This morning I went to my local corner store/convenience store/bodega/depanneur/deli for some essentials, unshowered and in yesterday's clothes. (But with clean socks and underwear, so I had already decided to have a lazy day.) I picked out a bottle of Bogle Vineyards pinot noir (2008, from Sonoma Valley), and bought a box of Cheez-Its and one of those 25-cent Lindt chocolate balls (mint) to pair with it. When I brought my bounty up to the counter, the guy who owns the place, with whom I exchange pleasantries or at least friendly nods on a pretty regular basis, asked me what happened to my girlfriend.
It caught me completely off guard. I don't have a girlfriend, haven't had one recently, and have as far as I know never been in his shop with any particular girl more than, at the very most, twice. I couldn't figure out whether to just say "no, you're wrong," because I knew whatever he was thinking was wrong, or to ask "what?" I sort of mumbled something in between, a questioning but negative response.
"Oh, that's not your girlfriend? I haven't seen her in a couple months, was wondering if she'd moved."
That just brings up more questions. So there is, or was, a girl who shops, or shopped, at my local corner store who according to the shopguy could or should be my girlfriend. She must live somewhere very close to me--there are other corner stores on just about every block and mine isn't so spectacular that a non-local would seek it out.
What does this shopguy know that I don't? Who is this mystery girl, who might live in my own building for all I know? Is the shopguy going by her purchases? Does she also find that the greasy and salty faux-cheddar flavor of Cheez-Its matches well with the herbal and fresh berry notes in the Bogle pinot? IS SHE MY SOULMATE?
I'll probably never know. She probably moved away. I just laughed and said no, whoever you're thinking of is not my girlfriend. We talked for maybe a minute, by far our longest conversation in the ten months I've been going to his shop, about how regulars come in and out of his life. He didn't know who my roommates were--we don't normally shop together--and was pleased when I identified four of his other customers as such. But then he mentioned that people usually say goodbye when they leave, which sort of surprised me. I've been a regular at a few different corner stores over the years, and have never said goodbye when I left the neighborhood, city, or country.
I didn't say goodbye to Henry, whose real name was Harry but who I called Henry for reasons I don't remember. Henry had a battered and graffitied dep, or depanneur (Quebecoise for corner store), at the corner of Clark and Duluth which shared a wall with my very first apartment. I used to walk the twenty feet through the snow in my ridiculous-looking bright red slippers to buy four-dollar Labatt 8.1% forty-ouncers and candy bars. Henry was crazy, but as with most everyone I met that year, it was an entertaining and good-natured kind of crazy. I and my roommates found out more about him throughout the year--first that, in addition to French and English (as required in that city and that profession), he also spoke fluent Spanish, which is pretty unusual in Quebec. It turned out Henry hailed from Guyana. He was dark-skinned and I suppose I had assumed he was South Asian, but nope. Guyana. I never found out how he ended up in Montreal. A few months later, I walked into the dep to find Henry speaking Chinese with a dark-skinned five-year-old Chinese boy, who Henry introduced as his son. "I haven't seen him since he was a baby," Henry told me. "He's been living in China with his mother."
We had naturally assumed Henry was dealing drugs in the store, a fact he half-confirmed when he announced one day that he had put a stop to his drug and alcohol habits. This was shortly after I had met his son, and a few months after he hosted an impromptu and illegal after-hours party in the dep. At that party, according to my roommate Mike, he stripped down to his tattered boxers, stood on his counter, and vigorously thrusted into the air, revealing his balls to the crowd while Mike stood awkwardly with a six-pack in his hand, trying to buy it before the 11:00 curfew on alcohol.
Henry remembered me after I moved, or at least he returned my waves when I walked by his dep. I tried to make it a point to buy my booze from him if I was in the neighborhood, but I moved farther and farther away until I graduated and moved to New York. I never said goodbye, and now I wonder if I should have.
I'm moving in a few months. I'll make an effort to say goodbye to my San Francisco shopguy. I'll even make a effort to learn his name before that happens.
I'm still trying to decide if I'll ever ask him which girl he was thinking of.
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