The mystic key, part 2
A short story of mystical realism
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The store’s doors parted to emit a middle-aged woman, perhaps ten years beyond Emmet. She cradled a bag of groceries in one arm on top of which presided a loaf of the store’s fresh-baked sourdough. Pausing to yield the right-of-way, Emmet observed her as an ordinary sort—graying shoulder-length hair, wrinkled skin that she didn’t attempt to smooth with lotions, and a well-worn denim jacket over a T-shirt from Reno’s Silver Legacy Casino. The modest diamond on her left ring finger suggested a partner who’d perhaps enjoy the sourdough for lunch or dinner or both. Emmet could not discern the exact nature of the relationship, of course, but there was a relationship for this plain woman nonetheless, a relationship within a humble life whose excitements and entertainments perhaps didn’t extend much past a 200-mile radius upon whose fringes lay “The Greatest Little City on Earth,” as her shirt proclaimed.
Emmet knew Reno well enough from a few visits and various transits through the airport, knew its general spirit as announced by the somewhat ubiquitous presence of slot machines. He hardly noticed them these days, but he remembered his first encounter some years earlier on a one-way return flight after a particularly enlivening retreat on the California shores of Lake Tahoe. The stark contrast between the two locales had struck like walking out of an air-conditioned hotel into a wall of blistering humidity in the American South. The gambling, drinking, smoking, and carousing that characterized Reno’s casino scene…not really his kind of thing but apparently appealing to the woman with the sourdough. A woman who had her own life history of perhaps 65 years, from when she was a baby and a little girl to a teenager and a young woman. A life of hopes and dreams and acceptances and compromises and disappointments and regrets, all wrapped up in this bundle of worldly desires, this unique expression of—
No, she is much more than that. Emmet fought back his predilections to see through the façade, then said in his heart, I see You, my Friend, I see You. Emmet directed his love not to the woman as a personality, but to the Friend of Friends within her. For surely the Omnipresent One was there—must be there—as much as in a brilliant sunset, an inspiring song, a place of pilgrimage, or the form of a saint. The Friend may be more hidden in this particular embodiment, thwarted from shining through by the scattering matrices of human egotism, whether in bold self- assertion or meek self-deprecation, but there nonetheless. And perhaps, perhaps—
Emmet caught her eyes for a moment and smiled. A smile without guile or agenda, a smile of lustless innocence and simple grace. A smile from his soul to the Friend in hers that said, “I see You, Friend. I see You before me. I see your deepest truth of being wanting to reveal itself.” A smile of loving joy that had no purpose other than to draw out, if even for one brief moment, that Friend dwelling universally in all, in the saint and the sinner, in the just and the unjust.
And Emmet’s heart leapt when the Friend of Friends, seemingly stirred within the woman, smiled back through her otherwise unremarkable countenance.
Emmet pushed his cart through the doors. After stopping to select some asparagus, displayed up front with store’s weekly specials, he paused again a short distance from the bakery case whence he’d select a few bagels for his family. One plain, one sesame, one cracked pepper, unless, of course, the poppy seed was available. But he had to wait his turn; an adult couple in their primes were at that moment filling a box of doughnuts. The man wore a button up and tie with his khakis, topped off with a mauve sport coat. Clean cut, good hair of darker brown—clearly a man of self-respect. His partner, too: she wore a tasteful floral dress, knee length with short sleeves, draped nicely upon a trim and well-proportioned frame. Brunette curls graced her shoulders and well-chosen cosmetics graced the angles of her face.
Emmet deduced they were buying treats for church, which, being a Saturday, implied Seventh-Day Adventists or Jehovah’s Witnesses—the Adventist church was scarcely a mile to the east, and the Kingdom Hall set just a mile beyond that. Their faiths were certainly distinct from his own, with theologies he couldn’t much relate to, and a strangeness that—
He shook the thought loose and corrected himself. Yet, I see you, Friend. I see You in them, for though theirs is a different approach that what we share, they love You, too. And I know you accept that love as you accept my own.
The couple finished gathering their dozen and moved toward the self-checkout. “Enjoy your goodies,” Emmet said to the Friend of Friends in them as they passed, offering again a guileless smile from the heart.
“We will, thank you,” replied the Friend in the man, reflecting a kind dignity and an appreciation for being acknowledged.
After gathering his bagels and a tub of hummus from the deli case, Emmet proceeded on his usual path through the store, a path of tactical efficiency for which his shopping list was precisely organized—another artifact of the COVID days when he minimized the minutes he spent in public places. Truth be told, he’d developed his commando style long before any pandemic concerns simply to make more efficient use of his time, especially with quick sorties into Trader Joe’s when returning from the Sacramento airport on business trips. Never much of a browser, he knew exactly what he wanted and where to find it. He needed all of nine minutes, even if the store was crowded. Kudos to TJ’s for their keen attentiveness to bring reinforcements to the cashiering stations on demand. Those stores managers would probably make good special-teams coaches in the NFL.
Approaching the refrigerator case of commercial cheeses—the eight-ounce blocks of Tillamook Extra Sharp Cheddar, on sale, being the day’s target—Emmet again preempted his habitual sizing-up of ordinary people. He saw the Friend presenting to him in a new form, here as a young mother bearing some post-partem plumpage, who handed a package of mozzarella sticks to the Friend in the form of her daughter. Just over a year in this body, Emmet guessed for the little girl, though his estimations had steadily lost accuracy since the time when his own cheese-loving son—the one who had a distinct preference for the Tillamook ever since a visit to the Oregon-coast factory—was of a similar age.
I see you, my Friend, Emmet said again to the presence resonating in his heart—and in theirs. He exchanged no glances with the duo, engaged as they were with each other, but the Friend smiled back at him nonetheless through a tingle of sweetness in his being. He prayed that the two would share much joy in the years ahead, as he had already shared with his own child.
Along the back aisle, the Friend next presented in the guise of a twenty-something store clerk who teased Emmet about his reusable grocery box, the one adorned not with the branding of the clerk’s employer but rather with that of their primary competitor in the region. Emmet returned the amusement and, with this stocky and stubbled manifestation of the Friend of Friends, enjoyed a few minutes’ banter about shopping the local sales. Emmet told of those Thursdays after school; the clerk reported on halving the grocery bill for his family of six; together they recounted the delight of watching the discounts at the competitor’s store tally up after everything was scanned, sometimes slashing the total by 50% or more, a kind of endorphin-laden reward that they agreed was better—and more dependable—than seeking a similar thrill on the Reno slots. (No offense, Emmet thought, to the Friend in the woman with the sourdough who was undoubtedly on the road by now.)
Emmet was delighted, too, to hear that this responsible family man had learned one of Mother’s favorite defenses against inflation: eat the sales. Eat the sales rather than shopping with the kind of ingrained mindlessness that retailers and manufacturers alike tend to exploit. (No offense to the clerk’s employer, nor to the primary competitor in the region.)
In the open space of the produce section, the Friend presented to Emmet in many forms. A grizzled, white-bearded man in equally aged jeans and flannel shirt was the sort that usually made Emmet wonder whether there were old ‘49ers still hanging around the Sierra Nevada foothills from the gold rush days, the ones that filled Grass Valley with the continuous din of three-hundred gold-quartz pulverizing stamp mills and who flooded Sacramento and San Francisco with the runoff of massive placer-mining operations. Sometimes the Friend in those bodies looked like they’d woken up in their log cabins after 150 years of unintended hibernation. Or maybe the lingering spirit of those pell-mell days still pervaded the soil like the discarded mercury, attracting suitable souls just as the mercury so readily amalgamated with microscopic gold. Either way, Emmet smiled at the Friend in him, and the Friend smiled back.
He smiled, too, at the Friend in the produce clerk who obviously worked Saturdays with the same consistency as Emmet’s shopping; at the Friend in a newlywed couple who were learning to run a household together with a debate between green beans and Brussels sprouts; at the Friend in a young woman who affirmed her bodily autonomy through abundant piercings and tattoos; at the Friend of Friends in an older gentleman whose size 10-4E, Velcro-strap New Balances seemed almost comically oversized for his shorts stature, but a stature that likely gave the Friend in him a toughness that served well in—if his ball cap was an indication—Operation Desert Storm.
Emmet chatted briefly with the Friend in a shortish woman about his own age as they probed avocados (also on sale this week) for the desired firmness. Behind her round-lensed glasses, she reminded him of any number of girls he’d known in high school, all of whom were grown up—or out, as the case may be—and passing through midlife as he was. He could see her as a teenager, roaming the halls in pre-torn jeans and a pre-torn concert shirt from The Go-Go’s. She looked to Emmet as if she was having a rough time in this day barely begun, and maybe…. He shared a smile with the Friend in her, a simple, silent greeting of kindness that might carry her spirits through the hours to come.
And through her he again saw the Friend smile back. Mission accomplished.
Emmet wound around to the aisles of pasta, crackers, and canned goods and saw the Friend in a pair he’d encountered during previous visits—a caretaker with one of the residents of the special-needs group home, the Friend in the caretaker exercising endless patience on every outing to once more divert the single-minded desire of the Friend in the gangly, awkward form of the inmate for a Coke.
I see You, Friend, Emmet felt in his thoughts, and I thank You for the love You demonstrate through them, for the caring and the compassion. Indeed, dear Friend, I see Your grace and beauty and joy even in what many would consider—as I once did—this broken form before me. I know that you are in her as you are in all others—in the lovely and handsome as well as the ugly and homely, in the young and the old, in the ignorant and wise, as much in the honest as in the criminal. You are always there, always there.
Emmet, his list fulfilled, pushed his cart to where the Friend of Friends presented as one of the cashiers, a sixty-something woman who shamelessly announced her personality through flair. A pink ball cap upon which silver sequins spelled out LOVE. A grocers’ apron bedecked with many pins, a collection revealing a marked preference for Winnie-the-Pooh. And unlike Emmet’s first encounter at the door, this soul clearly fed the profit margins of the cosmetic manufacturers—lipstick, blush, wrinkle cream, eye liner, her lips and cheekbones suggesting also the Botox treatments favored by celebrities.
Once—even half an hour earlier—Emmet would have dismissed her as little more than a showcase of vanity, but that has changed now.
Dear Friend, I see You.
And though Emmet exchanged but the usual courtesies with the cashier—she referred to him as “honey” at least three times—it was through her smile that the Friend spoke to him as well.
I see you, too, dear one.
Emmet bagged up his groceries—another habit retained from the Thursdays of his youth, one that he liked to indulge on most occasions because, as he frequently explained, he knew how everything would be unloaded at home and could thus expedite that task with a little preemptive sorting.
As he wheeled his cart back outside, he shared more smiles with the simple thought, Friend—with a young couple carrying a newborn, with another elderly man and his wife, with an energetic clerk of high-school age, with a towering leather-clad man with a bandana who’d likely just parked his Harley.
And each time, the Friend of Friends smiled back.
After riding the cart to his car without concern over appearances, Emmet transferred his purchases into his hatchback, stowed the cart in the return (pushing the other carts together, to help the Friend who’d retrieve them later), and buckled into the driver’s seat.
He tilted his head back, closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and basked in the radiance of a full heart and bliss-filled soul. Of all the places he could be on a Saturday—
He checked the thought.
The Friend of Friends, was right: right here as much as anywhere, right now as much as any when. And he’d been handed the key.
Emmet started the car, backed out, and began his drive home.
Saturdays—and all days—would never be the same.
(Finis)
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Very entertaining and enlightening.