The Price of Eggs

1/4/20 Awesome's Razor 18

It’s 3:30 a.m. I’m looking at zucchini when a man in a mask walks around the corner of my aisle. He stops and stares at me. I can see him out of the corner of my eyes, the only part of my face that’s visible. I’m also wearing a mask, my hoodie is pulled up; neither of us actually cuts a very menacing figure, but we’re obviously making each other uneasy.

We’re six feet apart, of course, but I’m in the middle of the only aisle that runs back to the front of the grocery store. Without turning to look at him, I step forward and hide myself behind an endcap of dried mushrooms and bury my face in a cooler of spaghetti squash. Behind me, the man shuffles past. “Thank you,” he says, relieved. 

We are the only customers in this 24-hour grocery store, a handful of which dot the Manhattan landscape. I am lucky to have one on my street. The aisles at this early hour are as empty as country roads. The half-dozen mask-wearing workers hidden about the store even freeze like deer as I walk past, looking up at me, startled, before returning to their work. I think to myself, deer would have run away. 

The shelves are as fully stocked as I’ve seen in weeks. This isn’t a surprise. In fact, it’s the reason I set my alarm for 3:00 a.m. It’s not that it’s been hard to find food and household items so much as it’s been increasingly difficult to actually go out and buy them. This store is open all night. It’s barely a block away from my apartment. But the midnight crowd was getting too busy. Too dangerous. Better to wait. 

I peruse a selection of canned tomatoes and dried beans. I had tried to order these online a few days ago. Delivery windows open up online from time to time, usually with a 48-hour wait, but half of my cart is always “Out of stock.” “Out of stock.” Out of stock.” A few weeks ago, the shopper assigned to my order would ask if I wanted a different brand, or a smaller item, or a larger one — but the last few weeks my order just arrives half-filled. I could jump online and lower the tip, but I never do. This person has literally risked their life to leave some groceries outside my door. 

The problem is that after a few weeks it simply becomes harder to know what you’ll have on hand and weighing “need” and “want” becomes a existential dilemma. The fact that “live” or “die” are potential outcomes to the question of “Do we need eggs?” is frankly absurd, but this is how I wind up in a grocery store at 3:00 a.m. wearing a mask and a hoodie, clutching a shopping basket with a Lysol wipe. 

As I’m checking out, the sound of laughter startles me. I look around and spot a young man and woman walking into the store. They are not wearing masks. They are the very picture of two tipsy lovers stumbling in for a snack on their way home from the bar — an anachronism. No bars have been open in this neighborhood for weeks. They disappear down the dessert aisle and I wonder, jealously, where they’ve been and, bitterly, why they’re not afraid like me. I turn back to my masked cashier. He flips the credit card machine around, saying nothing; I say nothing and pay. 

I walk home. I take my keys, which are wrapped in a Lysol wipe, out of my pocket. I hold the wipe as I turn them in the lock and I use the wipe to open the elevator door and punch the button for home. I look at myself in the elevator mirror. My breath from under my mask fogs my glasses and the lack of sleep fogs my brain. My hand tingles from the Lysol wipe. This is fucking insane. I am so tired. I am so proud of myself. I am so scared.

Inside my apartment, I set down the bags and wash my hands. I take off my hoodie and leave it on the hallway floor. I take off my glasses. I wash my hands again and take out the eggs and other perishables and set them on the floor. I wipe down the packages with some Lysol wipes and set them in a corner of my fridge. I wash my hands. I wipe down my glasses; I don’t bother to put them back on. If I’m being honest: I wash my hands again. I take off my clothes and stash them in the corner. I wash my hands. 

It’s a little after 4:00 a.m. when I slip back into bed. My wife is sleeping on her side, facing away from me. I put my arm around her and I lay there for a moment. I consider that perhaps it would be safer if I don’t touch anyone. I turn over. I spend the next few hours either struggling to fall asleep or dreaming that I can’t.

Sometime around 7:45 a.m. the sirens start. People waking up and realizing it’s time to make the call. They come in waves. A few minutes later, I can hear that my kids are awake so I get up and make coffee. I don’t touch the fucking eggs.

avataravataravataravataravataravataravataravataravataravataravatar

18 Comments

  3. Beautifully written. I have felt like every snippet of my life right now is a short story written by Kurt Vonnegut. Like, I walked my dog earlier, stopped by my friend’s house and I sat on her porch while we conversed through a window. It felt so weird. It’s small and of course a minor inconvenience to protect our safety but it’s weird. I constructed a mask this afternoon for my husband to wear to the store tomorrow. We have a couple n95s that I got on a construction site a long time ago (don’t worry, we couldn’t donate them since they were already opened), but we are saving those for if one of us gets sick for real. I’m shitty at sewing so I just followed a tutorial for a no-sew one. I’ll make some better ones once I bust out the sewing machine.

    (I mentioned in the DOT this morning we were awaiting COVID test results because I’m sick – they came and we are negative yay! So WTF is going on with me right now?)

  4. Glad to hear you’ve avoided this thing!

    It’s struck me on more than one occassion how even the smallest and most banal daily encounters play out in slow motion now, and it took me a while to realize: everything is traumatic. Everything takes on the spectre of life and death. And I’m humbled that this relatively controllable form of existence is my experience with it.

    • Yeah, it’s the slow motion aspect that is so weird. March was the slowest month I can remember since the Decembers when I was a very little kid.

      Also the encounters with people who don’t care at all are weird, like encountering ghosts of people who lived a century ago. I was in the grocery store a few days ago and people were almost all on the ball about not crowding, a bunch had masks, but one couple was completely oblivious. It’s easier to understand when the shut downs were starting and social pressure hadn’t kicked in, but now it seems like the world is on the same page. Except for these oddballs.

      • It’s hard to picture how we go back to normal, which isn’t to say -this- is normal now, I just don’t think we know how to feel safe yet.

        I do hope more people think about the small ways their lives have been changed. Life everywhere has a different rhythm. Everyone is or will be grappling with profound changes that don’t seem so big at first.

        • Yeah I’m not sure what normal will look like with all of our PTSD from this… I’m already like, tightening up when I see people standing too close or touching on TV.

    • The slowness is exhausting, it’s like wading through syrup. Everything seems to take more effort. I’m so tired and I don’t even know why.

    • That’s a great way to put it – everything is traumatic. Every contact I have with someone other than my husband is fraught with coordination and protective measures. Our environments and our community members are all potentially poisonous. Our homes have to be treated like sterile laboratories with our porches and entryways and stoops acting as disinfecting airlock chambers. Any communication that comes toward us could contain some of the most devastating news of our lives. All day we are on guard for it.

Leave a Reply