Delphine at the Supermarket

Somehow, you drag your suitcase to the station with your face and clothes as worn-out as the wheels on the luggage. Your smile fades as the sun does into the horizon not unlike the plaid on your suitcase because Delphine is gone back into town, back to stocking supermarket shelves and checking out customers. Her smile faded before yours in her big black truck as she tucked soft fingers into your cheeks to push your smile up a little longer, unsure if this memory won’t be more yet sure that the memory will be a lasting one. 

You arrive in town two weeks ago as a wide-eyed photographer inside the lens of a camera expensive enough to convince you that full-time retail is worth every picture. This is your vacation; a lonely train to a town two hours out of the city where you plan to create snapshots for a collage. Your co-workers chide and tease you for the sleepy locale but you don’t mind the criticism or the distance; it gives you much-deserved peace from the hustle and bustle you know. 

You check into a quaint hotel on the eve of what is known as a sunflower parade and given the large number of sunflowers scattered around the lobby, the meaning behind the name is self-explanatory. The concierge is bubbly, leaned into the front desk twirling a sunflower from her hair as she blows on the petals and asks your name. Your attention snaps from the petals to her sunlit face blinking and you mumble enough for her to scribble it down. 

The key is on the inside of your room which is room 214, she says as confidently as the lopsided nametag bent forward on her shirt. You never catch her name but you catch your breath before you hoist your luggage high enough past your waist to manage everything to the second floor. Yes, the concierge watches you with hawk eyes the entire trip up the staircase and yes, she doesn’t miss a beat twirling that sunflower in case you’re curious enough to return to her weak smile. 

The room is not in shambles as you are and you’re grateful to flop your exhausted bones on a freshly-made bed in a freshly-cleaned room. You scroll through the random photos of your neighbors’ messy apartment and the occasional spat between them that runs like clockwork at exactly 8 pm in the parking lot every Friday night. All of them are decent enough to be admired by an untrained eye who barely fiddles with a disposable camera but amateurish enough to be kindly or harshly critiqued by people who know their way around something high-definition. 

As you sit upright, your stomach growls and you claw at it, knowing good and well the frilly $12 fruit salad on the train is as filling as the half plain donut you hid shamefully in a sheet of paper towel. Much as you enjoyed them, you need a sustainable meal to help you survive the lonely two-week, three-bedroom nights in a hotel the size of a small health clinic. Nothing around the space yells sterile aside from a stuffy young couple who beg to come across old money in thrift store designer polo clothing by the pool; you judge and admire them silently on your way out the door. 

The foot traffic is heavier than the traffic in the street and maybe they’re all eco-friendly or the janitor is cleaning up the sunflowers. When you find a janitor with a comically large broom sweep sunflowers into a pretty yellow mass, you step around him at the green light and he eyes you up and down as if he’s committing you to memory in case you try that stunt on your return. The first place with food to come to your attention is Dina’s Supermarket and the first face you’re greeted by is a woman around your age whose perfectly straightened nametag reads “Delphine”. 

You hate that the first thought in your head is about her conventional attractiveness as opposed to the skillful way she bags groceries and maintains conversations or the warm personality that initiates these conversations in the first place. You hate, in equal measure, that there are people around you who acknowledge her conventional attractiveness and one guy is bold enough to act on his acknowledgment. You want… no… you DESIRE to shove him to the ground, step over him, and engage Delphine in conversation to prove you view her in a deeper way but you worry about being shallow anyway more than you worry about shoving that unsuspecting man to the ground. 

You attempt to shrug off what you consider seemingly pointless attraction to someone you meet for only a few seconds and whisk yourself off down the junk food aisle. Nothing says “fill my stomach up” like disproportionately large bags of cheese curds, rainbow pops, or jelly candies shaped like fruit you rarely eat. You wish you had your camera on you because credible scientific research conducted by credible scientists somewhere in the world convinced you and others that taking pictures of your food before having it makes it taste better and at the same time, you want a prime photograph of Delphine as she leaves her register to organize fruit. 

She ties a bright blue ribbon around her hair for a nice ponytail and you know your mother raised you to use higher words than “nice” to describe something you like but she passed away ten years ago and you get away with any 25-cent adjectives you can grab. She organizes fruit the way she bags groceries; there’s an effortlessness about it that you envy but not as much as you adore it until the annoying customer at the register becomes the annoying customer in her section. Delphine nods and smiles more than he speaks in hopes he checks out but the guy doesn’t budge and my brain becomes my backup camera at the moment. 

You wanna meet me after your shift, he asks as if a definite yes is gonna follow but she coughs into her arm and he backs a few inches away. He’s got these rhinestones on an already bright jean jacket that glimmer in the light and blind her as if this style is the thing to rope her in and you shove a bag of cheese curds into your cart as if it’s him. It’s when Delphine nods and bleeds on her apron that he mutters “freak” and shines into the sunset but you’re no hero; you stay put because people don’t require saving or sympathy if they can handle themselves. 

However, you do take it upon yourself to offer a cheese curd after you pay for the bag and she giggles with teeth straighter than her nametag. You hand her a napkin you happen to discover in those pants you hardly wear and she wipes the blood away from her nose in a sad smile. Some co-workers and the store manager, who is not named Dina much to your disappointment, ask if she’s okay and she gives them the thumbs up before she arranges more oranges and apples. 

You leave Delphine alone but your eyes follow her every move on your way out the supermarket. No, she does not return your gaze because these fruits will not organize themselves and she may not even think about you but that’s okay. Your brain makes a solid backup camera that you can develop into short films for your dreams tonight if you don’t resign to drink and you might bring your camera this time should you decide to drink. 

The nameless concierge tells you about a nearby bar on your way inside the hotel as if she has thumbed through your most recent thoughts and cherry-picked this one to answer. It’s called Dive Bar for Dummies, she laughs while she twirls that same sunflower the way she will probably do for eternity whether she dies on this job, another job or retired somewhere. The name speaks for itself and she leaves that statement suspended without expecting you to finish it or someone else to chime in and correct her or expand in what she says. 

Despite the name, you would hate being caught at a dive bar as some nondescript fish-out-of-water on the hunt for a good beer or a better photo although that’s your goal. You aim for clothes that are casual and let people know you deserve to own the fancy camera you’ve only used a handful of times on meaningless moments, the Friday night parking lot arguments notwithstanding. In the rare case that you run into Delphine there, you can look good enough to pretend you didn’t hope she showed up or better yet, that you already forgot a picture of beauty you swear is not plastered into your mind. 

Speaking of plastered, you take two shots of vodka before you step out into the world because some sober people can be coaxed into drinking at dive bars and if you’re at least buzzed, there’s a slight chance you can be left alone. You are a lightweight though so two vodka shots have you stepping a little woozy across the lobby and the concierge can only giggle but the stuffy thrift store designer polo couple scoff at you behind plastic champagne flutes of $3 wine at the pool. They seem wobbly themselves and standing will expose their weak center of gravity so they stay braced in their seats. 

Dive Bar for Dummies is strangely packed to the brim with sober people accompanied by drunk people who slouch in front of the bartender and hurls darts at the board hitting a stray person or a bottle of something they can’t afford to replace behind the counter. Two recognizably unrecognizable faces from Dina’s Supermarket are hardly able to sit upright in their seats and they flank Delphine who nurses a ginger ale as if it’s a Moscow mule. She notices you and waves which leads you to wave with your free hand but she narrows her eyes to your camera and gasps as she leaves the table to gawk at it from a closer distance. 

This lens is gorgeous, she gasps and launches into jargon about cameras that you don’t begin to understand but you understand the person you physically (and emotionally) admire if before you in all her non-retail glory. You have got to let me use this and you hand it off to her and brace for a close stool because you have the constitution of a french fry when it comes to alcohol. She takes pictures of everything with the ease she has on the clock at Dina’s which makes you wonder what aspect of her life she sucks in and how that would make her any less perfect. 

Before long, she calls her friends one of those ride-sharing taxis and asks you where you live in the most innocent way as if it’s coded in her DNA. You wonder why no one approached her and after you notice the blood on the napkins by her ginger ale, you don’t say a word. The bartender pats you on the back and hands you a glass of water which you empty in seconds as Delphine snaps a picture of you out of nowhere. 

You have to forgive the shutterbug in me, she coos and in those soft brown eyes, you’re sure you could forgive the killer in her within reason if there is a killer in her. You finally mention you live in the city two hours away and this is a much-needed break from the monotony and chaos of daily life. You can’t recall the name of the hotel you’re staying in until Delphine tells you that the hotel is purposely nameless because the experience is about pleasing the people rather than the bosses which would explain the concierge without a name herself. 

Everything turns black and you wake up on the freshly-made bed in the freshly-cleaned room to your camera and a note from Delphine that reads “thanks for the pictures xoxo”. You don’t know her well enough to be smitten but then you remember people can fall in love overnight and shortly after, you remember that you are not one of those said people. The fact that you have all your limbs intact may or may not be ample evidence to prove she’s not a killer unless she’s waiting to get you in your sleep which would be ridiculous until you realize how inviting and efficient she is on her job… you’re kidding, of course. 

Throughout the week, you don’t question Delphine’s secret plot to chop you into pieces and feed them to her german shepherd because there is no secret plot like that aside from the one she has to steal your heart. She doesn’t know this because she’s minding her business as she restocks shelves and checks out customers but you have this gut feeling which is hilarious because every gut feeling you ever had has been dead wrong. She does acknowledge your existence with a soft hey there, fellow shutterbug before you hand her a napkin for her nosebleed and you both share a smile only this time, you have your camera in hand for her impromptu fashion shoot in canned goods.

Outside of Dina’s, you run into Delphine at Dive Bar for Dummies as sober as she, arriving with her hammered friends who she sends home earlier in a taxi. This time, you’re the same level of sophisticated casual and the camera you share with her feels like it’s yours although you carry enough of an imposter syndrome around her to come across unworthy. There isn’t much to question except when you can see Delphine again and maybe in a less crowded space next time to which she responds, How about your hotel room?

You leap for joy in your dreams as you do the back handsprings and somersaults that could land you in a gurney or at least result in a few casts for a few weeks in real life. Delphine plans to hang with you in the hotel for a change and you’ll have the rest of the two weeks maybe picking her brain on photography and life itself if your mouth isn’t too clamped shut to speak. After one of her shifts, you meet her outside Dina’s and she offers to drive you in her big black truck if you can wait for her to change clothes and how can anyone turn down those deep brown eyes? 

Now that she’s about as casual as you with some jean jacket that isn’t bright like the annoying guy from the top of the week and some other hand-sewn clothes she doesn’t share, you both head back to the hotel. The concierge twirls the sunflower until she sees Delphine and winks at you as if something is bound to happen or that you hope something is bound to happen. Even if you wish for something to happen, that something will not extend beyond some aimless conversation and you know you can ease into that somehow. 

You tell her the first thing you notice is Delphine doesn’t have a nosebleed and she responds with That’s tied to childhood trauma I can’t part with yet but she parts with tricks and tips for taking optimal photographs. She doesn’t coerce you into posing the way some people may coerce you into drinking because you don’t need to be persuaded when you find someone attractive and the poses you hit make her ooh and aah like a proud den mother. You don’t understand the den mother reference and she might if you telepathically ask her but your IQ isn’t that high according to your mother; she might even pay you a visit to scold you if you attempt telepathy with Delphine. 

Another thing you notice about Delphine is the seamless way she transitions from ponies- I dreamt of being a Shetland pony a few times before- to the reason why she doesn’t drink- When you see your brother pass out on a highway drunk, you worry a car will swerve and smack him clear across the sky without missing a beat. What is off-limits is information she deems deeper than surface-level which includes but is not limited to mortality, sex, and her traumatic experiences and the start of those topics cut short and bookend otherwise rousing conversations about everything else and nothing else in between. Of course, you share pictures with each other and finally admit to being an amateur photographer and curious as to whether or not she was a calculated killer; two notable mentions that make her giggle rather than boil over in anger. 

In your final week, you pack your bags outside of the shambles you arrived in and even the plaid appears a little refreshed on the inside at least; the outside is as worn as it ever was. As you drag the suitcase downstairs, the concierge’s eyes follow you in the hawklike way they did your first day but there’s a different tone to them as she twirls her sunflower. Don’t worry, that couple won’t judge you at the pool anymore and you nod because she wants conversation but she isn’t Delphine-smooth and neither are you if you’re honest with yourself. 

Somehow, you drag your suitcase to the station with your face and clothes as worn-out as the wheels on the luggage. Your smile fades as the sun does into the horizon not unlike the plaid on your suitcase because Delphine is gone back into town, back to stocking supermarket shelves and checking out customers. Her smile faded before yours in her big black truck as she tucked soft fingers into your cheeks to push your smile up a little longer, unsure if this memory won’t be more yet sure that the memory will be a lasting one.