Silk Flowers

Lorelei watched as the UPS step van drove away from the dock door.

“What a cutie, and he’s got a good job.”

“That was Tony,” Dennis said.  “He’s gay.”

She frowned a little.  “That big hunk?”

Dennis nodded.  “He’s married.”

“To a guy?”

“Actually, it’s just that you’re not his type.”

“Fuck you!” she laughed, striking a pose in her loose white tee, fashionable shorts and flip-flops.  “I’m everyone’s type -- and I’m worth it.  Let’s keep the door open, it’s so nice out.”

A family friend of the owners, Lorelei was part-time for the summer in the fake floral design warehouse to help on the cash register, stock, and out back by shipping and receiving.  She’d arrive each day around eleven with a peculiar habit of dragging more than lifting her feet.  She was about five-foot tall with a natural blond pixie-cut, and offered with a wan smile: “Bonjour.”

She once spent a blissful semester studying in Paris with the owners’ youngest daughter, Kristen.  Kristen was currently in Sudan for a year with the Peace Corps, and would finish nursing school when she returned.  Lorelei sang old jazz standards, was doing some theatre acting over the summer, and had recently left her boyfriend in Dallas, Texas, before relocating home.

“Who does she think she is -- with the flip-flops in a warehouse?” asked Norm, the lifer whose job Dennis was being groomed to fill.

“I don’t know, Norm, you’ve known her longer than I have.”

“She's no Kristen,” Norm said.

Dennis liked to push her buttons.

“I just broke up with my boyfriend,” she informed him with a smile and a handshake upon their first meeting in the back.

“I have not yet left my wife,” he replied.

Next UPS pick-up, Lorelei stood by the dock door.  Tony barely glanced over.

“I have an idea,” she said to Dennis prior to the next one.  “Ship me.”

“Where?”

“It doesn’t matter.  I’ll pop out at his next stop.”

Dennis found an empty five-foot Xmas tree box, and she lay inside.  He wrapped her a little in bubble wrap, and poured in some peanuts.

“You’ll be overweight...''

“Shut up,” she said, “he’s backing in.”

“Close your eyes.”

“I miss Kristen,” she said.

“We all do, honey.  I only met her once, and I miss her.”

“She's doing a lot of good in the world,” Lorelei said before Dennis drew a patch of tape over the lid.  

Tony slung open the back door.

“This is a heavy one…”

When Kristen returned to finish nursing school, she worked part-time at the shop, and Dennis found the legit saint to be a little boring.

Lorelei and Tony were married, and Dennis was invited to the wedding.  In the end they had a couple of kids, and were able to retire young.

Fin