Crossing Paths

A trip to the grocery on a Friday evening anywhere is something usually best avoided. Here on the coast of Maine that's especially true as we get into tourist season because that's when the hordes arrive and need to stock up for their weekend stays. However, I'd gotting 2/3s of the way through making dinner and and desperately needed a lemon and there is only one supermarket in town. It'd be a quick in and out.

Since I was there, I grabbed a few other produce items, including a jicama. A 'woman of a certain age' bagging green beans next to the jicama suddenly stopped, her handful of beans suspended in midair. She looked at the beige, slightly wrinkled grapefruit sized item in my hand and gave both it and I quite an odd look, visible even behind her large, dark glasses. "You eat that? How do you eat that?" she asked in a New Jersey accent with an intonation that came in somewhere between baffled and slightly amused. I described its cool, sweet and crunchy charms. "I'll be brave and try one!" she excitedly proclaimed. When in Rome...

Heading towards the checkout lines I got busted staring at a tall, dark and handsome city dude wearing expensively classy gear that screamed "I'm casual, I'm cool, I'm on vacation." I'm pretty certain he belonged to the dressed out Harley with CN tags that had caught my eye in the parking lot . A cultural weekend warrior who'd successfully, albeit temporarily, escaped from his Armani suit (and Jerry Garcia tie?) in Greenwich only hours ago.

"Do you know where the coffee is?" he asked me. Several answers ran through my mind, but "Starbucks?!" was the one that popped out of my mouth. He didn't get the humor: there isn't a Starbucks for 40 miles! I could have given him a head's up though on where to find a NY Times to go with that coffee come Sunday, but he was already gone.

As I stood in the checkout line the finale appeared behind me: another version of the biker guy. This one 60-ish and dapperly attired probably rode more miles in a month than Joe Cool did in a year. In his 'going out dancing' black jeans and jacket, cowboy boots, hair and beard nicely trimmed, a tad too much gold jewelry, the hint of an OK cologne, he still had his sunglasses on and clutched a batch of red roses. I looked at the flowers, "Always a good move!" I said.

He sighs, and flashes a weaker version of what is probably a stunning grin. "I've been a real brat" he explains. "For a couple of days now." Pause. "It's my Irish stubborness. I'm going to hold these out in front of me when I walk through the door and hope they work. Sometimes flowers can say more than words." Good grief, I'm in an FTD commercial!!

The cashier and I exchanged a look. "It always works for my boyfriend!" We all laughed, she bagged my jicama and lemon, I wished him good luck. "It's better to bend than to break!" he said to me as I grabbed my bag, and to her "Can you get that price sticker off of there?"

I headed home to finish making dinner. Ahh, tourist season, it's started arrived early this year and with great promise!