I found her talking to a shelf
stacker about carrots.
She was looking for a 'thick knobbly
one' and, when the kindly old fellow found such a one, she volunteered why:
'The snowman's knob should be nice and thick and really, really orange.'
She stopped bothering him when she
saw me.
'Do you really need that carrot?' I
asked her.
She dropped it in the trolley and we
went to the booze aisle.
'Why's it having a piss?' she asked me, 'Why an indefinite article?'
I pulled out two bottles of gin:
Gladhouse and Viddick's.
'I mean, usually it's just piss,'
she carried on, 'A verb.'
I sighed. 'Verbs into nouns isn't an
uncommon thing.'
'But how about taking a piss?' She
tilted her head. 'Taking and having. What a difference a verb makes.'
'Choose,' I said, holding up both
bottles in front of her.
She took the Gladhouse one right
away and put it at the front of the trolley, where the fragile cargo usually
goes.
'You still call me Wilma,' she spoke
up halfway down the frozen vegetable section. Quite frankly I was expecting to
hear something about the carrots here as well. Chopped up.
'I'm not calling you Bill,' I
replied.
'I like Bill Rook.'
'Well, I still like Wilma Rook.'
She folded her arms. 'You can't keep
change from happening.'
I shook my head. 'Love might.'
We didn't talk again until the
checkouts and then that was in response to the girl there. She had inquisitive
eyes and tightly-packed hair. She held up the knobbly carrot.
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