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The shopping complex - fragment

Text: The shopping complex - fragment

from albee cyclone, 22.07.09

Both tall one fat the two of them wait, time and a bit longer for the automated gate to know. Welcome Burger, and then Eezel too close behind, two pairs of steel-capped toes too far from the centre. On the inside they hinge shoulders to form an expanse of chest moving from Bakery to Deli to Meat, in the margins of Fruit and Veg, over-exposed at the centre under the beaming florescence of nature’s horizontal plains, wilting with the greens and browns. Right turn. Tenderloins and Diced Breasts raise hair on the backs of their hands. It’s raw.
Aisles branch off to the right. They take in the breath of the blueprint falling out of time, shoulder to shoulder, together.  Meat-trays to milk; peach chunks in syrup to cream; yoghurt, yoghurt substitute, desert, all the same for two tracksuits with limbs. Stop. Corner right. A museum of frozen corn, carrots, peas and carrot, beans, boxes of berries, cheesecake, carrot cake, ice-cream and ice-cream cake, mud cake and strudel, all before a right turn that takes them too soon to the registers, where they get lodged in a bottleneck of metal trolleys and lines of bodies. People mind themselves as they shuffle onwards.
The centre has moved to the periphery, so they move towards the centre. Right turn into Noodles|Pasta|Pasta Sauce. Glass bottles and loose shapes in different sized and coloured plastic. The end turns into the beginning of Oil|Spices|Gravy, jars and jars and then lots of tiny jars, facing solid papered forms. They walk with lifeless arms, unaware of the body they’ve pressed into Self-Raising, Wholemeal, Baker’s and Plain, the aisle too small for the two towering forms.
From Confectionary –– no imagined taste, no smell, no pull towards shiny alfoil––to Breakfast Bars|Cereal|Muesli where Burger stops and lifts his head towards the rows and columns of boxes – Tigers, Toucans and Iron-Men. Burger reaches between Crunchy Nut and Milo Chocolate for the Value Pack. Holding a box each like breastplates, they wait for Burger’s body to rotate, then continue on towards Dairy–passing Milk– snaking around into mixed Drinks|Condiments|Soft Drinks. Green, yellow, red, black, pink. Pink. Burger hands the Nutri-Grain to Eezel and in one hand takes two 1.25Lbottles of pink, this weighted arm swings loose behind him connecting with a solid form; the frail body loses life as it falls to the ground, escapes dying alone. Burger cradles the spiralling bubbles into his arms, and walks on. A right turn. A left turn and right again.
Checking out there are lines, one which they stand in. It moves, they move, they get this. A girl finds them above an empty conveyor belt - would they like to buy that? Burger reaches from a great height down to place a bottle into a tiny hand. And another, before the human chain of Nutri-Grain begins ––Eesel to Burger, who again must extend down down to transfer this form.
       Two plastic bags stand to attention around large cardboard fillings, the bottles side by side in a third. Twenidollars-thirte. Burger’s arms hang loose beside him. She turns the screen towards him, tiny numbers flashing twenty dollars, and thirty cents. A hand goes fishing in a fleecy pocket and catches something. Is that savings? His head rotates, one slow circle. She swivels the keypad, a half circle. Finger pads meet keypads. She looks up at him from her great distance and he understands the extended tone means the bags at the end of the counter don’t belong to them, even though they chose them. Burger looks at Eezel whose already looking at Burger. They shuffle on. They walk the width of the supermarket, back towards the Entrance. They wait, time and a bit longer, for it to know. Welcome to Burger, and then Eezel too close behind. Fruit and Veg too open, meat too raw. Cans are just tins in rows. They shuffle onwards.
 

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