A Little More Fiction

“Here we go,” Tanya said. “How about him? He walks with a certain air of confidence.”

My sister Tanya and I were making our way from the supermarket to our car, our hands full of groceries in ecologically-correct fabric bags. “Him” was pushing a cart ahead of us, just out of hearing. His walk did, in fact, border on swagger. His shoulders were broad in a grey tweed jacket, and I liked his hair. But . . .

“He has tiny feet,” I said.

Tanya leaned her head to the left. “Oh, yeah. They are tiny. We don’t like tiny feet.”

“Not on men, anyway,” I said. “Maybe we should loosen up a little on our criteria.”

“Mmmm . . . We do have a rather long list.”

“But every item is important,” I said. “Like the car.”

“The car is definitely important.”

I watched the man in the grey jacket head toward a group of cars not far from ours. “Oooh . . . oooh . . .” I poked Tanya. “If he gets into that S550, I’m gonna flag him down and tell him he has cute feet.”

“I’ll be right behind you,” Tanya said.

The guy stopped his cart one car short of the Mercedes and used his key to unlock the trunk of a large white sedan.

“Oh, crap,” Tanya said. “The Crown Vic.”

“With rust,” I said.

“With rust,” Tanya echoed.

Our pace slowed as we approached my car. “Another one down,” I said.

“How many is that now?” Tanya asked.

“I dunno . . . I’ve lost count.”

“Me, too.”

“Do you suppose we should start over?” I said, unlocking the trunk and placing groceries inside.

“Like making that guy number one?”

“Well, we could,” I said, opening the driver’s side door. “Or we could make the next guy number one. After we take a look at our criteria and maybe do a little updating.”

We both got in the car. “Yeah,” Tanya said. “A little updating sounds like a plan.”

And with that I started the engine of our late aunt’s 1988 Ford Festiva, and we drove away.