Ninety-Nine

I’m at Norma with Becca. She’s frozen in front of the cookies, completely unable to decide what to commit to, and I’m walking the aisles in a kind of trance—past Thai mushroom sauces, Polish car radios, whatever they’ve decided the international section needs today. Then I see it. Organic basil. Green, full, genuinely substantial. Ninety-nine cents. I’m adopting this plant.

There’s something about finding the right thing at the right price. About five years ago I felt it with instant noodles. Ä Kim Chi, the Acecook brand, vegetable flavor. I don’t remember exactly when they became a thing—maybe around when everyone decided sodium was acceptable again—but suddenly they were just everywhere. Not student food. Real people with real jobs were buying them. I was one of them, kept buying them through some solid stretch of my life.

I was probably addicted to the moment more than the noodles themselves. That specific feeling of standing in a discount store and finding something that just clicks. Want hits price hits availability, and you don’t have to talk yourself into anything. The basil’s on my windowsill now. Every time I look at it I’m thinking about those noodles, about Norma as this place where random alignment happens, where Becca’s still deciding and I’m walking out with something I didn’t know I needed.