following Seymour Glass and Iris Murdoch up and down the isles at the grocery store

following Seymour Glass and Iris Murdoch up and down the Isles at the grocery store

fiction
edward w pritchard

For a master detective or even just an ordinary cop driving his cruiser on his beat the hardest surveillance job in police work is following a cross town bus up and down the streets of a small city
without being conspicuous. The bus keeps stopping and starting and the officer plays his role by pretending over and over to be looking up street names and directions on a folded up map.

That's how it was for me last Friday night shopping in the ice cream isle at my local store following Seymour Glass and Iris Murdoch up and down the isles at the grocery store. I wanted more than anything to listen to their intriguing conversations but did not want to intrude or be too obvious and draw unwanted and unwarranted attention to myself.

When Seymour is doing anything he gets into it all the way. It took him nearly twenty minutes to pick out an ice cream product for their upcoming after brunch Sunday at the park dessert soiree. So many words were minced to choose chocolate or vanilla, vegan or chemical product.

With Iris its always about relationships, philosophy and metaphysics. Her voice is soft and doesn't carry so I had trouble at times eaves dropping but no matter with Iris the elan of her thoughts is the thing. Once Iris stared me straight in the face as I was pretending to read the ingredients list in a pack
of  Eskimo pies. I don't know all the facts but to clear up one thing about Iris I could tell from her smile she likes men,even older ones being a little too nosey and maybe too familiar.

When one of the store employees brought a mop into our isle to clean up a broken glass bottle of Hershey's syrup I had to leave.

As I walked off with my back turned I heard Seymour doing to be or not to be in a falsetto mock British voice like Dick Van Dyke used to bring authenticity to his characterization in Mary Poppins.
That Seymour sometimes he is just an imaginary character, not authentic at all like Iris Murdoch, or myself or the expired actor Dick Van Dyke.