Blue Daisy - Descend
The aisle was a canyon made of brightly colored bricks, green by blue by red by yellow by pink by black by brown bricks and tubes. All soda. Maureen pushed her cart up and down the aisle, searching for the brand and flavor that her neighbor had offered at his barbecue, but did not see it anywhere on the shelves, though there was every other type of carbonated drink in existence, it appeared. Pineapple flavor, strawberry, orange, grape, vanilla, celery, cherry, cream, raspberry, chocolate, tonic, seltzer, herbal, in diet, no-sugar-added, no-calorie, and high-energy forms. She found it hard to believe there was so much aggregate demand in the world for such diverse species of soda, and it was in the middle of her astonishment that she saw the light green cases of Diet Chek Country Mist. The color of the packaging was itself heartbreaking: a green without natural precedent in the world, she thought the closest she could match it with would be the plastic grass that comes in Easter baskets, the case’s packaging had that same sickly quality, as if it were made of many strands of that grass melted together. The label too had a kind of sad hue to it, eggshell white, or mother-of-pearl, one of the not quite white shades, written or printed she guessed in type that reminded her of an older time’s conception of futuristic writing--the letters gave the impression that they were handwritten by a frantic robot. Diet Chek. What she found most arresting was the name of the flavor. Country Mist. She had a problem with connecting those two words, what they referred to in real life, she supposed a fog lying heavy above farmland, with something that could be bottled and remain potable for humans. Country mist. All she could imagine were the people who worked for the company of which Diet Chek was a part, and how those people had worked hard to formulate the name and design and flavor of this soda, had worked perhaps as hard or harder than her husband did at his job at the hospital. She imagined the type of television commercial that might be produced for Diet Chek Country Mist or for any Diet Chek product—-if such a thing happened, she had never seen one—--and pictured a woman her own age with a cheery bob haircut motioning to her male friend across a crowded cafeteria after he asks her what she wants to drink and the woman making a check mark in the air with her hand, as if to say, “You know what I want. Get me a Chek!” And both parties smiling at their shared love for the brand’s beverage.[Buy The Sunday Gift]