I met her when I was walking around the produce section holding a watermelon like it was my pregnant belly; I heard a pleasant voice behind me say, “Don’t get too attached to that or you won’t eat it.” “The watermelon baby’s name is Beth,” I said, then turned around to find a woman with reddish curly hair wearing a store name tag that also said “Beth,” and we laughed because what are the odds. She told me about the time the market got a shipment of watermelons that proceeded to explode in customers’ carts, in the giant in-store watermelon bin, on the checkout conveyor belts.
I wanted an exploding watermelon. “Well, they didn’t really explode,” Beth said, rather they abruptly cracked open and got juice everywhere. I said exploding watermelons makes a better story than abruptly cracking watermelons, so keep telling it like that.
Either way, it was apparently a huge sticky mess. I shop late at night and she works the late shift, so I often see her when I’m there. We talk while she scans the bread, the tiny orange tomatoes, the store-brand ice cream.
Advertisement She has a day job — she said she’s always worked two jobs — as a researcher at a biotech lab. She said that one day a coworker at the lab passed out after drinking coffee from the break room. Then another.
It turned out someone had put a toxin, uncommon outside the lab but readily available within, in the coffee. “But why?” I asked. She said the stakes there are high: grants are won.