“Baby bok choy, on sale, $2 a pound,” the welcoming female voice announces. She sounds so friendly and I squint as my mind tries to pinpoint her race and age. It’s impossible. 

Amazing, I think, wondering if it’s an artificial voice Jeff Bezos directed his teams to create, or the perfect voice actor making the training tape for the one that’s coming.

As I pass the boxes of dried linguine, it occurs to me I don’t even want pasta. There’s just something comforting about pushing my cart and its handful of items through the clean, wide lanes.

I close my eyes and take a deep breath, letting all the scents of the store fill my nose. Disappointingly, it doesn’t have an identifiable smell. 

Looking at the floors, I keep waiting to see an upturned tile or a pattern of lazy mopping that’s left the corners and cracks with gutters of thickened dirt.

That’s how it was at the Landmark’s Grocers of my childhood. My little brother and I fought to get in the bottom of Mom’s cart to push our Matchbox cars along the floor, making engine noises and being scolded for sending them flying off into the feet of oncoming customers.

Our hands were all over those filthy floors. They were mopped with cleaning products that were mostly water and it just moved slushy Chicago slopped boot-tracks from one side of the aisle to the next. A bouquet of almost expired meat was everywhere. Combined with the chilling ice that was hardly ever replaced under those cheap cuts, the body odor, and overused fragrance samples on the customers, it’s what poverty smells like.

The memory blots out the scents of seasonal spices and Asian sauces. I don’t need anything here, anyways, and I start the wander over to the fresh pasta cabinet.

Spinach-and-ricotta-filled ravioli, I decide, with a pine nut pesto and some fresh grated Wisconsin cheese. Not too decadent.

At the tables with the day’s catch, an older black woman looks up from the fresh crab and gives me a big smile. I can’t fight the infectiousness and I smile back, feeling like an uncomfortable kid again. 

I meander on, wondering if she actually bought one. They’re $35/lb.

The moment doesn’t last and I’m wandering past the butcher, slicing the side of an impressive steer. The sausage sacks, near his grinder, are making my mouth water for Vienna sausages.

I found a bodega near me that sells them for $2 and it’s a guilty pleasure I indulge every 6 months or so. The creaking sound of the aluminum can top still triggers me and reminds me of when they were the prize for stealing change from my dad’s discarded pants. Even now, I’m not repulsed sticking my fingers into the coagulated fat they settle in, with its unnatural translucent color and gelatinous texture, to pull one out. With a stack of ritz crackers, the journey through a single can and I’m 6 again watching the Spider-Man cartoon on Saturday morning.

“The ricotta is especially good today!” A young, black, hipster in a Whole Foods apron tells me, “And it’s on sale for $8 a pound.”

“Thanks,” I reply, with a hint of urban inflection added to a nod.

Into my basket plops what I eyeball to be about a pound. I’ve got some pesto at home and the pine nuts are near the exit, so I start making my way out.

Meandering back towards the front and the waiting registers, the old black woman is still at the crab. But before I pass, I see her pat them with her hands and walk on, giving her small purse a reassuring touch.

It makes me sad.

Upstairs there aren’t many people and it feels like the employees outnumber the customers 2-to-1. I love all the brown faces, though. And I’ve never asked an employee here a question they couldn’t answer.

At Landmark’s, the answers were always a yell to someone three aisles over, a dumbfounded expression, or an argument over whose responsibility it was to know the answer in the first place.

But that was a long time ago.

On my phone, I show the Amazon Prime scanner code to the checkout girl, and she glimpses my Lake Shore Drive wallpaper.

“You’re from Chicago?” she asks with a smile I can’t tell is sincere.

“Yeah. A year ago.” I answer, mirroring it with my own.

“What do you think?”

I pause, then answer the way I was conditioned to, “It’s nice.”