Game Theory by Barry Jonsberg

It didn’t do any good, though. Sometimes people just don’t like watching other people having fun. I don’t know why.
    ‘Do we need anything from the deli?’ she asked after we had found a trolley and entered through the little swing gates that remind me of batwing saloon doors in old westerns. The deli was Phoebe’s favourite and she insisted on doing the ordering. Sometimes the assistant had to crane over the big curved glass frontage to see her. I normally stood a distance off and watched. I didn’t this time.
    ‘Four salmon fillets,’ I replied.
    ‘Risotto,’ said Phoebe.
    I nodded. It was one of Mum’s staple recipes. Risotto with mushrooms, dill and peas, topped off by grilled salmon steaks. Phoebe would be in charge of grilling the fish, a task she took very seriously. Mum would do the risotto, since it took a lot of stirring and constant attention to get it just right. I was never required in this process but I would sometimes watch Phoebe and the salmon. She’d check about every ten seconds, turning the salmon with tongs to make sure the fillets were cooked evenly, her tongue poking slightly out of the corner of her mouth, totally absorbed in the task. She was the salmon. In the zone.
    ‘I’ll get the herbs and the mushrooms,’ I said. We had peas at home and there was plenty of arborio rice. ‘Meet you at the chocolate section.’ Occasionally I would buy Phoebe a Mars bar or something. Not always, because she was an addict and you can’t feed addicts, but I was in the mood this time. I left her withthe trolley, mainly because she wouldn’t have given it up even if I’d wanted it.
    Listen. I have been over what happened next at least forty times. To the police, to my parents. To anyone who cared to hear. But that’s nothing compared to the number of times I have rewound and reviewed it in my head. And each time something else came back to me, real or imagined. A glimpse of someone out of the corner of my eye, a snatch of conversation as I passed through the aisles. The supermarket was crowded. There were small children who’d stop right in front of you, oblivious to your presence, so you’d have to swerve around. That definitely happened. There was an Indian woman in brightly coloured clothing who apologised to me when her kid – a little girl with enormous brown eyes and jet black hair that shimmered like silk – skidded to a halt and nearly bailed me up. I smiled at her, but I didn’t say anything. The police interviewed the woman, much later, but she couldn’t recall anything, not even the apology. I walked to the vegetable section and picked up a pack of pre-sliced mushrooms. There was an assistant – a guy with receding hair, around forty years old – stacking the shelves with broccoli. I remember thinking he was an unlikely employee. And I also remember thinking I was being ageist for thinking it. I guess I believed that when you hit middle age you’d have some kind of career and stacking vegetables wouldn’t be part of it. Did he have dreams, when he was at school, of becoming a surveyor or an airline pilot or an inventor or a writer? And what brought him to this point, thisbalancing of vegetables on steel shelves? I shoved those thoughts away and asked him if they had any fresh dill. They didn’t. He told me a delivery was expected tomorrow. He had good teeth and watery blue eyes.
    I bought a tube of processed dill – a herb pretending to be toothpaste. It wasn’t ideal, but I had to get something. The fruit and veg section was large and full of people. There was a woman scolding her child, who was whimpering about something. She was kind of yelling but pretending not to, as if bawling at a kid was a shameful action in a public place. I guess it is. Her face was doughy and she had a tattoo peeking above her T-shirt at the base of her neck; some kind of Celtic symbol. She grabbed the kid by the arm and gave him a little shake, and then he really started to cry. Her mouth was