Electricity

Jared scanned the bar code around the neck of the pineapple. Beep. The desiccated coconut. Beep. The box of lite Kraft Singles, the low-fat yoghurt, the tinned whole tomatoes. Beep, beep, beep.
'Oh please put those in another bag," the lady, mid-forties, hands encrusted in gold snapped at him.
"Of course," he said, and then whispering, added. "You old bag."
"What?"
"A new bag..." he rebuked himself with confidence, and pinned a new bag to the frame before him.
"Oh, ok, yes," the woman replied with unease.
"That's seventy-eight dollars and fifty-five cents," Jared yawned.
"Just this one," the woman pulled a Visa Debit from her YSL clutch.
Jared swiped the card for the woman and was told by the machine to enter the chip, as he did he noticed the name on the card was one Mr Herbert Mariweather. He smiled at the woman while the card was processed, an uneasy pitying smile. The woman entered her pin and in a couple more seconds was gone from Jared's life until next week when he would be greeted by four boxes of bran flakes, a kilo of caper berries, and another designer handbag.
Jared shuffled his little stationary colection before him with futility. He put the ball-point pen on top of the register, the stapler he moved an inch to the left of where it already sat. The motley assortment of coloured rubber bands he let stay where they were before he moved the pen back where it had been before, straightened up its placement and then nodded with approval. He looked up feeling someone's gaze upon him. Kristy was looking down on him from the mezzanine where she was pricing boxes of mineral water. She blew a bubble from the hubba bubba in her mouth boredly and then looked away. He watched as a father in a pair of fitted Carhartt cords, a tweed jacket and Oliver Peoples glasses pushed his daughter's pram down the toiletries aisle calmly telling her because people need groceries... why? because otherwise we go hungry... why? because we would starve... why? because our bodies would become little skeletons even tinier than you...why?
"Hi," a girl was standing before Jared with eyes more purple eye shadow than pupil.
"Hello," he responded and promptly knocked his pen to the ground.
Truss tomatoes. Beep. Pappardelle pasta. Beep. Garlic cloves. Beep.
"How has your day been?" the girl asked, chirpily.
"Um, you know, it's been ok," he responded nervously.
Jared slowly lifted the few items in the girl's red shopping basket, Aubergine .23kg, bagful of lemons .17kg, a single banana .08kg. He stole a glance at her wrist, adorned with an old men's Longines watch in rose gold. His eyes crept up her forearms to where her blouse sleeve started, the lace hem was a little tattered in a charming kind of way. His eyes moved to hers and she was already looking at him, smiling the coy smile of cat about to pounce.
"I think it's gonna rain out," Jared said quickly.
"I love the smell in the air just before it rains."
"I do too," Jared replied surprised at his own conviction, and cleared his throat. "I really do," he confirmed.
"There's this kind of electricity in the air, you know?"
He nodded and scanned the last of her items, a selection of chocolate covered almonds and hazelnuts and she handed him forty dollars in cash. Her fingers brushed his and a static charge pulsed through the contact of their skin. He jumped a little and tried not to drop her money, he noticed her eyes were giving away a smile that her lips were not privy to. He gave back her change, and smiled. "Apparently the electricity in the air is due to the vapour build up from precipitation," he said and immediately regretted it.
"You don't say," she replied, letting the smile in her eyes take over her face. "You don't say."
She made her way to the automatic doors and disappeared from eye shot. He greeted the next person in line but watched through the closing entry doors as a flash of lightning cut through the white sky.