Two A.M. Sushi: A Supermarket Love Story
October 23, 2009, 1:35 A.M.
Ally stood in the frozen fish section of her local supermarket and admired the little refrigerated bin filled with sushi selections that had been prepared earlier that day.
Sushi was one of the quintessential Japanese foods, yet seeing the bits of meat and rice lying on a cheap plastic tray with a cheap plastic lid and surrounded by cheap plastic lemon grass made it seem more of an American thing. The fish itself could have been caught or farmed anywhere in the Pacific Ocean, which was an impressive one hundred and sixty-five point two million square kilometers in area, and then flown thousands of miles overnight for the privilege of being gobbled up in a series of tiny bites.
She could splurge and give them a try, although Ramen noodles were a better match between the cuisine of the Orient and her food budget.
There was a tap on her shoulder. She turned.
“Excuse me, but you’ve been staring at the sushi for about thirty minutes now.”
A handsome young man her age had tapped her on the shoulder. He was tall and thin with dark, disheveled hair. He had tapped her on her shoulder.
“Are you alright?”
“Yes. Yes, I’m fine. Thank you,” she replied as she hurried away.
October 29, 2009, 12:23 A.M.
Ally had been sent to the supermarket tonight to buy candy for her sister Katie’s Halloween party that weekend. That was easier said than done. Didn’t Katie know that there were fifty-two different types of candy at a modern supermarket in the week before Halloween? Did Katie want one of the fifteen types of excessively sugar-based candies, or did she want one of the twenty-six types of chocolate-based candies, or did she want one of the eleven types of fruit-based candies?
The party was primarily going to be attended by Katie’s soccer friends. Probably any type of candy that mixed well with vodka would suffice. She began to search for expiration day specials that would have dramatically lowered prices.
That guy who had tapped her on the shoulder the other day was here, apparently trying to decide what type of crunchy interiors he wanted buried within his candy shells. Maybe she should say hello?
She held out her hand to him. “Hi, my name is Ally.”
“Peter,” he replied as he held her hand gently. “It’s nice to meet you, Ally”
“I’m sorry if I weirded you out the other day.”
He smiled. He had a nice smile.
“That’s alright. Rumor has it that strange things happen around the sushi counter at night. I was just making sure.”
She perked up a bit inside. Zany conspiracy theories were very hipster. She kind of liked hipster.
“I just get kind of focused on things sometimes,“ she explained. “It helps me at work but it makes grocery shopping a chore.”
“Trust me, Ally, I know what you mean. Say, would you like to go out for coffee sometime?”
“I can’t this week. But maybe next week if you can choose a Halloween candy for me that mixes well with vodka.”
November 4, 2009, 1:14 A.M.
Her sister Katie had been hypnoslutting again, and that cute guy Peter had freaked when she mentioned the vodka thing last week. She had seen it in his eyes. It was the look that said “You are a member of a mutant-rights organization and I just voted for Senator Kelly.”
One problem at a time, she reminded herself. Soccer was in her sister Katie’s blood. Katie was going to go pro if only she could make it through her college’s soccer program. As a female athlete, it hadn’t been possible for Katie to get full scholarship, especially when attending a college with only a four point two percent return on investment on its trust fund and no major donors. Being financially dependent on Ally after their parents had passed away made it even harder for Katie. Ally had moved her laundry and grocery shopping to Friday nights so Katie could feel more independent when her soccer friends came to party.
She could tell that Katie had started getting her old triggers pushed when a fresh bunch of bananas had appeared in the kitchen. That meant that Katie was back with her old hypnotist boyfriend Tommy. Tommy was nice and mostly used hypnosis to spice up his sex life, although he did have a fetish for random acts of dildory using common household items. Getting the yellow banana stains out of Katie’s panties was going to be a weekly hassle.
There was a cardboard cup full of coffee in front of her face. Somebody had bought her coffee.
“I hope you like cream and sugar,” Peter said.
She held the cup like a treasure and sipped and savored it. Peter had bought her coffee from the supermarket coffee counter.
“Hmmmm…. Exactly forty-four point five milligrams of sugar. My favorite. Thank you, Peter.”
“You’ve very precise with numbers, Ally. What do you do for a living?”
“I’m a flutist. I play second flute for the city philharmonic.”
“Congratulations. That sounds exciting.”
“It’s a lot of work and the pay isn’t very good. I do a lot of tutoring too. Some of the kids have to learn something from Bach or Beethoven every time or their parents will threaten to sue me.”
“I’ve always admired people with a talent for music.”
That meant that he admires me, she thought. She suppressed a smile by sipping her coffee again.
“What do you do, Peter?”
“I’m a grad student in mathematics. It’s a lot of work and the pay isn’t very good.”
“Really? That’s so interesting. I like numbers too. Actually I love numbers.”
“Well, it’s more than just numbers. It’s very abstract at the grad school level.”
“I sat in fourteen classes of calculus when I was in college for ninety minutes per class for a total of one thousand, twelve hundred, and sixty class-hours. I also like integral calculus very much.”
She smiled brightly and held his hand and swooned inside when he held her hand back and gave her a meaningful look deep into her eyes. “Why don’t you show me some math, Peter?
December 11, 2009, 12:22 A.M.
Ally was happier now then she had been at any point in her life after her parents had died. She, of all people, had a real boyfriend for the first time. The holiday season also brought lots of opportunities for musicians. The second flute chair was free for two weeks of “The Nutcracker” and she had snagged it. On top of that, she had been spending her spare time doing as much tutoring as she could to get kids through the dreaded winter recitals.
In short, she had been awfully busy, and that mean that she was now temporarily flush with cash. She knew that she should save every last penny of it, but she felt she needed to do something with it.
She could eat sushi with Peter. Sure, he avoided the sushi counter at all costs, but she didn’t think it was the raw fish and rice that scared him away. It was just the “strange things happen around the sushi counter at night.” Those things wouldn’t happen with her around. She would go to the sushi counter, find the perfect plastic tray of sushi with exactly nine elements so Peter could have one extra, and bring it to him so they could eat it in safety. Then they could go on a walk through the flower section so she could pretend that Peter had bought them all for her.
She felt as light as a feather when she arrived at the supermarket. Peter had apparently arrived early tonight and, unfortunately, it seemed that he was unhappily brooding in the coffee section. She wanted him to be romantic, not sad, or was that capital-R Romantic, as her English teacher liked to say?
Ally sat next to him and kissed his cheek. He put his arm around her shoulders. He is holding me tightly, she thought to herself. It made her toes want to curl.
“What’s the matter, Peter?”
“My office mate disappeared last night.”
“That’s so sad. I’m sorry. I hope he’ll turn up alright.”
“I think he was abducted by aliens.”
Ally thought that this was the introduction to a very zany and hipster joke, but she artfully concealed her bemusement.
“What makes you say that?”
“He appeared in the supermarket security recording. He was standing next to the sushi counter here when the recording washed out into noise at exactly 2:00 A.M. When the recording resumes at exactly 2:45 A.M., he’s gone. Nobody in the store saw him leave, although several other patrons reported lost time.”
She was stunned. That was exactly forty-five minutes of lost time. Usually there were some seconds involved in these kinds of things. She liked counting seconds the best, but minutes were nice to count as well.
He realized that she hadn’t grasped the meaning of his statement. “Lost time and electrical fuzz-out are classic signs of an alien abduction,” he explained.
“That sounds like ‘strange things happen around the sushi counter at night’ to me, Peter.”
“Yes.” He pressed her closer to him. She could savor his masculine scent now.
“There was something else,” he continued. “Something even more strange.”
“More strange than an alien abduction?” This was getting very very hipster.
“When he left work that day, he told me that the CIA was infiltrating female androids into the supermarket at night to secretly scan the sushi counter.”
This was so capital-H Hipster that it made her want to have sex with him ten times tonight. She didn’t know how to communicate this in an appropriately feminine way, so she just squirmed instead.
“Can I ask you a question, Ally? An important question with no kidding on the answer?”
“Yes, of course, Peter, but only if you promise to cheer up and hold hands with me in the aisles.”
“I promise. Here goes.”
He took a deep breath.
“What is ten divided by three?”
Ally pondered this a moment to check if there wasn’t a secret riddle hidden in the words.
“That’s simple. It’s exactly three point three three three three three.”
January 7, 2010, 12:58 A.M.
Despond. Tommy had moved in with them. Ally felt ashamed that Tommy had even turned her into a bobblehead doll today.
One problem at a time, she reminded herself. Something had changed in Tommy after Christmas. He seemed more dominant and cruel. Katie was even more into being hypno-controlled than she ever had been before. Katie had had a number of intense but brief flings in the one thousand, two hundred and sixteen days since their parents had died, so Ally had assumed that this would one eventually pass like the others.
This assumption failed when she had discovered that Tommy was forcing her sister to wear adult diapers. Katie had taken great pains to conceal this, of course, but Ally could sense the subtle signs. One day, Katie even phoned Tommy from the dinner table and begged and pleaded to be released from diaper bondage, even if it meant calling him Master and being his slave forever. This was all a game and Ally would not understand.
The next day was New Year’s. Tommy arrived on that day to move in with his car full of stuff. Ally didn’t help to unpack it.
Ally then had to suffer their increasingly vocal Master/slave sex play at nights. There were even loud smacks that Katie had to count each time or she would have to start all over again. These were especially anxious for Ally since she had felt compelled to count along. Katie’s soccer games didn’t seem to be affected, although Katie spent most of her time around the house wearing only crotchless panties and a leather collar.
Yesterday, Ally had been propositioned by Tommy to have sex with him and Katie. Ally had refused. Today, Tommy had gotten his revenge.
Tommy had approached her at breakfast and subtly weaved counting into the conversation. Katie must have told him that Ally had a tendency to concentrate deeply on numbers. Before long, she had been trapped counting helplessly upwards from one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine; each number taking her deeper and deeper and making her more and more submissive.
She couldn’t remember what happened after that.
When she was aware again, Tommy and Katie were there smiling at her. She was puzzled by this. Tommy asked her “How are you feeling, bobblehead?” To her surprise, this word made her head start to feel really weird and empty. Her chin wanted to go down against her will, and this made her feel really good, so she let it. Then her chin went up again. She tried to stop, but her head kept slowly bobbing up and down. It made her feel good in a very strange way. She felt like there was a little spark of pleasure between her legs. It was making her panties damp.
Katie and Tommy started laughing at her when she was driven to her knees by some unseen force guiding her muscles. Katie unzipped Tommy’s fly for him and exposed his big, hard penis. Ally had never seen one of those before! Now she was sucking on it, sliding her lips up and down on the smooth skin. It felt wonderful, like a bright flashlight full of pleasure was in her mouth and radiating so brightly that the world could see the pleasure-light shining through her cheeks.
Tommy moaned and Katie called her a “good little bobblehead”, but Ally didn’t notice because of the up and down sucking pleasure in her mouth. Soon, Tommy’s penis was spurting semen into her mouth. She gagged and didn’t know what to do so she just let him pump it onto her face. When he was done, Tommy and Katie cheered together while she locked herself in the bathroom to wash.
She left on the bus to do her private rehearsals at the music conservatory, spent the night in a bookstore browsing the stacks, and then ended up at the supermarket to see Peter. When she arrived, she thought a single word from Peter would make her break down in tears.
When Peter saw her, he took her hand and led her back into the parking lot. In the very back of the lot, his small car was parked in a cold, dark spot away from the orange sodium lights scattered around in the distance. It was a lonely spot. It made her think of what Mom and Dad must have felt like before Katie and Ally had been born.
She could feel the winter winds sting her flushed cheeks. The fresh air made her feel clean. She didn’t want to cry in the cold.
Peter opened a back door, sat inside, and then pulled her to sit next to him. Then he leaned back so she could lie on top of him in his arms.
They lay there in the dark for a long time. Ally felt totally isolated from the universe: a tiny spot of warm floating in the vast sea of cold. She never wanted it to end.
“Let me stay with you,” she whispered into his ear when she thought it must be near dawn. In response, he unzipped her clothes to touch her and share himself with her.
She moved in with Peter that day. Katie was sad to see her go and promised to visit without Tommy coming along. Tommy played it cool because he was afraid that Peter would deck him.
That night, Peter insisted that they stand by the sushi counter at two A.M., just like his friend, so they could discover some clue about the disappearance. Ally wanted to come with him, no matter what, and he agreed.
January 8, 2010, 1:58 A.M.
Ally looked at her watch. It was time. She held Peter’s hand and they waited.
Ally blinked and looked at her watch again. It was exactly 2:45 A.M.
Peter was excited. “They agreed to help us, but only if we come back again tonight.”
They spent the rest of the night making love in a bed for the first time. The next day involved getting Ally settled in to her new space in-between her musical tutoring sessions and his math tutoring sessions.
January 9, 2010, 1:58 A.M.
The time had come again. They held hands in front of the sushi counter and waited.
Ally blinked.
She awoke to find herself standing in a white room with gently luminous walls. Katie and Tommy were naked and motionless and seated in front of her. Luckily, she was still in her original winter clothes, although the temperature here seemed to be just right. All three of them were facing Peter, who was standing facing them and wearing his original clothes as well.
Ally walked over to stand by Peter. She noticed that she felt bouncier when she walked than she could remember. Her hair seemed to have more body than it usually did, and her breasts definitely seemed to be responding amply to her movements. She had to stop half-way, take stock, and then make a conscious effort not to visibly flounce like a girly-girl before she could rejoin him.
She made a few more tests. It felt great when she flexed her fingers and whistled. Her dexterity and vocal acuity seemed to have improved. A strong desire to be playing her flute arose within her.
“What happened to us, Peter?”
“I worked a three-way deal with the alien Greys and the CIA.”
“That’s totally crazy. I like it. It’s very string theory.”
“Well, it went down like this. The CIA was infiltrating robots after all, and these robots were scaring away all of the really good specimens.”
“You mean human specimens?”
“Don’t worry. These Greys are only interested in DNA samples from cheek swabs. Well, most of the time.”
“We didn’t get anal probed, did we?”
“No no no, Ally, no. These aren’t that kind of aliens. These are very sophisticated aliens. Very chill.”
“So your friend was a specimen too?”
“Yes. Unfortunately, the Greys don’t exactly understand human culture yet, so they decided to teleport him to Rio when they were done taking their DNA sample. The poor guy is probably teaching the irrationality proof of the square root of two to a crowd of naked women right now.”
Ally giggled despite herself.
“Moving on, I decided to trade two exciting human specimens with highly atypical neural patterns to the Greys, namely your sister Katie and her Master Tommy, in exchange for a human clone.”
“You bartered for a clone with my sister and her boyfriend?”
“Uh, yeah. Sorry if I didn’t ask you first. I didn’t think you mind.”
She remembered how her sister had stood by and watched while she was sucking off Tommy and decided that she didn’t mind.
“And what happens to the clone? Are they just going to let it out into the wild with no home to go to?”
“They came up with a cover story and the right memories. Quick: what’s ten divided by three? Humor me.”
“It’s an irreducible fraction. It’s ten thirds.”
“What’s ten thirds as a decimal?”
“It’s three with a decimal point and an infinite string of threes.” She pouted. “You know, I seem to remember having a different answer to that once.”
She hefted her breasts and had to admit that they had an enticing biological feel to them. She stopped playing when she caught Peter smiling at her erect nipples.
“Ok, Peter, I think you’re selling me on the clone thing. What else?”
“Yeah, so, the other leg of the deal was that the Greys decided to offer the CIA a pair of robot assassins in exchange for abandoning their surveillance. The CIA agreed, so the Greys…”
“Yes?”
“They robotized Katie and Tommy.”
“My sister and her boyfriend are now robot assassins?”
“Their real bodies are in cryo-suspension and their brainwave patterns are stored. Think of the robots as identical copies. They’ll be indistinguishable from the real ones, even to themselves, and will live just like the original Katie and Tommy – except about a year from now they’ll smuggle themselves into Libya and try to bring down Qaddafi. Good luck with that, Katie and Tommy. The CIA was so happy they decided to throw in another decade’s worth of strategic ‘weather balloons’ to fool the public. Kind of a sweet deal for the Greys when you really think about it.”
“You turned my sister and her boyfriend into robot assassins for the CIA in exchange for a human clone, and now the international UFO conspiracy is all your fault?”
“It’ll all shake out justly in the end, Ally. Let’s just try to enjoy our new life together.”
Ally inspected what were evidently the two robots sitting in front of her.
“Can I be alone with them for a few moments?” she called out. She blinked and Peter vanished.
“Katie, can you hear me?”
The Katie robot opened her eyes. “Hi there, Ally Cat.”
“Hi Kates. How are you feeling?”
“Feeling great. Sorry about you moving out. Can I still come to five of your concerts in the next six months? If they are ninety minutes each, that would be four hundred and fifty concert-hours. Do you still play Ravel’s Boléro?”
“Sure Kates. You can come by and listen anytime you want.”
“I’d like that.”
Ally smiled and walked over to the Tommy robot.
“Tommy, I order you to chant ‘I am a bobblehead’ for the next hour.”
The robot began chanting that phrase over and over. Ally then gently bent its head back and let it go so it would bounce up and down helplessly. She stood back and admired her handiwork.
“Mr. Alien Grey, sir,” she called out. “I’d like to go back to Peter now so we can get married and have children. Can you please do that without giving me an anal probe or anything?”
Ally blinked and she was reunited with Peter again. He had a tray of California roll in his hands, ready for her to try for the very first time in her life. She smiled and ate a piece and it was delicious.