My Publix Love Scene

This one's for you, Keely...

I have a standing joke at work--before going home I'm hitting Publix. Since I work at night and get off at 7am, it's the perfect time to grocery shop. It's still cool (relatively so, being that I live in Florida) and there's no one at the store. I can zip in, and zip out. I say this at least once a week. Do I actually go to Publix? Sometimes, but more often, by the time 7am rolls around, I'm just way too tired after 12 hours of birthin babies and all I can think about is bed.

But the other morning I was determined. I had to get dog food. So I made my usual announcement at work, "I'm off to Publix!" Keely just laughed. She knew for sure that when I came into work that night, I'd say I had skipped out. Well, in retrospect, that's would I should have done. But then, maybe not. I actually got some good writing time in...

Once I got in the store, I not only got dog food, I was on a roll. I got an entire cart full of groceries (Must be those subliminal messages they put in the Muzak) By the time I was finished, I was exhausted and completely ready to hit my bed. So instead of taking my groceries out to the car myself, I let Bobby (the sweetest bag boy in the world) take them out. Now, since I was in my hospital scrubs, I had my keys in one pocket and my debit card in another. I guess I must have used my keys at some point to open the car trunk. Right? All I know is when Bobby slammed down the trunk to the car, I had that eerie creepy feeling that something wasn't quite right. But it was too late. The car was shut down, and yup... you guessed it. I had no keys. Poor Bobby. You should have seen the look on his face when he realized we had just locked the keys in my trunk.

Now, if I was thinking (as opposed to whatever was going through my head) I would have called AAA and that would be the end of it. But I forgot all about AAA. Instead, I called Mike Geraci to come save me. Unfortunately, Mike Geraci works on the other side of town and was already in his first meeting of the day. But he promised he'd get there asap.

So I found an empty bench in front of the Bone Fish Grill (conveniently located right next door to Publix- I only wish they were open at 8am so I could have gone in for a stiff drink) and did what all serious writers do. I wrote. Now, I had no paper with me. But I did find a pen on the floor and I had a grocery receipt longer than I want to think about, so I improvised. I wrote (in my own convulted shorthand) the love scene to my new historical on the back of the grocery receipt. Originally, I had titled that scene the Yes/No love scene (I give all my scenes little titles) but now, of course, it can only be referred to as My Publix Love scene. Of course, it needs some serious layering, but hey, it's a pretty good scene!

One hour later, as I was dozing on the bench, my hero arrived and I was saved. By this time, the parking lot was full and the temperature was already in the mid 80's and climbing. You should have seen me scramble to grab that grocery receipt. No way did I want to leave that behind. I can only imagine the look on some senior's face if they had found it and read the back!