A small story:

"There are," Consort reported, "Seven canisters of tea in the storage space."

I nodded and smiled, because that fact made me feel warm and safe.

"Let me rephrase that," he said.

"Why are there seven canisters of tea in the storage space?"
"Because it's my favorite kind of tea and for jasmine buds, it's ridiculously cheap."

"That's why we have one, or two. Why do we have seven?"

"Because I got them at Jon's," I said, because that explains everything. Consort, maddeningly, appeared unenlightened.
"Jon's," I repeated, as he'd suddenly say, "Oh, JON'S" and then we'd dance around a maypole for a while.

"You mean your store you like with all the mean grandmothers?"

"Well, it's not my store and those women have been through a great deal in their native countries."
"And yes," I finished.

Each Jon's store has items you'd see in another chain grocery store but it also has items from around the world. Often they will have items catering to the local culture.

Glendale is, in a world, Armenia. Ergo, Jon's in Glendale has Armenian things.
For someone like myself still making and sending craft cocktails and cocktails -

Still doing it! Make a donation to @santedor, send a drink to a friend here in Los Angeles!

Unusual juices are a godsend. And so educational! It seems that Armenians are really into mulberries.
So I'm there one day and I see a canister of jasmine buds for tea and the price is oh, half of what I'd pay somewhere else. I note with pleasure the small amount of misspellings on the label. "Yes," I think happily, "This is the stuff they hold back for kinfolk."

I buy it.
It's HEAVEN.

I have suspicions it's cheap because it's irradiated or grew next to a formaldehyde plant but, screw it; I've already had my kid. A week later, I go back to get it.

Nothing.

On the shelf, where there had been my tea was now another goddamn mulberry thing.
I grabbed a clerk, laconically restocking wallpaper-sized lengths of lavash, dragged him back to tea. Between the masks, English not being his first language and my increasing panic over being separated from my beloved it took a while, but we finally almost got there.
"Ah," he finally said, his peltish eyebrows raising, "You want tea!"

He then pointed me to a box of something written in Armenian, a scowling grandmother on the box; I had no idea what it was but suspected if I drank it, three Turks would die. I shook my head sadly.
He shrugged and went back to arranging yards of bread.

This is when I learned the secret to Jon's, which is that items blink into and out of existence with breathtaking speed. When they are gone, no one who work there will acknowledge they ever had it.

It's Food Fight Club.
A month later, in pursuit of something novel, I stopped by Jon's. Because I enjoy causing myself pain, I passed by the tea aisle, to torture myself with the lack of jasmine tea.

THERE WAS MY JASMINE TEA.

The sign was back up as if the drought had never existed.
I grabbed every single canister they had. At one point I felt pressure on my foot. I looked down and discovered an Armenian woman of unimaginable antiquity was using my instep as a resting place for her walker as she grabbed all the grandmother tea.

We locked eyes, nodded.
We knew.
"That's why we have seven canisters of tea, because you don't trust them to restock," Consort said.

I nodded and said happily, "Exactly. Just the seven canisters. Speaking of nothing at all, please do not look under the Kid's bed or in the hallway closet?"

He looked so tired.
He should try some of my tea.
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