Sour Milk


Charlotte Jones was often considered an unfortunate soul. You see, she wasn’t necessarily an unattractive girl, but was quite easy to pass by without notice. With hair the color of rain-beaten wood and a stature that was prone to teasing by her statuesque sisters, the only way one could remember her was by adding, “She’s the one that crashed her car into that barn on Orchard road some months ago. Remember?”

It had been snowing, and icy, and she couldn’t necessarily see where she was going. Not knowing where she was, she had pulled into a driveway and driven in a little too far, crashing right into the bright red walls of the barn. She didn’t necessarily cause a lot of damage, besides a medium-sized hole in the wood and a few spooked cows, but, this being a town that had nothing much better to talk about, her name had been plastered all over the papers with the headline, “Woman crashes into barn; frightens livestock.” And of course, she didn’t have the money to paint over the telltale red paint marks on the bumper and dented hood of her poor 1989 Accord.

She also had this annoying tendency to always be single. At twenty-five, she had been on her fair share of dates, but after a while, as her reputation become more renowned, the men stopped asking, and she didn’t dare to bring it up. She wasn’t quite sure whether it had to do with her, per say, or the nasty habit her boyfriends had of dying.

Well, ex-boyfriends.

Her family would often joke that she was a gentleman-killer, which she didn’t think was very funny at all. Her last steady boyfriend, a businessman who had more money than personality, had run off to Brazil with a librarian and had suffered a fatal snakebite wound that only allowed him enough breathing time to sign over his estate to the now rich book-lender. The one before that had gotten a bee sting (he had been severely allergic) when he was taking a bouquet of roses to his ex-girlfriend’s house. And before that, she had been dating a handsome journalist who, on a “business trip” to Laos, had choked to death on a grape that was being fed to him by a scantily clad hooker.

“Well, I suppose it helps,” her mother commented at dinner when they had again fallen onto the subject of Charlotte’s romantic status, or lack thereof. “You don’t have to worry yourself wondering if he’s cheating on you. You’d know.”

“That isn’t funny, Mom,” Charlotte replied, scooping more mashed potatoes onto her plate and taking her fork to it, sculpting little lines into the sides to form a scattered, messily elaborate, design. She was known to be gloomy, and, as her father had come to call her, the “dark little ray of sunshine” in the family. The way her parents carried on, it was no wonder why.

Her sisters did very little to help. All married (including the youngest, who was three years Charlotte’s junior), tall, and blonde, they didn’t seem to find anything wrong with openly mocking her with false pity and jokes that they thought were friendly but only proved to be tiresome and all sound the same after a while.

During that ruthless night of teasing and questioning, she decided to stick up for herself and get them to shut up, at least for a while.

“Tommy didn’t die, remember?” she said, trying in vain to defend herself.

“You dated Tommy in sixth grade. And you dumped him because he kept putting Sweethearts in your locker.”

Charlotte made a face. “Those things are disgusting.”

“Wasn’t he in a car accident a few months ago, Gloomy?” her father asked, smirking ruthlessly as he engraved a matching pattern into his own mashed potatoes. Her mother couldn’t cook; the potatoes with the consistency of cement played testament to that. “I swear I saw it in the paper.”

“No, that was Benjamin,” Charlotte explained. “Tommy was struck by lightning the day after graduation.”

Beth, Charlotte’s older sister, smirked.

“He’s okay,” Charlotte insisted.

After a stressful night, most people went to bars. Charlotte, however, tended to stay far away from bars (in case anyone came on to her and was immediately afflicted with alcohol poisoning) and, after the hellish dinner, went to the local 24-hour supermarket to take a stroll through the produce aisle. She liked being there at night, when the delis were closed, the windows dark, and the aisles free from loud and constantly-underfoot children. She liked being in the produce aisle and sticking her hands over the vegetables when the mist machines came on with that steady “hiss” that was almost pleasant.

After looking through what new odd and interesting selections they had to offer (star fruit was apparently now in season; it was everywhere), she began to walk to the bulk foods aisle on the other side of the store when she was suddenly distracted.

Two young men were in the cereal aisle, one kneeling on the floor and slicing open a large cardboard box, another standing before him, hands clasped, looking hopeful and shifting his weight eagerly in anticipation and bouncing on the balls of his feet. The one on the floor was an employee, with the signature green apron and the equally telling bags under his eyes that were probably a tribute to a sudden switch in work hours, and the other looked to be about Charlotte’s age, possibly a few years younger, who was dressed in pajama bottoms and a t-shirt. His red hair looked as though it was tousled with sleep and his eyes gazed blearily through his glasses.

Charlotte couldn’t help but be immediately interested in him. Suddenly aware that she was staring, she looked away and walked a few steps into the aisle, pretending to interest herself in the nutrition facts on the back of a box of bran flakes. She could still see him standing out of the corner of her eye.

The cardboard box finally opened and the employee handed a box of cereal to the young man, saying, “Here you go, sir. Only the one?”

“Yeah,” he answered. “Only one.”

The boy finished unloading the cereal onto the shelves, at an amazingly quick speed, and left. It was then that Charlotte noticed that the other one was hugging the cereal box to his chest, and she saw a very familiar face on its cover.

“Is that Count Chocula?” she asked, slightly amazed. She had completely forgotten her previous reservations about never talking to strangers, which definitely included never talking to those strangers that hung out in the cereal aisle in the supermarket in the middle of the night, wearing pajamas and hugging boxes of cereal.

“Yeah,” he said brightly, grinning. His smile was brilliant.

“I didn’t think they made it anymore,” Charlotte answered.

“They do,” he replied. “Just not very much. The store only gets a shipment every three months, and I tell them to call me as soon as it comes in.”

“Why don’t you get more than one box?”

He narrowed his eyes, his eyebrows furrowed. “I’m not going to be greedy,” he answered, sounding slightly confused by her inquiry. “It would be unfair if I didn’t leave some for the other people.”

Charlotte decided immediately that she liked this boy. “That’s very kind of you,” she observed.

“I could share some with you,” he offered, holding up the box. “I could go buy it, and plastic bowls and spoons, then we could go to the café and eat some.”

Charlotte smiled timidly, the warning alarms in her head going off. This boy is really nice…are you really going to lead him to his doom like this? Don’t be selfish. She ignored them.

“I’d love to.”

§

For the first few minutes, they both remained in silence as the boy poured both of them cereal. She poured her own milk. He took a spoon and tucked in tidily, smiling shyly at her.

The café that was divided from the supermarket by only empty space and a cash register was empty and dark, and they were the only inhabitants of that side of the store. The booth was uncomfortable and made her squirm, but Charlotte couldn’t help but think that this was sort of fun.

“So,” she said finally, after his cereal was already half-gone. She had taken one bite and was swirling her spoon around in the milk, watching it as it turned a swirled shade of brown. “What’s your name, anyway?”

“Oh!” He laughed quietly and put his spoon down, wiping the corner of his mouth on the back of his hand. “I’m John. Johnny, actually. You can call me Johnny.”

Charlotte nodded and took another hesitant mouthful of cereal. He didn’t budge but looked at her steadily. His eyes sparkled a nice shade of blue from behind his glasses. “And your name is…”

“Oh, Charlotte,” she answered, her face flushing red.

“Charlotte,” he said quietly. “That’s a nice name. So, Charlotte, do you often wander the supermarket in the middle of the night?”

“Yes,” she admitted. “I like the produce aisle.”

“It is pretty calming, isn’t it?” he posed. “Especially the misting.”

Charlotte gave him another one of her hesitant smiles. “I love the misting.”

They finished their bowls of cereal and stayed a few minutes afterward, moving around the last dregs of milk with their plastic spoons. They talked about their odd fascinations and compared notes on how other people reacted, and how sometimes the simplest things were the most interesting.

“Oh,” Johnny said, sounding disappointed, as he glanced at his watch. “It’s quarter after one. I better get home. I have a dog.”

Charlotte nodded in understanding. “All right.”

Johnny stacked their empty bowls and threw them away, and for a minute, Charlotte thought that he was going to leave without saying goodbye. But he returned and said, “May I have your number?”

Charlotte fought the ingrained impulse to say “no” and grabbed a napkin and a pen out of her purse, scribbling “Charlotte Jones” and her number across it in her crabby handwriting. She handed it to him and he studied it intently, his eyebrow lifted.

“Charlotte Jones? Are you, you know, that Charlotte Jones?”

“The one that drove into the barn?” she said, hearing that her voice was filled with dread.

“Yeah,” he answered, tucking it into his pajama pants pocket. “That one.”

“I am,” she replied gloomily.

He grinned again. “Awesome. Maybe we could go out tomorrow night.”

Charlotte was trying very hard to keep herself from breaking into a smile. “I would love to.”

“Great. I’ll see you later.” He grabbed his now half-empty box of Count Chocula and walked out of the café. Charlotte watched him all the way, from the table to his disappearance as he rounded the shelf of cold creams.

§


Beth had decided to make an appearance at Charlotte’s apartment after having called earlier and announcing that her dear sister just “didn’t sound right.” It was for this reason that Charlotte was now sitting, straight-backed, on her couch, eyes wide and swallowing convulsively.

“I can’t believe you’re going out on a date with him!” Beth shouted from the kitchen. “Where the hell is your Lysol? This place smells like a meat shop.”

“It’s under the sink,” Charlotte replied, crossing her feet under her and staring, eyebrows furrowed, at the kitchen table halfway across the room. Its knotty eyes stared right back. “And he’s nice.”

“He sounds nice,” Beth agreed, sounding anything but thrilled. “Too bad he’s going to end up being crushed to death by a herd of stampeding elephants.”

“He’ll be fine,” Charlotte protested.

“Yeah, he’ll be fine, just like Tommy’s fine.”

“They did a very good job with the skin grafts.”

Beth emerged from the kitchen, her hair in disarray and her fists clenched on her thin hips.

“Please,” she said, frowning. “Just be careful.”

§

Johnny kept his promise. He arrived at her apartment at promptly 7:08, just as he said he would, and knocked on her door in a surprisingly polite, slow manner.

“You look nice,” he said proudly. He looked nice, too, wearing black slacks and a button-down shirt, though she was starting to wonder if his messy hair was a hereditary condition.

As they walked to the bookstore, where they had planned on dining on fine soup and cheesecake from Starbucks and wander through the foreign language section (though neither of them knew a foreign language), Johnny was very nearly run over by a bus at the crosswalk.

Horrified, Charlotte had clung on to his shirt, certain that he was already dead.

“I’m fine,” he insisted when he saw the horrified look on her face. “I’m okay. Don’t worry.”

Charlotte couldn’t help but worry all the way to the bookstore. He was already marked for death and it was still so early.

They made it to the bookstore with only another incident of Johnny being nearly run over, and Charlotte couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief when they were safe in the confines of the large building.

They ordered the food and sat near the magazine rack. After a few minutes of intense conversation on sporadic advertising of cereal companies, Johnny went back to the counter to get their soup and cheesecake. Only milliseconds after he returned, there was a deafening, prolonged crash and sound of metal grinding on metal. Sparks flew, tables slid and chairs slid away, and the cashier screamed in horror. The only man that had been sitting at those tables was on the floor to the side, guarding his coffee and watching the scene in horror.

A car had come crashing through the wall of the café.

Acting as though nothing had happened at all, Johnny set the soup down and pushed a bowl toward Charlotte, smiling shyly.

“I should have told you,” he said as he sat down across from her, ignoring her obvious case of the shakes and the other people in the store that came running to the café with horrified looks on their faces. “I have a bad case of dumb-luck. I’m a magnet for trouble, but I always survive it, somehow.”

“You’re that Johnny?” she said, eyes wide in amazement. “The one in the paper who was attacked when a bear got loose at the zoo and fought it off with a folding chair?”

“That would be me.”

“The one who ate a hundred Peeps and lived to tell the tale?”

He looked slightly disgusted for a second, but he answered, “Yes. Give me a life-threatening situation, and I’ve survived it.”

“Many people would consider me a life-threatening situation,” she said, bending toward him slightly.

“Well, I suppose I’ll get to survive you, then,” he replied with a smile. Even with all the screaming and the clanks of wood and metal, it seemed perfectly silent.

He took her hand and she grinned. The sun broke through the gloom.

The End