The Last Rotisserie Chicken
A brutally air-conditioned Costco in suburban Phoenix at 5:51 PM on a Friday, where the hot case under the READY TO EAT sign holds exactly one rotisserie chicken and a woman in scrubs is approaching from the opposite end of the aisle.
There is one chicken left. It's 5:51 and the next batch doesn't come out until 6:20. Double wants to sprint for it — full grocery-cart-ramming, excuse-me-pardon-me, no-eye-contact commitment. Bust wants to loop around through freezers and approach from the blind side like a reasonable person, but the woman in scrubs is eleven steps closer and gaining. The chicken's internal temperature label reads 167°F. It is perfect.
“Eleven steps is nothing. I once closed a four-aisle gap at a sample station during rib day. We go NOW.”
“She's wearing running shoes, Double. Those are New Balance 880s. That's a woman who has made peace with cardio.”
Double launched the cart like a battering ram into a Kirkland Signature toilet paper display, creating a six-foot-high barricade in his own path. The woman in scrubs didn't even speed up — she just extended one arm at a walking pace, picked up the chicken by the container lid, and nodded at him like a nurse acknowledging a patient who'd pulled out his own IV.
That chicken was already cold, I could tell from here — we dodged a bullet.
It was 167 degrees, Double. You read the label out loud. You whispered 'perfect' like you were proposing to it.