Excuse me Mam, are you intoxicated?

This story is a bit rushed. forgive it. 

The afternoon sun brilliantly illuminates a host of chrysanthemums just outside the market door. A careful breeze sneaks its way deftly into the door.  I close my eyes, imagining that I am  standing in a deliciously grassy field with only sheep to keep me company.  I answer to no one.  I answer only to the call of nature's voice, telling me to lie down and take a long nap in the sun.   I take a deep breath... A melange of apples...home baked bread... and  ripened tomatoes... flows into my senses.  And Whisky.   I open my eyes. I look from side to side, searching for the source of this smell.  Liquor. Sniff. I cannot find the source.  All that stands before me is a petite unassuming woman with frizzy gray hair. She is sporting a frightening t-shirt featuring kittens playing in an overturned basket of flowers. I think that surely this unassuming woman is no friend of Mr. Daniel's, expecially at two o'clock in the afternoon.  But the evidence is against me.   She has a crooked grin on her face and is swaying from side to side as if she too is in tune with nature's song and is, in fact, dancing to it. I approach her, still not sure if it is she who is exuding the smell of whiskey or if it is in fact one of my co workers boozing up in the back room (a highly likely scenario).  

"Can I help you, mam?"

"Hmmmmmm?" says she, as if she had just been woken up from an afternoon siesta.

I repeat the question with great purpose:

"CAN I help you?" 

"Yessss. I would like tooo buy sum floooowers ples."

"Excuse me?"

"I WOULD like. tooo BUY.  sumflooowwwrsPLEZ!"

"You would like to buy some FLOWERS? Is that what you said?"

"Yesss. Thass whad I sait. Thanks."

"Ok. well. which flowers?"

"Ya know I happen ta ooown a flowersshop s'funny thad I'm buyin flooowers here.  oh well! godda get 'em somewherenow don ya?"

The smell wafting to my nostrils with each words the woman attempted to utter is about to knock me over. This woman, who according to herself already owns a flower shop, is here to buy flowers.  I wonder if I should be selling anything to a drunk woman.  I assume there is some sort of law dealing with the selling of products to intoxicated individuals.  Maybe they get a BUI: Buying Under the Influence. I mean, you can't get a tattoo when you are drunk so why should buying flowers when you already own a flower shop be any different? Its an irrational decision.  But I am a revolutionary. I seek to give people the benefit of the doubt. Believe in human decency and potential.

"I would like two. Christanthemummms. ples."

I sell the women her flowers. As the stumbles out the door, she encounters Derek, our macho-man garden worker. He has no idea this woman has just performed a BUI. He says:

"What can I help you with mam? I'll get your flowers if you tell me what you got."

At this, the woman smiles such a winning smile that I think Derek my fall for her. But before that can occur, she falls first. Backwards.  Derek catches her right before she hits the pavement. He sets her back on her feet like one of the standing wooden scarecrows we have for sale.  She gives him one more of her winning smiles, strokes his forearm as seductively as a drunk woman can.

"Yur so stroooong. I liiiike my men sooo strooong."

At this point Derek is bewildered beyond limits.

"Mam, are you intoxicated?"

The woman burst out laughing.

"Ov corze NOT! I'm buying flooowers!"

Unless a new logic rules the world that deems all actions to be soberly done as long as the buying of flowers was involved, Derek knows the woman is indeed three or four...or five sheets to the wind.  He takes her flowers to her car, realizing then that the woman has driven herself to the market.  and will in fact have to drive herself from it. So Derek calls the police.  the woman may get quite a decorative record...one BUI and one DUI in one day. 

The woman has no idea we are calling the police. We are afraid the woman will drive away before the police arrive but as fate would have it, she is distracted by a phone call.   Unable to answer her phone and drive at the same time, the woman throws her car into park after having already pulled halfway out of her parking space.  So there she sits, drunkenly blabbering on the phone and blocking the drive way for one of our regular customers.  This particular old woman regular  makes one visit to the market a week where she always buys the same thing. One banana and a dozen eggs.  She has hair as black as Elizabeth Taylor, a hunchback, and a set of the most elegant costume jewelry on this side of the mississippi.

 I, watching this whole ordeal occur, decide to help the old woman find her way out of the parking lot in a different direction.  But the woman will not budge.  She will use the exit she has planned and the one she has used for ten years. or bust.   So to pass the time, she whips out a newspaper to read. 

I leave the old woman to her waiting to check up on the intoxicated seller of flowers.  She has fallen asleep on her steering wheel.  The situation is so deliciously absurd that I cannot help belting out a laugh. A drunk woman is asleep on her steering wheel while an old woman reads the paper behind her.  The scene grows more ridiculous when the police arrive, are briefed on the situation, and proceed to tap at the sleeping woman's window.  She is roused from her slumber made to exit her vehicle.  When asked to follow the finger of the cop with her eyes, she sways back and forth, following the finger with her whole body. She eventually closes her eyes and stands grinning, as if she has found the same sheep filled field that I had earlier in the day. But it is no grassy field where she is headed. She is put in the cop car and taken away to a lovely place we like to call jail. poor lady. all she wants are some happy flowers.

the old woman sits in her car reading the paper for a whole hour until a tow truck comes to tow away the car that is blocking her path to freedom.  To be honest I think the old woman is glad for the delay. It is a break in her routine. She will get to experience a new time of  light from the sun on her drive home. A shade she hasn't known in ten years.  Light that belongs in no routine.  

As for me, I go back to my post, pondering and pitying the poor woman just carted away in the paddy wagon but rejoicing that I am an hour and a half closer to being set free myself from the four walls of my market cell.