“Hey, you don’t have to tell me twice about having fun with mac n' cheese,” he said, sneaking around the grumpy old lady to try and get a snag at a bag of flour. “I like the ones with the unicorn noodles.”

But try as he might, for all she was old and hunched and gray, she was a force to be reckoned with-- her and her cart and her heavy-looking purse.

“Um, yes, I can try and get noodles-- hey!” she swatted at his hand when he made his move, glaring at him again.

Alex’s laughter over the phone was like magic, but the old lady was still piling flour into her cart and fending Memo off at every turn. But there was a flash of gold from a ring on her hand, and that gave Memo an idea.

“Hold on, dear,” he said, loudly and with emphasis, before muting his end of the line and tucking the phone against his shoulder. “Hey, can I have-- one bag, at least, please? It’s for--,” he put on his most pained, brow-beaten expression. “--it’s for my wife, and I’ll be in trouble if I don’t come home with one. You know what it’s like!”

The old lady regarded him with narrowed eyes, liver spots and gray hair radiating malice, before shifting her cart over and allowing him to take two bags of flour from her hoard.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” Memo said, dropping the loot in his basket and departing. The almond flour was less of a hot commodity so he grabbed two packages of that, too, before rounding the end of the aisle and trekking back towards pastas and international.

“Mission complete, captain,” he radioed, unmuting his end of the phone. “I just had to tell her we were married and you were my long-suffering baking enthused wife. What kinda noodles do you want?”

⚰︎ memo fights an old lady

Alexei Ivanov

“Physically, I’m fine,” he says cheerly into his phone, dodging around two crashed motorized scooters so he can make his way back to the main drag and head towards the rear of the store where the baking supplies are. “Emotionally I don’t know if my pride can live with fighting children for mac n’ cheese, but all things in time, huh?”

Someone dropped a gallon of milk on the ground and it exploded everywhere. He tries to avoid stepping into it, while also looking for what Alex has requested.

Of course the yeast is on the top fucking shelf.

“I think there’s a box-- way the hell back there,” he’s more or less narrating out loud because he has to stick his arm through the basket handles (he doesn’t dare put it down), shove the phone against his shoulder again, and physically climb up the shelving, smacking at the top level until he feels the cardboard of the box of yeast crush between his hand. He drags it forward and pushes it in the basket.

“Regular flour or almond flour?” he asks, just as an older woman cuts him off while he’s heading for the AP kind. “Permission to use force against the elderly, commander.”

It’s mostly a joke but she glares at him anyway.

⚰︎ we don't stop

Alexei Ivanov