“Sunday Market” by MacKenzie Mazzarisi, XII: short story

Sunday Market

“Should I grab the apples, or should you? Sorry, I don’t know how to do the social distancing stuff.”

The amount of times I’ve had this interaction working the farmer’s market each Sunday is astounding, but justified. My answer is entirely situation-dependent, and would appear totally random to someone watching me do this all day, if anyone ever did that. And for the most part, it is.

I usually say, “It doesn’t matter,” offering them the token cheap brown paper bag to dump their produce in. Then it’s their move.

Often, if they’re around twenty-five years old with blue and purple hair and their own t-shirt bag, they’ll tenuously reach into the produce basket, being sure to take what they touch, and place their produce gently in the bag they gave me to hold open. “There we go,” they say, upticking at the beginning and end of their sentence, in case I can’t read their enthusiasm from behind their mask.

If they’re over forty with a staple Karen side-bob and wrung out husband by their side who thinks “Everything looks pretty nice, honey,” they’ll definitely pick the stuff themselves. They probably also showed up at eight-thirty even though we don’t open until nine. Now, they really make sure to go through each and every piece of fruit, to ensure they’re not ripped off fifty cents every pound lest their apple have a spot on it. Trust me when I say it takes every ounce of my strength to not yell at these imbeciles for touching everything. I’d probably slap their hands away, but that wouldn’t be very social-distancey of me. And I kinda get it, everyone wants to get good fruit. But I wouldn’t put it out for sale if it were bad, and touching everything in general is nasty, even when there’s not a pandemic.

The third iteration of customers are the Boomers. These are typically well-mannered elderly couples, one with a bleached blow-out and the other holding his wife’s soaps and knit hats and whatnot that she already bought at the front of the market. They tell me that they want me to pick out the best fruit for them. “I trust you, dear. Just get me a few good ones.” I don’t mind them so much.

This system pretty much encompasses anyone who would be at a Sunday farmer’s market. But there’s a special place in Hell for this one guy who likes to complain about our tomatoes. To preface, not one other person has ever had a single negative thing to say about our tomatoes, and we usually can’t get them to

shut up about their goddamn tomato sandwiches. And they most certainly never accuse us of having something called “fake Jersey tomatoes,” whatever those are. But this guy does. One time he came right up to the tomato section, looked me dead in the eyes, and said, “I had a tomato last week, and it just didn’t smell like a Jersey tomato.” As though to prove his point, he picked up a tomato, and put it up to his nose (which was already out of his mask), and sniffed it. I swear I saw a drop of snot land right on top, pulling away from his nostril as he took another look. He then said, “Yup. Don’t smell right,” and put it back. I had to toss that one after he walked away.

I imagined what it would’ve been like to teach that guy a firm lesson in not being a weird entitled creep. Really hand his ass to him, right there. Had my boss not been right next to me, I probably would’ve told him to shove it. “Eff right off, and take that fake tomato with you while you’re at it. Take your snotty nose and your snotty attitude and go have a crap day elsewhere,” I’d say.

Or maybe, if I’d come prepared, I’d have a six-foot-social-distancing walloping stick. I could smack him right across his fat head without even having to lean across the plastic folding table. Really give him a good bonk and tell him to quit asking stupid questions. “Do you even know what a fake Jersey tomato is? Do you even know what you’re asking? I’ll tell you what, I grew these things up on planet Krypton, making sure to pump them real full of GMOs and pesticides, and when they’re done, I inject them with the taste of a real Jersey tomato. Then, I bring them down here in my spaceship, and sell them to the local idiots. Except you, sir, of course, because you’re so smart you’ve figured out they’re fake. Here’s your goddamn medal.” Then I’d give him another smack for good measure and he’d promptly cease to exist.

I think about this for a while. All the ways I could make this guy realize what an absolute doorknob he’s being. I stew on it for a good few minutes while I meander around my booth, restocking bags and throwing out the apples with holes in them. I don’t get very far into my fantasy though, before a fifty year-old looking woman comes up to me with her gangly t-shirt bag, sizing up the eggplants.

“Should I just put these in my bag, or do you want to?” Like I’d want to.

“It doesn’t matter.”

- MacKenzie Mazzarisi, XII: Short Story