Page 5 of Special Delivery
She glanced around. There was no-one to help. She looked back to the puddle of sauce at her feet and realised dolefully that she could definitely not do a runner. The pasta sauce footprints would give her away.
‘Are you going to get that cleaned up?’
Poppy swivelled and baulked.What. Were. The chances?Ken-doll-in-scrubs (literally, he was wearing scrubs again) was walking down the aisle, gesturing to the chaos at her feet. ‘You can’t leave it like that,’ he said. ‘You should tell someone.’
Poppy glared at him. ‘Of course I was going to clean it up,’ she snapped, turning back to the shelf to inspect the damage.
Ken doll was behind her now. ‘I didn’t mean you personally should clean it up; I just meant you can’t leave this mess here and not tell anyone. It’s a safety hazard.’
‘Oh my god,go away!’ cried Poppy, squatting to pick the shards of glass from the red paste. As she started placing them uselessly in a pile, she could sense him shifting uncomfortably behind her.
‘Okay, I guess if you’ve got this under control, I can …’ He reached over Poppy to pluck a jar of pesto from the top shelf. He was so close she could smell the laundry powder scent of his scrubs. His knees were probably two inches from her head. A raging heat rose up her neck.I could swing my head back and smash this guy. His knees would buckle and he’d go flying. She could watch him squirm. The image of Ken doll covered in pasta sauce was an enticing one.
‘Right.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I’ll be going then.’
‘Yeah, you can fuck off,’ Poppy muttered, still picking glass out of the sauce.
‘Excuse me?’ he said, turning around.
Poppy fixed him with a hostile stare. ‘I said goodbye!’
As soon as she’d loaded the groceries into the boot of the LandCruiser, Poppy put her AirPods in and dialled Dani.
‘PARPEEE!’ her friend cried.
‘DARNEE!’ cried Poppy in return, reversing the LandCruiser out of the parking space. ‘Thank the lord you picked up. I was going to bust a lid if you didn’t. You would not believe what I have just been through.’
‘Oh my god!’ cried Dani. ‘Is there a baby?! Tell me everything! WASTE NO WORDS!’
Poppy flicked her indicator on and laughed. ‘No baby, my friend. Just a giant shit sandwich in the supermarket. Not literally, obviously, but I almost killed someone.’
‘Whoa, lady, tell me more.’
‘Dude, you wouldn’t guess who was there.’
‘No, I wouldn’t,’ Dani said impatiently, ‘so spill already.’
Poppy paused dramatically. ‘The guy from the car park.’
‘Who?’
‘The guy from the hospital car park—the douche. I told you about him.’
‘The Ken doll in scrubs?’
‘Yes, none other than hospital douche Ken. Buy one and get a free Barbie caravan bumper sticker that saysI’m a douche, and I’ll be a douche about it.’
Dani chuckled. ‘So what happened?’
As she drove home, Poppy recounted the whole incident: the trolley, the broken glass, the sauce, his annoying holier-than-thou-ness, his hovering in her personal space. ‘And then,’ she concluded with a satisfied smirk, ‘I told him to fuck off.’
‘You didn’t!’
‘I did.’
‘What are you becoming, woman?’ Dani cried gleefully. ‘Dropping f-bombs in public. Man, I would pay to see that. Imagine what your old workmates would pay! This is uncharted territory: fired-up Poppy. I can’t wait to see her in action.’
Poppy laughed. ‘Seriously, this guy is my kryptonite. I promise I am still a normal human woman. I have no intention of becoming known as the lady gangster of Orange.’
