By Peter Grimes

The woman outside the condo didn’t match the dating profile Marvin had clicked on. She’d dyed her hair brown, while his remained gray as advertised.

Recognizing him, she waved.

He lowered the window. “Is that you, Beverly?”

“Hello, Marvin.”

Instead of driving to the lakefront they’d agreed upon, he headed for the Harris Teeter across town. This was his form of retaliation. Be what you seem. It was a small thing to ask.

August burned outside. Marvin hated this part of the city, the sprawl, the congestion. He parked far from the supermarket’s automatic doors and waited for her questions. There were none. She grabbed her burgundy pocketbook and popped out the door, leaving him alone in a cloud of spicy perfume. He watched her march across the boiling pavement toward the store. Was this anger?

Inside, by the cellophane-wrapped flowers and watermelons, she stood with a cart.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Waiting for you.”

She must have thought they were getting picnic supplies, he realized: beer, bread for the ducks at the lake. He took the cart and led her down the first aisle.

Unflappable, this Beverly woman. He didn’t need anything for the condo, so he threw in some non-perishables. Soy sauce. Kebab skewers. Peanuts. Then, before she got any ideas about him making her dinner, he tossed in Drain-O, aftershave. One aisle, two aisles, three aisles. Whenever she opened her mouth, he found something else to chuck in the cart.

On aisle five, she plucked at his polo. “I might pick up some litter, if you don’t mind. This version is extra light.”

Marvin had once been exposed to a cat who’d sit on your lap and purr and then, without provocation, swat you. The owner never apologized.

“Go ahead,” he said.

Beverly grabbed two jugs of the cat litter and set them in the cart.

“You must be a dog person,” she said.

“I didn’t say that.” Truly, he didn’t consider himself any sort of person. He disliked those easy categories.

“Well, you seem like a dog person.”

“A person is not always as they seem.”

“Do you wish they were?”

He glanced pointedly at her dyed hair and said nothing.

As they strolled along, Beverly told him of her cats: Zachariah, Joseph, and Abraham. Their quirks, their ailments, their demands. She grabbed a two-liter of black cherry Fresca, some steel wool, a bag of Pink Lady apples.

“They have everything you need here,” she said.

If he got a new dog, he was thinking, it would be a spaniel like Ludlow had been. Old dependable Luddy. Forty-five pounds. Docked tail.

If.

“I adopted my kitties,” she said, “after my neighbor, a church lady, died without arrangements.” This struck him as peculiar. Perhaps even…untrue. This woman adopting three cats? She wore a golden ring on her pinkie finger, a golden bracelet on her tanned wrist, a golden necklace with a pendant that said Precious.

His late wife, Sophie—earthy, soft-spoken, comfortable in her own skin—now she was the sort to adopt orphaned cats.

“What was her name?”

“Whose?”

“The church lady’s.”

“Eugenia.”

It didn’t prove anything.

The zit-faced cashier rang them up without unnecessarily acknowledging their existence.

Back in the car, buckling in, Beverly said, “This has been nice.”

Marvin kept missing the ignition slot and had to remove his sunglasses to see. “Just some things I had to pick up.”

“I have to say, no one’s ever taken me grocery shopping on a first date.”

Obviously, he thought.

They waited, idling, as overloaded carts crossed behind them. One splotchy guy walked with a cane, the woman beside him twenty years younger, a beach umbrella on her shoulder. They held hands. How did that happen? Marvin wondered. His neck grew stiff from craning.

In the passenger seat, Beverly was doing something garish to her eyelashes. “I mean,” she said, “it makes sense. You can tell a lot from what a person buys.”

“I can’t remember what I bought,” he said. Suddenly, he peeled backward into an opening.

Beverly shrieked.

Braking, he shifted into drive and saw she’d smeared mascara over her eyebrow. He couldn’t help but smile. The black streak with all the gold adornments gave her the look of an Egyptian priestess.

“Sorry.”

They had to wait another several minutes for an opening onto the boulevard.

“Are you going to help me put away my groceries?” She was wiping at the smear with a tissue, a pleasant look on her face.

He mumbled something noncommittal. Then: “I need to stop by the bank. And the drycleaners.”

She reached into her purse for a pack of gum.

He waved it away.

“Which drycleaner?”

He named one he’d used before retiring eight years ago. The suit he’d worn to the memorial service hung, still wrinkled, in the closet.

“My pharmacy’s over that way,” she said. “Would you mind?”

He didn’t answer, all his attention on the cars whipping by. Sports cars, SUVs, little smart cars, strangers grouped inside.

“Gray hair isn’t actually gray,” he said after a moment. “It’s just white follicles blending with darker colors, like brown.”

Beverly appraised his profile. “I don’t think you’re old,” she said. She snapped her pocketbook shut.

“I’m not old,” he said.

“Nor am I.”

He was seventy-three, and her profile had said sixty-eight.

“Okay,” he said.

“Okay.”

When he spied a break in the traffic, he gunned it, the car arcing bright chrome through the afternoon. And off they drove toward the place they were already going.

~~~

Peter Grimes has published short fiction in The Missouri Review, American Short Fiction, Narrative, Mississippi Review, Fiction International, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and other journals. He edits Pembroke Magazine.