Peony

Out of all the ways to woo a gal, he gives me a peony in a box with a bow on it. For him – working in the shoe department at Sears – the box is either a grand gesture or a perfect way out of buying something. Now I know I'm no high fancy person either, working the register at Hallmark, but when you're surrounded at all angles by cards and bears and crap, you expect anything else in the world - not a flower in a Converse box, size eleven, BLK.

Colleen, my coworker, thinks the dead flower in a cardboard grave was "precious.”

 “Date the man, give him a chance,” she says.

 “His hands will smell like socks,” I tell her.

“Date the man.”

So I walk through the store, trying to find something that I hope will speak to him enough. Or I could find him something that he'll hate, so he’ll never be interested in me again. So I grab a Fuji apple candle, a ripped starfish toy on discount, and a few handfuls of chocolates, tie them up in a cheap bag, and trudge to the other end of a wounded, dying, crawling mall to Sears.

He's not here. He gets a lunch. Lucky fella. I run into his mealy-mouthed coworker at the help desk in the tool department.

"Hi," he says. He notices my Hallmark name tag so now I'm compromised.

"Is Steve in?"

"No."

Verbose. I guess I asked him a tough question. I try an easier one. "Well, when will he be back?"

"Don't know."

"Alright." I go to leave.

"Wait, do you have a message for him or something?"

"No, I wanted to ask him the density of Venus and the Best Picture winner of '67."

He's lost.

"And give him this disaster," I say, waving the bag.

"I'll take it."

"Don't open it."

"No."

"Promise."

"Sure."

I scowl. "Promise better."

"Yes."

"Okay," and I hand it to him.

“Wait,” he says as I leave.

I wait.

“Didn’t you like the peony?”

Jesus Christ.

 —

“He must have told EVERYONE,” I  share with Colleen.

Colleen doubts that, “Steve seems like a respectable man. He wears a tie every day.”

“Yeah but that means nothing. I wear a blouse every day but that doesn't mean I'm Jane goddamn Austen.”

“Give him a chance; he might be a real surprise. That's what happened with me and my husband. I took a chance.”

“Colleen. Your husband left you fifteen years ago for a foot model. No offense.”

“Yes, but for a while he loved me. And that's what matters.”

I didn't know that Steve even remembered me. We only met once; he was still working for Ross then. We happened to be smoking at the same butt can. I looked like hell that day, but he told me that I had beautiful hair. I told him he was wearing nice pants. And that was it. A month ago, two lines, and now he's practically proposing to me.

At the end of my shift I punch out and head down to TGI Friday's for a quick dinner. Afterwards, I’ll be away from the mall for three whole days. I'm getting an enema, at least that's what I tell Colleen. I'm really just going to sit at home, eat Combos, and watch Nick at Nite until my eyeballs rupture.

While I wait for my pasta, I allow myself to indulge in one mojito. And then:

"Hi," Steve says out of nowhere, scaring me half to death.

"Jesus," I look around, "Ok, this is going too far."

"What?" He says, all innocent-like.

"What?" I mimic, and then tell him to sit. He does. He orders a Miller. Gag.

"What's the deal?" I say.

"About what?"

"The flower."

"It's a peony."

"I don't care if it was handcrafted by Mary's nimble fingers. What's going on? You don't even know me."

All of a sudden he freezes, snaps out of it, and then blinks at me twice.

I blink back three times.

He gets real red in the face. He loosens his tie. Gets his beer and drinks it like a dick.  Afterwards he goes "ahhhh."

"You opened that box," he says.

"Yes. You're courting me. Like Heathcliff."

"Oh, God. I'm going to be sick."

"What?"

"That wasn't for you," he says.

"I beg your pardon."

"I had someone leave it for Colleen."

I lose my breath. I grab him by his collar. "Say that again."

"I had someone leave it for Colleen. I like her. Not you."

"I beg your pardon."

"You have my pardon," he snaps, "Oh, I'm going to throw up. That wasn't meant to be seen by anyone else." He drops his head in his hands and moans.

And I start to laugh. I can't help it, I feel bad, but I just laugh until he talks again.

"So now what?"

"Steve," I say as I get my pasta and slap money on the table, "You are on your own. Someday we'll laugh about this. Just be glad you didn't see the bag that I sent you."

He says something as I walk out of the restaurant but I'm already imagining The Jefferson’s rerun I'll watch tonight.

As I step out into the hallway, the mealy-mouthed coworker from Sears is holding my bag. He's smiling. And I see all three of his teeth and all fifty of his zits.

"I really liked the starfish," he says and laughs. "What's your number?"

Christ.

Kevin Richard White's fiction appears in Hobart, Rejection Letters, Lost Balloon, The Molotov Cocktail, Soft Cartel, X-R-A-Y, The Hunger, Hypertext and Grub Street among many others. He is a Flash Fiction Contributing Editor for Barren Magazine as well as a reader for Fractured Lit and Quarterly West. He lives in Philadelphia. You can find him on Twitter at @MisterKRW