Creating a Story PART ONE: ‘A Cut in Line Never Saves Time’
I wrote this in 2021. I wanted to share my first pass of my new short story, “A Cut In Line Never Saves Time” and share how I conceptualize the stories I write. Also most of my short stories I can’t share with you at this time. Unlike a musician's demo tape, if I actually share a story, many short story publishers would consider it “published” and won’t accept them. I hope to have my second pass up in a week’s time.
Stories come to me in a number of ways. “Not This Saturday” came to me at my cousin’s house years ago, when his friend asked us, what if these people were living alternate lives? Those people were all in their sixties and seventies at the time. But I thought there was a story there. What if the family was younger? What would it feel like to accidentally learn that your cherished family member was living a secret life? How do you show a macro event on a micro level? Let me show you how my stories come to me.
One night before bed, in my ritual to fuel my insomnia, I landed upon a news story, I believe in The New York Times, a Houston doctor had been charged with stealing a COVID-19 vaccine.
Now, I think America has a problem. Some people don’t like to read this; people who think saying our country has a problem is a problem, an unpatriotic one. Especially when you’re suggesting the country shouldn’t be racist or homophobic or that voting should be open to all citizens. Of course, some of these same people wanted to make our country great again—which implies the country had become not great.
To me, the country of my birth is great and always has been great. In my sphere, mainly the Northeast and some of the West Coast, life is pretty great regardless. But we do have problems—or challenges, if you’re so inclined—that need addressing.
One problem is how we elect state attorney generals and district attorneys. Instead of calling balls and strikes, what is legal or illegal, what is for the public good, and what is not, these lawyer-politicians seem to be playing a game to score points for higher office.
In Houston, a doctor opens a vial of COVID vaccine near the end of the day. He can throw it away but instead goes on a search for eligible people who need the vaccine, having notified his superior that he’d be doing this and been given the OK.
He is fired and charged with a crime. He is of Pakistani descent, and one thing I read was he had given the vaccine to people with Pakistani or Indian last names, including his wife—who was eligible. I think, had he been Dr. Smith, and he’d given the vaccine to Mrs. McWaspy, or a man whose last name was on a street or the name of a city, he’d have been hailed as a hero of Houston. It worked in Florida, where they first provided the vaccine to affluent white communities that had supported leadership.
There are countless other stories, such as the Netflix docuseries “Trial 4,” where the seemingly innocent are tied up in courts and jail for crimes they never committed because law enforcement wants to send a signal to the community by charging anyone the community could believe did the crime, and the DA doesn’t stand up to law enforcement because quickly pinning someone with no ability to defend themselves shows they are fighting corruption. And as evidence comes out exonerating the victim, the falsely accused, they continue to insist to the media of the innocent’s guilt because doing otherwise would be a signal against law enforcement.
Now, this is all swirling in my head.
A couple of days later, I’m standing outside the Trader Joe’s in Foxborough, Mass., in a COVID-19 supermarket queue on a cold sunny day. This elderly woman, who walked with a cane, arrived arm in arm with her friend. They weren’t spritely and limped their way to the front door. The attendant must have been distracted, and so they began to slowly limp by a line of ten or so assholes who don’t offer their place in line. Standing at the end of the line, I let them go in front of me. Seconds later, an employee of Trader Joe’s comes out and invites these women into the store.
And I ask myself these questions based on what I had read in Houston: What if the local town or county passed a draconian law that prohibited people from allowing others to cut in a supermarket or other line during COVID? What if a person didn’t know it was illegal and didn’t even know the person they let in line but was simply trying to do good things? What if someone from the DA’s office was in the line too and saw the opportunity to show the community how they are taking the issue of line-cutting seriously?
And here begins the draft of my story.
—
And I drop the bottle of pink lemonade for my girlfriend. It is the least I can do for her.
Buffalo was not the part of New York State she wanted to move, but the job opened up and I took it.
I look back at my phone. Mark lemonade off my to do list. English muffins are the last item. I should’ve remembered it when I walked down the bread aisle, but my list was so long. It’s back in the first aisle.
A woman stares at a selection of almond, oat, soy milk alternatives. Her cart is to the right of her, and so she’s blocking the aisle. I lower my music, Phoebe Bridgers, Savior Complex. What if I told you I feel like I know you, but we never met?
“Excuse me,” I say.
“Am I blocking the way?” The woman with a slight crossed eye asks.
I smile. No. You’re taking too long to choose. Vanilla almond milk is the way to go, even though I wonder of the ecological disaster of almond milk. I know literally every choice.
The woman moves out the way, and I proceed up the aisle to the front.
—
It is at this point where I need to figure out what is the name of my Trader Joe’s knockoff. My synonym list comes out with Monger, and it’s almost as quickly that the name Matt, named after a friend from college and another from high school, pops in.
What exactly is Monger Matt’s theme? Trader Joe’s has the Hawaiian shirt. What other shirts are iconic for an area? And within a few minutes. I come with a Havana shirt, and of course, Monger Matt’s would be based in Miami, which for a quick minute I’d lived in. The same way I lived in LA and shopped at the original Trader Joes in Pasadena (or the flagship.)
For reference, the initial Monger Matt’s was opened in Coral Gables when the character lived in Coconut Grove. So we continue…
—
An employee, wearing a Monger Matt’s Havana short sleeve shirt, locks eyes with me. It isn’t the first time I’ve noticed an employee looking at me. But the service here is so much better than anyone else.
“I just need to get English muffins before I’m ready to check out,” I say.
I feel like Monger Matt’s is like my family. I’ve been shopping at one since I lived briefly in Coconut Grove. That was what, fourteen years ago? So glad they opened one up in Buffalo. Really, it’s Amherst. I couldn’t understand why towns around Buffalo had Buffalo ZIP codes. Of course, I was from New England, where obscure villages had their own post offices.
As I make my way to the bread aisle, I notice two police cars out front of the store. I hope everyone is okay and no one is seriously injured.
I go down the first aisle and come to the bread again. I place the Monger Matt’s brand of English muffins on top of the probably one-hundred-dollar-plus cart and begin to make my way out.
Two officers talk to a lady, suddenly she turns and points to me.
I smile. It really can’t be about me. Can it? But suddenly these two officers approach me.
“Can we talk to you outside?” an officer with his brim pulled very low to his head asks.
“Do you mind if I check out first?” It can’t be that serious.
“We received a complaint,’ the other officer says. He’s a bit older, with a pinkish hue to his white skin. “We received a complaint.”
“A complaint about what?” I quickly try remembering what it could’ve been. This had to be the most uneventful days of shopping that I had. I even yielded someone else a very close parking spot.
“You allowed a woman an Athena,” the younger officer reads off his notepad, struggling with her last name, “Kefata-do-poulos, to cut in front of you.”
She was Greek? “I did,” I say. “The woman had a cane, and was holding onto her companion teetering to fall. They were both teetering.”
“Why don’t you come outside and we can discuss this?” the older officer asks.
“Okay? What can we do with my things?”
“Where’s the store manager?” the officer looks around.
This had to be the dumbest moment in policing, unless they were going to take my information to award me a prize.
The store manager walks over.
“Can I help?
“We’re going to take him outside for some questioning,” the older officer says. “Would you be able to look after his cart?”
“Of course,” the woman with red hair and a wide face says. They’ll just leave it out front. “We can take it in the back and keep it together for you.”
The older police officer walks toward the front door, and the one with the lowered brim raises his hand offering to let me go out next.
I’m being escorted out!
We get outside. It’s Buffalo cold outside. I look down the line, which before COVID, never existed. The line still wraps around the building.
“Do you have an ID on you?”
“I do. But why do I need it?”
“We received a complaint that you allowed a woman,” again the younger officer pulls out his notepad, “an Athena Kefta-dopoulos, to cut in front of you. That’s in violation of Erie County Code four eighty-three, O three, clause seventeen ninety-one, the ordinance prohibiting individuals from allowing others outside of their personal party to cut the line of any establishment needing to maintain a queue to enter because of the COVID-19 epidemic.”
“She had a cane and couldn’t walk.” I point to the line. “Would you let someone with a cane walk by you and have them stand out in this cold for fifteen to twenty minutes?”
“What’s your name?” the lower-brimmed officer says.
“Anastasy.”
“Anastasy, what?”
“[Greek Last Name].”
“Just as we suspected, not helping out people, but helping out a fellow Greek.”
“I had no idea she was Greek until you said her name.” I exhale. This is fucking dumb.
“You ethnic types are always helping each other out, and then playing dumb,” the lower-brimmed officer said. “I bet suddenly you don’t understand English.”
“I understand English quite well, even though I do have some working knowledge of three other languages. What I understood was the Monger Matt’s employee managing the line, thanking me for letting her cut, and then inviting her to skip the line. The person behind me standing behind me, probably not fucking Greek, thanked me as well.
“‘Had you not done it,’ she said, ‘I would’ve.’”
—
This is really important. We have a subconscious choice. If he hadn’t done it, someone else would’ve, and it would be her having these discussions about being a good person while breaking the law.
—
“Is this woman here to corroborate your story?” the lower-brimmed officer asks.
Is she here? “It’s like I was involved in a car accident and forgot to take witness statements. Why did they let me shop if what I did was so criminal?”
“Do you have an ID?” the lower-brimmed officer asks. “Do you want us to take you down to the station? We can add an obstruction and resisting arrest charge if you keep on swearing.”
“Are you arresting me for helping an old lady?”
The older officer glances at the younger officer and then to me, “We want to avoid taking you down,” he says. “It wasn’t the store that called. It was someone in line.”
I pulled out my Vermont license. “Why would someone call the police because of this?” I handed it to him. “I just moved to downtown Buffalo two months ago.”
“Vermont. Did you vote for the socialist?” the younger officer asks. “You have thirty days once you move in state.”
“I’m working six to seven days a week, coordinating the testing sites and the vaccine sites.”
“So you think because of your job, and that you live in Buffalo, you can just come into Amherst and break our laws,” the lower-brimmed officer says. “We can add failure to obtain a New York driver’s license.”
“Actually, you won’t,” I say. “My colleague, a New York state trooper, says that I need ninety days to establish residency, and then the thirty days would take effect.”
—
There can be nothing worse than telling a police officer that you understand the law better than them. I’ve found myself in this situation several times, both with city and town cops, realizing that I understood the law far better than they did. How are they directing traffic when they don’t understand the law?
—
“How do you feel when you’re waiting in line,” a modulated female voice asks, “and there is someone ahead of you just letting people in?”
I turn. It’s a woman standing in front of a news camera tripod with the logo. Channel Nine Gawker News.
“I would love to just issue you a citation and summons, but now,” the older cop says, looking at the media van, “the complaint came through the DA’s office. We’re just going to take you down to the office, issue you a citation, and then someone will return you.”
“I can’t get arrested and end up on the evening news,” I say. “I’m here as a liaison working for the governor’s office, ensuring that the vaccine is distributed in Western New York.”
“You should’ve thought about that before you broke the law,” the lower-brimmed officer says.
“I didn’t know there was a law to be broken,” I say. “I just helped a woman struggling to walk not have to walk to the end of the line, and wait with able-bodied people. It’s called manners. And I’m going to lose my job.”
The older officer hands the younger officer my ID.
“Anae-Stacey [Mispronounced Greek Last Name]…
“You just heard me say my name. Anastasy [Greek Last Name}.
“You have the right to remain silent.”
“You think you could get that right. I let her cut and I’d do it again.”
—
And that is it. A story loosely based on the Houston doctor giving out COVID vaccine, only that it is a guy who let’s an older woman with a cane cut in line. There are times when law enforcement and our elected attorneys want to exemplify someone, even if the example doesn’t fit their narrative. It’s all so the DA and law enforcement can show the public that the law keeps people safe. In this story's case, keep people cutting a line. ANd the news crew showed up, assuming that the DA’s office called it in, to do a report on the scourge of line cutters. Anastasy may lose his new job and be forced to move back to Vermont.
At some point in the future, I will edit this and resubmit it for your review.
All from me standing out in front of the line of a nearby Trader Joe’s. By the way, Trader Joe’s, please open a location in Braintree, Mass. Thanks.
Check out my second pass at this story : https://www.theodorekechris.com/magazine-archive/creating-a-story-part-two
