style="font-size:15px;"> Each trip, even for the smallest purchase, kept Ursula in the supermarket for at least half an hour. All the employees here knew her, with whom she chatted out of habit, without knowing the brakes.
Ursula began to walk between the aisles, where along the way she came across the owner of the store, Yann Leblanc, who, standing on a stepladder and leafing through documents in his hands, checked the purchase prices with the prices on the shelves.
– Hello Mr. Leblanc.
– Hi.
– How are you doing?
– Basically, nothing good. But without a fire and without a robbery, this is also good.
They both laughed and Ursula added:
– I don’t know about the fire, but without a robbery it’s great.
These words caused even more laughter from the supermarket owner.
Ursula walked a little deeper into the trading floor. There she met Raymond Rafferty, who, like Cassandra, sometimes worked at the checkout, but most often either laid out goods in the hall or worked in the warehouse. At that moment, Raymond was arranging goods on shelves with dairy products.
– Oh! Socialite – Raymond almost exclaimed when he noticed the approaching girl.
When Ursula had just started school, one day Raymond asked her, arranging goods in the next row: “What do you want to become when you grow up and finish studying?”, – to which Ursula replied: “A socialite”. Since then, Raymond has called Ursula a socialite.
Raymond was twenty-six. After school, he got a job at Leblanc’s supermarket and since then he has only known one job in his life. This is largely why Raymond knew all the visitors by sight. But for Yann Leblanc, what was more important was that this guy knew every corner of the store, every rack, every product item. He could place goods on a shelf without taking his eyes off the box, and the goods would be placed with precision down to the last millimeter. The speed of servicing the trading floor at Raymond’s was perfected to the point of automaticity. He alone, in a couple of hours, could complete the amount of work that three other people could do in half a day. For this reason, Yann rarely put Raymond at the checkout, knowing how much productivity he would lose on the sales floor.
– How are you? – Raymond asked, continuing to arrange packets of cookies.
– Tolerable. And you?
– The same bullshit. Socialite, where have you gone? I haven’t seen you for a couple of weeks?
– Weeks. But not years.
Raymond smiled as he put the empty box in his cart and pulled out a new one.
– So do not worry. I can’t live without you – Ursula said. – In the end who will get me fresh yogurt, and not the two-week old trash that is on the shelf?
After these words, Raymond laughed louder, answering:
– So that’s why you’re friends with me: just for the sake of fresh yogurt and chocolate.
– What else is it for? If friends cannot bring you benefits, then they are no longer friends.
Raymond was struck by the thought that if he had seen this girl for the first time, he would have decided that she was the daughter of some Jew. But Ursula had a sense of humor that was not without sarcastic language.
The girl chatted with Raymond for some more time, after which she took the yeast and went to the checkout, where she paid and advised Cassandra to drink coffee instead of nodding off.
Ursula went out into the street and, out of habit, began to cross the sidewalk, approaching the curb. She never looked around at night because it seemed to her that she would definitely notice car headlights if they appeared. But that evening an unusual car was approaching from the right. Its headlights were too dim to be noticeable from afar. But Ursula felt the car approaching even before her eyes noticed the dim glow of the headlights. The car drove slowly along the adjacent lane. Ursula froze, as if her legs were covered with a thick layer of ice, which could not be said about her heart. It was filled with blood, pounding like crazy and was ready to explode.
Passing in front of the supermarket building, the car turned around, moving from the far lane to the near one and stopped in front of the curb opposite the supermarket, where Ursula was standing.
On any other day this would not have been strange. But that evening was unusual. Because it was the Dodge.
11. Gambler
On the day of bread and shamelessness, Carter Beckran decided, if not to indulge in sin, then at least to stop one step away from it. He bought two lottery tickets for himself and his father, thereby trying to get into a little excitement. Carter treated excitement as a kind of need and preferred to satisfy it on a harmless scale, so as not to cause significant harm to his pocket. In many ways, Saul Beckran developed this trait in his son. He was already in his seventy-second year. He was half a head shorter than Carter, with gray hair around a wide bald spot on his head, a beard that was never completely shaved, and a noticeable paunch that had begun to appear since Saul began to experience problems with his back and legs, which is why he stopped run the business, leaving everything to Carter. After retiring, Saul became interested in fishing and literature. His collection consisted of more than a thousand books in the field of history and philosophy. Saul also began to develop skills in assembling ships in glass bottles. But not all the time was spent on entertainment and hobbies. Saul was constantly looking for where and what to repair. When his youngest granddaughter had a flat tire on her bicycle, he was happy because there could be nothing better for him than restoring his granddaughter’s favorite toy. True, a week later Saul decided to buy a new bicycle for the girl. But over the years, the opportunity to work around the house began to narrow. The back and joints in the legs were making themselves felt more and more. He lost his wife at thirty-two to a cerebral hemorrhage. Saul endured the tragedy with difficulty. Having raised his only son, he considered his grandson and two granddaughters as a healthy compensation for separating from his wife too early. Carter’s wife, Giselle, became like a daughter to him. Sometimes Saul thought that his relationship with his daughter-in-law worked out from the first day due to the fact that Giselle practically did not know her father, who abandoned her mother when she was three and a half, and her mother was then still pregnant with her sister. This was partly true. Having met such a smiling and friendly father-in-law, who at every meeting hugged her like his own blood, Giselle highly appreciated this attitude and for the first time understood what paternal warmth was. The presence of her mother became something natural for her, but she never knew her father’s closeness and could hardly imagine what it was.
Since her student days, Giselle wore the same hairstyle, slightly shortening her hair, which fell about twenty centimeters below her shoulders. For all thirty-nine years, Giselle’s hair has not used a drop of dye, forever retaining its chestnut shade. She had large black irises, neat eyebrows with a graceful curve at the outer edge, slightly convex pinkish lips with small dimples on her cheeks and eyelashes so thick that if Giselle had become some kind of celebrity, the whole world would have forgotten about Elizabeth Taylor.
She perfectly mastered the entire list of her husband’s addictions and passions and therefore, until the last moment, she tried not to distract him from the lottery, but too many dishes had accumulated after
