You can’t find the lemons. You’re in a medium size grocery store. Big enough that they should have lemons. Not so big that you shouldn’t be able to find them. But you can’t. You’ve done a few laps around the other produce. This wall has lettuces. This wall has bowls of pre-chopped fruit. This bin’s got potatoes. But no lemons.

You widen your search. You’ll look for limes too. They should be near the oranges. You find 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.

You 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 the 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 does one 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 she be called? Bulldozer driver? No, lesbian. You laugh at yourself. Pulchritudinous. That’s the word. Doesn’t start with a C at all.

Maybe that will work for lemons. You go into a different aisle. Bread, coffee, soup. Who arranges this like this? Do they go to school for it? Soup then. Once, you asked a nice couple you knew to a restaurant you wanted to like. Co-worker turned friend, and her husband. Restaurant near your very very small apartment, too small for entertaining. You’d been to the restaurant once, liked the idea of having a local. A place where they knew you. Greek place. Soggy dolmas and half-raw half-burnt baklava. So you invite the couple. They’ll be impressed that you’ve got a local. They order the lemon soup. They hate it. You never go 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 you can’t think of that word. You’re losing your 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? You like to do crosswords, are pretty good at doing crosswords, and the only time you ever see or even hear 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 you were into crosswords. You should have introduced yourself to her. You could be married now. And divorced, spark gone. Oh well.

You round the corner, and the produce section is exactly as you remember 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 you’re 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.

You follow 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 customers or make up a box of fried chicken. 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. You can hardly keep up. Almost drop your garlic. By the time you’re 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 swipinghis 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 whilehe plays Xbox.

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

Reverse it. Fate and all that. Make your own destiny. Concentrate. Why do you need lemons? Not want, but need. Sadness, they say, is the feeling when want contradicts with need. By now, you merely want lemons. Do you need them? What were they for? You’re 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 you want lemons?

Okay now this is embarrassing. Lemons for water? You 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 you want lemons because you feared your thyroid wasn’t working properly?

That’s absurd. You go back to the produce section. You fill your 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. You’d had some, once, friends who honeymooned there brought it back. Not bad. Great in coke.

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

So you’re halfway there. You wants lemons for your Coke. Maybe you should just go get the Coke, and that will draw out the lemons. You go to the cold soda pop section. It’s next to the cold beer section. You considers getting a six of Corona. Just to help yourself 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.

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

Get the Coke, pass the cute girl again. Make eye contact. She is totally into you, because now you have confidence. Confidence that once you get to the produce section again, you will find the lemons, easy. You 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 you’re standing in the produce section, staring at a great heaping mound of lemons, and realizes it doesn’t matter whether she loves you or not anymore, you realizes you don’t love her.

The irony of course is that now that you have attractive confidence you’re in no mood to start the next seven years of your life with her. You want the lemons. You get to the produce section, and like a shot, walk straight to the little part that’s tucked around behind the flower stand and all the organic stuff. You normally avoids the organic stuff because you’re not convinced they’re worth the price. But you recognizes now it’s the one place you hadn’t checked. You go right to it. And stop. And stare. There’s the bin where the lemons should be. It is totally empty.

On the one hand, you should be relieved. This is why you couldn’t find them. But you have to be honest with yourself—even if they had been here, you would not have seen them. You 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 you an empty lemonade bin. What sweetness can you add to get something better than what you had.

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