John Leibowitz pulls into Stop&Shop parking space number 44 at 6.09pm on Wednesday, January 10th. It’s a cold, windy evening, and though it hasn’t begun to rain, anyone walking through the parking lot at 6.09pm knows it will in the next few hours. John squints as he walks through the parking lot, the velcro lining of his red windproof jacket collecting tiny beads of moisture hanging in the air restlessly, as if they were displaced from the sea.

Once inside, John will buy the same things he buys every Wednesday: a can of pea soup, an orange, and a miniature bag of m&ms.

Carrie Jones drives a beaten white Volvo, a car which makes so much noise that fellow drivers glance concernedly as she plugs along the two-lane three mile stretch between her cottage and the grocery store. When she parks it in parking space number 20, the Volvo heaves and screeches as if it is imploring her to leave it there forever in retirement, which she will not. Carrie gives her old companion an appreciative slap on the hood as she locks it, slinging an oversized faux-leather bag over her shoulder and cursing to herself that she has, once again, forgotten her reusable tote bags at home.

Once inside, Carrie will buy a categorically bizarre range of items: fresh laundry-scented candles, baby carrots, saltines, grape soda, a bouquet of white flowers, high fiber cereal, batteries, licorice, and microwave popcorn, to name a few.

Laura Christensen rides her bicycle to Stop&Shop every day. When she coasts it to the silvery dented bike rack by the side entrance, she nods firmly to herself, checking off an item on a mental checklist of daily rituals that supposedly strengthen her brain against rot: walk through the garden, check the mail, email her nephew, ride her bike to the grocery store, buy something, ride home, lock the door, watch the news, take a bath, go to bed, repeat. It is day 108 of her ritual and she has not yet missed a single item on a single day.

Once inside, Laura will scamper up and down the aisles like a bewildered mouse until grabbing a box of instant oatmeal, using the self-checkout, and riding home.

Manny Lot parks in single digit spots only. He prefers 9 or 8 or 7, but on Wednesday, January 10th, at 6.13pm, he settles his navy pickup truck in spot number 2, grimacing at the large white outline of a wheelchair on the pavement, and then grimacing again at the handicapped sticker on his window. The last time he ventured out in wet weather, his cane had slipped, and though he suffered no physical injury, the condescending aid of a well-meaning passerby had been upsetting enough. Tonight he foregoes the cane altogether, preferring to shuffle slowly in padded white sneakers.

Once inside, Manny will buy a microwave dinner, anything with mashed potatoes on the side, and a peanut butter cup for his wife.

Jess McArthur has borrowed her great aunt’s bright red Toyota, and, both embarrassed by the outspoken bumper stickers and ashamed of this embarrassment, she parks it in spot number 199, preferring to walk across the entire lot than to risk association with George Bush’s reelection campaign. She kills the ignition at 6.13pm, in perfect but unnoticed synchronization with Manny; at 6.15pm, it is she as well who gestures happily for Manny to cross the welcome mat before her, and it is she who frowns with sympathy as Manny turns glacially towards the frozen food aisle.

Once inside, Jess will buy a whole rainbow range of fresh vegetables, green tea, and a pack of blue pens.

The Stop&Shop in Northam, Cape Cod is a neglected branch of the franchise. The lighting is a wretched patchwork of fluorescents, soft yellows, bright yellows, and a blinking orange by the bakery corner; the tiles are cracked; the heating, abused with overuse in the winter months and wrinkled with underuse in the summer, makes a rattling noise that nearly drowns out the top 40s radio station leaking fuzzily through ceiling speakers; the cashier attendants are underpaid and the self-checkout aisles unsupervised, inviting conspicuous teenage shoplifting. In the summer, big tourist families with squealing children will wander through once or twice during their stay to stock their hollow rental homes but will otherwise choose the farmer’s markets, boutique shops, and ‘family owned’ restaurants nearby. It is, after all, their vacation. As the weather cools in autumn, the vacationers become few and far between, dwindling steadily until only the locals can be seen driving to and fro town, nodding at each other in silent solidarity. Residents of Northam below the age of 40 spend most of their time in the surrounding towns, where seafood bars are staffed by teenagers hoping to save up for college and twenty-year olds who never bothered to try.

The Stop&Shop in Northam, Cape Cod can nevertheless be expected to have a few dozen customers on the average off-season day. On the evening of January 10th, it has only five. By 7.00pm, all five of them will be back home. By 7.05, the wet air will turn to heavy downpour.

As she scurries around the store, Laura is the only one of the five who will see each one of them. She’ll pass John with only a peripheral glance but will smell damp saltiness from his red jacket and will imagine he is a fisherman, carrying on his shoulders local tradition and culture, and later that night she’ll pretend she’s speaking to him and hearing his tragic tale of crewmen lost to sea and his love for the great ocean. She’ll see Carrie from a long distance and admire her curly black hair. She’ll watch Manny select one miniature peanut butter cup in gold wrapping and briefly consider buying one herself. As she looks up at the myriad options of hot cereal, Laura will hear Jess say “can I reach anything for you?” And though she was only staring at the overwhelming number of brands offering the same item and has never had any interest in oatmeal, she will stutter out a “yes please,” point upwards at random, and smile as she thanks her, panicked by the unexpected interaction and touched by the tall, polite, young woman holding pens.

John, who stops and shops at this precise Stop&Shop every day of the week except Sunday, is ritualistic in his wandering. He is ritualistic, too, once he gets back home. He’ll sit on his wooden stool, eat his Wednesday pea soup with a bit of black pepper, and then move to the sofa to watch the box set of Frasier that his gardener gave him. He’s relieved, now, that the holiday season is once again behind him, that there are no expectations to be cheery and say happy new year to strangers and receive calls from distant family members. Later that night though, after he’s switched off the television and is tidying up in the bleak quiet before bed, he’ll wish he’d spoken aloud that day, if only once; he’ll feel his face warm and his throat contract and he’ll switch off the lights in his bedroom as if he won’t feel tears in the dark and he’ll have no idea that there’s a kind woman who also frequents Stop&Shop every night except Sundays and who will then be in her apartment pretending she’s chatting with the fisherman in a red coat.

Jess has resolved to observe more, to absorb more details for her attempts at first-person journalistic essays but she does this only in settings she finds romantic, which, since taking a leave of absence from her small college near her small hometown in dry central Arizona, is anywhere near the sea. She therefore slides by Manny towards the self-checkout without seeing the faded green patch on the sleeve of Manny’s coat. Had Jess seen it, she would’ve realized she was within a few feet of one of only two still-living members of the Northam Theater & Arts Association, the other being Jess’s aunt. She would’ve taken down Manny’s phone number or address and zipped home, leaping enthusiastically into her aunt’s bedroom with news that would’ve brought joy not felt in that home for twenty years.

Though Manny continues to write ‘photographer’ on any ‘occupation:’ lines on any tax or registration forms, he now avoids the eyes of strangers, telling his son that no, he would not like a new camera for Christmas, as he can no longer capture people’s portraits when their eyes look back at him with pity. Even if he did, however, look up as he passes Carrie in the candy section, there could be no way to know that in her home, she keeps flowers in an enormous white vase decorated with seashells, an exact copy of the one his wife bought him for Christmas two years ago, the exact copy that is now filled with peanut butter cups, dropped in one by one like a very slow but steady rain.

Carrie will come home to a cottage by a salty lake, quiet except for the snoring of her old spaniel, Max, who sleeps lazily by the door. She’ll arrange white flowers in a seashell vase and eat baby carrots, and when even the youthful punchiness of grape soda cannot counter the overwhelming silence of her cottage, she’ll sit in her tall green armchair with Max in her lap, her computer propped up on the coffee table, watching old episodes of Frasier for comfort. She’ll remember the smell of her ex-boyfriend’s cologne and the sound their kayak paddles made in the salty lake and she’ll have no idea that less than a mile away, a lonely man named John will be doing quite a similar thing.

There is nothing noteworthy about the Northam Stop&Shop. There are millions of such quiet mundane places scattered throughout the world, and in their quiet mundanity they cradle latent multitudes.

Do you remember making friends when you were a child? Do you remember that all it took was a favorite game or movie or color or even just being in the same room to run around and laugh with another kid? With each year that passes and brings a new personal technology, as each of us become masters of our own little universes we carry in our pockets, common concern turns towards the dissolution of privacy.

But what about the public?