FLOWER STATION: A RED SHOE DIARIES STORY

 

when you SURVEY Safeway, you see the EXPANSE. WAY in the back is the flower station, an island from the rest of the grocery store. two very attractive young people have been manning this station for a year now, they go about their work every day, deliberately, seriously, picking flowers for their bouquets, the right string, the right paired balloons. oblivious to the rest of the workers, they don't have time to pack meat, they're doing ART here!!!

Brad looks EXACTLY like Kurt Cobain, he has the same rough face, piercing eyes, long blond hair with orange tips he whips up and down every five minutes. he wears plaid green-and-black-square long-sleeved shirts over olive-green T-shirts and jeans ripped at the knees not for fashion but from use. Angie is a BEAUTIFUL Latin woman with a face like a young JLo, the Selena days. she has a BUTT like Jennifer Lopez, too, always wrapped tightly like a ham in a tin in light-blue jeans.

Brad: everyone thinks we're a couple. i don't like that.

Angie: why? 

Brad: i want to keep our couplehood private. a secret from our bald boss.

Angel: don't stress over what people say and WRITE about us, we can't control that. if we're hot we're hot. if we necessitate a sex special so be it. our relationship is our own. 

Brad: i will admit, i got a crush on you on day one of working here. you have that cute Ally Sheedy/Alessandra Torresani/Genevieve Buechner/Caprica face.

Angie: for me it took a year. it developed only after a year. don't take offense, love takes time. hey come on, man, i taught you better than that with the geraniums, use the blue cellophane, the blue!!!

Brad: why blue? like this?

Janet Wood: the arrangement is all wrong. like THIS. gotta mix in some posies with the ferns, use daisies only in an emergency. spritz with vinegar.

Brad: hey i was reading about this guy who had to be forgiven, he messed up with his girl. he figured $500 in flowers was enough? is it? would it be?

Angie: the fuck you say, what'd this guy do? forgiveness is not a given.

Janet: if they're arranged properly. give me $500 worth of chrysanthemums and i'll make him SNEEZE like a motherfucker from the motherfucking BALL of orange dust. he's only forgiven if he sneezes 39 times.

Jack Jones: picture it: me singing "Do You Hear What I Hear." see? i could never do it as good as Whitney Houston.

Liza: we only have BEACH umbrellas at Safeway, not RAIN umbrellas...

Bob Seger: i'm singlehandedly responsible for Disco Demolition Night...

flat-headed cats: we're not dumb. we evaded capture for 100,000 years...

Nina Siemaszko: *smiling her crooked smile*

me: yeah, i want Blue, too.

King Charles's Christmas message: we have to all do a digital detox. return to the most important things in life: family and friends. life is not about doing something apeshit online just to get that extra 100 followers. what encapsulates this quandary so everlastingly and so devastatingly is the life of Adam the Woo.

Melissa Maker: a December power outage is the perfect time to clean the outside-back of your refrigerator you've been putting off till the end of the year...

family: so you're not bored all day...

Billy Corgan: you know my childhood home? the house in the "Disarm" music video.

Nosferatu: Smashing Pumpkins, why would you do that to our sacred vegetable? that gourd was my first wife.

Billy: my childhood home looks like a vampire house, a house a vampire would live in. hence the "Ava Adore" music video.

Nosferatu: someone with a head AS LARGE AS yours should NEVER shave it, you look freaky.

cool: extroversion, hedonism, power, adventurousness, openness, autonomy.

Miles Davis: improvisation, hepcat holmes.

Gordon Ramsay: i personify all 6 of these traits. 

Tana Ramsay: but you can't cook. go on then, wear these tight beige crotch-hugging Indiana Jones short shorts. you're TOO open, i wish you'd yell INSIDE your head and become a schizophrenic.

Gordon: what's weird is you don't have a tan...

peanut brittle: BRUTAL on the teeth, hence the name.

there's a LARGE room in the back of the flower station for storage: faulty flowers, rejected rosebud love notes, misting showers behind panes of frosted glass, extra string, price tags for petals. glitter. 

Angie: hey i don't like you loitering in this room, i see you all the time in here NOT at noon, you're in that corner over there huffing the Miracle-Gro.

Brad: i need it for my music, man, leave me alone.

Angie: at least i huff helium like a proper lady.

Brad: i like to meditate while i'm neck-deep in the middle of this room-sized bed of pink pansies here.

Angie: GET THE FUCK OUT OF THIS ROOM NOW!!!