从外面走进来三个只穿着泳衣的女孩。我站在第三个收银台后，背对着门，所以直到她们越过面包架的时候我才看到她们。因为是周四下午，店里的顾客寥寥无几，所以我也没有什么事可做，就靠在出纳机旁等那些女孩购物完毕后过来付钱。

过了一会儿，她们从较远处的陈列着电灯泡的过道走了过来。那个领头的“小皇后”放下手中的罐子，我用手指头把它拿了起来，指尖感到一阵冰凉。那是一罐鱼王牌什锦鲱鱼点心，用纯酸奶油浸制的，3元。

接下来，每个人都开始走霉运了。伦格尔与卖主进行一番讨价还价后买了一卡车卷心菜。他走进店来，并准备躲进那间写着“经理室”的房间。他只要一看到女人，就会在那里躲上一整天。伦格尔性格极其沉闷，他在主日学校教书，还有其他诸如此类的事情要做。不过，他可不会什么事都看不到。他走过来说：“姑娘们，这里可不是海滩。”

“小皇后”脸红了。她现在离我很近，我才注意到那可能不过是被晒红的。“我母亲叫我来买一罐鲱鱼点心回去。”她的声音让我感到有些吃惊。可能初次跟某人见面，听到这样的声音总会有这样的反应：那声音听起来很平淡且含混不清，但又略带高贵和华丽，特别是当她把重音放在“买”和“点心”的时候。突然间，我从她的口音似乎一下子看到了她家起居室的情景：她父亲和其他男人站成一圈，身穿冰淇淋色的大衣，打着领结；女人们则脚穿凉鞋，从一个大盘子里用牙签取鲱鱼点心吃；他们都端着颜色看起来像水的饮料，里面放着橄榄和薄荷叶。“这当然没错，” 伦格尔说。“不过这里可不是海滩。”他重复这句话的时候，我感到滑稽极了，就好像他才刚刚想起这句话，而之前这么多年来他一直认为A&P超级市场是海边的大沙丘，而他则是救生员的队长。看到我笑他，他很不高兴——我说过，他可不会什么事都看不到——不过，他这时正全神贯注于用主日学校校长充满悲伤的眼神盯着这些姑娘。

这会儿，“小皇后”的脸又红了起来，这次可不是太阳晒的缘故。那个穿格子泳衣的胖姑娘——我更喜欢看她的背影，真是迷人极了——突然说道：“我们可不是专门来逛商店的。我们只是为了这罐东西才进来的。”

“那也没有什么区别，”伦格尔对她说。我从他转动的眼睛看得出来他先前并没有注意到这姑娘穿的是两件套的泳装。“我们希望你们来这里时穿着得体些。”“我们挺得体的，”“小皇后”突然说道，撅起下嘴唇。想想经营A&P超市的这帮人糟糕的态度，她略显愠怒。什锦鲱鱼点心在她的蓝眼睛里闪了一下。

“姑娘们，我可不想和你们斗嘴。下次再来的时候穿上一点能遮住肩膀的东西。这是我们的规章制度。”他说完转过身去。我感觉得到，在这种无声无息的气氛里，人人都变得神经紧张起来，最紧张的是伦格尔，他问我：“萨米，她们结帐了没有？”

我想了想，然后说道：“还没有。”不过我想的不是这个，我按下了出纳机上的按键：4,9，副食，总价——这可比你想的要复杂得多。我把她递给我的那张钞票展平，然后把一枚5角和一枚1分的硬币放在她那修长的粉红手掌里，把鲱鱼装在一个袋子里，把袋子的上端拧好之后递给她。做这些事的时候，我一直在默默思考

着。

看着那些姑娘——和指责她们的人——急急忙忙准备要走的时候，我冲伦格尔说道：“我不干了。”我有意说得很快，好让她们都能听到，满心希望她们能够停下来看着我——她们意料之外的英雄。她们继续向前走，到了电子眼的范围后，门自动打开了。她们在停车场上一闪就进了汽车。“小皇后”“格子姑娘”和另外一个“傻大个儿”（这里可不是指她长得不是天生丽质）撇下我走了，伦格尔站在我旁边，眉毛皱成了一团。

“你刚才说什么，萨米?”

“我说我不干了。”

“我也觉得你是这么说的。”

“你不该把她们弄得这么难堪。”

“是她们把我们弄得很难堪。我看你根本不明白自己在说什么，”伦格尔说。

“我知道你不明白，”我说，“可是我明白。”我拉开围裙后面的活结，把它从肩膀上脱下来。见此情景，两个原本向我所在的收银台走过来的顾客迟疑不定地撞到了一起，就好像猪圈里受了惊吓的猪一样。

伦格尔叹了口气，脸上露出充满耐心又苍老的神色。他和我父母是多年的好友。“萨米，你总不会这么对待你的爸妈吧？”他对我说。的确，我不会这么做。

但是，在我看来，一旦表明态度，不坚持到底的话真是要命。我把那件口袋上绣着红色“萨米”字样的围裙叠好，然后放在柜台上，把领结放在它上面。领结也是他们的——如果你想知道的话。“你以后肯定会后悔的。”伦格尔说。我也知道这是实话。但是一想到他让那些漂亮姑娘们如此难堪我就很难受。按下了“无交易”的

按钮，收款机发出“哔卟”的响声，抽屉哗啦一下开了。这种事发生在夏天的好处就是我可以干净利索地一走了之，用不着麻烦去找大衣和雪靴。我穿着母亲前一天晚上帮我熨烫好的白衬衫，潇洒地走向电子眼的范围内，门自动打开了，阳光洒满了外面的柏油路面。

我向四周望了望，想看看我的姑娘们在哪里。可是，她们已经走了，这一点儿也不出乎意料。路上空空荡荡，只有一个年轻的妇人站在一辆浅蓝色的猎鹰牌旅行汽车门前，因为没有买到糖果在跟她的孩子们大声叫嚷。我的视线越过人行道上堆放着的许多袋泥苔藓和铝制除草用具，向身后的大窗户望过去，我看到伦格尔站在我的位置上，正在帮一个顾客结账。他的脸色阴沉沉的，背挺得笔直，好像刚刚才注射过铁水。从今以后，这个世界会对我多么严酷无情啊。想到这里，我的心情开始沉重起来。

In walks these three girls in nothing but bathing suits. I’m in the third check-outslot, with my back to the door, so I don’t see them until they’re over by the bread.

The store’s pretty empty, it being Thursday afternoon, so there was nothing much to do except lean on the register and wait for the girls to show up again. After a while they come around out of the far aisle, around the light bulbs. Queenie puts down the jar and I take it into my fingers icy cold. Kingfish Fancy Herring Snacks in Pure Sour Cream:49.

Then everybody’s luck begins to run out. Lengel comes in from haggling with a truck full of cabbages on the lot and is about to scuttle into that door marked MANAGER behind which he hides all day when the girls touch his eye. Lengel’s pretty dreary, teaches Sunday school and the rest, but he doesn’t miss that much. He comes over and says, “Girls, this isn’t the beach.”

Queenie blushes, though maybe it’s just a brush of sunburn I was noticing for the first time, now that she was so close. “My mother asked me to pick up a jar of herring snacks.” Her voice kind of startled me, the way voices do when you see the people first, coming out so flat and dumb yet kind of tony, too, the way it ticked over “pick up” and “snacks.” All of a sudden I slid right down her voice into her living room.

Her father and the other men were standing around in ice-cream coats and bow ties and the women were in sandals picking up herring snacks on toothpicks off a big plate and they were all holding drinks the color of water with olives and sprigs of mint in them.

“That’s all right,” Lengel said. “But this isn’t the beach.” His repeating this struck me as funny, as if it had just occurred to him, and he had been thinking all these years the A & P was a great big dune and he was the head lifeguard. He didn’t like my smiling—as I say he doesn’t miss much—but he concentrates on giving the girls that sad Sunday-school-superintendent stare.

Queenie’s blush is no sunburn now, and the plump one in plaid, that I liked better from the back—a really sweet can—pipes up, “We weren’t doing any shopping. We just came in for the one thing.”

“That makes no difference,” Lengel tells her, and I could see from the way his eyes went that he hadn’t noticed she was wearing a two-piece before. “We want you decently dressed when you come in here.”

“We are decent,” Queenie says suddenly, her lower lip pushing, getting sore now that she remembers her place, a place from which the crowd that runs the A & P must look pretty crummy. Fancy Herring Snacks flashed in her very blue eyes.

“Girls, I don’t want to argue with you. After this come in here with your shoulders covered. It’s our policy.” He turns his back. I could feel in the silence everybody getting nervous, most of all Lengel, who asks me, “Sammy, have you rung up this purchase?”

I thought and said “No”, but it wasn’t about that I was thinking. I go through the punches, 4, 9, GROC, TOT—it’s more complicated than you think. I uncrease the bill, and pass a half and a penny into her narrow pink palm, and nestle the herrings in a bag and twist its neck and hand it over, all the time thinking.

The girls, and who’d blame them, are in a hurry to get out, so I say “I quit”to Lengel quick enough for them to hear, hoping they’ll stop and watch me, their unsuspected hero. They keep right on going, into the electric eye; the door flies open and they flicker across the lot to their car, Queenie and Plaid and Big Tall Goony—Goony (not that as raw material she was so bad), leaving me with Lengel and a kink in his eyebrow.

“Did you say something, Sammy?”

“I said I quit.”

“I thought you did.”

“You didn’t have to embarrass them.”

“It was they who were embarrassing us. I don’t think you know what you’re saying,” Lengel said.

“I know you don’t,” I said. “But I do.” I pull the bow at the back of my apron and start shrugging it off my shoulders. A couple customers that had been heading for my slot begin to knock against each other, like scared pigs in a chute.

Lengel sighs and begins to look very patient and old and gray. He’s been a friend of my parents for years. “Sammy, you don’t want to do this to your Mom and Dad,”

he tells me. It’s true, I don’t. But it seems to me that once you begin a gesture it’s fatal not to go through with it. I fold the apron, “Sammy” stitched in red on the pocket, and put it on the counter, and drop the bow tie on top of it. The bow tie is theirs, if you’ve ever wondered. “You’ll feel this for the rest of your life,” Lengel says, and I know that’s true, too, but remembering how he made that pretty girl blush makes me so scrunchy inside. I punch the No Sale tab and the machine whirs “pee-pul” and the drawer splats out. One advantage to this scene taking place in summer, I can follow this up with a clean exit, there’s no fumbling around getting your coat and galoshes, I just saunter into the electric eye in my white shirt that my mother ironed the night before, and the door heaves itself open, and outside the sunshine is skating around on the asphalt.

I look around for my girls, but they’re gone, of course. There wasn’t anybody but some young married screaming with her children about some candy they didn’t get by the door of a powder-blue Falcon station wagon. Looking back in the big windows,over the bags of peat moss and aluminum lawn furniture stacked on the pavement, I could see Lengel in my place in the slot, checking the sheep through. His face was dark gray and his back stiff, as if he’d just had an injection of iron, and my stomach kind of fell as I felt how hard the world was going to be to me hereafter.