Not a confession but an alibi
Robert and Viola visit the new grocery store that has just opened. It is a wonderful grocery store. There is an entire aisle devoted to different varieties of kale. “It’s a little far to come regularly,” Robert says. There are beers in the cold beer aisle that Robert has read about on blogs about craft brewing: ninety-minute IPAs, one-hundred-and-twenty-minute IPAs. Next to the refrigeration unit is a table set up for a beer tasting. A tall black man with a long face hands Robert a small plastic cup of beer. “It’s infused with basil. I think it actually tastes quite remarkable.”
Viola and Robert sit on well-designed bar stools at the wine and coffee bar at the front of the store, drinking coffee and flipping through the free weekly. There’s a small arts festival at Eagle Creek Park. “Those are always horrible,” Viola says. “I mean, they’re really kitschy. Like a live band with a name like ‘The Governor’s Men’ playing covers of Steppenwolf songs and a bunch of booths selling paintings of trees,” she says. “I don’t mean it wouldn’t be fun,” she says. “It might be fun. We can go, if you want.”
