Chocolate for Lena

“Aren’t you going to smell that?” Lena asked as Orlando dropped a bottle of lotion into the basket.

“What?” he asked, confused.

“The lotion. You didn’t smell it.”

Orlando starred down at the plastic white bottle.

“How do you know you’ll like it?”

“Its on sale.” He pointed at the clearance tag on the shelf.

“But how do you know you’ll like it? It’s a big bottle.”

“Yeah, and its on sale. It’s a good deal.”

“But what if you put it on for the first time and you don’t like it?”

Orlando picked up the bottle, “its lotion?” he asked turning the bottle over in his hands.

“Yeah, Lando, its lotion,” Lena stated taking the bottle from him and opening the top, “but they don’t all smell the same.”

“I know that. But its lotion. Its on sale.”

Lena put the top back on the lotion and placed the bottle back into the basket. “Okay.”

Lena was not dating Orlando. She had been ‘not dating’ Orlando for around four years. He had recently floated the idea of her moving in. They were both paying too much in rent and he wanted to see her more.

“Can you grab me a box of tampons?” Lena asked as they passed the OBs. Thank God they’re back on the shelf, thought Lena. She was tired of rooting around in purses and the bottom of drawers for strays. Orlando flicked the nearest box into the basket using only the tip of his index finger.

“Did you grab a Super?” Lena stopped walking.

“What?”

“The tampons. Did you grab Supers?”

“I don’t know,” Orlando shrugged, looking away. Menstruation made him nervous.

“Did you look?”

“They’re blue, right? I grabbed the blue ones.”

“They’re all blue.” Lena puller the Variety pack out of the basket and replaced it with a box of Regulars. “I just need the regulars,” she stated to Orlando’s back. He was looking at his feet. I swear to God will you never grow up? Lena asked Orlando, in her head.

“Do we need anything else?” Orlando asked, looking down at the list Lena had written up in his apartment.

“I don’t think so, but we can look around some more.” It was hot outside, blistering, fry an egg on the pavement, melt lip balm in your car, kind of hot. Neither Orlando nor Lena had air conditioning at their apartments and so they were delaying leaving the cold glory of the store.

“Oh, I know,” cried Orlando in excitement and ran off.

Lena was flipping through a copy of Sunset when he returned. “They’re on sale,” he said proudly dropping two Cadbury Milk bars into the basket. “Chocolate. Its your favorite.” He grinned at her.

Lena leaned over and kissed him. They were smiling at each other when the clerk screamed.

“Oh my god a gun!”

Clide had never lived in Nashville, but he’d always dreamed of buying a little house there. His mom loved that home and garden station where they were always redoing people’s houses. Sometimes they did a house in Nashville and he’d watch with his mom and think how he’d do it differently. He wanted tile in the kitchen. Real blue tile. He didn’t care that his mom said it’d be dangerious, too slick when wet, people’d fall. He liked the idea of tile instead of linoleum, thought it sounded like something you’d hold on to.

There wasn’t much chance though, of getting that house. Clide had worked some odd jobs off and on. He was pretty good with plumbing. He’d fix things for neighbors. They’d pay him if they could, but he’d fix the problem anyway if they bought the supplies. His mom had tried to talk him into applying at a plumbing repair service. But he’d been afraid. He didn’t think they’d take him without a high school degree. He didn’t want to get laughed at for trying. He’d worked for a while at a plumbing supply warehouse. He’d liked it there, but some stuff got stolen and a coworker accused him. He’d denied it, but they’d fired him anyway. He had stolen the supplies, but not the money that was missing. Someone else had taken that.

Lena leapt behind Orlando, feminism be damned. A guy in a gray hoodie was pointing a gun at the blonde teenager at the cash register. His hand was shaking.

“The cash,” he yelled, pointing at the drawer with his other hand.

The cashier just stood there starring at him.

“The cash,” he repeated. This seemed to work better in the movies. Everyone was just standing around starring at him with their mouths open. No one was even crying. That was good though, Clide didn’t like it when women cried.

“The money,” he tried again, this time pointing with the gun. The movement of the gun seemed to wake the girl out of her paralysis.

She exhaled loudly and started to press keys on the cash register until she got frustrated and started hitting it.

“What are you doing?” Clide asked. “That’s not going to work. That’s not how it works? Are you new or something?”

“What?” asked the blonde teenager, now starting to cry.

“No. Crap, just move okay.” Clide slid behind the counter and opened the drawer. He shoved a bunch of twenties into his pockets and lifted the tray to see if there was anything larger. There wasn’t. His buddy had told him a grocery store was a great bust cause they’d be low on security and would be sure to have lots of large bills. Nick had been wrong before.

By this point the blonde was sobbing and leaning into Orlando’s shoulder.

“You,” Clide gestured at Orlando with the gun, “you got a phone on you?”

“Yeah, yeah, sure. I’ve got a phone. It’s in my back pocket.”

“Okay, well give it to me.”

Orlando, pushed Lena aside just enough to grab his phone. She was clinging to him pretty hard, he thought he might have bruises in the morning.

“What’s this?” Clide looked down at Orlando’s five year old phone.

“It’s a phone.”

“This it?”

“Yeah, what’s wrong with it?”

“You don’t have like an Iphone or something?”

Orlando let out a brief burst of laughter. Lena pinched him and her mouth got very small.

“No,” he told Clide. “I don’t have an Iphone or something. I’ve got that.”

“You don’t get upgrades?” Clide asked, turning the phone over in his hand.

“Seriously?” Orlando looked at Clide in disbelief and then looked at Lena and the sobbing cashier.

“Yeah, yeah, right” Clide responded, getting the hint. “Anyway, um, don’t call the cops.” He clipped his shoulder on the automatic sliding glass door as he ran out. The door hadn’t opened as quickly as he anticipated.

“Oh my god.” Lena breathed slowly, still clinging to Orlando’s shoulder. “We’ve been robbed. Or… well… I guess, you’ve been robbed.”

“Don’t worry I already called the cops,” said a guy near the back of the dairy aisle. “They’re on their way.”

That night, Lena collapsed on Orlando’s futon. “I am too tired to move,” she stated into the cushion. They’d spent hours talking to cops and filing paperwork for Orlando’s crappy phone. The guy had been right, of course, Orlando’s phone really did need to be replaced.

“I don’t have anyone’s numbers,” Orlando had realized at the station. Lena couldn’t help really, they had some friends in common, but since they were not dating, they kept their social lives fairly separate.

“You’ll just post it on Facebook. People will send you their numbers.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

Orlando broke open one of the chocolate bars in the kitchen while Lena lay face down in his living room. The store had given them their items for free, since they’d been so helpful with the police and Orlando had calmed down the teenaged cashier. Well, until her boyfriend arrived anyway, at which point she started crying so hysterically that the only thing anyone could understand was “I could have died” over and over again.

“You want anything?” he called to Lena.

“Have you thought about having a baby?” she called back.

Orlando chocked on his square of chocolate. The sweetness coated the roof of his mouth, “what?” he asked quietly, walking into the living room with the look of a man given a fatal diagnosis.

“A baby,” Lena repeated turning her face in his direction.

“That’s what I thought you said. A baby?”

“Yeah. A baby?”

“Like a human baby?”

Lena stared at him without answering.

“What? It’s a legitimate question.”

“No” Lena sighed, pushing herself into a sitting position, “its not.”

“Well, I don’t know. I don’t know where this is coming from.”

“It coming from my uterus.”

“What?” Orlando started, starring at her lower abdomen. “Um, wait are you?” his voice trailed off.

Lena threw her hands over her stomach. “No, no, what? No. We bought tampons.”

“I don’t know. What is going on? What is wrong with today? I got robbed. We are not having this conversation. Not today.”

“You didn’t seem that upset earlier.”

“Earlier?”

“At the police station.”

“About the baby? I didn’t know anything about a baby at the police station.”

“What? No,” Lena shook her head slowly. “About the robbery. You didn’t seem that upset. Are you pretending.? To get out of this conversation?”

Orlando sat on the floor, “I would, I mean, I would pretend to get out of this conversation, but no. I’m not pretending now that I’m upset. I was pretending then that I wasn’t.”

“What?” Lena crawled off the futon and over toward Orlando on the floor.

“There was some guy, pointing a gun at you. I was upset. Of course I was. But what was I going to do?”

“You didn’t seem upset.”

“What was I going to do? Whitney was sobbing…”

“Whitney?”

“The girl. The cashier, her name is Whitney. Anyway she was scared shitless, and she was sobbing and you were there and the dumb fuck had a gun. What, I’m gonna start crying or something?”

“I don’t know.”

“Anyway, I’m not pretending. But, Lena, a baby? You want to have a baby?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“With me?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about it.”

“But you decided to think about it now. Today?”

“I don’t know. That guy, he had a gun pointed at you. I… I mean… I think we should have a baby. Maybe. Or at least talk about it.”

“Not today.”

“Okay, not today, but still.”

“Right.” Orlando pulled Lena to him and wrapped his arms around her. He rested his chin on top of her head. “We’ll talk about it later.”