Roses the Day Before Friday
By Logan Littlefield
I work for Bundlesoflove.com, a company that distributes mass manufactured gestures of affection assembled by Mexican factory hands. I drive a van five days a week spreading joy and misery all over the metropolitan Northwest. All year round I wear the same obnoxious red polo shirt. Aubrey, my stupid girly name, is stitched above the Bundlesoflove.com logo; a flamboyant pink heart being hugged by a white teddy bear.
We have ads on television, but if you are a normal person you generally aren’t up during the wee hours of the night when the spot airs. We guarantee a basic arrangement for the low low price of 19.99 that will have her dreaming of you, or so the ad claims. I repeat however, that if you are a normal person you wouldn’t consider anything at the low low price of 19.99 to have any effect on a woman’s desire for you.
Not that I am any kind of authority on the workings of a woman’s desire. I have flat given up on it. I do know that life for me as a whole has remained quite simple without the complications of feminine interference. A woman reading this would most likely label me a homosexual however that is not the case. I did love my mother very much, but not in a psychopathic sense. She was a good woman, and she and my father remained married until their mutual passing. Perhaps they set the bar a little high, but partnerships like that are out of fashion. Turmoil and betrayal are sexier I suppose.
Besides, companionship comes in many forms. Owning a cat is similar to the maintenance of a serious relationship. Her name is Meesha and she keeps me on a regular schedule, constantly craves attention, is a finicky eater, and occasionally destroys my things. But as long as Meesha gets her Fancy Feast at the same time each evening she doesn’t care if I eat what I want. She doesn’t judge my music selection or my stupid red polo shirt. She doesn’t call me “Audrey” even though the effects of that slander wore off when I was 13. She appreciates everything I give her without needing flowers or champagne.
As far as sex goes, no I don’t fuck my cat. That piece of the puzzle is of course missing. We don’t need to get into specifics, but one big benefit to my shitty job is being able to afford the internet. Meesha doesn’t get jealous, and I lock her in my bedroom out of politeness. It is impersonal and at times soul crushing, but it serves as a quiet substitution. I sleep on a twin bed anyway, so there really is no room for two people and a cat to sleep.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that a woman hasn’t been in my life for three years now. Aubrey the idiot mama’s boy in the obnoxious red polo shirt who thinks living with a girl cat is the same as living with a girl. I know how it looks on paper. The good news is I don’t care. Love doesn’t exist, breaking news, it is something delivered to your door created by some backwards ad agency to capitalize on the huge demographic of stupid people in this country. The biggest secret they don’t want you to know is that you can live without it, quite comfortably, and spare yourself all kinds of torment.
For example, I start every day in a motor pool located in one of one million loading docks in the industrial southern end of the city. It is a big, flat, soulless building sprouting one tall story up from an ocean of blacktop. Not exactly cupid’s dream factory, and not exactly staffed by happy fluffy teddy bears. My supervisor, Sharon, is a bull-dyke that could very well be the answer to the Seattle Seahawks’ offensive line problems. Her massive shoulders fill out the flaming red shirt much more effectively than my own, and her cargo shorts are about two sizes too small. They seem to be constantly trying to suffocate her crotch, in an attempt to keep it from breeding I imagine. She wears work boots with wool socks bunched at the base of her calf, as if they, unlike her shorts were fleeing her crotch.
Sharon likes to make a point that she is my boss on a daily basis by trying to intimidate me. Constantly barking about the schedule and threatening to fight me. She is as aggressive as possible to cover up the fact that her heart was recently handed to her on a tarnished silver platter by her latest lover. I found it to be a particularly clever way to sever the relationship. The ex ordered a cheap arrangement and had it delivered to Sharon’s office, by me. The ex also dictated the particulars she wanted scrawled on Sharon’s custom card creation, which I was happy to write out myself. Her big bulldog face went slack as she read the card, and I left her in her crushed silence. Sharon is a fine little example of email-order misery being non-exclusive to sexual preference.
Today Sharon is not on the warehouse floor. Meaning she is most likely crying in her office, the mornings seem the hardest on the broken hearted. It is a good thing she is locked away in her office of solitude, because it is Thursday. Why is Thursday relevant to my little tale? Well, by law it seems that every week the stars align in such a way that anything and everything that can go awry most likely will. I am not sure why, I am not generally superstitious, but I can guarantee at least one strange thing will occur at any given time on a Thursday. It might be because it is the last day before Friday, and the week feels obligated to throw a wrench in the gears at least once before any sense of hope or relief can really start to set in.
I work much more efficiently when my masculinity isn’t being challenged by a giant tormented lesbian, so I am able to make good time loading out my van and getting my delivery run set up. I have to make fourteen stops, six of which are scattered from the North end of Seattle to the South end of Tacoma. Maybe Thursday will strike me with a flat tire, or have me sit in traffic for hours on end extending my route time well past my designated payable hours. Maybe a truck full of monkeys will run loose on the freeway, set my van on fire and run off with all of the flower arrangements forcing me to pay for all of them with my meager wages. On a Thursday, I don’t rule anything out.
There are several different scales of arrangements offered by Bundlesoflove.com, ranging from simple and sweet to over-the-top sickening sweet. I seem to have one of each in the spectrum meaning I will experience the full gambit of reactions women give when they receive a pre-ordered third party delivered gift. They will be at their places of business, their homes, occasionally hospitals, resting homes, and funeral parlors. The most desirable reaction is the swooning “oooooooooohhhhhh” accompanied by erratic fanning and blushing cheeks. These women are generally receiving the arrangement for the first time from some new man they have yet to grow tired of.
The second reaction consists of a blank stare followed by a forced smile. These women have received the same bouquet and candy combo for every occasion, be it an anniversary or Valentine’s Day. They don’t get misty, or fan themselves excitedly. They gesture stiffly to a vacant space on their desk then hold out their hand for the invoice acknowledging the receipt of the “thoughtful” gesture.
The final reaction is far more intense and unpredictable. Since women like to make big scenes, be it in the spirit of great joy or intense furious anger this is usually the most spectacular. The bouquet is forcibly removed from my grasp and smashed to the floor. If there is a stuffed animal tucked into the arrangement it is removed, disemboweled, and stomped into the remnants of the bouquet. Chocolates however, are never discarded.
I can usually avoid the wrath brought on by the unwelcome gesture, although there have been plenty of times when I become the hand of the offending beau. A wildly enraged menopausal women is the scariest in that particular scenario, with them I become the very face of the cheating spouse so that they may channel their astronomical feminine scorn. I usually sign the invoice myself in the safety of my delivery van.
So far today I have had three swooners and one scorner. From what I could gather from the scorner her husband recently erroneously confused her birthday with her sister’s. Sending the bouquet intended for the sister to his wife’s place of business. An honest mistake it would seem, however the contents of the card tucked in with the pink and white roses suggested it was a more catastrophic error. Her ritual of destruction was certainly in line with what I have come to expect, she started out with a banshee scream and finished in a heap of sobs surrounded by the scattered roses. Her fellow employees looked on in fascinated horror, one was kind enough to sign the invoice on behalf of the jilted woman so that I could continue on with my day and not have to wait for the scorner to collect herself. She of course kept the chocolates.
Four down, ten to go. Luckily my deliveries in the South end are accounted for, so I can put some miles in between myself and the crazed woman. Who knows if she will pile into her mid-sized luxury sedan and come after me in place of her soon to be ex-husband. Its not like it would be hard to track down a large red delivery van with the smiling white teddy bear hugging the big hot-pink heart plastered on the side of it. In some ways, when I deliver to angry people like that I feel as if I have done them a favor. Sometimes being the anti-cupid is satisfying. As I drive away from the non-descript office park and check my mirror one more time for the lunatic that may or may not be at my heels, I can’t help but feel satisfied that I helped move her hollow relationship into the slaughterhouse. I am at times, the best medicine for a dying love. I can put it down like a lame horse for the low low price of 19.99.
My next stop however is one of my favorites. Ms. Jan Holdsteadt has to be two hundred and fifty years old. I may be off by a couple of years, because she is still very mobile and from what I can gather she still lives alone. Her condo is in a high rise metropolitan tower on a floor that inspires altitude sickness. Her skin has been so consistently baked under a sun lamp that she resembles a bleached blonde archeological find. She always answers her door in a short length silk kimono robe, usually toting a wine glass that appears to be able to hold an entire bottle of red and white wine at the same time. Her collagen gorged lips are always polished and puckered around the filter of a long smoldering cigarette. I enjoy my deliveries to Jan Holdsteadt because she is one of the most honest women I have ever delivered to, and I deliver to her every week.
“Sweety, some people just don’t get it.” She growls directing me to set the arrangement of fifty red roses, a bottle of aged French champagne, and a deluxe box of truffles in her massive black granite kitchen.
“Everybody wants what they can’t have kiddo.” She says emptying another half bottle of wine into her massive bowl sized glass.
“And what is that Ms. Holdsteadt?” I ask handing her the invoice to sign. Her signature is a quick strike of the pen across the bottom of the page, more of a giant check mark than a name of any sort. Her pale blue eyes snap to me from their cradle of stretched skin, her whole face expressionless, looking as if there is a paid midget hiding in her plume of blonde hair, constantly wrenching back on her face to keep it from going slack.
“Love. Everybody wants it, nobody gets it. But here we are every week, you showing up at my door delivering another vase full of garbage that just dies and turns into fertilizer, just like us.” She blasts out a cloud of smoke and hands me the invoice. “Flowers sonny, never fill the void created when you lose someone special.”
That is how it goes, each week I show up with a bigger and better arrangement, ordered by some poor old fool that thinks he still has a chance to win the heart of Ms. Holdsteadt. A heart, that for all I know is completely bionic. Maybe the midget she pays to pull her face back has to wind her up each morning too, or inject her with enough adrenaline to make her sun baked bones move around in the massive kitchen until all the wine and cigarettes are gone. Maybe today she can explain why Thursdays are so fucked up.
I pull my van into the loading dock area of the massive high-rise building. The tower is home to law firms, commercial real-estate brokers and agencies of all sorts. I am sure if I looked at the mind-numbingly huge directory in the bustling lobby I would find that Ms. Holdsteadt owns at least one of them, but my interest in the old faded trophy only goes so far. The residential elevators are at the far back of the lobby, and have their own reception area separate from the massive corporate bays that account for much of the center concourse in the lobby.
Today Ms. Holdsteadt will receive her standard fifty red roses, along with the expensive champagne and truffle assortment, the best Bundlesoflove.com has to offer. I set them on the counter and am greeted by a homely receptionist. I suppose receptionist isn’t the best word, given the fact that she wears an oversized blue blazer and a utility belt of sorts. Her nametag reads Brea, a name that I won’t venture to try and pronounce correctly. I suppose I shouldn’t judge her work attire, but for the first time in a while I didn’t feel so bad about how dumb I look in my uniform. Her hair is up in a tight ponytail, and she wears just enough lip-gloss for it to be noticeable, but not enough to interfere with her security guard appearance.
“I have a delivery for Ms. Holdsteadt, up on 48.” I set the flowers on the security counter and the girl looks up from a gossip magazine. Her eyes are big a doe like, slow to glint with any type of purpose or recognition. Perhaps whatever meaningless Beverly Hills celebrity gossip she was reading took her away from the fact she is a homely rent-a-cop.
“Is she expecting you?” She said shutting her magazine and pushing it out of my view, scrambling around to appear occupied with some type of authoritative task.
“That wouldn’t make for much of a surprise would it?”
“Excuse me?” She stops trying to look busy, and succeeds at looking completely confused. I step to the side of the massive flower arrangement, revealing the hot pink logo stitched onto my chest.
“You don’t think I dress like this for fun do you?”
“Oh, well, no. I mean, I don’t know. Let me see if she is in.” She tried to smile, her big dumb eyes darting around behind the desk looking for some indicator that Ms. Holdsteadt was receiving.
“Look, I know she is in. She is always in.”
“Well, there is a new policy, no visitors without verbal consent from the resident.”
“You just memorize that from your handbook?”
“What? No, it is policy.”
“And you have all the policies memorized huh?” I grab the flowers off of the counter and begin to make my way toward the doors leading to the elevators.
“Hey, wait right there, I need to confirm that she is in.” She stood out of her chair and met me at the end of her desk. She was shorter than me, her eyes were about level with my throat. She pursed her thin glossed lips in an attempt to look intimidating.
“Look, I deliver to her every week. Go back to reading your girly magazine, I am on a schedule.” I make another move toward the elevators but she comes all the way around the desk and blocks my way. I peek around the wall of roses obstructing my view and look her up and down.
“Listen, you are new here so let me explain this in terms you will understand. I deliver flowers, hence the uniform, and the flowers. This box right here, full of truffles, not explosives. This bottle, full of overpriced French champagne, not poison.”
“I know what it is.”
“Well then why are you trying to stop me from delivering it to Ms. Holdsteadt? Who lives on the 48th floor, who I obviously know?”
Her face is tight, and her eyes squint slightly, it is obvious she doesn’t like being talked to in such a way even though she asked for it. Fairly typical from a girl like her with a job like this, any sort of excuse to be the boss. She stomped around the desk back to her chair.
“Don’t move.” She says pointing to me from behind the desk. She rummages around for a moment and produces a large flashlight. She clips an overstocked key ring to her belt and places a small placard onto the polished reception counter.
“Alright Captain Loveboat, I am going to escort you up there.”
“Is that really necessary?”
“Yes, it is.” She rounded the counter again and gestured with her flashlight toward the glass doors leading into the elevator bay. I stopped at the door and made her open it for me.
“You know, for someone that delivers flowers you have quite the attitude.”
“Well, maybe you are just sore that they aren’t for you.”
She looked back over her shoulder and I smiled at her around the large display of roses. Her large key rig jingled as she walked ahead of me, she had broad hips that shifted and wrinkled the waist of her oversized blazer. She held the long black flashlight at her side as she punched the call button for the elevator.
“So what made you want to get into law enforcement?” I said adjusting the carton holding Ms. Holdsteadt’s roses, truffles and booze. She shot me a look of disgust, then tapped the button for the 48th floor.
“I am going to tell my supervisor about you.”
“Are you going to tell him how funny I am?”
“Not exactly.”
“Well, don’t leave me hanging in suspense, it is a long ride up. What are you going to put in your report officer?” She opened her mouth and turned to me, with that glint of flame and fury a woman gets in her eye just before she is ready to articulate her displeasure. A look I am quite familiar with, a look that is usually followed by a sentence starting with ‘you know what. . .’ then a full blown diatribe about every little flaw they can find in my every breath.
Instead there was a heavy jolt, and a squealing sound. The elevator jumped and with it several of the fifty roses and the box of truffles. I was able to instinctively grasp the champagne and pull it into my chest, as it would be the most expensive of the items to replace if broken. The lights were out for a moment or two before dim emergency lights filled the elevator.
“Shit!” Brea exclaimed, she had fallen back against the railing of the elevator, but quickly stood from it once the lights came back up. I looked down at the floor and saw that nearly a dozen roses had come free of the arrangement. I set down the carton in the corner and began to pick them up and plant them back in their vase.
“Fucking Thursdays.” I said collecting the flowers.
“What?” She was standing up and fumbling with her radio. She clicked on her flashlight and shined it on the control panel beneath the towering rows of buttons.
“Thursday. Today is Thursday, weird shit always happens to me on a Thursday.” I looked up from collecting my roses and she flashed her light in my face.
“Well good, I guess that explains it, Thursday.” She said it sarcastically into the control panel, running her fingers over various buttons and switches.
“Case closed officer?” I placed the last of the roses back into arrangement and looked over to her. She caught me again in the face with her flashlight, giving me another blue glob on my cornea to match the first shine.
“Just shut up okay?” She snapped.
I situated myself in the corner, rubbing at the spots in my eyes from her flashlight. She stood up from the control panel and talked into her radio.
“Ray. Ray are you there? It’s Brea I am stuck in elevator four with some flower guy.” She paused and rested the radio on her shoulder, still staring intently at the control panel.
“Ray this is Brea, come in Ray.” Another pause came over the radio with no response.
“Typical.” She set her radio on the floor and went back to fidgeting with the control panel. I looked at my watch and sighed, looks like lunch will be out of the question. Brea flipped a switch and the elevator hummed, the lights snapped on again and the towers of buttons lit up.
“HA! Got it!” She looked at me with a flash of triumph, but turned quickly away seeming to recall that she despised me. She pressed at floor 48, but there was no jolt of movement, no sense that we were getting any closer to Ms. Holdsteadt or my lunch break. She tried to get whoever the hell Ray was back on the radio, but it didn’t seem to be any use. She slumped in the corner, facing the control panel, avoiding my direction like some unpleasant stain on the wall.
We sat in silence like that for a half hour. She cupped her hand over her face in an attempt to completely shut out the small space and the obnoxious flower guy. I was tempted to ask her to call Ray again, or take advantage of the emergency call box, but I didn’t want to invite any additional retinal damage. She finally pulled her hands from her face and stripped off her oversized blazer draping it over the railing above her.
She was wearing a short sleeved white blouse. Her arms were long and thin, I couldn’t see a ring on her finger, but she wore a polished silver wrist watch that led me to believe she had someone that bought her nice things. I am sure she is part of the twenty something boyfriend girlfriend faction. She struck me as one of the girls locked in some multi-year commitment that kept her happy in her security job and one bedroom apartment. Committed to a man that doesn’t challenge her, and buys her flowers for Valentine’s Day and when obligatory anniversaries deem it necessary.
“So, are you going to try that emergency call box?”
“Oh yeah, and have the fire department come down here and make a big scene?” She rolled her eyes, but avoided looking in my direction. “I thought I told you to shut up?”
“You did. I am just saying it might get us both out of here a little quicker. I know you love my company and all.” With this she covered half of her face and tried her radio again, but there was still no sign of Ray on the other end.
“Fine, we will try the call box, dammmit.” She stood up and stepped over the call box, looking down at me as she picked up the receiver. She slammed the receiver back onto the hook.
“Nothing, great plan.”
“How is that possible?”
“I don’t know. I am just a dumb security guard. Why don’t you tell me?” After that there was about an hour of silence. Some excitement came when we could hear the descending hum the elevator in the shaft next to us. This spurred both of us out of our respective corners of the elevator, we pounded on the stainless steel siding and shouted, but there was no way the folks in the other elevator could have heard us. Brea slumped back into her corner, wrapping her bare arms over her knees curling in defeat.
“Aren’t there cameras that can see us? Don’t you have monitors at the desk?”
“No, not in the residential elevators.”
“Shouldn’t Ray be looking for you?”
“Yeah, he should. I don’t know ok, I just don’t know.”
I sat back in my corner. We had been in the elevator for two hours, and it seemed there was little hope at all I would be able to finish my route on time today. I couldn’t wait to have to deal with Sharon when I got back to the motor pool. I wondered what threat she would throw at me, what slanderous name she would throw my way. I could always just counter it by reciting the words ‘enjoy your life alone’ as her ex so eloquently put it.
Through the silence in the elevator I heard a grumbling sound. I looked over to Brea and she held one of her hands over her stomach. She caught my stare and quickly replaced her hand over her knees.
“Hungry?”
“Ha, and I thought I was supposed to be the detective.” She rubbed her temples and closed her eyes. “I skipped breakfast this morning, like an idiot.”
“Why?”
“Nervous I guess.” She looked over to me, awaiting another smartass quip. In all honesty, I was starting to wonder about who she was outside of these four walls. She was prettier than I had thought at first. I guess anyone would be put off by the uniform. I could tell now that she had a good figure, a healthy one that would look nice in a cocktail dress. I am sure on a Friday night she cleans up nice, lets her auburn colored hair down and frequents the bars with her lap-dog boyfriend of x-amount of years.
“Today is my first day at the desk, by myself at least.”
“Shouldn’t have started on a Thursday.”
“What is it with you and Thursday? What does that have to do with anything?”
“If there is a God, he takes Thursday off. I guess that is my theory at least.” I smiled weakly, and she gave me a look that made me feel like a child speaking nonsense. “Ok, so this one time I am making a delivery to this house, the standard midnight 19.99 special.”
“The what?”
“Midnight 19.99 special, usually people call in and order it off of their TV because. . . it doesn’t matter, the point is I am delivering this cheap bouquet to this house. A woman answers the door and seems pretty normal, friendly, nothing to make me afraid to follow her into her kitchen and set the flowers down. So I get into the house and set down the flowers, still nothing too spooky, but as I hand her the invoice to sign she opens a drawer and pulls out a gun.”
“What?”
“Yeah, big ass fucking gun and points it right at my balls. I put my hands up like an idiot, and beg her not to shoot. She looks at me and says ‘I got a message you can give to my husband’ and I am pissing my pants thinking she is just going to shoot me right then and there. Of course I don’t know her husband, but I say ‘ok yeah anything just please don’t shoot me in the balls’. So she is standing there with this hand cannon aimed at my junk and she says to tell her husband that she knows about the hotel. That was it, it was all she told me to tell him.”
“I agree to tell him, so she puts the gun away and signs for the flowers. Now, I can’t get out of the house fast enough, I bolt to my van and make sure I didn’t piss myself and start to drive down the block. Well, next thing you know this car pulls right in front of me and this big ass dude gets out and comes up to the window of my van. He knocks on the glass and tells me to roll the window down, so I do. Wouldn’t you know it, it is the husband.”
“No way.”
“Sure thing, he had been parked up the street watching the delivery go down.”
“Well what did he want?”
“He wanted to know if she was mad or happy or whatever. I told him I just drop off the flowers I don’t read minds. So then he pulls out a gun, right in the middle of this residential street and says he is going to shoot me in the fucking head if I don’t tell him exactly what she said.”
“Holy shit.”
“Well, there was a lot of stammering and what not, and this time I did pee a little in my pants but I told him she liked the flowers and had me set them in the kitchen, that’s why I went inside.”
“You lied?”
“Hell yeah I lied. You have to understand, I had a gun aimed at my balls and my head in a matter of minutes.”
“So what happened?”
“Well, he grilled me a little more. ‘She didn’t say anything about a hotel, or the phone bill or the car?’ So on and so forth, and I said no, I just said she couldn’t wait for him to get home. So he puts his gun away and gets back into his car and lets me go. I called my dispatcher but they didn’t believe me. So that night I went home and turned on the news, expecting to see some story about a couple blowing each other away, no sign of it. Next day nothing, so on and so forth. No shootings at hotels, not a thing in the paper or on the internet, anywhere.”
“Next Thursday, I get a delivery to the same house. I am shaking all the way up to the door. This time it was a bigger arrangement than the time before, with the chocolates and the stuffed animal and what not. The woman answers the door and is all smiles, gushing over it and acting like we had never met. As I am turning around to head back to the van I hear the husband call from the house ‘Hey kid, thanks for playing along!’”
“I don’t get it.”
“They were fetishists, it was all a setup. They get off on some poor schmuck like me being scared out of their mind by getting caught in the middle of a lover’s quarrel.”
“Get out of here, no way.”
“Yep, turns out they do it every couple of months, we always send the new guys there for a laugh.”
“Wow.”
“So yeah, that is just one example of a Thursday story.”
“Well, it is kind of cool if you think about it.”
“What? I think you missed the point.”
“No, it is kind of cool. You helped them spice up their love life, that is exciting!”
“Shit, you are crazy too. If love is lying and pointing a gun at someone I am perfectly happy without it.”
“Maybe you just lack imagination.” She smiled. “Sounds like that couple knows how to keep it fresh.”
“Fresh is one thing, brandishing a gun is madness. It figures though, the extremes people need to go to in order to be ‘happy’.”
“Are you happy?” Brea looked directly into my eyes. I hadn’t noticed before that they were actually green.
“With what?”
“Are you happy? It is a simple question.” She turned her body away from one wall and faced me, leaning forward slightly awaiting my response.
“What is happy anyway? You mean like TV happy? Smiling like an idiot because I am on the latest anti-depressant miracle pill? Or ‘my life isn’t so unbearable I haven’t killed myself’ happy?”
“OK, so that is a no.”
“No, well, I mean no that is not a no.”
“What?”
“I will have you know I am perfectly happy. I have everything I need.”
“You have a girlfriend?” She said with an impish grin, her whole face lighting up with mischief. She knew I didn’t, but I figured the best way to get the upper hand would be to try and lie my way out of it. You are what you tell people you are, or something like that.
“I do.”
“What is her name?”
“Meesha.”
“Meesha? That is a pretty name. Where is she from?”
“Seattle.”
“I mean where in the world, Meesha doesn’t sound traditional.”
“She is black.”
“Ok, fair enough. How long have you guys been together?”
“A few years now, we don’t really keep anniversary dates or anything.”
“Wow, she must be quite the girl. I don’t know any girls that don’t love keeping track of their commitments.”
“Well, you musn’t know many girls like Meesha.”
“Guess not.” She still had the traces of her mischievous grin on her face, until her stomach let out a growl even louder than the one before it.
“She is going to be mad at me, now that I think about it.”
“Who?”
“Meesha, my girlfriend. Thursday is movie night, and it looks like I am going to be late. She hates it when I am late.” This part is true, not the movie part, the waiting to be fed part however is quite real. She usually expresses her displeasure by clawing something to bits, or spraying urine all over the door so I am greeted by the pungent reek of her displeasure.
“So she doesn’t care about how long you have been together, but she hates it when you make her wait.”
“That’s right.”
“She sounds like the perfect woman.” Brea held her stomach as it let out another grumble. I leaned forward from my corner of the elevator and grabbed the box of truffles. Ms. Holdsteadt wouldn’t care if I opened them, she already has a lifetime supply, besides I am sure she exists solely on alcohol and nicotine anyway.
“What are you doing?”
“Opening the truffles.”
“They aren’t yours!”
“Hey, give it a rest officer Brea, Ms. Holdsteadt won’t mind.”
“How do you know?”
“I have been delivering this same arrangement to her for the last three years, that’s how.”
“You mean. . .”
“Someone sends her this same getup at least once a week. She has quite the stock I imagine.”
“Wow, that is so sweet.” I could see Brea’s eyes hungrily tracking my fingers as they broke through the cellophane. She quickly dismissed her concern for Ms. Holdsteadt’s property and fell into the oh-so familiar chocolate trance. I held the box out to her, the golf-ball sized chocolates glistening beneath the elevator lights. She looked up from the chocolates and into my eyes, I gave her one last glance of encouragement and she grabbed the middle truffle with swift hungry precision.
“She doesn’t really care anymore. I think whoever sends her this stuff is paying off some doghouse debt from about a decade ago.” I eyed the chocolates, but had no real desire to eat one myself. Brea had her hand over her mouth as she chewed away at the truffle, her eyes wide with cocoa induced ecstasy.
“Oh my God, that is so good.” Flecks of the chocolate stuck to her lightly glossed lips, making her look like a child gorging on their first cake. “Don’t you want one?”
“No, after delivering the damn things for so long I am not the biggest fan of chocolate. I can’t even smell the roses anymore.” I smiled weakly at her. That wasn’t a lie.
“So what about you? Are you happy?”
“Right now?” She said before popping in the second half of the truffle. “Well.” She paused a moment to finish chewing the expensive chocolate.
“Besides being a 30 year old glorified mall cop with a bachelors degree stuck in an elevator on my first day with a perfect stranger and no real idea of being rescued, the truffle is great.” She finished chewing the truffle and looked down at her utility belt and radio.
“Wow, you are thirty?”
“Don’t go there.” Her intense green eyes flashed up at me, then back to the box of truffles. I held them up to her and she grabbed another one.
“I am also supposed to be starting a diet today, so much for that.” She bit the truffle down the middle and slumped back against the wall. “I don’t know, I guess I am happy. What did you call it? My life isn’t so unbearable I haven’t killed myself?”
“Yeah. I mean, it is Seattle, that is pretty good.”
“Is it? I wouldn’t know, I just moved here.”
“Highest rate of suicides in the country.” I tried to say it with enough enthusiasm to let her know I was joking, even though it is true.
“I just thought it rained a lot.”
“Well, that too, but mostly it rains people.” I kept my face straight, she swallowed the rest of the truffle and looked at me. Then she giggled and smiled. It was a warm giggle, a deep giggle that bubbled up from the purest of sources. A smile crept across my face and we both laughed.
“You know, I wanted to break your face with this Mag light when I first met you.”
“You don’t now?”
“Not so much. You are creeping toward my good side, even if you brought along your Thursday bad luck.”
“Sorry about that.”
“I don’t know if I am happy. I was supposed to go into law, but I really didn’t take to it as well as I thought. Sure I got the starter degree, but there is just so much more school. I moved here to get away from everybody asking me what I was doing with myself, why I wasn’t married, why no kids, and why not be more like your sister.” She paused and her shoulders dropped a little, she looked off into space as if she could see the list of her flaws on the wall behind me.
“I guess I am just out of the loop, meant to be alone. I don’t really want anything special, I mean, for me life is pretty simple just hanging around with my cat watching bad movies. It hasn’t killed me so far at least.” She leaned forward for another truffle and I grabbed her wrist. Her beautiful green eyes flashed up at me, and I felt a gravity pulling me to her. I was overwhelmed, so suddenly and unexpectedly a fire burst in my chest. I felt feverish, wild with passion and wanting nothing more than to pull her against my stupid red polo shirt and tell her all I the stupid lines I had memorized from all of the stupid cards I had delivered over all of those stupid years.
There was a whine and a squeal of metal, a thumping sound followed by an electric motor of sorts. The elevator doors parted and light came in from the upper half of the door. It appeared we had gotten stuck in between floors, and the fire department had finally arrived. A handsome broad shouldered fireman, in his mid thirties I would guess with slick cropped hair reached his hand down to Brea.
“It’s alright guys, sorry for the wait. Miss, I can help you up.” His muscled forearm extended out like some sculpted bronze god. I released my grip on Brea’s soft wrist; she looked to me and smiled lightly before standing and grabbing her blazer. The firefighter smiled with pearly teeth at Brea, who blushed and handed up her utility belt and jacket. I watched as he hiked her up through the opening of the doors, her curves shaping in statuesque swoops beneath her blouse and pleated pants. From below I watched as the burly firefighter wrapped her in a blanket and shuffled her away.
“Alright cupid, lets go.” My firefighter was built like an Italian pizzeria operator, sweaty and impatient. I handed him the box with the arrangement of roses and the opened box of truffles.
“Aw, you shouldn’t have!” The other firefighters standing around got a good chuckle. I declined the blanket, I wasn’t cold and didn’t need swaddling from the hefty Italian firefighter. I looked down the hallway and saw Brea standing there with a taller thin man in his late fifties. His hair was thinning, and he wore the same blazer and slacks leading me to assume it must have been Ray.
A paramedic was shining a light in my eyes and taking my blood pressure. I explained that I was fine but apparently there is sometimes shock that can occur when subjected to elevator entrapment. The handsome young firefighter and Ray shuffled Brea towards the service stairs at the end of the hall and they were gone.
“Sir, you are in a state of shock, I am going to need you to take a seat.”
“What? No I am fine, I just need to talk to Brea.”
“Who?”
“The girl! The girl I was in the elevator with!”
“Have you had anything to eat today sir?” The paramedic said as he started to dig in an orange utility box.
“What? I need to talk to Brea.”
“Hey, she is fine buddy take a seat you are going to pass out.” The jumbo firefighter pressed down on my shoulder and I folded into a chair staged in the hallway.
“NO! I have to go talk to her you don’t understand!” I stood up and tried to head for the door where Brea had vanished with the handsome firefighter that I knew was about to sweep her off of her feet and marry her and forever destroy my chances at love! What is happening to me? I feel dizzy, like the world is spinning and the floor has crumbled beneath my feet. Is this what it feels like? Is this what the throws of passion and infatuation feel like? Is this the sensation that has been missing all these slow lonely years?
I passed out.
After six hours of being suspended on whatever floor without any food or water I became dehydrated. I missed lunch so I had a dangerous drop in my blood sugar, all of this combined with the trauma of seeing Brea slip through my hands right when I realized I wanted her more than I had ever wanted anything threw me for a whirl. I came to in the hospital a few hours later, in a bit of a daze but feeling pretty good. The first thing that came into my mind was poor Meesha, she was probably furious with me. No doubt I will return home to the brutal hanging stench of her disgruntled spraying.
And then I thought about Brea, and how much I wanted to see her again. How much I wanted to intercept the charming firefighter and somehow get her to see we are so much alike. My bed in the hospital is sectioned off by drawn curtains. I can hear people talking to either side of me. An IV is running from my left arm up to a large bag of fluids that appears to be nearly drained. The curtain in front of me was pulled aside and a short frog looking woman behind thick glasses toting a clip board appeared.
“Rise and shine lover boy.” She said approaching the bed readying her stethoscope.
“You have had quite the day.” She pressed the stethoscope to my chest and listened, then looked up at the IV bag and began scrawling on her clipboard.
“Doctor, I think I am OK, I need to get back to work.” I sat myself up and started to swing my legs off of the bed.
“Not today, we have notified your employer, I am sure they have it all sorted out.”
“OK, well, I need to feed my cat, what time is it anyway?”
“Sir, please, just relax. Cats are pretty independent, I am sure it will be fine.” She wrapped the blood pressure band around my arm and started pumping away.
“You don’t know this cat.”
“Look, it is only seven o clock, we want you to stay for observation just to be safe. You passed out on account of dehydration and mal-nutrition.”
“That sounds pretty extreme, really, I think I just stood up too fast.”
“Either way, we just want to be safe. I am going to change out your IV and be back in a bit then we will let you go. OK?” She removed the band from my arm, the Velcro scratched and released and the frog doctor waddled away. I dropped my head onto the stiff hospital pillow and closed my eyes.
“Ms. Holdsteadt sends her regards.” It was a soft voice. It was a voice filled with a bubbly charm and sweetness beyond that of any French truffle. I opened my eyes and there she was. Her hair was down, soft and cascading over the shoulders of her overcoat. She looked taller than before, but I could see she was wearing some tall heeled boots and jeans rather than her pleated slacks and awful black workshoes. She still wore her white uniform blouse, but it wasn’t tucked in anymore and the top few buttons were open. Brea’s mischievous smile and sparkling green eyes peeked over a bundle of red roses.
“She said you could have these, even though they are only fertilizer, whatever that means.” She handed me the roses, and they were beautiful and perfectly clipped. For the first time in the longest time I could smell their rich wonderful scent. Brea pulled up a chair next to my bed and scooted close.
“So, Ray fired me. I guess there go my shot at being a detective huh?”
“Why did he fire you?”
“Well, you know when I picked up the emergency call phone and said it didn’t work?” She said sitting back in her chair. “I lied, it worked fine. I just hung it up when the dispatcher answered.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t want you to be right, because you were being an asshole.”
“I see.” It took me a minute to process the information, I was still feeling a little out of sorts, and wasn’t sure if I was imagining her and the flowers and the whole damn day.
“Anyway, I heard they had to take you to the hospital so I made sure the flowers got to Ms. Holdsteadt, and Ms. Holdsteadt made me promise to bring those to you and tell you the fertilizer line.” She got up from the chair and stuffed her hands into her pockets.
“Did she hold a gun to your head?”
“My ovaries actually.”
“Brea, I need to tell you something.” I heard myself say it, and I knew I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t find the words. I couldn’t refer to any of the corny cards or any of the pre-packaged mass produced lines about how one feels when they fall for someone. She looked at me with her cool green eyes expectantly.
“I don’t have a girlfriend. Meesha is my cat.” As if telling her I am a liar on top of being mal-nourished, dehydrated and an asshole was going to help my cause. Brea squinted at me with a curious look and stepped back closer to my bed.
“Is she at least black?”
“Yeah, she is.” I couldn’t look at her. I figured this was the part when she would walk away again. Hopefully this time I wouldn’t go into shock and lose consciousness. I heard Brea’s boots step slowly closer to the bed, she sat in the chair again and slipped her soft fingers over mine.
“Well, I guess you don’t lack imagination after all.” When her lips touched against mine it was as if we were alone in the world. We were safe and comfortable in our own little elevator, on the perfect Thursday evening.
