaked out and accused me of going out to get some while she was alone scared of an ice storm.”“Here it is!” Penelope said, holding up a pack of tortillas, triumphant. “Let’s go. Also, Tom, you must have dated some paranoid women.”“Well,” he said, pondering, “that one girl, I think she was redirecting. She was either cheating or getting drunk. Pretty sure she was an alcoholic.”Penelope rolled her eyes. “Sounds like you picked a winner there.”“Yeah, she’s gone now. She was more worried about me having another girlfriend than she was about having a good relationship. Hell, I don’t even know how an affair like that would begin.”“Come on,” Penelope said, rolling away, “we’re done with Mexican. And I know how it would start.”“How?” he asked, pushing after her.“Oh, it always begins with The Night.”They turned the corner. Penelope asked: “Do you need any”— as she read the sign— “soup, sauce, or canned fish? What the fuck is that combo?”“No,” he said. “But we’ve got coffee in the next aisle and I really need some of that.”“Okay,” Penelope said, moving on. “The Night.”“The night, yes.”“No no,” she said. “You’re not saying it right. I can hear it in your voice: you don’t have any caps on the N in night. Put some punch in it, Tom. Give it a little whiskey or maybe some bourbon. The Night.”“The Night!”“Yes!” she exclaimed. They pulled up to the rows of coffee. “The Night,” Penelope went on, “is that first sexual encounter, or— if you’re Baptist, are you Baptist?— no, doesn’t matter, we’re fucking anyway— it’s the magical moment that puts everything else into motion. If it were me, it would be the moment that I always remember.”— Penelope put the back of her hand on her forehead and mock swooned— “The perfect orgasm, the most beautiful lovemaking.”Tom pulled down the coffee bag he’d been looking for. “So what do I have to do to make this perfect, uh, Night happen?”Penelope tossed a package of coffee into her cart, then held up a finger. “First, you need lots of wine.” She put up a second finger. “And then: scintillating conversation.”“Can it be beer?” Tom asked. “I like beer. Some really hoppy IPA?”“Let’s get some Oreos, you hipster cuck. And no, beer won’t do. I’m a classy Southern lady. You’re going to seduce me with some nice, bottom shelf, red wine. Or Bloody Marys and Mimosas on Sundays.”“Alright,” Tom said. “So we’re both drinking too much red. Then the conversation. What do I do? Sit next to you and say ‘Who are you really, and what were you before? What did you do, and what did you think?’”Penelope pirouetted to face him. “Oooh, Casablanca! A romantic!”“Only the best for you, Penny.”She put both hands over her heart and sighed. Theatric.“I’ll give you this, Tom. That’s a damn good start. You’ll make some girl very happy some day. But not me, though. You’re about to fill me with confusion and guilt.”She drove her cart away from him, leaving him chasing after her. “What? Why?”Penelope stopped and looked at him. “Well, isn’t it obvious? You’re a married man!”“Oh I’m married now?” he said.“For the purposes of this story, yes. Now shut up. I— ”“Ahem.” The two of them turn. It’s the Old Woman again. “You’re in the way of the Oreos.”Penelope looked over to the Oreos, grabbed all of them, and threw them in her cart. She stuck out her tongue at the stunned woman, then stalked away with her cart. Tom trotted up with his cart, grabbed a bag of Oreos out of Penelope’s cart, and tossed it to the Old Woman. Penelope harrumphed.“Okay, so we’ve had the Night.”“Yes yes, do you like pancakes?” she asked.“For the morning after?”“No, dummy, it’s the next aisle. Bakeware, flour, pancake mix.”“Oh. Yes, I like pancakes, but I don’t need them.”“Watching your figure,” Penelope said. “Good for you. Then onto pickles and olives.”“I hate pickles,” Tom said.“Oh good,” Penelope said. “Every good relationship is based on a person who hates pickles finding someone who will eat pickles. I’ll happily consume the spear that the burger place puts on your plate.”“Gross,” he said, cruising into aisle eight.“It’s these kinds of things we’ll begin to learn about one another,” she said, “once we begin seeing each other on the regular.”Penelope took a jar off of the shelf and showed it to Tom. He grimaced. “Oh good,” she said. “It goes in.”“What I want to know,” Tom said, “is when we’ll see each other.”“Oh, there are all sorts of options, Tom.” Penelope wheeled her way down the aisle. “There’s some lunchtime delight, there’s working late delight. Maybe we’ll do ‘work trips’ to Cabo where I can topless sunbathe and you can rub sunscreen all over me.”“But you’re forgetting my wife,” Tom said. “She’s paranoid. And she’s an alcoholic.”Penelope looked over her shoulder at him. “So, all the more reason for you to want to be with me.”“Well, I have to go to AA. They’re my only support. That’s lunchtime.”“You can’t skip a few for me?”“No, see, I’m doing these for you.”“How’s that now?” she asked.“Well, I want to make sure we’re on steady ground. I don’t want the best night of my life to be the result of some resentment of my wife. I want it to be based on something real.”Penelope stopped her cart and pointed her finger at him, pushing his chest. “You, Mr. Tom, are a clever one. I’m impressed. You almost make me think you could make me very happy one day.”Tom leaned towards her so as to fill the space between them, but she ignored him and moved on. “Okay,” she said, “next aisle is lady stuff. And I need lady stuff. Are you man enough or do I need to meet you on the next aisle?”Tom was mildly offended. “I can handle tampons and pads,” he said.“But not oranges?” she asked, arching an eyebrow and rolling down the “lady stuff” aisle.“Okay, that’s fair,” Tom said, trailing behind her. “But it’s also not!”“So,” Penelope went on, ignoring him, “lunches are out of the question. When will see each other?”“Cabo sounds good,” he said.Penelope grabbed two tampon packages and some pads. She waved them at Tom before putting them in her cart. “I’m not scared!” Tom protested.“Oh sure sure,” Penelope said, chuckling. “Anyways, you’ve got to earn Cabo. In the meantime, you’re going to have to work seriously late some nights.”“How late?” Tom asked.“Well, look Tom. This is a love match, right? I’m not just in it for the sex. I’m getting my fucking pillow talk— hey!” Penelope waved at the Old Woman wheeling up behind them. The Old Woman stopped, surprised to see them again. Penelope grabbed a pack of tampons and tossed them into the woman’s cart, as if she were shooting hoops. Penelope strode off.“How does she keep getting caught behind us?” Tom asked as the bewildered Old Woman put the tampons back on the shelf.“Don’t care,” Penelope said. “She’s my enemy now.”“I need some laundry detergent,” Tom said, pointing down the next aisle.“I just assumed that you hired out your laundry,” Penelope said, running her hand up and down his arm, playing at feeling the fabric of his shirt. Before he could react she plunged down the aisle, almost running away from him.“I do my own!” he yelled after her.“Well, come on then,” she replied over her shoulder. He followed.

She went on: “The hard part, though, is that at some point I’m going to tell you I love you. If I don’t say it, you will, but when you say it, you’ll regret it. The guilt will eat at you. So I’ll say it first— too soon, in fact. But at least if I say it first, you can convince yourself that you’re just saying it back.”“And that’s somehow not as bad?” Tom asked.“You’ll tell yourself it isn’t,” she said. “It’s a lie, though.”Tim found his laundry detergent, tossed it in the cart.Penelope rummaged through her cart. No fruit, black beans, bouillon, tortillas, coffee, a shitload of Oreos, pickles, a pack of tampons, and a package of pads. “I’m done here,” she said. “Are you?”“I— ”“Good! Let’s check out! I see my friend.”The Old Woman was ahead of them now and cruising to a checkout lane. Pushing her cart before her, Penelope took off at run in an attempt to cut ahead of the Old Woman. The Old Woman saw Penelope in time, though, and showed an unexpected burst of speed, making it to the checkout lane before Penelope.“Ha!” the Old Woman said, giving Penelope the finger. Penelope slapped her cart in frustration.“Penelope,” Tom said, pointing out the next open line.“Fine,” Penelope spat. “Fine! Next time!” she yelled, shaking her fist at the Old Woman.

Tom walked out of the Kroger carrying his one bag. Penelope followed, struggling with the bulk of bags filled with packages of Oreos. “My car’s over there,” she said, pointing. “Walk me? I need to tell you about our affair’s tragic end.”He walked after her. “Tragic?”“Well, yes,” she said, unlocking the door with her remote. “See, I’m not a kept woman, Tom.” She loaded the bags into the backseat. “So, at some point I’m going to demand you make a choice.”“You or my wife?”“Exactly,” she said, sliding into the front seat. “And in the end, you’ll always choose her.”“No! But we had the perfect night!”“I can’t change fate, Tom. You’ll choose a lifetime of misery out of guilt and a misguided sense of obligation instead of happiness and adorable children with me. And Tom, we’d make such beautiful children.”“But,” he said, “we were having so much fun!”“It’s tragic,” she said. “But it is what it is.” She closed the door of her car. Tom watched as the car rumbled to life and Penelope pulled out of her spot. She rolled down her window and smiled at him. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning, Tom.”“I— ”But she had seen something in the parking lot that caught her attention. “Gotta run!”She hit the gas and cut the steering wheel tight, narrowly avoiding sideswiping a parked car as she turned, and roared towards the parking lot exit. She got there just before the Old Woman had her car to the exit. Tom heard Penelope’s exultant roar. The Old Woman rolled down her window and threw the package of Oreos at Penelope’s car. Penelope cackled, “I win!” before driving away.Tom looked in his bag: rice, oranges, green beans, and laundry soap. He fished around in his pocket and pulled out his shopping list. It was much longer than four items. He sighed. He looked back at his list, then at the Murder Kroger. A junkie shuffled by, grunting, and a homeless man was crawling into the clothing donation bin. He looked at his watch and shook his head.He pulled out his car keys. “Well, Penny,” he muttered, “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”

John W. Treviño