by Nina Post
“Notice anything about these customers?” Rex asked.
Eric looked down the dairy aisle at the competitors. “They look as out of it as they usually do.”
“Look harder.”
People wandered through the store and rubbed at their arms like they had the chills. They looked afraid, darting their eyes side to side, jumping at the smallest surprise. Their foreheads were shiny with sweat and they pressed wrists or fingers against the sides of their heads. Some of them bumped into end caps or displays. Some held their stomachs, and some lost their balance. Some opened the freezer doors and stayed there, resting against the shelves or even climbing in until an employee pulled them away and pushed the door shut. Some of them pushed employees out of their way to get to the dairy aisle.
“Oh,” Eric said.
“Oh?” Rex said. “That’s all you’ve got?”
Eric took advantage of the crew’s distraction with the lighting to walk a few feet away and respond to Rex. “Possession? But wouldn’t they act more … purposeful?”
Rex gave him a look. “They are purposeful: they want that yogurt. Unlike you, they’re also exhibiting neurological and gastrointestinal symptoms. My guess is that they’ve ingested commerce spirits,” Rex said.
“Commerce spirits?” Eric said like Rex was pulling his leg.
“They’re spirits that make people want to buy something. They must have ingested them with the Quantal yogurt.”
“Then why didn’t I want to drink more POUNCE!?” Eric said.
A young male employee took a mop to a new puddle of vomit.
“I’m different.” Rex raised his chin with pride. “Better than these crude low-level things in the yogurt. But you did drink more POUNCE! for a few days; you just didn’t know it.”
The camera and sound guy were ready. They signaled Jerry and they all converged on Eric. Jerry took him by the shoulders and maneuvered him down the aisle. “Stay right in this spot.” Jerry slowly removed his hands from Eric like he would take off at any second, which he was in fact considering, then ran sideways back to the camera. “Take your shirt off!” he yelled.
“Why not?” Rex said. “It’s chaos here, and it’s only going to get worse, really soon.”
At Eric’s hesitation, Jerry added, “Look, Snackerge, this isn’t going on the evening news. It’s a series of ads for the web.”
Eric exhaled and stared at the ceiling. Then he nodded and took off his shirt.
“Give him a yogurt!” Jerry said.
“There aren’t any left,” the sound guy said.
“Oh, for –”
Eric got a yogurt out of one of his coolers and held it up to Jerry.
“Sweeeet. Now take the lid off real slow. Yeah, just like that. Nice.”
Once the lid was off, Eric didn’t know what to do. He had done some art class posing a year ago, but that was different. And he didn’t have a spoon.
“Get him a damn spoon!” Jerry looked ready to punch the sound guy. He whirled around to both sides like he was in the middle of a bar fight, then grabbed another brand of yogurt, parfait-style, with spoon included. He ripped off the spoon and ran it over to Eric like it was the last leg of a relay race.
“Now,” Jerry said, gasping a little. “Just,” he waved his arm in circles out from his chest. “Um, eat it with the spoon. Slowly.”
Rex smirked. Eric held up the spoon to Rex with a threatening stare.
“No, not like a knife you’re going to stab someone with,” Jerry said. “Slooowww –”
Jerry was cut off by a possessed Quantal eater who tackled him to the waxed floor. The sound guy shrugged and kept holding the mic.
The camera guy grinned and hoisted up the camera again. “This is good stuff.”
Chapter Thirteen
Eric parked the Princess in the lot behind the Fireworks Superstore & Convenience Center, and the ad agency crew left in their van to go back to the city. Eric had a quick snack, not yogurt, then rode his bike to Jamesville Technical College. He would only drive the Princess for more distant yogurt runs; fuel was expensive, and money was running low.
Willa was in her office, going through paperwork. The other instructor was putting scraps of paper through a tiny desktop shredder that sounded like a remote-control car accelerating. “I saw the videos.”
Jerry and the team at Quantal Foods’ ad agency had quickly produced and uploaded a series of five vignettes. In one, Eric was eating the yogurt while driving the Princess, and this footage was interwoven with documentary-style footage of the inside of the bus. In another, he was eating the yogurt in the store, without his shirt. The third was an atmospheric montage of Eric entering various stores. The fourth was a moody, almost noirish piece of Eric riding his bike next to the camera guy in a van, while eating the yogurt. The fifth was edited like an Italian spy movie from the sixties.
“What did you think?” Eric laced his fingers together while he darted a look to the other side of the room, where the other HVAC instructor was apparently covering up a massive conspiracy, judging by the amount of shredding going on.
Willa cleared her throat. “Andy, would you go have lunch?” The other guy looked up from his task with wide eyes.
“I already had lunch.”
Willa walked over and stood behind Andy. “Have another one.” She gave him a ten-dollar bill.
“Right,” Andy said, and left.
Willa locked the door behind him, then stood in front of Eric. “I thought they were hot.”
Eric started to stand, but Willa pushed him back on the sofa and saddled him, skirt riding up her thighs.
“What –” Eric said, and Willa shut him up by kissing him the same way she did when they first met. She tasted the same, she felt the same, and he was back in 1998, close to graduating with the highest honors, close to starting law school at a top university, close to making good money for the family he wanted to start with the smart, petite, bellicose HVAC student he had fallen for at the Racaille, a bar on campus.
Willa pulled off her blouse and threw it over her shoulder to the desk, but kept her bra on, a lacy black and pink push-up. Then she leaned back in and he held her with a fierce grip. She reached down and flicked open his belt then unbuttoned his pants while she kissed him. Seconds later, she lifted up her hips then sank onto Eric with a purring moan.
Everything was right with the world in this brief portal to 1998. Willa was his again, completely his. Eric dug his fingers into Willa’s hips, and she leaned forward to put her hands on his chest as she moved against him. 1998. He hadn’t crossed campus from the law library to the main library, hadn’t taken a free sample bottle of POUNCE! from a fellow student manning a kiosk by the cafeteria. He hadn’t drank it, hadn’t been infected with a spirit who possessed him and took over his life for eighteen months.
Eric lost himself in Willa, was intoxicated by the taste of her mouth, by her skin that smelled of light sweat and her clean, almost masculine perfume, and the same glycerine soap he knew she had used since she was a teenager, and he tried to stay in 1998 as long as he could. This lasted until he couldn’t and she climbed off him to get dressed and said, “Are you out of food yet?”
He pulled up his pants then pulled on his shirt. “Almost. And thanks. Thank you, for making all of that.” It was quick, and it was over, and they were back to the status quo, which he hated.
“Have dinner with us tonight.” Willa fastened her bra and pulled on her shirt.
“With you and Mark?”
Will narrowed her eyes in reproach. “With me and Taffy.”
Hope burst and fizzed and tingled in Eric like popping candy. Maybe their status quo had changed. In his mind, he was ready to move his stuff out of the Princess that day.
Eric stopped by Ed’s house in the evening to drop off some groceries for Willa, who was still trying to clear up that grocery delivery problem.
“Where’s your mom?” Eric asked Taffy, who was sitting on the counter reading Perfumer & Flavo
rist. Next to her on the counter was a bowl of boiled edamame. He took Taffy’s leg just above her high-top and shook it like someone’s hand.
“Mom took her class on a field trip today,” she said, turning a page. “I think they toured an air chiller or something in the city.”
Eric sanitized (per Taffy’s insistence) the groceries and put them away. Then he stood around for a few minutes while Taffy read. “Okay,” he said. “I’m going to go.” He took his keys, hesitated, then went to leave out the side door. Taffy didn’t look up.
“Oh, Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“Can you help me install a new thing on my bike?”
Taffy’s question made Eric feel like he had stepped out of black and white into glorious Technicolor. Maybe things were turning around.
Taffy’s bicycle had a number of features that most bikes didn’t. There was one thing Eric knew that he and Taffy had in common, and that was suspicion. Taffy’s suspicion, however, extended to restaurant workers, food that wasn’t boiled, crowds that she presumed were on the precipice of turning into a mob, and animals, any one of which could be patient zero for an emerging zoonotic disease that that would make the Spanish flu seem like an outbreak of lice.
Taffy wanted to be prepared, and an important part of that was her bicycle. Its frame could emanate an intense glow. Parts of the frame flipped up like a Pez dispenser to access stored beef jerky, red licorice, a fishing spear, a dental care kit, and a breathing tube in case she had to drive her bike into the water. The seat contained a parachute and the handlebars offered storage for iodine pills, MREs, chewable vitamins, and candy. In between the handlebars was an air bag. There was a button near the handlebars to release a fluorescent spray out the back to mark any attackers. And those were just the features that Eric knew about.
“I want to install a nozzle by the horn,” Taffy said.
“Easy enough,” Eric said. “To spray what exactly?”
“I’ve been collecting the digestive saliva of the Belostomatidae for months.”
Eric kneeled down and held the frame. “Right. Maybe we could start with something a little … easier?”
Taffy thought about it.
“I also want to cover the frame with a peel-off coating.”
Eric didn’t ask questions (though he almost asked if it was fruit, like a flat fruit leather) and helped Taffy, mainly by handing her things. She got so focused that she tended to detach from conversation, but this was nothing unusual. At one point Eric smiled.
“What’s funny?” Taffy said.
“Hm? Nothing, why?”
“You smiled,” Taffy said. “You don’t look as worried.”
“I’m happy helping you right now.”
Taffy gave him a look. A suspicious look. “Maybe. But you’ve been eating nothing but yogurt lately.”
Eric started to say something, thought about it more. “I’m not sure how those two things relate to each other.”
“The large amounts of probiotics you’ve been eating have increased a certain receptor of a neurotransmitter in your brain that decreases anxiety,” she said.
Eric thought of Willa in her office, her scent, the feel of her skin, and how that decreased his anxiety, but then with a Herculean effort of will, banished the images until later. “Is it so hard to believe that I just enjoy your company?” Which he did.
Taffy applied a new section to the frame. “I guess not. But one of the possible consequences of eating so much yogurt is a change in behavior.”
“So if I smile, I’m like a gassy baby,” Eric said.
“Yep.”
They worked in silence for another few minutes.
“Hey, Dad? I thought you were still friends with Mark,” Taffy said.
Eric studied the bike bell he was holding. “So did I.”
“Because he’s not your friend.” Taffy shot him a pointed sidelong glance.
Eric nodded and put the bell on the shelf. “I know. Wait, how do you know?”
Taffy applied a length of coating. “He’s been coming over a lot. He tried to get me to go to that petting zoo restaurant at the park, so, obviously, I can see through him. But I’m pretty sure Mom does too. I mean, how could she not?”
Eric laughed. “What’s he going to do next, order queso fresco for you at a Mexican restaurant? Take you to a farm where you hand-feed the animals then eat unpasteurized cheese? Make you go to some ratty hole-in-the-wall and order eggs benedict and an egg salad sandwich?”
Taffy actually giggled, a double rainbow on a spring day to Eric.
Willa and Taffy were on his side, and they could get the house back. They could be a family there again. Everything was going to be okay.
Eric deliberated in front of the Princess’s narrow but full-body window: full suit, or just collared shirt and tie? He looked good in a suit, but put the jacket back on the hanger. He was meeting Willa and Taffy for dinner in the next town over, one closer to the city and known for its theater, so he should dress for the theater, just in case, but not look like he was trying too hard. Or should he go for trying too hard?
He went with his best and only choice: gray shirt and tie, charcoal pants, black belt, black oxfords. He shaved, applied aftershave with a light touch, and put his wallet in his pocket as he resolved to pay for dinner. If he had to take on another job or sell his plasma or sperm or be a medical test subject or work off the dinner washing dishes after Willa and Taffy went home, he would.
The money he had left after buying so much yogurt and fuel made it painful to even buy flowers for Willa. But he found her favorites, tulips, and if hurt this much to just buy tulips, then dinner was going to feel like minor but unanesthetized surgery. He tied the tulips to the bike.
Eric didn’t like going to nice restaurants. He had been to some before in school, but he preferred to eat at home – now, his bus – or at Sammy’s. He didn’t like that the only people who received good service at fancy restaurants were the customers who liked to throw their money away on overpriced drinks and entrees, and that if you didn’t buy a whole bottle of wine, the server treated you like you smelled a little off.
Eric got to the restaurant early, but Willa and Taffy were already seated. Willa was still wearing her clothes from work, but Eric knew she liked to change in her office for dinner. As a concession to her equally strong-willed mother, Taffy wore a simple dress, but with fluorescent orange ballet sneakers. Willa thanked him for the tulips, but put them on the floor and didn’t waste any time. With a look, Willa had the server across the room at their table in seconds, pad in hand. Eric loved how she could do that, but was disappointed that the flowers were already on the floor.
Taffy looked at the ceiling with the disapproving appraisement of a Fire Prevention Bureau inspector. “There aren’t enough sprinklers in here.”
“We want the pre-theatre menu,” Willa told the server, who snapped to attention. “The pre-theatre menu includes an appetizer, entree, and dessert, guaranteed within twenty minutes.”
Willa ordered for all of them, and Eric and Taffy toed the party line.
“Are we going to the –” Eric started to say, but Willa cut in. “Taffy, tell your Dad about your new friend.”
Taffy shrugged. “He’s more of an acquaintance.” At the lift of Willa’s eyebrow, she rolled her eyes. “He’s in my social studies class.”
“You like him?” Eric said, despondent that he was losing his daughter even more now.
“I like someone else.” Taffy crossed her arms and that was the end of that line of conversation.
Eric moved in with the delicacy of a zoo worker in the tiger cage. Best to divert Taffy’s attention from the subject at hand. “I need your –” not expert, he thought, could be construed as condescending, “opinion on a foodborne infection matter.”
Taffy’s eyes brightened with excitement but she tempered it into a cool consideration. “Sure. What do you wanna know?”
Eric’s peripheral vision was caught from t
he window. Rex pressed up against the glass like Mildred Pierce.
“Uh –” Eric regrouped. “Symptoms. Say someone has an infection. How long would it normally take for symptoms to show up, and then how fast would things, uh –” Rex dropped slowly down the window, face smearing into a Munch scream. “Get bad?”
Taffy drummed a breadstick on her plate. “That depends on the infection. Usually there’re symptoms within several hours, but with certain infections the incubation period can take days or weeks.”
Willa excused herself to the restroom.
“And if someone wanted to put a substance into a food container, how hard would that be?” Eric asked. He had seen Taffy’s journals in the mail, and flipped through them once in a while just to see what she was reading. She would know something.
Rex emulated dry-humping a woman who passed him. Eric shook his head. What would it be like to be a normal person? Someone who hadn’t been possessed by a spirit who refused to leave or act his age, especially at an important family dinner?
“Nanotechnology.” Taffy sipped her bottled water with her own straw. “You can embed nanomaterials in the packaging, or the food. It’s pretty cool. Someday they’ll be able to tell if the food has gone bad. Or they can use it as nanotextured food, like yogurt.”
Eric almost knocked over his water glass. “Yogurt?”
Will furrowed her brows.
“Yeah.” Taffy tapped her finger and looked off to the side. “Nano-emulsions. Or they can use it for nanocarriers or food additives. Like flavors.”
“What do you mean by nanocarriers?” Eric asked.
“Delivery systems, Dad. You know, to … um, encapsulate any kind of nanomaterial in food, even something like,” she held up Willa’s clear carbonated drink. “This pop. It’s a whole big thing.”
Willa returned to the table. “What are you talking about?”
“Foodborne pathogens,” Taffy said.
“Okay, that’s stopping right now before I lose my appetite,” Willa said with a wince as the server brought their food.
