A woman with a baby in her cart reached between them for a can of macaroni and cheese. Delia stepped back to give her room.
“If it’s not too much trouble,” Adrian said when the woman had moved away, “I’ll just tag along while you finish your shopping. It would look sort of fishy if I left right now, all alone. I hope you don’t mind.”
Mind? This was the most interesting thing that had happened to her in years. “Not a bit,” she told him. She wheeled her cart into aisle 4. Adrian strolled alongside her.
“I’m Adrian Bly-Brice, by the way,” he said. “I guess I ought to know your name.”
“I’m Delia Grinstead,” she told him. She plucked a bottle of mint flakes from the spice rack.
“I don’t believe I’ve ever run into a Delia before.”
“Well, it’s Cordelia, really. My father named me that.”
“And are you one?”
“Am I one what?”
“Are you your father’s Cordelia?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “He’s dead.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“He died this past winter,” she said.
Ridiculously, tears filled her eyes. This whole conversation had taken a wrong turn somewhere. She squared her shoulders and pushed her cart on down the aisle, veering around an elderly couple conferring over salt substitutes. “Anyhow,” she said, “it got shortened to Delia right away. Like in the song.”
“What song?”
“Oh, the… you know, the one about Delia’s gone, one more round… My father used to sing me to sleep with that.”
“I never heard it,” Adrian said.
The tune on the loudspeaker now was “By the Time I Get to Phoenix,” competing with her father’s gruff voice muttering “Delia’s Gone” in her mind. “Anyhow!” she said again, more brightly.
They started up the next aisle: cereals on the left, popcorn and sweets on the right. Delia needed cornflakes, but cornflakes were such a family item, she decided against them. (What ingredients were required for blancmange?) Adrian gazed idly at sacks of butterscotch drops and rum balls. His skin had that slight tawniness that you occasionally see in fair-haired men, and it seemed almost without texture. He must not have to shave more than two or three times a week.
“I myself was named for an uncle,” he said. “Rich Uncle Adrian Brice. Probably all for nothing, though. He’s mad I changed my name when I married.”
“You changed your name when you married?”
“I used to be Adrian Brice the Second, but then I married Rosemary Bly and we both became Bly-Brice.”
“Oh, so there’s a hyphen,” Delia said. She hadn’t realized.
“It was entirely her idea, believe me.”
As if summoned up by his words, Rosemary appeared at the other end of the aisle. She tossed something into the red plastic tote basket hanging from Skipper’s fist. Women like Rosemary never purchased their groceries by the cartload.
“If we went to the movie, though, we’d miss the concert,” Adrian said instantly, “and you know how I’ve looked forward to the concert.”
“I forgot,” Delia said. “The concert! They’ll be playing…”
But she couldn’t think of a single composer. (And maybe he had meant some other kind of concert-a rock show, for instance. He was young enough.) Rosemary watched without a flicker of expression as Delia and Adrian approached. Delia was the first to lower her eyes. “We’ll just save the movie for tomorrow,” Adrian was saying. He guided her cart to the left a bit. All at once Delia felt woefully small-not dainty and petite, but squat, humble, insignificant. She didn’t stand much taller than Adrian ’s armpit. She increased her speed, anxious to leave this image of herself behind. “They do have a Sunday matinee, don’t they?” Adrian was asking.
“Of course they do,” she told him, a little too emphatically. “We could go to the two o’clock showing, right after our champagne brunch.”
By now she was tearing down the next aisle. Adrian had to lengthen his stride to keep up. They narrowly missed hitting a man whose cart was stacked with gigantic Pampers boxes.
In aisle 7 they zipped through the gourmet section-anchovy paste, smoked oysters-and arrived at baby foods, where Delia collected herself enough to remember she needed strained spinach. She slowed to study the rows of little jars. “Not those!” Adrian hissed. They raced on, leaving behind aisle 7 and careening into 8. “Sorry,” he said. “I just thought if Rosemary saw you buying baby food…”
If she saw her buying baby food, she’d think Delia was just a housewife with an infant waiting at home. Ironically, though, Delia had long passed the infant stage. To suspect her of having a child that young was to flatter her. All she needed the spinach for was her mint pea soup. But she didn’t bother explaining that and instead selected a can of chicken broth. “Oh,” Adrian said, traveling past her, “consommé! I meant to buy some.”
He dropped a tin in her cart-a fancy brand with a sleek white label. Then he wandered on, hands jammed flat in his rear pockets. Come to think of it, he reminded Delia of her first real boyfriend-in fact, her only boyfriend, not counting her husband. Will Britt had possessed this same angularity, which had seemed graceful at some moments and ungainly at others; and he had cocked his elbows behind him in just this way, like knobby, sharp wings, and his ears had stuck out a bit too. It was a relief to find that Adrian ’s ears stuck out. She distrusted men who were too handsome.
At the end of the aisle they looked in both directions. No telling where Rosemary might pop up next, with that carefree, untrammeled tote basket. But the coast was clear, and Delia nosed her cart toward paper goods. “What,” Adrian said, “you want to buy more?”
Yes, she did. She had barely passed the halfway mark. But she saw his point. The longer they hung around, the greater his chances of another confrontation. “We’ll leave,” she decided. She started for the nearest checkout counter, but Adrian, lacing his fingers through the grid of the cart, drew it toward the express lanes. “One, two, three…” She counted her purchases aloud. “We can’t go there! I’ve got sixteen, seventeen…”
He pulled the cart into the fifteen-item lane, behind an old woman buying nothing but a sack of dog chow. He started dumping noodle boxes onto the counter. Ah, well. Delia rummaged through her bag for her checkbook. The old woman in front of them, meanwhile, was depositing bits of small change in the cashier’s palm. She handed over a penny and then, after a search, another penny. A third penny had a piece of lint stuck to it, and she plucked that away painstakingly. Adrian gave an exasperated sigh. “I forgot cat food,” Delia told him. She hadn’t a hope in this world that he would volunteer to go back for it; she just thought a flow of talk might settle him down some. “Seeing that dog chow reminded me, we’re almost out,” she said. “Oh, never mind. I’ll send Ramsay for it later.”
The old woman was hunting a fourth penny. She was positive, she said, that she had another one somewhere.
“Ramsay!” Adrian repeated to himself. He sighed again-or no, this time he was laughing. “I bet you live in Roland Park,” he told Delia.
“Well, yes, I do.”
“I knew it! Everybody in Roland Park has a last name for a first name.”
“So?” she said, stung. “What’s wrong with that?”
“Oh, nothing.”
“It isn’t even true,” she said. “Why, I know lots of people who-”
“Don’t take offense! I live in Roland Park myself,” he said. “It’s just pure luck I wasn’t named… oh, Bennington, or McKinney; McKinney was my mother’s maiden name. I bet your husband’s mother’s… and if we decide against the blancmange tonight we can always have it tomorrow night, don’t you think?”
She felt dislocated for a second, until she understood that Rosemary must be in earshot again. Sure enough: a tote basket, still loaded, arrived on the counter behind her own groceries. By now the old woman had moved away, tottering under her burden of dog chow, and the cashier was asking them, “Plastic bags, or paper?”