Every trip to the grocery store is like watching my own, twisted, semi-crazed soap opera.
I'm there daily, or at least every other day. So are all the other women in my neighborhood. And yes, I insist, they are all women, because for some reason men don't seem to grocery shop in Paris. Or when they do, they just buy something frozen and zip out of there so quickly that I never catch a glimpse of them.
So, for example, when the Lady with the Brown Coat was talking to the afternoon shift butcher about her son, I remembered what her son looked like from the day I saw them walking out of the dry cleaner's weeks prior. This contributes to my knowing something more about my neighbors than I usually would, and multiple experiences of this kind can lead to gossipy rumor-spreading. I don't know if the Lady with the Brown Coat knows that I know her son, and the secret she doesn't know she just shared with me, but I do.
Or, today, when Ms. Big Hair (who the Boy and I refer to as Innocently Crazy Lady) was chatting it up with the dairy stocking boys, I had a pang of jealousy. I thought I was the only one they were so friendly with. If this were "Young and the Restless," the camera would zoom up on my face quickly and I would clench my jaw dramatically, and resolve to hurt that big-haired bitch. Never mind the fact she's over 70.
But the real drama of the show would be centered around my favorite storyline: I am in love with Fish Boy.
Fish Boy has what is perhaps the most unappealing pseudonym in the history of my thousands of pseudonyms, but all that seems to wash to the wayside when he asks how he can help me. Very tall, very thin, and bordering on pedophilically young, he's an attractive young lad alright. I still remember the first day I fell for him - something about the way he handed me my three filets of salmon and looked me softly in the eye spelled L-O-V-E.
Today, I felt the feeling was reciprocated. Fish Boy and Secondary Fish Boy (less attractive and generally less interesting) were joking behind the counter about something, and I saw Fish Boy's cute, shy sideways glance at me while he was giggling with his short little friend. Sure, maybe the sideways glance was just because I was the next person in line, but I felt there was more to it than that. And maybe he refers to everyone in line as "Next," but that could also be a way of metaphorically calling me his next girlfriend, the next love of his life, his next amour. Yes, I do believe it's true. Fish Boy and I are meant to be.
The problem is that Vegetable Boy seems to have claimed me already. At my grocery, you choose your fruits and vegetables and then take them to a little stand where men and women who happen to know all the produce codes await you to weigh your goods. They stand on little pedestals just behind the zucchini, and reach down to grab your plastic bags of carotts and apples like gods parting the clouds.
I've never been attracted to Vegetable Boy, but it's always nice to have men point out their affections for you. Because I'm not physically interested in him, it was a bearable shock the day I first saw him off his pedestal, and I towered above him by a good half a head. Vegetable Boy knows I'm foreign, knows I study, and knows I don't like fennel. To me, that means friendship. To him, I guess that means love. Never mind that half head between us.
I don't know how I can possibly express my love for Fish Boy under Vegetable Boy's cold jealous stare. I don't want to hurt my good, banana-weighing friend's feelings, but what is a girl to do when a boy looks her so deeply in the eyes when handing her 400 grams of shrimp? It just makes a girl melt.