He widens his search. He’ll look for limes too. They should be near the oranges. He found the oranges. Next to the peaches. And the nectarines. And the so-called tangelos. Grapefruit. They should move the bananas, and put in limes. Move the cherries, put in lemons.

He read once that sometimes remembering something means not thinking about. Something to do with the way things are retrieved from long term. Word on the tip of your tongue, think about something else. What’s that word, that fancy long word for beautiful, that word, stars with a C, a word that doesn’t sound beautiful at all. Think about something else. Bulldozers. Ballerinas. A ballerina driving a bulldozer. How do you know she’s a ballerina. She’s wearing a tutu. But if a woman dressed in workboots and a flannel shirt, wearing a hard hat, on a stage, was dancing around, arms flung like this, Tchaikovsky in the background, what would you call her? Bulldozer driver? No, lesbian. He laughs at himself. Pulchritudinous. That’s the word. Doesn’t start with a C at all.

Maybe that will work for lemons. He goes into a different aisle. Bread, coffee, soup. Who arranges this like this? Do they go to school for it? Soup then. Once, he asked a nice couple he knew to a restaurant he wanted to like. Co-worker turned friend, and her husband. Restaurant near his very very small apartment, too small for entertaining. He’d been to the restaurant once, liked the idea of having a local. A place where they knew him. Greek place. Soggy dolmas and half-raw half-burnt baklava. So he invites the couple. They’ll be impressed that he’s got a local. They order the lemon soup. They hate it. He never goes back.

That’s a bust. Next aisle. Cereal. Cereal should be with the bread. Granola bars, peanut butter. Jelly. Jam. What’s the difference between jelly and jam? Has something to do with that stuff. Now he can’t think of that word. He’s losing his mind. Let it go. No, don’t let it go. Never give up. That couple, they’re divorced now. Who knows what they’re up to, that was 10 years ago. Or seven. They gave up. Well, he did. She tried and tried and tried. He thought their spark was gone. She thought their seven years was worth fighting for. Pectin. That’s the difference between jelly and jam.

Awesome, head back to the produce aisle, passing the marmalades. Lemon curd. Wait, what? Curd is a thing? Is there whey in this aisle too? He likes to do crosswords, is pretty good at doing crosswords, and the only time he ever sees or even hears about curds, or whey, is doing crosswords. A girl in college. Nice girl. Easy on the eyes, as they say. She was into crosswords, so he was into crosswords. He should have introduced himself to her. They could be married now. And divorced, spark gone. Oh well.

He rounds the corner, and the produce section is exactly as he remembers it. Down to the way the garlic is piled up. Is no one else shopping? Is no else buying garlic? Or lemons? Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency: if you are lost, follow someone who looks like they know where they’re going. You might not end up where you want to go, but you will end up where you need to be. That’s a paraphrase.

Okay, try that then. How about that girl. No, too pretty. She’ll think he’s a stalker. That guy. Guy’s always know exactly what they’re looking for. They shop by need, and only buy a few things. They hardly ever use a basket. This guy’s got no basket, is carrying a bag of carrots, a can of chili, and some bottled water. With bubbles. He is walking with determined, purposeful strides. Follow him.

He follows him. Exit produce, pass the deli, the back wall, where there’s milk and yogurt and eggs. But not cheese. Cheese is in the other deli. This grocery store is a nightmare. There’s the deli where they’ll slice something for your or make you up a box of the fried chicken you’ve selected. But if you want pre-sliced cheese, or pre-sliced deli meat, go all the way to almost the other side of the store. Where this guy is headed. Is he looking for cheese? Some shredded cheese, to sprinkle on his chili?

Passes the not-good-enough-for-the-deli cheese aisle. Swings around into the next aisle. He can hardly keep up. Almost drops his garlic. By the time he’s in the aisle the guy’s got a package of lemon zingers in his hand and is all but sprinting for the checkout. Goes straight for the self-checkout. Whips the items over the scanner like he’s done it a thousand times before. This is this man’s thrice-weekly routine. Go to the grocery store, get chili, carrots, bottles of water with gas, and a lemon zinger. He’s almost got three hands, scanning items and tapping buttons on the helpful screen and putting his items in a plastic bag and swiping his credit card and grabbing his receipt and walking to the door, lemon zingers open, one of them stuffed into his mouth, sugar energy for the three blocks he has to walk back home so he can heat up his chili, eat it in front of The Family Guy, then wash it down with eau avec gasseuse and nibble carrots while he plays Xbox.

This is all speculation of course. But now he’s standing at the checkout line. This is where he needed to be? Watching some guy stuff zesty lemon zingers in his mouth? He’s partial to the red ones, himself, the lemon ones too tangy. Lemons! No, now he’s thinking about them again. This is getting exhausting. He should have followed the cute girl afterall.

Reverse it. Fate and all that. Make your own destiny. Concentrate. Why does he need lemons? Not want, but need. Sadness, they say, is what you feel when what you want contradicts with what you need. By now, he merely wants lemons. Does he need them? What were they for? He standing in the wide space between where the aisles end and where people clog up the checkout aisles on Sundays and for some reason Monday nights. Just standing there. Why did he want lemons?

Okay now this is embarrassing. Lemons for water? He read that adding lemon to your drinking water can raise your blood Ph and boost your metabolism. No, it was actually that it just keeps your blood Ph from dipping too low, which can lead to your body using up iodine to restore a good balance, which deprives your thyroid, which can slow down your metabolism. Did he want lemons because he feared his thyroid wasn’t working properly?

That’s absurd. He goes back to the produce section. He fills his minds with lemons. Lemonade. Good for a hot day. Turns out the first guy who ever made pink lemonade did so by using water that someone had washed his red tights in. It’s true. Lemon meringue. Meringue is a fun word, one of those words that would be on the tip of your tongue if you didn’t have lemons to help it. A French word. Those guys have a word for everything. Lemon pie. Is there such a thing. Limoncello. They make that in Italy. He’d had some, once, friends who honeymooned there brought it back. Not bad. Great in coke.

Coke! He wanted to add a slice of lemon to his coke! He checks his basket, and there’s the no Coke in it. That’s because he started in the produce aisle, which is closest to the front doors, and the Cokes are in deeper. If he’d had the Coke already, he’d have been able to recall why he wanted lemons in the first place. Like trying to retrieve the word meringue from memory, and using the word lemons to do so.

So he’s halfway there. He wants lemons for his Coke. Maybe he should just go get the Coke, and that will draw out the lemons. He goes to the cold soda pop section. It’s next to the cold beer section. He considers getting a six of Corona. Just to help him find the limes, which should lead right to the lemons. Oh, this is cute. There’s a little bucket, attached to the glass doors of the beer coolers, attached with suction cups, and it’s full of limes. For the Coronas. But do they have a bucket of lemons for the Hefeweizens? No. Fascists.

He’s never understood why the put slices of lemon in pints of hefeweizens anyway. When he’s served one, he always takes his out. But now is not the time for distraction. It’s getting late. He gets his Coke. Yes, they sell Coke with lemon flavor. But he wants that damned wedge on his glass. And then he can toss and turn all night, on the caffeine, but at least he can toss and turn with a peaceful heart. He’d found the lemons. If he did.

Has the Coke, passes the cute girl again. Makes eye contact. She is totally into him, because now he has confidence. Confidence that once he gets to the produce section again, he will find the lemons, easy. He could totally talk to her now. It wouldn’t be creepy. You hear stories about people meeting in grocery stores all the time. A little chat, agree to meet for coffee sometime, then a movie or maybe visit a museum, dinner, another date, a series of shared experience, an attachment, exclusivisity, permanence, a proposal, an acceptance, year of stress, a wedding, a honeymoon, some limoncello, a bit of bliss, a stretch of years, nostalgia, therapy, and it’s all over one day when he’s standing in the produce section, staring at a great heaping mound of lemons, and realizes it doesn’t matter whether she loves him or not anymore, he realizes he doesn’t love her.

The irony of course is that now that he has attractive confidence he’s in no mood to start the next seven years of his life with her. He wants the lemons. He gets to the produce section, and like a shot, walks straight to the little part that’s tucked around behind the flower stand and all the organic stuff. He normally avoids the organic stuff because he’s not convinced they’re worth the price. But he recognizes now it’s the one place he hasn’t checked. He goes right to it. And stops. And stares. There’s the bin where the lemons should be. It is totally empty.

On the one hand, he should be relieved. This is why he couldn’t find them. But he has to be honest with himself—even if they had been here, he would not have seen them. He would not have seen these lemons. They say that when life hands you lemons, make lemonade. But what if the lemons life is handing you is that you can’t seem to find lemons. What’s the metaphorical lemonade one makes out of that? And doesn’t lemonade require sugar? Isn’t that what the saying is really saying? That if life hands you something sour, add something sweet to it. Well, life has handed him an empty lemonade bin. What sweetness can he add to get something better than what he had.

A voice behind him says, Are you kidding me? He turns around. It’s the girl. How does a grocery store run out of lemons? she says.