Dreams.

I drag a heavy office chair down the street – towards a small store in the neighborhood. I need to make a few purchases, then take them home, and bring the chair inside. The store has two floors, with a department and a checkout counter downstairs and upstairs. When I arrive, there's a queue of 20 people per square meter upstairs, and they're directing me up there, while blocking the exit because they're doing wet cleaning on the first floor. Nevertheless, especially for me – a valued customer – they open a third checkout counter on the second floor with a young saleswoman, and while the crowd is crammed into one line, I make my purchases at the other.
I wanted to buy some carrots, and she gives me a small piece. How much does it cost, I ask? She doesn't answer, but talks to someone who is cleaning downstairs. I put down 50 rubles in cash, waiting for my change. She says – that's not enough. I say – what do you mean, not enough? It's just a piece of carrot. She says – oh, yes, that's true. I decided not to take it. I wanted to buy some sauce or seasoning, and I ask – where is it? She says – oh, I don't know. I look at her reproachfully, and the store cat sitting nearby looks at her the same way; she seems to feel embarrassed.
Then I say, okay, I want some ice cream. She immediately says happily – ah, it's here, it's here! She jumps to the other half of the second floor, where the queue of 20 people had already dispersed, and says to the 50-year-old female cashier: %name%, arrange some ice cream for this man! She "arranges" it – by pointing with her hand to several refrigerators that are there, telling him to look around, they won't stop him. I rummage through all of them, looking for the type of ice cream I want, but I can't find it. At one point, I notice that I almost touched the cat with my hand, which is sitting on a chair near the refrigerator. It looks like a plush toy, and I know that it probably is, because the real cat is in the other half of the floor, but I still flinch, and the cat flinches too and gets scared – after all, it was alive.
I take a random ice cream, go to the checkout counter with the 50-year-old woman. She suddenly says to me – oh, I thought you looked familiar, and you shop here all the time. I say – yes, I come in once a month. The woman: I'll give you a discount – and she doesn't scan my ice cream. Instead, the first young woman scans it, and I notice that there's a third cat sitting there, and it purrs loudly when it sees me, like a vacuum cleaner or a refrigerator. Moreover, I notice that it only has half a head – vertically – and something like a watermill wheel is attached to it. When it purrs, the wheel turns, and the purring turns into a strange melody, as if it's being filtered on a computer. You're liked by her, says the saleswoman.
Then the saleswoman extends her palms, closed, and asks for my palm to pass something. I give her my palm, and a peach/apricot pit in the shape of a pine cone is placed in it, gnawed down to a one-millimeter layer of pulp, and on the pulp, it says: "I 💜 you," and it's clear from the emotion that this is a professional gesture from the saleswoman to a regular customer. I take my purchases here, return to the previous checkout counter to pick up what I might have left there, but I don't see anything of mine, only an open cash register with money, and the keys to the car and apartment of the young saleswoman. I realize that I didn't buy anything, I met a creepy half-cat, I wasted a lot of time and effort, and there's still an office chair outside that I need to drag home, and I sigh heavily.