“Vaguely menacing, perhaps,” offered Geek from the opposite corner. “A bit more humorous than hazardous.”
She snatched the drawing away and made a face at him. “It is very difficult,” she retorted, “to make a potato look dangereuse.” She bent down over the paper again and started to erase. Frankie leaned forward and brushed the hair from the back of her neck. He blew gently on her bar code. She shrugged her shoulders, but he could see that she was smiling, and he felt his heart race. He looked up and saw Geek watching them. He leaned back into the nook and traced his finger along the curve of Charmey’s spine. He waited patiently until bedtime.
The Seeds did a reconnaissance of Thrifty Foods the next day, while Frank was in school. They were timing the action for noon on the Saturday before Christmas, when there would be plenty of moms and kids around. Moms were key, Geek explained. Gotta get the moms. Lilith had shanghaied one of the baggers and got the personnel information from him, and that night they reconvened in the bunker for a briefing. The manager, Lilith reported, took a lunch break at noon and usually went off site. Y nodded. He had drawn a big map of the checkout area and was assigning the lanes.
“We’re starting with Express Lane One and doing the odds. We want a female in One because it’s closest to the entrance, just in case we get some early police action. Lilith is good with Five-O, so I’d prefer her, if that’s cool.” He looked around the group. No one objected.
“Good. Frank, dude, you’re next, Lane Three, so you can keep an eye on the door. You think you’re gonna know some of these po-po, right? You can recognize their vehicles?”
“Sure.”
“Excellent. Let us know when they’re coming, but once they’re on top of us, watch Lilith and do exactly what she does. The idea is no conflict. Just go limp and drop. Got it?”
Frankie nodded. He knew how to deal with the police.
Y continued. “I’ll take Lane Five and initiate from there. Charmey’s on Seven. Once we have it jammed, Geek’ll bring in Mr. Potato Head. Everyone clear?”
It was snowing on the morning of D-Day, so they moved into position early. The snow was good. It would get the shoppers into the store, stocking up in case the storm got bad. It might also slow down the police. By 1100 hours, the Spudnik had established a position in a far corner of the Thrifty Foods parking lot. They had cleaned out the vehicle and stashed their dube in Frankie’s cleaning closet at McDonald’s, in case they got searched.
“Okay, Seedlings, let’s roll,” said Y. He was dressed in a clean pair of jeans, a button-down shirt, and a tweed jacket. He’d shaved and tied his dreadlocks tightly back, and he looked surprisingly presentable. Lilith stood next to him, wearing a cloth coat and carrying a purse. They gave a thumbs-up and left the Spudnik. Frankie stood to follow, but Charmey held him back.
“Un moment . . .” she said.
She was looking more like a kid than ever, in a pair of baggy overalls, a striped wool sweater, and a baseball cap worn backward. Geek was dressed in a pair of green tights and a matching leotard, and for such a large, round-seeming man, he had legs that were surprisingly thin. Over this he wore a burlap contraption, held up by suspenders, which looked like a giant diaper. He checked his watch, then nodded at Charmey.
“Allons,” she said, grabbing Frankie’s hand.
By 1130 they had infiltrated the target and were pushing shopping carts up and down the aisles, filling them with tomatoes, squash, jars of baby food, canned corn, bottles of canola oil, miscellaneous snack-food products, and ten-pound bags of potatoes. They all had a supply of leaflets in the child’s seat of their carts.
At 1207 Lilith asked to see the manager and was told he had just left for lunch.
By 1212 this information was relayed from Aisle 1: Fresh Produce through to Aisle 7: Cleaning Products & Picnicware, and the operatives headed toward the checkout lanes. A quick reconnoiter revealed a healthy target demographic—mothers with infants, preschool toddlers, and some early-elementary-school children, too.
By 1223 all operatives were engaged with the checkout personnel or closing in on the front of their lanes.
Y initiated the action in Lane 5.
“Hey,” he said in a friendly voice, squinting down at the name badge on the breast of his cashier. “Shawna?”
“Huh?” she said. She barely lifted her head.
Frank watched from Lane 3. He was worried. The cashier’s streaked hair was held off her face by an enormous plastic claw, and her two-toned lips were heavily lined in dark brown pencil. Frank had gone out with Shawna once, back in junior high. He knew for sure that she had no consciousness. On their date she had barely even been conscious.
“Shawna,” Y repeated with a smile. “That’s a nice name.”
She blinked and froze. Her fingernails, laminated with green sparkly polish in keeping with the pre-Christmas season, hung in midair above the conveyor belt of oncoming groceries. Her eyes were blank. Frank shook his head. Shawna was a frigid bitch. Hadn’t even let him kiss her. This was not going to work.
But he was wrong. He had underestimated Y’s charm. It took a minute, but by 1225 three things had fully dawned on Shawna: that Y was a cute, hip, older guy; that he was probably not from Ashtabula; and that he was attempting to have a conversation with her.
It was like someone had flipped a switch.
“Thanks,” she said, smiling and running her tongue under her upper lip to keep it from sticking to her teeth. She tossed her hair. The conveyer belt delivered a ten-pound bag of bakers. As she dragged it across the glass surface of the bar-code reader, Y took her hand.
“Hey, great nails,” he said. “Listen, before you ring that up, I wanna ask you something.” His voice seemed to be growing deeper and louder.
“Yeah?” she squeaked. She was practically batting her eyelashes at him. Ol’ Shawna sure was stoked now, thought Frank.
“Those potatoes, do you know if they are genetically engineered?” Y asked. His voice was really loud, now, booming over the ambient Christmas music being pumped in through the PA system—so loud that the customers in line at the checkout stations looked up to see what was going on.
“Huh?” Shawna didn’t know what he was talking about, and his volume was making her nervous.
“These potatoes!” Y held up the bag. “Have they been genetically engineered?”
Shawna looked around. She didn’t want to get in trouble. It occurred to her that maybe this guy was a creep. Then, two lanes down, she caught sight of Frank, grinning like a madman. She narrowed her eyes.
“Listen,” she said smartly, “like, do you want me to ring this up or not?”
“I don’t know. Could you call your manager and maybe I could ask him?”
“Are you, like, serious?”
“Yeah, I really want to know.” Y turned toward the fit young mother behind him. “Maybe you could tell me,” he said, looking apologetic but still very concerned. “Do you happen to know if these are genetically engineered?”
The woman shook her head. “No, I’m sorry. I don’t know—”
Y nodded. “That’s the problem, isn’t it?” He held out his finger to the infant in the shopping cart, making her dribble and coo. “We don’t know because they don’t tell us! They’re genetically engineering poisons into potatoes these days. But they refuse to label it, so how are you supposed to know what you’re feeding