Mr. Buttercream

He was in her line again. Tall, dark, and oh my god. Talk, dark, and yes please with a side of frosting. Was he buying buttercream? She surreptitiously glanced at his sole item on the asphalt gray conveyor belt, but couldn’t tell which flavor because the label was faced away.

Millie, with the slow drawl and the ginger-hued beehive, had named him after the first time he’d come in. Day one, she’d called him Mr. Dreamboat, because he really was. He had the look that made Janie go a little weak in the knees. Casually handsome with some rough edges. The type who would stop and help you change a flat if you were on some deserted road.

How could she tell? Because Janie had been working the night shift for three years, and you started to get a feeling about people. So far, she hadn’t been wrong. She might only see a customer for a minute or two once or twice a week, but she was intuitive. The nice people were simply nice. They let someone with a loaf of bread go ahead if they had a full cart. They shared their coupons. Offered up a penny. They didn’t grumble.

The nitwits were nitwits.

They talked loudly on their phones the whole interaction. They were petty and obnoxious and you knew in your heart that’s how they were outside of the store, too.

This man, with his short dark hair and slate gray eyes was attractive but tired looking. He didn’t have manicured nails, but his hands were always clean. Mille’d called him Mr. Dreamboat, but Janie had started to think of him by the flavor of frosting he bought. Mr. Sprinkles. Mr. Vanilla Bean. Rich and Creamy! Great new taste!

Janie tried to concentrate on what the irate woman directly in front of her was squawking about, but this customer’s voice sounded like the off-screen adults in a 1970's cartoon. The wah-wah-wah-wah of a muted trombone. The woman in the curlers under a synthetic scarf was growling about double-coupons, which wasn’t even something Janie’s store offered. On top of that, the customer was irked about the price of the cat food, which had been on sale until yesterday, and it was now today. The price changed at midnight. It was automatically programmed into the register system. Nothing Janie could do about it.

Damn, was Mr. Buttercream looking at her? He wasn’t on his phone. Never on his phone. He seemed to be clocking the way she was dealing with the angry customer. Patiently, but with a firm hand.

There were shorter checkout lines. For instance, Millie on register 5 was wide open. Millie was open in many ways. Why didn’t he take his frosting and go to her line, let her show him a bit of her latest ink? Millie had a fan club.

He wasn’t moving lines. He winked at Janie.

Janie felt her cheeks go the pink of strawberry frosting (aisle two, right in the center). She was trying to listen with half of an ear to the chatter of this woman who would not stop itemizing which stores in town had deeper discounts. The one over on Howard Street. The one on Wilson. And why couldn’t Janie just tell the customer to go there instead, then? To any of those other, seemingly better markets. Because she wanted to keep this job. This 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. job. This generally-quiet-except-for-the-weirdos-who-buy-cat-food-after-midnight job.

Had he really winked at her? She darted her eyes in his direction again, and now he was half-smiling.

Damn, her customer was paying in change. The woman had literally dumped a rumpled ziplock bag all over the counter. And was that a Canadian quarter?

Mr. Buttercream was scanning the magazines. He could have done self-checkout. Her mind—the part that was walled off from the woman in the housecoat who now had found a second coupon deep down in her raffia purse with the plastic flowers and wanted Janie to begin the transaction all over again, so that Janie was forced to ring for the manager—that safe part of her tried to remember how often she’d seen him.

Last Saturday night, around 12:45, was it? Same time-ish. Same item. One jar of frosting. What was he making? What was he buttering? Or creaming? There was no cake mix. She tried to catch a glimpse of his hand to see if there was a ring or not… ring the manger… that’s what she was supposed to be doing.

Estelle came over quickly. Estelle who had been at the store since Clinton played sax on Arsenio, who didn’t get ruffled by hooligans who came in to try to suck N20 out of the whipped cream containers or couples who attempted to join the mile low club in the cereal aisle. Estelle had seen it all. She soothed the woman in the pink scarf with the curlers and the 16 cans of cat food, slid the little key into Janie’s register to void the sale, scooped up the mess of change, took the apoplectic customer to a closed aisle to redo the entire transaction, and tossed a well-placed but soft apology to the man in line.

And now he was in front of her. Mr. Frosting himself. Except, he wasn’t. He had let a curly-topped moppet with a bottle of tequila and a few loose limes go ahead. Janie had to card the kid in the university sweatshirt, and as she did, she noticed Mr. Frosting walking over to the manager.

The ID, miraculously, passed the test. Janie wanted to say something to the student like, “Be careful,” or “Have fun,” but those were two very different bits of wisdom. She wasn’t that much older than I’m-about-to-do-my-first-body-shot. Why did she feel ancient? The night shift. It aged a person.

One aisle over, Mr. Frosting was saying something to Estelle, handing something to her, watching her seem shocked but then nod and smile.

Janie bagged the makings of a night to forget for the youth, and then Mr. Frosting was back.

He said, “Is it always like that?”

“Like a tempest in a teapot?”

“Or chaos in a cat food can.”

She said, “We do get our odd ducks. Something about the 11 p.m. to 3 a.m. crowd.” But then she realized he fit into this category. And would he be offended by being called an odd duck? Didn’t seem to be. Didn’t seem to be in a hurry. There was nobody behind him. She reached for his frosting. It felt oddly intimate.

“Are you baking a cake?” she asked, trying to drag out their interaction as long as possible. She knew Millie was watching without turning to look over her shoulder.

“I don’t bake.”

Next she asked if he would like a small bag.

He nodded. The small bags were nightmares. The management had cheapened out, so even just opening them would cause a rip if you weren’t careful.

“It’s buttercream this week?” she murmured. It had been coconut three weeks before. Followed by sprinkles the next. Then German Chocolate.

“I like to live on the edge.”

There was still nobody behind him so she didn’t need to hurry. She could smile at him, which was something she was supposed to do anyway. It was in the most recent edition of the store’s thick policy handbook. “Be pleasant. Smile when and if appropriate.” But don’t be too pleasant. A few of the checkers had complained that if you smiled at customers, more often than not, they took this simple upturn of the lips as an invitation to take you out to the bar on the corner and teach you how to two-step, if that’s what the young people were calling it these days. Maybe she should have asked Tequila and Lime junior.

And what if she wanted her smile to be an invitation?

The second week she’d seen him, there had been an altercation in the snack food aisle. A dude they called Sticky Fingers had been caught trying to slip chips plus a jar of salsa into his pants. Mille had alerted their somnambulant security guard who hadn’t done much at all.

Mr. Frosting had asked her if all the customers got nicknames, and she’d said, “Only the ones who stand out.”

Now, she was fumbling with the small paper bag. She was trying to remember how small talk worked. Last week, he had leaned over the barrier and said, “Do you like frosting?”

Did she? Sure.

Last week, she’d had a sudden rush, people running out of onion dip and light beer, condoms and pickles, and she hadn’t been able to give him her full attention, but as she’d handed him his change, he’d asked her which flavor she liked best, and flustered she’d said, “Buttercream.”

Which is what he was buying now.

Estelle was looking over at her. She’d fixed the glitch with Ms. Angry Catfood 2026. Millie was watching, too. Millie had a theory about men who came through their lines in the middle of the night. She had a theory about the women, too, if we’re being honest here. But her focus was on the men. It’s why she left her top buttons undone in spite of the employee handbook preaching professional attire. Millie liked people to see her tattoos.

Janie sort of wanted to ask the man if he ate food aside from frosting. She kind of wanted to know what he was frosting. More than that, she wanted to know why he chose her line, even if there were people in front of him, even if someone was, god forbid, writing a check.

He said, “I know this isn’t where one is supposed to get intimate, but I look forward to the minute or two we spend together each week.”

She did, too.

He said, “My ex bought sprouts, and wheatgrass, and tofu in slimy bricks and left me for her personal trainer. She never let me keep frosting in the cupboard.”

Millie was watching. Her theory in action. Estelle couldn’t say squat because there was nobody else in line.

He said, “Do you like sprouts?”

And she shook her head.

He said, “Every once in a while, don’t you just want to slip a cold silver spoon into a jar of frosting and lick it clean?”

Janie did. Yup. That is exactly where her mind went.

Instead she said, “What did you do over there?” she motioned to Estelle. “When you went and talked to her.”

He said, “I paid for the lady’s cat food. Nobody should have to dump out change to feed a pet. I gave the manager a little extra, so that when the customer comes back, the cat food is taken care of.”

Janie felt vindicated. She might only see a customer for a minute or two a few times a week, but the nice ones were nice.

He took the bag from her, and he handed her a small scrap of paper. “If you want to lick a spoon after you get off work.” He smiled at her again, and then left, and she looked down at the card, it there was a phone number under the words “Mr. Buttercream.”