At the Whole Foods in Clarendon, there was a loft with some tables and chairs where I often sat looking down on shoppers roaming the salad bar. I had heard a report on NPR that said you should get a lot of toppings at a salad bar. Stuff like nuts, cheese, and dried fruit, all of which are more expensive per pound than the price per pound of any salad bar. A bit of lettuce is okay, but not too much. It was clear to me that no one who shopped at this salad bar had heard that report. They always loaded up on sweet potatoes and other heavy root vegetables, the worst choice of all, the report had said.
Sometimes I saw my beautiful friend Gulnar, who was on the copy desk with me at Tax Analysts. She always bought prepared food and expensive water. “She treats it like a cafeteria! I bet she doesn’t even look at the prices!” I told my boyfriend. We were in the process of breaking up, and once we did, these kinds of observations would die inside me, so I needed to get out as many as I could.
Experts were always coming to Tax Analysts to improve our lives, because the financial crash of 2008 hadn’t happened yet. Once there was a skincare expert who met with us individually to shine a special light on our faces that showed how well we had applied our daily combination sunscreen-moisturizers. Gulnar was the first person he met with and also the only person in the whole office who applied her sunscreen-moisturizer correctly. She was too polite to tell anyone this, but word got around. I decided I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of looking at my youthful skin through his stupid light and telling me I had already done something wrong. “It’s free, and he’s really nice! You should meet with him,” Sonya said. As I said I didn’t want to, a thick wind of rage formed in me. Not rage at Sonya. It was a free-floating thing I didn’t understand.
Another time, an “ergonometrist” evaluated how well we were sitting in our chairs. We went into a conference room and watched his slideshow explaining all the ways that sitting correctly at work and in the car can improve your life. I told Sonya and Gulnar he was just trying to get us to work more. “Lucy, you’re so cynical,” Sonya said. She was much better at the work than I was, and she liked being there. I didn’t like anything; I only loved and hated, like Catullus.
One evening after work I was sitting alone as usual in the loft above the salad bar, cutting myself pieces of a mango with a plastic knife. It cost more than $3. I was shocked when the cashier rang it up. I didn’t want it anymore, but I didn’t feel like I could say so, because it was the only thing I was buying. For some reason, I kept thinking everyone in the salad bar down below was my now-ex-boyfriend. Then one of them was him. I knew he would make a salad bar salad with romaine lettuce, shredded carrots (which weren’t economically advisable to purchase at a salad bar), raisins (which were), and green goddess dressing. As I watched him make that exact salad, prickles of rage gathered in my chest, then wrapped around me. They moved up and down my back. They felt like ecstasy. He often said I was a very angry person. He probably meant himself, but he also was probably right, by coincidence.
I wanted to make a salad with only toppings, but what if the cashier peered in at the contents of my salad through the plastic while she was ringing it up? I know this isn’t in the spirit of the salad bar, but it’s not illegal, I would say. And what if my ex-boyfriend looked up into the loft and saw me alone eating a mango, and knew that I had been there for two hours? He’d pretend he didn’t see me, and I wouldn’t have to do anything. But what if I bought a condo in Clarendon with a subprime mortgage? I’d prance around the pristine streets in the late morning on weekends, when the fresh generation of professionals I was a part of brunched after a night of college-style drinking and sex, then never called each other again.
I had all the answers and I was free.
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Lucy Biederman‘s recent work has appeared in Sixth Finch and the Exposition Review. She is the author of the Walmart Book of the Dead (Vine Leaves Press, 2017) and lives in Chicago.
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image: “Sunnyside:” Kelly Moyer is an award-winning poet and fiber artist, who pursues her muse through the cobbled streets of New Orleans’s French Quarter. When not writing, stitching or weaving, she is likely to be found wandering the mountains of North Carolina, where she resides with her partner and two philosopher kittens, Simone and Jean-Paul. Hushpuppy, her collection of short-form poetry, was recently released by Nun Prophet Press.
Rejection Letters 