Ahead of me now are two giggling children, very young, pulling packets of seasoning mix out of racks. A young woman in jeans looks around the end of row and snarls, “Jackson! Misty! Put those back!” I jump. I know she wasn’t talking to me, but the tone sets my teeth on edge. One child squeals, right beside me now, and the other says, “Won’t!” The woman, her face squeezed into a strange shape by her anger, rushes past me. I hear a child yelp and do not turn around. I want to say, “Quiet, quiet, quiet,” but it is not my business; it is not all right to tell other people to be quiet if you are not the parent or the boss. I hear other voices now, women’s voices, someone scolding the woman with the children, and turn quickly into the cross-aisle. My heart is running in my chest, faster and stronger than usual.

People choose to come to stores like this, to hear this noise and see other people being rushed and angry and upset. Remote ordering and delivery failed because they would rather come and see other people than sit alone and be alone until the delivery comes. Not everywhere: in some cities, remote ordering has been successful. But here… I steer around a center display of wine, realize I’ve gone past the aisle I wanted, and look carefully all ways before turning back.

I always go down the spice aisle, whether I need spices or not. When it’s not crowded — and today it’s not — I stop and let myself smell the fragrances. Even over floor wax, cleaning fluid, and the scent of bubble gum from some child nearby I can detect a faint blend of spices and herbs. Cinnamon, cumin, cloves, marjoram, nutmeg… even the names are interesting. My mother liked to use spices and herbs in cooking. She let me smell them all. Some I did not like, but most of them felt good inside my head. Today I need chili spice. I do not have to stop and look; I know where it is on the shelf, a red-and-white box.

I am drenched in sweat suddenly. Marjory is ahead of me, not noticing me because she is in grocery store shopping mode. She has opened a spice container — which, I wonder, until the air current brings me the unmistakable fragrance of cloves. My favorite. I turn my head quickly and try to concentrate on the shelf of food colorings, candied fruit, and cake decorations. I do not understand why these are in the same aisle with spices and herbs, but they are.

Will she see me? If she sees me, will she speak? Should I speak to her? My tongue feels as big as a zucchini. I sense motion approaching. Is it her or someone else? If I were really shopping, I would not look. I do not want cake decorations or candied cherries.

“Hi, Lou,” she says. “Baking a cake?”

I turn to look at her. I have not seen her except at Tom and Lucia’s or in the car to and from the airport. I have never seen her in this store before. This is not her right setting… or it may be, but I didn’t know it. “I — I’m just looking,” I say. It is hard to talk. I hate it that I am sweating.

“They are pretty colors,” she says, in a voice that seems to hold nothing but mild interest. At least she is not laughing out loud. “Do you like fruitcake?”

“N-no,” I say, swallowing the large lump in my throat. “I think… I think the colors are prettier than the taste.” That is wrong — tastes are not pretty or ugly — but it is too late to change.

She nods, her expression serious. “I feel the same way,” she says. “The first time I had fruitcake, when I was little, I expected it to taste good because it was so pretty. And then… I didn’t like it.”

“Do you… do you shop here often?” I ask.

“Not usually,” she says. “I’m on my way to a friend’s house and she asked me to pick up some things for her.” She looks at me, and I am once more conscious of how it is hard to talk. It is even hard to breathe, and I feel slimy with the sweat trickling down my back. “Is this your regular store?”

Yes, I say.

“Then maybe you can show me where to find rice and aluminum foil,” she says.

My mind is blank for a moment before I can remember; then I know again. “The rice is third aisle, halfway along,” I say. “And the foil’s over on Eighteen—”

“Oh, please,” she says, her voice sounding happy. “Just show me. I’ve already wandered around in here for what feels like an hour.”

“Show — take you?” I feel instantly stupid; this is what she meant, of course. “Come on,” I say, wheeling my basket and earning a glare from a large woman with a basket piled high with produce. “Sorry,” I say to her; she pushes past without answering.

“I’ll just follow,” Marjory says. “I don’t want to annoy people…”

I nod and head first for the rice, since we’re on Aisle Seven and that is closer. I know that Marjory is behind me; knowing that makes a warm place on my back, like a ray of sun. I am glad she cannot see my face; I can feel the heat there, too.

While Marjory looks at the shelves of rice — rice in bags, rice in boxes, long-grain and short-grain and brown, and rice in combinations with other things, and she does not know where the kind of rice is that she wants — I look at Marjory. One of her eyelashes is longer than the others and darker brown. Her eyes have more than one color in them, little flecks in the iris that make it more interesting.

Most eyes have more than one color, but usually they’re related. Blue eyes may have two shades of blue, or blue and gray, or blue and green, or even a fleck or two of brown. Most people don’t notice that. When I first went to get my state ID card, the form asked for eye color. I tried to write in all the colors in my own eyes, but the blank space wasn’t big enough. They told me to put “brown.” I put “brown,” but that is not the only color in my eyes. It is just the color that people see because they do not really look at other people’s eyes.

I like the color of Marjory’s eyes because they are her eyes and because I like all the colors in them. I like all the colors in her hair, too. She probably puts “brown” on forms that ask her for hair color, but her hair has many different colors, more than her eyes. In the store’s light, it looks duller than outside, with none of the orange glints, but I know they are there.

“Here it is,” she says. She is holding a box of rice, white, long-grained, quick-cooking. “On to the foil!” she says. Then she grins. “The cooking kind, not the fencing kind, I mean.”

I grin back, feeling my cheek muscles tighten. I knew what kind of foil she meant. Did she think I didn’t know, or was she just making a joke? I lead her to the middle cross-aisle of the store, all the way across to the aisle that has plastic bags and plastic storage dishes and rolls of plastic film and waxed paper and aluminum foil.

“That was quick,” she says. She is quicker to pick out the foil she wants than she was with the rice. “Thanks, Lou,” she says. “You were a big help.”

I wonder if I should tell her about the express lines at this store. Will she be annoyed? But she said she was in a hurry.

“The express lines,” I say. My mind blanks suddenly, and I hear my voice going flat and dull. “At this time, people come in and have more than the express lines sign says—”

“That’s so frustrating,” she says. “Is there one end or the other that’s faster?”

I am not sure what she means at first. The two ends of the checkout go the same speed, one coming as another leaves. It’s the middle, where the checker is, that can be slow or fast. Marjory is waiting, not rushing me. Maybe she means which end of the row of checkout stands, if not the express lanes, is faster. I know that; it’s the end nearest the customer services desk. I tell her, and she nods.

“Sorry, Lou, but I have to rush,” she says. “I’m supposed to meet Pam at six-fifteen.” It is 6:07; if Pam lives very far away she will not make it.

“Good luck,” I say. I watch her move briskly down the aisle away from me, swerving smoothly around the other shoppers.