Stan jostles the plastic dice hanging from the interior, rear-view mirror in the company van, as he drives along the coast road on the Southern Shore with his last delivery for the day. The late afternoon sun reflects on the waters of the bay, casting prisms of light through a sheen of fog and low clustering clouds.
Cindy, his fiancée, her blonde hair cascading over her white, fluffy-sleeved blouse, is anxiously awaiting his arrival, on the front porch of her family’s wood-clad, paint-patched house.
“I have a C.O.D. package, Cindy, addressed to your mother,” says Stan, as he steps from the side door of the van.
Cindy jumps from the porch step, grabs the cardboard carton from his hands and gleefully tears away the tape and paper packaging with purple-painted fingernails. She pulls the white, high-heeled shoes from the box, kicks off her slippers and places her feet into the narrow, open tips.
“They’re my wedding shoes,” she says excitedly, as she pivots on her hips, showing off her new shoes. She dances about in circles between stones and tufts of grass, her pleated-skirt flaring out around her. “Mom ordered them from the catalogue. I need to know they fit before she buys them.”
“That is against company policy, Cindy. A heel may get broken!” exclaims Stan, catching her in his arms. “Your mother needs to pay for them before you try them on. You’ll have me fired from my first job before we’re even married!”
“Don’t mind the company,” breathes Cindy through red, lipstick-coloured lips, fluttering black, false eyelashes on turquoise-painted eyelids at Stan.
Stan’s heart pounds in his chest, as his nostrils quiver from her wafting perfume.
“You need to be sensible, Cindy,” cries Ms. Riley, an elderly widow, mother of three, leaning on her hickory stick, as she passes along the lane, “Marriage is serious business.”
