The Customer
A man and his wife have settled into their new modern home in the south of Scottsdale, but just across the border in Tempe. An area bustling with entertainment and activity. A valuable starter home crammed within inches of other homes. They met in a college bar on penny beer night. The man and his wife enjoy a life of relative ease with good jobs, no children and infinite possibilities for the future. They attend many parties and discuss their achievements among friends and strangers, comparing their lives with envy and pride. Their main topic these days is their new house in Scottsdale.
The husband is a heavy drinker and still likes to go to clubs with neon lights filled with young women in tight short dresses looking for free drinks. His wife quietly accompanies him to meet up with his college friends, his bros. They order bottles of tequila, obnoxiously party into the night. All while his wife stands in the shadows listening to them rate the fawns.
She is a gorgeous woman with beautiful doe eyes, a fresh salon cut, and a body that fills a dress as if it was tailored just for her. An effort to keep her husband straying eyes fixed on her amongst a sea of early 20 somethings that barely fill their thick high heel shoes.
As the night rages on she leaves in a taxi. Her husband notices an hour later. Now in a fury as his possession is lost. He imagines she absconded with another more successful, much wealthier man to his mansion in the mountains overlooking Paradise Valley. He leaves his bros frantically calling and texting with no response. He returns to his bros for another bottle.
2 AM, last call, the man finds himself pissing in an alley before heading over to catch up with his bros for late night tacos. He vomits in an Uber on the way home. Too wasted to remember the gate code he jumps the wall catching his cargo pocket on a spike falling flat on his side. He tries a few doors before finding his home. Then walks to the bathroom; his gut twists the last of the clear fluids out with a finish of a yellow acidic glob of bile.
He rinses his mouth walking to the bedroom where his wife lays with her back to him pretending to sleep. Then attempts to massage her. She shrugs him off, but he continues his attempts anyway. He thinks his drunken antics are foreplay and will woo her into sloppy animalistic sex. The smell of his slime disgusts her further. A mixture of evaporated alcohol and vomit permeating from his heavy breath.
She jumps out of bed and reams him out for his behavior. Banishing him from the bed. They meet again late Sunday morning after missing their brunch reservation at a posh breakfast restaurant. Her trade off for his night out was a morning jog along the red mountains of Papago Park. The man, still sick and dehydrated, tries to find a way to apologize with words, but they are futile as her demeanor grows colder.
He makes himself a Bloody Mary to drink while scrolling through his phone watching Fox News in their living room filled with furniture from the Memorial Day sale. His bros are posting pictures of themselves on social media partying throughout the night. He’s tagged in a picture licking salt off a waitress’ cleavage. Then an ad pops up for DoorDash flower delivery. He acts swiftly picking out the second most expensive arrangement.
The Delivery Driver
A delivery driver wakes up and puts on his shoes for another long day of fighting traffic delivering food. He’s a Type-A burn out working on 7 straight days. A dropout with a torrent of flames trailing behind him in failed relationships and opportunities. He used to drive a taxi until Uber came along. He used to drive an Uber until the Corona Virus came along. His car is sweating oil and antifreeze, shaking in idle waiting for a green light. The air conditioning trying to keep up with a 115° day blowing in his face. It smells like garlic flavored garbage with a hint of mildew.
The Phoenix traffic on a Sunday morning is just as relentless as a Friday night rush hour with alcoholics frenetic for that first drink. Demons behind wheels ride his tail, flash by, swerve around limping people in crosswalks pushing strollers full of their former lives.
An annoying bleep goes off. Bleep bleep bleep bleep…bleep bleep. The driver, already going mad from the heat, the traffic, the same songs on repeat, quickly presses the button to stop the relentless alert. It’s an order from a flower shop with a delivery going to a wealthier neighborhood. He accepts the delivery even though it’s only paying $9 for a nearly 20 mile trip. Doordash likes to hide the true value of the order to encourage drivers into taking lower paying deliveries. The driver in high hopes accepts the delivery on the off chance the customer is generous.
The driver arrives at a worn building lacking the conventional signage of a brick and mortar business. Vinyl lettering requests pick-ups and deliveries be made to the double doors in the back. He proceeds around the building passing a cluster of discarded boxes forming a small hill missing the doors. Then gets out of the vehicle and calls the shop as he walks back around to the area.
A person’s arm can be seen retracting through a door scooting an orange cone to prevent it from locking, when a lady answers the call. She directs him to stop as he walks through the narrow path created by discarded cardboard and the building walls. The lady opens one of the doors handing a bright bouquet in a vase to him. She suggests taking a box and the driver first declines, worried about the stability of the vase full of water and fragile flowers. Then she picks out the perfect one with boxes within a larger box creating firm stable dividers fitting the vase snug.
The driver finds himself back in the race among the demons first on the surface streets then on the I-17, where merging is more often a juke than a graceful change of lanes. A critical maneuver at high speeds with amateurs driving in the right lane as if they are lost in the blurry dust storm created by the turbulence of passing vehicles. He maintains a certain lane to avoid the lost on the right and the demons passing on his left as the junction of the I-10 and I-17 creates havoc among those not familiar with the elevated curving arches. Many catastrophes are made as the two worlds meet, not quite understanding which lanes go east and what direction east is. This time like many others the driver breaks free unscathed.
The driver merges on to the I-10 East heading to the Deck Park Tunnel. Again he positions himself to avoid the confusion of the freeway as it narrows. The downtown exits jam up the right lane in the void of the tunnel, which in itself causes slowing as the timid brake and the wannabe race car drivers roar through in a display of bravado. As he exits the tunnel merging to the right in preparation for another battle of wills between those entering the freeway and those trying to figure out which lane departs the I-10 to Highway 51 or the Loop 202. This goes smoothly as well.
The merge onto the 202 East is coming from the right as it begins from it’s parent I-10 West. Google maps interprets the 202 poorly with a slight left to stay on the freeway just before the exit to 52nd Street. The savvy driver has taken this route before and maintains his lane until the exit approaches. He continues east on McDowell which splits the red mountains of Papago Park overlooking Tempe Town Lake. A dry lake bed is now full of water lined with a growing glass metropolis.
A red light allows him to check Google maps for finer information and the Doordash app for better instructions on the destination. They both are lacking, but he knows this must be the car dealership that was razed for overpriced condominiums squished together on a small lot of land. The new metropolitan look of the desert is not quite a house nor a condominium nor an apartment. Chicken wire boxes made of 2×4’s covered in stucco painted grey with thin windows and a garage held behind a cinder block wall and security gate, which he has no code for. Luckily someone else pulls in behind him and he circles around to tailgate them inside.
The Delivery
The delivery driver stops in front of the man’s house. He exits to carefully pick up the vase from the passenger side of the vehicle only to forget that it was locked. Unlocking the doors from the driver’s side, then walking back around as the man opens his front door.
Disheveled with a puffy droopy face covered in 3 days of beard growth he stands in the doorway without as much as a hello. The driver pulls the vase full of flowers from the sheath the lady at the flower shop gave him. The man says, “thanks” and turns back inside his air conditioned home shutting the door.
The driver completes the delivery on his app to his chagrin; it was just a $9 trip across the belly of the beast of Phoenix. A $46 taxi fare, a $17 Uber trip. (Based on 2016 rates) Now a $9 DoorDash delivery. Charity for the boy.
I decided I couldn’t just leave this as is. Part of the first short story was releasing the angst and frustration I personally have in life. It was not a wise decision to take a low paying delivery 19 miles and I had my fun expressing the negative feelings. It did occur to me that this may not have been what I imagined and could be a much simpler and more kind hearted event in life. So below is a diametric story of what happened.
Flowers Enhance Relationships
The Customer
A man and his wife have settled into their new modern home in Avondale. An area bustling with entertainment and activity. A valuable starter home in a new neighborhood. They met through friends of friends at a church picnic. The man and his wife have good jobs and are planning to have children. They attend church activities, play in a local coed softball league, and enjoy spending time hiking when they have the chance.
The husband is a hometown sports fan and has made plans to watch a Suns playoff game with friends. His wife, not quite as interested in watching sports, but enjoys the company of friends, joins him at a local hot wings joint.
They spend the night laughing, joking, and cheering as the Suns beat the Lakers. The night is getting late and they head home in good spirits. Her husband makes dessert, ice cream and a slice of apple pie he heated up in the microwave. They enjoy their late night treat watching Netflix and cuddling, which later turns into foreplay and passionate copulation.
In the morning the wife feels sick and she has missed her period. She takes a home pregnancy test with positive results. Her husband making breakfast is unaware until she enters the kitchen with a glowing smile holding the test strip. They embrace hugging and kissing the joy of the revelation.
The husband secretly opens up his DoorDash app in the dining room and orders a dozen roses. He writes on the card, “For the most beautiful and gracious woman. I am lucky that someone like you would have me as your baby’s father.” Then they go on a hike as they had planned earlier in the week enjoying the fresh cool morning air.
The Delivery Driver
A delivery driver is woken up by his cat kneading on his side. He’s a hard worker and only delivers on the weekends to help pay for his children’s college tuition. It’s a Saturday morning with relatively light traffic. The vehicles seem to almost be in sync as they catch green light after green light, when his phone bleeps a couple times alerting a potential delivery. He’s surprised to see it’s for a flower shop and accepts it in curiosity. It’s not everyday he gets to deliver flowers, so this sounds like an opportunity to brighten up someone’s day.
He arrives at the flower shop and is greeted by a bright smile by the florist. She hands the arrangement over in a neatly designed box, which he carefully places on the passenger seat. The drive to the customer is along surface streets and a sleepy neighborhood with green island parks. Local families on their morning walks wave as he passes by.
The Delivery
The GPS gives an early warning, “Your destination is on the left in 100 feet.” as he pulls over verifying the house number. He parks near the sidewalk leading to the door and pushes the lock button to make sure the doors are unlocked. As he exits and circles around the back of the vehicle the husband greets him. They exchange gratitude as the husband slips a $20 bill into the driver’s hand.
The two couldn’t be happier as they part ways. The husband quietly returns inside, placing the bouquet on the kitchen island for his wife to discover. The driver continues on knowing how his effort was integral to making someone’s else’s lives better that day.
