"What would you like?"
"A pound of the cod you have there for sale."
He didn't have a hat on. His near baldness was irrelevant as he cut the remnants of his gray hair down to stubbles, just like his facial hair. He's in his mid fifties, his eyes of a lackadaisical expression, his rather fat lips matched the lump of fat also hanging under his chin. There's nothing menacing about him, but neither adorable. It was late evening in the supermarket and soon the seafood section would close. He was catering to one of his last customers. His dirty apron hung on him as if it, too, was tired from the day's work. When the previous customer, a black woman standing in front of her impatient boyfriend, was being indecisive about what to order, inspecting carefully all the items on display, the fishmonger all that while did not change his lackadaisical expression. He was daydreaming about the end of his shift. He got up early this morning for his other job, also as a fishmonger, but for a much smaller shop specializing in fresh seafood, and he did a lot more heavy duty work there. After his brief lunch break that was the drive from that first job to this supermarket, he had a lobster roll his daughter had made for him.
He grabbed the white piece of flesh, paused for a split second to eye the previously frozen piece of a very big fish, and then slabbed it on the electronic scale on which a piece of wax paper had previously been placed and tared. Both him and the customer looked at the digital monitor of the scale at the same time, though from opposite sides. It was just shy of a pound, and the customer nodded. While the customer looked at other items in the display, he carefully wrapped the flesh with the wax paper. He turned to reach for the sticky tape, pulled about five inches out, ripped it off the dispenser, and then sealed the corners of the wax paper that have congregated in one place after the paper had wrapped the precious cargo. He then turned to his right and pulled out a plastic bag somehow was made specifically for seafood. He tore that out too and carefully put the wrapped fish inside. He looked up at the scale and found the button he was looking for. For a second he couldn't find it with his fingers, and his eyes struggled to focus on the button he was looking for. It's been a long day.
So he pressed the button and the sticky tag with the price came out. He taped that on the doubly wrapped cod fillet and asked:
"There you go. Would you like anything else?"
He usually, when not so tired, would be smiling and making conversations like "How are you making that?" He would even share a recipe off the top of his head that he had seen his daughter do it. But now he's just waiting for the moment to come and he could put away this stinky, fishy smell. Despite his daily showers, he couldn't get rid of his fish smell, which accompanies him straight home, where his daughter is the only person in the world who never complained about the smell, not even when she was younger when kids of that age felt free to complain about everything.
"No, that's all, thanks!"
"Have a good evening!"
"You too."
And another customer disappeared from his sight. There was no stool or anything to sit on, and he could just go in the backroom and sit there for the remainder of the sevent een minutes. But for a moment he took a deep breath, ignoring the dead sea smell pervading into his nostrils. He looked around him, the store, the vegetable isle, the pasta isle, and he wondered if he wasn't sick of this same view for over a decade now, well over.
