A figure is standing there, a large figure in a tan uniform, a security guard, I realize, given the lateness of the hour. And I also realize that I am ready to present myself directly to him: Hi, my name is Desi; I’m the spaceman you have been waiting for, whose image floats cheerily over your head even as we speak. And as soon as I think of saying these words, all that I have imagined for myself crumbles at once. I pull my hat down low and then stuff my hands in my pockets and I turn my face aside. I am not a fool. The more rational part of me does not really expect this world to understand the iconography of their ubiquitous Mr. Smiley Face. I am drawing nearer, trying to navigate with peripheral vision, my face still turned sharply aside, focusing on the metal newspaper box to the right of the doors, allowing the guard a benign interpretation of my refusal to look at him. “Evening,” I say and then, cleverly, I refer to the newspaper headline which I want him to believe has entranced me. “‘Fear and Hope at the End of the Millennium.’ How often those two things go together, do they not?”
He makes no reply but neither does he try to stop me. I have already stepped onto the rubber pad and the doors swing open with a sound like the one that admits me to the life-giving atmosphere of my home craft from the vacuum of space. I cross the threshold, I am inside one of Earth’s cathedrals of consumerism and the lights dazzle me and I glance quickly about and see no creatures and I duck my head and put on my Groovy Glasses with the dark lenses, affixing my Snappy Sports Strap at the back to hold them on me in the absence of anything quite like earth creatures’ ears on my head. I thrust my hands back into my pockets and head off into an empty space to my right, away from the presence of store clerks and any of my fellow shoppers. But even as I avoid them, I am thrilled with the idea of them: my fellow shoppers.
Music plays from above. I’m Bluer Than Blue. How ironic. I am whatever is the opposite of that sentiment. I am redder than red. But now there is a metallic clash of shopping carts nearby and I am yellower than yellow, dashing forward, away from the sound, past a great silver case radiating heat, full of whole rotisserie chickens, and past tables Where it Costs Less to Get More, tables spilling over with French bread and cream cakes and angel-food cakes and cinnamon cakes and Special Sale Half Price fruit cakes and past bins of Big Savings on tubes of Christmas wrapping paper and bags of bows, and the sound that frightened me has ceased. It was the late-night work of some bag boy rounding up the evening’s stray carts, I am sure. And now I am in the vast and deserted pharmacy space and I slow down and I am alone and I am happy and I stop and I am standing before rows of mouthwash and they are full of motif and reprise: blue mint and cool mint and peppermint and soft mint and freshmint and my head is spinning with a strange delight and I stagger a bit farther and now there are many ways to hold your false teeth in your head, a matter about which this world is as deeply sympathetic and attentive as the most wonderful and loving father or mother. One can cling, in one’s prosthetic vulnerability, to Dentrol and Sea Bond and Fixodent and Poli-Grip and Dentu-Grip and ORAfix and effergrip and Rigident and Cushion Grip and Klutch. I am quaking now with an irrational hope. For what I do not know.
I take off my sunglasses to see all these things in their natural light. My eyes throb for a moment with the brightness, but I adjust. I adjust. I am happy to be here. I am awash in a sense of the possibility of things. Another few steps and there are so many ways to clean one’s teeth, one of them Age-Defying. That is all I need from this section. I turn a corner. To stand against the dark stellar wind of mortality, a tube of toothpaste held valiantly before you: perhaps this is the powerful outer edge of yearning.
And now I am among the lipsticks and foundations and blushes and fingernail polishes and mascaras and powders, women set in cardboard all about me, their heads thrown back in perpetual smiles, defiant smiles, it seems to me, rich in Body Fantasies that Make a Statement with the Color of Vibrant Life that Stays on You and Only You. Yes these women, too, are facing the specter of physical decay that confronts all the creatures on this planet — and on my planet, too — on every inhabited planet in the known universe — and these women throw their heads back and laugh and they smile and they are confident and I am standing in the middle of this place, learning so much, and I turn and a woman’s face — at first I see it as a face from the racks of cosmetics, but I am wrong — a woman’s face, drawn and plain and washed pale as death from the fluorescent lights, turns and sees mine, a tube of Maybelline Great Lash Waterproof mascara in her hand, and her eyes widen at the sight of me and I am suddenly keenly aware of my sunglasses in my hand and she screams.
“Hi,” I say. “My name is Desi.”
She screams again. There are voices from the other side of the store. Away from my spaceship, on this planet’s surface, I could alter the consciousness of only one, perhaps two, creatures at once in, at most, a three-pace radius. I take a step toward this woman who raises her tube of mascara before her, as if it were a weapon. “I am a friendly guy,” I say, but she is opening her mouth to scream once more and I quickly wave my hand. She goes glassy-eyed and yawns and smacks her lips, looking about her.
“Hi,” she says to no one in particular. “I know a little song.”
The other voices, shouting, are coming nearer. I hear a man cry, “It came from over there.”
“Three little fishies,” the woman before me begins to sing.
I put my Groovy Glasses on and I back away, feeling the heat of panic spreading down my arms and into my hands. I realize my visit to Kroger has come to an end. And things could become much worse than that, as well. Much worse. I hear the electric doors whoosh open in the distance. More voices. The guard has rushed in, I know. I move away quickly, away from the door for the moment, back to the turning I made into the cosmetics aisle and then I go up the cross aisle, keeping low, moving deeper into the store, fleeing the gathering of Earthlings but not without the stiff hot fear of trapping myself. I turn again, my Chuck Taylors making a terrible racket beneath me. I can only hope that my pursuers will split up in their search and that they will not have torches and dogs, and I am in the full flowering of panic now, I realize. I am squeaking along among great bundles of disposable baby diapers, Huggies and Pampers, and I wish for that now, very badly, to be in my wife Edna Bradshaw’s arms and she will huggy me and pamper me and we will be safe in the middle of the air and I wish to catch no one up in the clouds ever again. Let this world be.
I am approaching the western wall of the store. Bins again before me, tree stands and Christmas lights and plug-in nativity scenes, though given my circumstances, I am less enchanted now with the Incredible Holiday Savings available here. Sadly, all that matters at this moment is that I must turn right toward the front of the store or left toward the back or retrace my steps. I go to the left, there are less than a dozen more paces to the far corner, but up ahead I see a door and I rush. I had a good plan after all. This will take me into a storage room and then perhaps — almost certainly — a delivery door out the back of the building.
A sign is there: NOT A PUBLIC EXIT. But I am prepared to defy this sign, and I welcome the implication of still another exit — a PRIVATE one — through this way. Private is what I deeply desire. And I arrive and I grasp the handle and I turn it and it will not yield. I turn the handle hard and the door is metal and the lock is heavy-duty and I am ill-equipped for the use of physical force. I am heating up again. I spin around and I am trapped in the farthest corner of this vast place, the rows and rows and rows stacking up before my eyes ablaze in fluorescence, blocking my escape, sealing my doom, the voices are drawing nearer, though they are distinct now, separate.