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The hardware store is empty, aside from a lone cashier, and the two women traversing the aisles with a cart of mismatched tools and parts.
“We came here for one single screw,” Carol comments, chin pressed against the cart handle. She’s bent over, positioned strategically beneath the only working AC in the whole damn building, and she is bored out of her mind. As Helen paces up and down the same aisle for what has to be the fourth time, Carol lets out a sigh, closing her eyes. “One screw. Nothing else. An in-and-out job.”
“Okay, sure. That was the original plan, but, look,” Helen replies, standing at the opposite end of the cart. Her arms are full: a watering can is tucked into one elbow, and a shovel dangles from her hand. Carol doesn’t look, out of spite alone. “The store is empty. It’s local, it’s nice, and don’t you think it would feel great to support an independent business?”
Another sigh. “Not really, no.”
“God, you’re so miserable,” Helen teases, rolling her eyes as she nudges Carol’s side with her elbow. Carol isn’t sure when she got close enough for that. Maybe she’s been zoned out longer than she realised. “Oh, woe is me. Lighten up."
The AC shuts off, and Carol opens her eyes. The scowl on her face is almost comical, and Helen just smiles her smug, stupid smile.
“Lighten up,” she repeats, pressing a kiss to Carol’s hair. Carol instinctively flinches, before narrowing her eyes at her. “There’s no cameras, and we’re in the cashier’s blindspot. Stop scowling.”
“Why? Because you want to spend an ungodly amount of money on tools we’ll never touch, and houseplants that’ll be dead in a week?” she questions, hands gripping the handle of the cart like a lifeline. God, it’s annoying, having to be all rational.
“Exactly! But we’ll be contributing to keeping this place open, isn’t that great?”
“That’s exactly what you said about the hot tub we’ve been in once. Once!” she exclaims, eyes narrowed at her wife. “And the dual head shower that we have never been in at the same time because you shower at stupid times. So, yeah, maybe we’ll be helping out this fucking business, but it will be at the cost of an ungodly amount of money.”
“Who cares about money?”
“Me! I do. It’s our money.”
“Fine, I’ll spend my money on it.” She turns away, returning to her unhurried pacing.
“Whatever,” Carol grumbles, and rolls the cart backwards and forwards until the AC starts back up.
They have been in the store for forty-five minutes (forty-four of which involve various, grumbling complaints from Carol) before Helen notices the garden section.
“Oh my God, look at this thing,” Helen exclaims, coming to an abrupt halt in front of a plant. Carol, begrudgingly pushing the cart, almost crashes straight into her legs, but manages to catch herself before that actually happens.
She steps around to stand beside Helen, peering down at the plant. She looks at it, really looks at it, then looks back at Helen. “It’s forty-five dollars. For a flower. Forty-five, Helen. Four and then a five.”
“It’s beautiful,” she whispers, hands already holding the tag. “Strelitzia reginae, bird of paradise.”
The plant is nice, Carol can admit that much (internally, where Helen’s prying ears can’t hear a damn thing), but God, the price tag… “It’ll be dead before it even enters the house,” she argues. Still, she can’t stop her eyes from wandering across the shelves of houseplants. She knows Helen will want every single one if she doesn’t divert her attention. “Hey, what about a hammer? Ours is looking rusty.”
Helen either doesn’t hear the deflection, or ignores it, already admiring another pot of green nothing. She picks it up, holding it under the light, as if that will make it any less green and boring. “Oh, God, and this one!”
“It’s just green,” Carol remarks, shrugging her shoulders. She leans back against the cool metal of the cart, wedging it between her body and the shelves. She glares daggers at the plant, wishing it out of existence. If she had it her way, the damn thing would erupt in flames right now, triggering an alarm, and freeing her from the boredom she is forced to endure. Of course, those flames would have to only burn the plant, and not touch a hair on Helen’s head, or else she would have to wish ill on the flames, too, and that’s just too much fucking work.
The plant, much to Carol’s annoyance, does not catch on fire, and, instead, she is forced to listen to Helen’s continued ramblings. “It would look so nice in the office, right by the window.”
Carol scoffs. “You are not putting plants in my office, absolutely not.”
“Do you have to be such a hardass about everything?”
“Yeah,” Carol murmurs, shrugging again. Nonetheless, she leans in closer, inspecting the plant with a critical eye. “What’s so special about this thing, anyway? It’s just grass, but bigger.” She lifts one of the leaves, eyes narrowed as she takes in the colour, and the yellow markings. “It barely looks alive as is.”
“It’ll die if you touch it,” Helen says, swatting Carol’s hand away. “You’re drowning the poor thing with your negativity.”
“You don’t actually believe in that shit, do you?” she asks, and the glare Helen shoots her is more than enough to answer that question. Of course Helen believes in that. Helen believes in a whole load of shit Carol doesn’t understand. “All the more reason not to get anything alive, then.”
“All the more reason for you to lighten up,” she retorts, eyes drifting straight back to the plant.
“If I lighten up, who will fill your days with pessimism and self-depreciation?”
“To answer your question,” Helen says, turning back to the first plant, a bird of paradise. “It’s special because it just is. Everything is special when you aren’t such a downer.”
“Bullshit,” she murmurs, a snort accompanying it. She doesn’t believe that for a second. “By your logic, a grain of sand is special.”
“Bullshit yourself. And yes, I’d argue every grain of sand is special.”
She needs a new tactic, and settles on “it’s orange.”
“So, what?”
“So, nothing we own is orange.” She shrugs, a triumphant smirk already teasing at her mouth. “You hate orange. We hate orange. It’s ugly, and tacky, and your Mom’s entire house is orange. Which you also hate.”
Helen’s eyes narrow, then, deep in thought. “We have that blanket my sister made us for our anniversary,” she tries, although she sounds sceptical as the words leave her mouth. “That’s orange.”
“The blanket you threw into the bottom of the closet because, and I’m paraphrasing slightly here, it’s a fucking eyesore and should never see the light of day. That blanket?” Carol asks, her eyebrows raised in disbelief.
This time, it’s Helen’s turn to deflect. “I’ve been eyeing a new print.”
“Sure.”
“I have,” she insists. “It’s an O’Keeffe. Orange and red, mainly. Canna Red and Orange, beautiful thing.”
“Convenient. Another flower that looks like a vulva? Truly, an inspired choice.”
“I prefer well thought out,” she replies with a shrug, grinning from ear to ear. “You like O’Keeffe, anyway.”
“I like one O’Keeffe.” It’s a lie. They both know that, but she folds her arms, plants her feet firmly on the ground, and stares down her wife, inviting her to argue.
“Bullshit,” Helen replies, shaking her head. She knows she’s won. She always wins.
“So, what? You’re planning to redecorate our entire house around an O’Keeffe print you’ve never mentioned before right now, a blanket you loathe, and an ugly houseplant that’ll be wilted and shrivelled as soon as it’s in a fifty yard radius of our house?”
Upper hand to Carol.
Maybe…
“Maybe I am. What then?”
“You love our decor as is. Why change it?”
“It’s fine, but maybe it’s time for something new, no?”
“No.”
She tries. Really, she does. She tries to squeeze her eyes shut to rid herself of Helen’s smiling, expectant face, but even then, she can still see her, pasted bright and happy on the inside of her eyelids. God, that was annoying.
“Whatever, just get the damned thing.”
“Good,” she says, squeezing Carol’s elbow as she passes her, a plant under each arm. “I was going to anyway, but it’s nice that you caved so fast.”
“Asshole.”
“Go pick out some pots for these, lady.”
Carol does just that, while grumbling and cursing under her breath. The selection of pots is vast, covering a whole wall of the store. “They all look the same,” she calls out to Helen. “What size do you even need?”
“I don’t know. What size do you think we need?”
Carol narrows her eyes, her annoyance taking the reins. She picks up the smallest pot she can find, an act of spite, and returns to the cart. She holds her head high as she presents the pot to Helen, who just smiles and takes it.
“Thank you, baby. You do know I’m just going to find another plant to put in that pot, right?”
Well, fuck.