Soy Sauce

It was bound to happen, and what better spot than Draegers Supermarket, right by the Tuscan bean soup, featured today, and looking attractively warm, considering meteorological conditions outside.  Actually, conditions inside were also unattractive, the market being surprisingly cool, or feeling so after I had gotten soaked in the December rain.  Upstairs, conditions were much more favorable, downright warm, in fact.  The upper level restaurant, actually, was my first destination.  And I would not have been hovering by the Tuscan soup, if the restaurant had fulfilled its duties to the lunch hour public and remained open, instead of closing for some sort of gourmet gala luncheon, all the individual tables where people like me normally sit being jammed together banquet style.  Which had me back on the ground floor, eyeing the hot soup and the Styrofoam containers beside it, thinking that maybe the best course of action was a retreat, homeward bound with steaming Tuscan beans.

Hi.  Our realtor stepped out of the shadows.  Which is to say, the checkout line, purchase in hand to say hello.  Monica.  To call her 'our realtor' misstates the case in several ways.  For originally I knew her as the wife of a PR account executive.  Then I knew her as the wife and local person I would run into on the street.  It was only in the final stage of things that her realtor credentials came into play.  Marlou, when she moved down to Menlo Park, was determined to buy a house.  Why not?  I would have had much the same response.  And with Marlou, there was no arguing.  I could tell she thought I was stubborn or defeatist on the topic of house owning.  Yes, things were expensive, but costly was a long way from impossible.  So lighten up, she seemed to be saying.  I knew there was no stopping her.  So I set up an appointment with Monica.  We would go over a few listings.  See what was what.

Later, my psychologist told me this was a good ploy.  Right.  The old reality ploy.  Gets them every time.  Just let your spouse-to-be try on the notion of an $800,000 condominium, two bedrooms, which if you act quickly, you might just nail.  Not that the place doesn't need a bit of work.  And once that work is done, and you have pooled savings to come up with the better part of $1 million, do note that you will be seven stories up.  Garden?  Of course not, but you will have your very own balcony....  Thus, Monica.

Actually, it was Monica's husband whom I told about Marlou's cancer.  We ran into each other at Peet's, and the encounter was a very brief one.  What kind of cancer?  Oh.  He was gone.  And soon, we both knew, Marlou would be gone.  But no one could say when, and time passes oddly, the first thing you knew it was December and there I was, seriously tuned into soup, having been seriously turned out of Draegers Café upstairs, my frequent refuge these days.

Oh, hi, said Monica.  How is your wife?  It was entirely possible that Monica could not remember Marlou's name, having only met her a time or two.  But I'm sure her husband had told her about the cancer.  An innocent question.  And for some reason, this was a moment I had long anticipated.  I was fully, or almost fully, prepared.  'How is your wife doing?' would get the only reasonable answer...a lot less these days...you're so unproductive when you're dead.  Or even better, 'how is your wife?'...well, thanks for asking, but for her things are kind of dead.  'How's your wife?'  Last time I checked....

Of course, I said none of this, just responding dead straight.  No pun intended.  Monica, being either extremely professional or remarkably stoic, betrayed no reaction at first.  Her face showed nothing.  She maintained the same welcoming smile, asked when, then finally said she was shocked.  She asked what I was doing for the holidays.  I told her.  She had been to Gloucestershire, knew it reasonably well.  And that was that.

Alone again by the soup.  I gazed upstairs, at the balcony where the café was now looking empty.  But it was still shut.  I still had a trip to the bank.  And with no lunch, the soup seemed like a wonderful idea.  But transporting hot Styrofoam containers did not seem like a good idea just then.  Scalding being what it was for the neurologically compromised.  So I bought some sushi.  Cold.  Safe.  And ate it upstairs in the closed café.  Which led to the next revelation, only fully apparent once I was outside.  Soy sauce.  One of the kindly supermarket staff had opened the plastic packet for me, and damned if the stuff hadn't spilled on my blue jeans.  I eyed the stain angrily, rolled outside into the rainy afternoon and began looking for a good drip.  Nothing like rainwater rolling out of a gutter to dilute a little soy sauce.  Okay, so my entire thigh got drenched.  And I must have cut an odd figure, the guy in the wheelchair deliberately sitting under the gutter's downspout, water splashing across his lap.  

But never mind.  For Monica's question hadn't disturbed me all that much.  Because I had come a long way in the last year.  True, I was more eccentric than ever.  And a little wet.  But dealing with the soy sauce.