A Lunch Date with Costco and Exxon by Lenitschka

This week's exercise: take two company names and write a story with them as characters

or

Write a scene describing the POV of a person with a mental illness drawn from the Russian Hat of Literary Excellence. My illness; Pica

My companies fit so well, I chose to combine these two games

Costco was hungry. That was abundantly obvious. Then again, Costco was almost always hungry. Exxon didn’t even know why she bothered making the observation to herself. It was about as useful a thought as the sky is blue. The sky was always blue, and Costco was always hungry.

He chose a hot dog stand for their lunch. Exxon got one hot dog with mustard and onions, and a can of ginger ale. Costco got four hot dogs, a bag of chips, a can of Pepsi and then asked if they could stop at the next stand for ice cream.

“They’re such good prices it makes sense to get more,” he explained. Exxon considered mentioning that he wasn’t saving any money by buying more lunch than he could eat at once and making him self sick later, but thought better of it. Costco was always irrational about how much he could fit in his belly at one time. They found an empty table along the pier and sat down. Costco was already halfway through his first hot dog.

“So,” Exxon began. “How was your morning?”

“Fine,” Costco said, another bite of sausage and white bread being mulched in his wide open mouth. “Yours?”

“Sale totals were reviewed this morning. I beat Chevron by four percent.”

“No way! Awesome!” Costco offered Exxon a high five. She accepted it, though her hand became coated in ketchup in the process. She wiped it on her napkin and took another bite of her own lunch.

“Chevron was super catty about it too. She kept making snide comments all morning. I just think she’s jealous.”

“Yeah, definitely jealous,” Costco agreed, opening his bag of chips.

“We’re both being considered for promotion so the pressure is pretty high on both of us, and I get that she’s under stress, but I just think, you know she could be a lot nicer about it. We’re going to have to work together afterwards no matter who gets it, so I just think, it would be nice if we could just get along.”

“Yeah. Hey are you going to finish that?”

Costco pointed at Exxon’s half eaten hot dog.

“Oh, no, go ahead.”

The bread was making her stomach queasy anyway.

Costco finished it in a few bites then scarfed down the rest of his lunch while pretending to listen to Exxon. She sipped her ginger ale and kept talking, not caring so much if her lunch buddy listened as much as she did that he didn’t try to talk over her.

It was 12:40 and lunch hour would soon be over. Costco was nearly done his lunch, and Exxon had raised the empty Canada Dry can to her mouth three times now before remembering there was nothing in it. Embarrassed, she propped up her elbows on the table and held the can to just below her face with both hands, as if that was what she had meant to do all along. The empty can crackled as her fingers squeezed it, a sound Exxon had always found quite soothing.

Man, she was hungry. She tried to think back to what she had eaten for breakfast that morning, but nothing came to mind. Had she skipped breakfast again? Absently, she took her empty pop can and grasped the rim between her teeth. Now that she was distracted, all conversation had died, and there was no sound but Costco’s chewing and the waves of the ocean beneath them. Exxon squeezed the empty pop can again. The rustling of thin metal sounded soothing, and exciting.

Why had she let Costco finish her lunch? She should have at least eaten the whole hot dog, never mind the fact it had made her sick. How was she going to get through an entire afternoon of work with only half a hot dog and ginger ale in her stomach?

“You okay?” Costco said. She looked at him with a start. “We should start walking back.”

“Yeah, okay,” she said. Exxon grabbed her bag and cleared away the garbage from the table, dropping it in the nearest trashcan on the way down the street. The empty pop can was still clutched in her hand.

“Do you mind if we stop here?” Costco asked, pointing to a convenience store. “I’m still a little hungry and I want to grab something to last me through the afternoon.”

“You’re still hungry?” Exxon exclaimed. “Costco, you had four and a half hot dogs, an entire bag of all dressed chips a can of coke and ice cream! How do you even have room for more food?”

“I like to bulk up at lunch,” he shrugged, and went into the store. Exxon sighed, but didn’t follow. She looked up the busy street, full of men and women in suits grudgingly starting the walk back to their office buildings. No doubt all of them had had a more satisfying lunch then her. Maybe she should grab something from the convenience store as well. Then again, these little downtown hole in the wall stores were always ridiculously overpriced. Better to just go hungry.

Absently, Exxon tapped the empty pop can she still held against her face. The metal was cold against her lips. She took another sip from the can, in the vain hope that maybe a little bit was left, but she should have known better. There was nothing in this can but air.

She twisted the empty pop can, and tore it in two. Inside, it still smelled like ginger ale. Exxon looked up and down the street to make sure that no one was looking, then, tentatively, licked the torn up can.

It didn’t taste like ginger ale. It tasted, well, Exxon wasn’t quite sure how to describe it. She licked it again. It tasted, good. Not even bothering to look around this time, Exxon bit into the can. It was sharp, and impossible to chew, but bit by bit, Exxon swallowed the shreds of can.

“Exxon?”

She turned, spitting out a mouthful of metal. Costco was staring at her from the convenience store doorway, a bag of pretzels in hand and a look of revulsion on his face.

“Is that, are you . . .”

Exxon chewed a bit more and swallowed.

“I was hungry,” she said by way of explanation. The look on Costco’s face suggested she was only making things worse.

“That’s. Not. Safe.”

She looked down at the sharp edges of the torn up can.

“You’re right,” she agreed, and walked over to a recycling bin to deposit the remains of her snack. The recycling bin was right under a tree just starting to bud, it’s roots overflowing from the tiny plot of dirt it had to grow in in the middle of the sidewalk.

Hmm, dirt. Exxon knelt down, balancing precariously in pumps and pencil skirt, and scooped up a handful of dirt. Rising to her feet, she sampled a pinch. Not as good, but not bad.

“And you think my eating habits are unhealthy,” Costco said, catching up to her. “You really shouldn’t eat that Exxon, it’s bad for you.”

“You really shouldn’t eat that.” Exxon said, nodding toward the pretzels. She ate another pinch of dirt, and smiled to herself.

Three months later, Costco had a heart attack. He was lucky to survive, but was forced to go on a rather boring diet and cut his serving sizes drastically down. He felt pretty sorry for himself until one morning when his wife brought him the paper, and he saw that his former friend’s eating habits had fared worse than his own. The headline read:

“Local Woman Arrested for Trying To Eat Oil Tanker: Exxon Valdez Pleads Mental Illness”