Browsing Through CDs at the Supermarket

This was my second time around the aisles in half an hour and the still empty basket at my side was making me feel conspicuous. I picked a pizza from the frozen food cabinet beside me and noticed it was buy one get one free, so I took another. This was my fifth time here in as many nights and I had fine-tuned these excursions to take place at half three when the supermarket was at its emptiest. I walked along the front past the tills. They were all closed, except the one at the end.
I walked through the clothes section and stopped at the CD rack on the edge of it. I looked through the different bands and singers on it. None of them were my sort of thing, but I stood my ground. I looked at the open till. The lady that sat behind it looked severe, with her thick glasses but her short, plum hair suggested a quirkiness: either that or a bad choice of brown. I fiddled with the flap of my satchel, not trying to open it. The beer that I’d drunk to suppress my nerves was sloshing about in my stomach. I burped and foam came up my throat. I swallowed again and took a few deep breaths to calm myself.
I looked around. A security guard walked past. He was about my height and not as well built but I lost my nerve and did a lap of the biscuit aisle picking up some bourbon crèmes. I came back to the CD’s and looked over them again. The Best of The Bangles; The Best of Bond Themes, Bond Themes Are Forever; The Corrs: Talk on Corners; Tracy Chapman, Matters of the Heart. I read down through the list, at all times keeping an eye on who else was in the store. There was a man walking about the store with a girl who, despite my suspicions otherwise, could have been his daughter; there was a bleary eyed drunk man who was stumbling about and muttering away to himself; then there was a nurse, probably on her break from nightshift at the local hospital, rushing round the aisles looking for the sandwiches. She asked a shop assistant, the only one on this side of the store, who directed her to them.
What was I worrying about? These people wouldn’t give me any bother and even if they did none of them were anything to worry about.
The man and the girl walked along the aisle towards me. Now they were closer I could see she wasn’t as young as I’d thought but she still wouldn’t have been more than a teenager. Her delicate fingers looked awkward interlocked with his much larger hand, which was covered in wrinkles and doted with liver spots.
As they passed she looked at me from under her dark fringe and I realised I was staring. I looked on down the list of CD’s passing from the Cs onto the Ds: Daniel O’Donnell: Daniel In Blue Jeans, Dido: No Angel, Tanya Donelly: Love Songs for Underdogs, Def Leopard: Vault.
I thought about taking the Daniel O’Donnell CD and putting it in the O section where it belonged.
The nurse stopped beside me, she quickly scanned the rack and picked up the Dido album, showing me just how long someone should take to choose a CD. She walked off in the same direction as the man and the girl. I plucked up my nerve and turned around. The security guard walked past again and I lost it. I walked around the cereal aisle and bought some Frosties.
Then along the frozen food aisle and back through the clothes section to the CD rack.
The security guard walked past again but I held my nerve. I was careful not to look too closely at him. I picked up the Corrs album and read the back of it. Glancing up I could see the till; there were no customers at it. The security guard was now a few aisles past me. I set the CD back on the stand. Now was the time. Walking purposely through the clothes section towards the till, taking deep breaths to calm my nerves, I lifted a black one-piece woman’s swimsuit off the rack and shoved it into my basket. I almost broke into a run.
When I reached the till I threw my basket down and hurriedly pulled out all my shopping, the swimsuit half-hidden in the middle. Blood was pumping into my head as I fiddled through my wallet, anything not to look at the woman serving me. The front of my head felt like it might give way as the blood thumped against it and sweat started to run down my face.
“Have you a club card?” the woman asked flatly.
“No,” I replied quickly, drunk as I was I could barely meet her eyes. I watched nervously as she put the items through the checkout. The till made a small jingle sound as the pizzas went through. Foam flew up my throat and only the ballooning of my cheeks stopped the woman from being covered in vomit. What was wrong with the till? My eyes leapt to the woman’s but she didn’t look at me. She set the pizzas down and picked up the bourbon crèmes.
Looking at the display on the till, I saw it said: ‘pepperoni pizzas – special offer’. I opened my satchel and put the pizzas in it, followed by the bourbon creams.
Then the swimsuit went through the till. It came up on the display as ‘woman’s bikini’. This confused me, and I forgot to panic or look fearfully at the woman and expect her to erupt with disgust or rage or call the other customers over with the tanoy to laugh at me. What sort of arsehole didn’t know the difference between a swimsuit and a bikini?
The woman handed me the swimsuit and picked up the box of Frosties.
“Fifteen pounds, eighty eight,” she said as she handed me the cereal.
I gave her a twenty, which she put it in the till and then reached me my change. I put a pound in the guide dogs box beside the till and gave the woman a grateful smile.
As I walked outside, feeling a mixture of happiness and nerves, I secured my satchel straps and threw it over my shoulder. The light had started to change and the brightening blue hue of the sky was beginning to show rain clouds, which had started to drizzle. I walked drunkenly home through the rain to try on my swimsuit, hoping I’d bought the right size.