This will get her to five hundred dollars rather slower than the other way. Perhaps she should look into other neurologists to see if they want less money.

"I'm kind of alarmed to discover that we have hired a deli counter girl who needs a neurologist," says her boss, but he sends her off to work.

"It's because I want to understand how I learned English spontaneously the other day!" she explains, and she goes cheerfully to the deli counter to do her job.

Her job involves a lot of meat and cheese and weighing things and packaging things! Some people express attraction to her or spontaneously mope at her about their various personal drama:

- "My son never calls me and it would be better for my self-image if that were genuinely completely baffling but I actually think it might be because I was a terrible mother to him and don't feel capable of change."
- "I'm getting married next week! At the time of the proposal I thought of it as settling but I've gotten to like her more since then."
- "Wow, I really want to see your breasts. You should probably not take that as much of a compliment, it's true of nearly every woman I see."
- "I don't know the difference between provolone and meunster and I'm worried this betrays some fundamental lack of discernment in me."
- "I'm really overwhelmed and upset that you're out of the kind of roast beef I like! I was relying on that roast beef for my day to go as planned and now it's not and I'm maybe going to cry!"
- "You're not Kelly. I have a parasocial relationship with Kelly because I restock the employee fridge with stuff from here every day and I resent that you're not her."
- "Your nametag says Bird! That's an unusual name and makes me wistful about having been named something more interesting than Lisa."
- "Your hair is beautiful. If I find any of it in my turkey I will sue this store."

She expresses sympathy to people who are having a hard time and happiness to people who are having a good time and also has some other responses.

"Don't worry, I don't know the difference either!"

"I picked my name myself! I like birds because they don't live in caves or eat brains!"

"I am reasonably sure there is none of my hair in your turkey! I like having hair. It's pretty and nice to touch."

Everyone finds this basically unremarkable as a way for her to behave, though Kelly does offer Bird samples of provolone and meunster so she can experience the distinction.

This is a very interesting distinction and deserving of focused attention!

"The first time I tasted cheese," she muses once the ritual is complete, "I tried to eat the entire rest of the wheel of cheese because it tasted so fascinating. That turned out to be a bad idea. I ate too much cheese and made myself sick."

"One time I did that with ice cream when my parents left me alone in the house long enough that I went shopping," Kelly nods.

"What is it like to have parents?"

"I like it okay but sometimes my dad gets on my back about not giving him grandkids."

"Oh! Grandchildren! I hadn't thought about those! That must be interesting. I don't think I want kids myself. Making an entire person seems like a lot of responsibility."

"I just didn't want to be pregnant. It sounds really unpleasant. And I don't have a husband anyhow."

"Oh, is being pregnant usually unpleasant? I didn't know. I haven't heard very much about it."

"Some people don't mind it but some people get awful complications! And they get huge. I don't want to be huge. It's hard enough staying under two hundred pounds as it is."

"Is staying under two hundred pounds important?"

"It's a big round number and that makes me feel like it's a more important threshold than going from one eighty seven to one eighty eight."

"I thought I heard that bigger humans were better off because they have more food and can survive lean times more easily, but maybe I am confused!"

"Oh, I think that was true back when there were more lean times. Now, well. Here we are in a grocery store!" She gestures at the food all around them.

"This grocery store does have more human food in it than I had ever seen in my entire life before I appeared in this town, but I hadn't seen very many human settlements before then so I wasn't sure how normal that is!"

"It's a big store!" agrees Kelly, handing somebody their deviled eggs and potato salad. "But there are lots of big stores."

"Now I wonder how stores this big stay supplied with food!"

"It comes on trucks from processing plants which get it from farms! If you get an opening shift at some point you can see some of the trucks."

"Neat! I look forward to that!"

"The manager always likes to put new people on shifts in the middle of the day but in a few weeks you can get other hours if you want."

"Probably I will still be here in a few weeks and I can ask for an early shift to look at the trucks!"