Ketchup Bottle

I watched a middle-aged woman walk out of the condiment aisle and hoped it hadn't been her, because I had convinced myself that whoever it was would be important to me, and this woman did not call me to me with any electricity at all. The ketchup bottle was still facing forward, anyway, and my moment of worry about the poor uninteresting woman was unfounded. I walked to the center of the aisle and spun the ketchup bottle placed in the front. Better, I thought, with the label now facing away from me and the back of the bottle facing out. I wondered what I would say if she appeared now, as I stood with my hand on the bottle. Would I speak up and say something about my obsession with this bottle and how I had become obsessed with the idea that whoever it was who had also been turning the ketchup bottle around for the last two months would change my life forever? Or, would I pretend to be browsing the nutritional information of the various tomato based sauces, ignore the interested gaze, and move on? At that moment a simultaneous mixture of horror and relief swept over me. What if this had all been going on in my head? What if the bottle remained turned around because of sloppy shelving practices at this particular Safeway, or worse, what if the whole thing could be chalked up to coincidence? I knew that if either of these scenarios were the case, if no one else was turning around the bottle, and there was no obscure but somehow important communication going on with this ketchup bottle, that there was a good chance I was crazy or worse. This idea settled uncomfortably on me like an awareness of having made an inappropriate joke that comes in just after the joke is spoken, and hangs in the air, unacknowledged, like a bathroom smell. However, I reached out and turned the bottle around anyway, and the rear label faced me. I breathed a sigh of strange relief and walked toward the front of the store to checkout. I glanced one last time over my shoulder as I left the aisle behind. A woman stood at the far end, opposite the ketchup, and took in the various mustard options. She didn't look up. I wondered if she could be my ketchup-girl and laughed a little at myself. Pathetic, I thought, buy a dog or something.

I sat there, huddled and frozen at the aisle's end, waiting for him to leave. Just go say something I thought, but I couldn't bring myself to it. I watched as his hand hovered by the ketchup bottle. He looked troubled. Finally, he walked away, and I walked to the bottle to feel the last of the dissipating warmth from his touch.