My cell phone rang. The rest of the room rushed into view. The box filled with three grocery bags I’d left on the kitchen counter, her cat, the fridge with pictures of her and her pony-tailed mom.

“Hello?” I asked a question. Was ‘hello’ the correct greeting? Didn’t Bell want us to use ‘ahoy’?

“Jeffrey, my man, where are you? Old lady Green just called. Says she can’t eat breakfast until you deliver her Metamucil and if she can’t eat breakfast within the half hour she’ll get a migraine.” It was my boss, the dispatcher for Tennenbaum’s Fine Foods delivery service.

“Sorry, Mike, I’m just leaving Jenny Lee’s place. She hurt her arm and asked if I could help put the groceries away.” I looked around, her arm, her head, her pretty red heart, all of it was hurt.

“Tell me you used it as an in to finally ask her out, man,” Mike laughed, he had this guttural black man’s laugh. Like Louis Armstrong or B.B. King or someone like that.

“Um, no. She’s hurt I didn’t want to take advantage…”

“Pussy. Get to Green’s place quick will you? I hate that old bag.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“How many times do I have to tell you, you don’t have to call me ‘Sir.’”

“I better get going.”

“All right, man, see you later.” I could see him hanging up and shaking his head. Probably lighting up a cigarette. Smoking is like pumping hot magma into Yellowstone’s super volcano, just asking for destruction.

I realized I couldn’t put her together here, in her kitchen. I took the grocery bags out of the box I had carried them up the stairs in and put the groceries away as best I could. It seemed like she put spaghetti sauce in two places, in two entirely different cupboards. So I did the best I could, then I gathered her pieces. They kept skidding across the linoleum. I put them into the box. They didn’t all fit and I had to put some in my apron pockets. I had to wear the grocery store’s aprons when I delivered.

The rest of the day was OK, except for the box of Jenny in the passenger seat. It made me sad to see her like that, stuffed in a Boone’s Farm box. At least she wasn’t scattered anymore. I wondered supernaturally if her soul felt better all in one place. At the end of the day Mike saw me carrying the box to my car and hollered at me across the parking lot. We weren’t allowed to take the boxes home. Tennenbaum’s was a green store and we reused the boxes everyday.

“Jenny gave me some apples,” I called back. I didn’t want to get close to him, “Can I bring the box back tomorrow?” Mike shook his head, he was always shaking his head. The world held him in constant disbelief.

“You shoulda asked her out, man.” He laughed and tossed his cigarette before he went back in the building. Something tickled me and I smiled down at the box.

“She is coming home with me,” I said to myself.

On my way home I stopped by the biggest bookstore I could find and spent my week’s salary on anatomy books. The clerk said I looked too old to be in med school. I said they were for my niece. I assumed I didn’t look like a father either, but I might look like one of those uncles who buys stuff because they don’t know how to ‘connect’. She smiled and told me I must be a, “super nice uncle.” She had dimples. Really cute dimples. Jenny didn’t have any dimples. She had a big smile, with bright white teeth. All of her teeth had broken out of her skull. I had picked up every last one.

“Is there any way you can wrap these for me? I’m horrible at that stuff. It’ll look terrible.” I never had to attempt looking lost. I was born that way. Looking like I didn’t know why I was here, or anywhere. I think people find it endearing though. She smiled again, with those dimples, and looked past me.

“Sure, there’s no line, I can do that for you.” I picked plain butcher paper wrapping with purple and gold bows and ribbons. It seemed like something Jenny would like.