Ultimately these things were too expensive, so she picked a small-farm cheese and a six-pack of nice beer. “I mean, I work all the time. This is why I work, isn’t it?” she mumbled. “I’m a hard worker. I can buy this cheese. It’s just cheese, I guess.” She was standing by the cheese case, holding the cheese, looking at the cheese and pumping herself up to buy it. “Fuck it,” she mumbled, and tossed it in her basket.

When she got home, Randy asked, “Oh, cool, what’s the  occasion?”

“I dunno,” said Megan. “I just wanted to get us some fancy groceries.”

Randy poked through the bag. “No snacks?” he said.

“The snacks were all stupid,” said Megan. “It was all, like, tiny bags of dried Himalayan berries for nine bucks.”

“Hey, nice cheese.”

“And I got some fancy beer.”

“Can I have one?” he asked.

“Obviously,” said Megan. “And look at how nice that bok choy looks.”

“Oh yeah,” said Randy. He wasn’t looking at it closely enough. He was looking for snacks. “Do we have any bread for this cheese?” he asked.

“God fucking damnit.”

“What?”

“No, we don’t have any fucking bread for that cheese.”

“Oh, it’s ok, baby.”

“Well, what’s the point of the cheese if you can’t eat it?”

“We could put it on the potato. Hey, don’t look at me like that.”

“We’re not going to put the cheese on the fucking potato,” said Megan. “That’s stupid.”

“Well, hold on,” said Randy. In the cabinet he found some stale tortilla chips. “Here. We can eat it with these.”

“Are those even good?”

“They’re probably fine,” said Randy.

Megan baked the potato and cooked the greens with hot pepper. They ate the nine dollar cheese on the stale tortilla chips and Megan said, “Well, I guess this nine dollar cheese is pretty good.”

“Oh come on, it’s great.”

“It would be great if we didn’t have to eat it with these shitty chips.”

Randy sighed. “Do you remember Kelly?”

“Uhhh, sort of,” said Megan.

“She’s opening up a vintage clothing store in the neighborhood.”

“Wow.”

“And,” said Randy, looking at her sideways, “I’m doing the website for it.” He wiped his mouth and took a sip of beer.

“Oh, cool. What’s it going to, uh, look like?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t started it yet. But she’s having a launch barbeque thing in two weekends, so that’s my deadline. She’s going to give out business cards and coupons and stuff. It’s going to be a pretty big thing.”

“Sounds fun,” said Megan. Sounds like my fucking nightmare.

“So, you want to go? She’s paying me.”

“Paying you to go to her party?”

“No, Megan, paying me to do the website.”

“Oh, that’s cool.”

THREE