by Maggie Way
Neither of us moved right away. Darwin cared for these plates the way he cared for everything else. I didn’t know why but despite them being mismatched, I knew they were special to him. I muttered an apology and stooped down, picking up the shards of ceramic without thinking.
“Stop. You’ll cut yourself.” Just as he said it, an edge of the broken plate pierced my skin. Reflexively, I held my finger in my free hand. “I told you be careful. Come on. Sit and let me look at your hand.”
“It’s nothing. Just a minor cut,” I said even as I watched blood flow out of what I thought had been a small wound.
He helped me up and ordered me to sit on one of the chairs. “Stay there. I’ll get the first aid.” Before he left, he kicked the ceramic pieces aside with his foot.
While I cradled my bleeding hand, I noticed one of the bottom of the plates on the floor. A name had been carved on it. Eva. “Shit,” I swore under my breath. I was right about those plates being special, and I had ruined them.
When he returned with a rather large bag of First Aid Kit, I sucked in a sob. What if the plates were all he had of hers? The few things he remembered his departed wife by?
“Does it hurt a lot?” he asked, placing the kit on the table and zipping it open.
“What no, not at all.”
“Why are you crying?” He slid a finger under my chin and nudged my head up.
“I’m not crying.”
He brushed over my cheek with the pad of his thumb. And when I looked at it, the tip of his thumb was wet…with my tears. I hadn’t realized I was crying until then.
“I’m fine,” I lied, and thankfully he didn’t push on.
In silence, he went about cleaning my wound and pressed a small bandage to cover it. “Try not to get it wet.”
“Thank you, and I’m sorry about your plates.”
“Nothing to be sorry about. They’re old. I’ve been meaning to get new ones.” As though he just remembered there were still broken shards on the floor, he stood and grabbed the broom and dustpan. “Watch your steps in case I missed any.”
“Your wife made them?” I couldn’t stop myself from asking, even though I might be pushing my luck.
His shoulders stiffened and his grip tightened on the broom, his fingers paling as he held on. “She loved pottery. We even had a kiln in our old house, and she made hundreds of them. Gave them away as gifts. She loved everything handmade…until she couldn’t…” I held my breath as I waited for more revelation. His eyes shone as he spoke about her. His voice softened at the memory of Eva. As if he only realized who he was speaking to, his gaze caught mine for a moment before he said, “Why don’t you go for lunch now? I’ll attend to the customers.” In with that, he turned on his heels, taking his shards of ceramics and the memory of his wife.
Chapter Four
Tuesday…
The weather resembled my mood. Buckets poured down once again from cloudy skies, soaking everything in site.
I left the shop for home last night with the scent of the rain hanging over me, mixed with the mood I couldn’t quite shake off. After lunch Darwin made himself scarce, and didn’t say much to me until it was time to close. He could’ve been mad, but I couldn’t tell. I would have loved the chance to replace the plates I’d broken but how would one go about replacing ceramic plates a dead woman made with her hands.
My mood soured the longer I thought of it.
I didn’t have any belongings with sentimental values. Apart from the clothes I kept after the divorce and the boxes of books I’d hoarded through the years, I had nothing to my name. I wasn’t crafty in any way. I’d only been able to work at the flower shop because I paid attention and I charmed my way into customers’ hearts.
Thinking about a solution kept me up all night, and yet, I didn’t end with a clear solution.
When my alarm rang, and upon seeing the darkness looming outside, I wanted to call it a day, perhaps call in sick for once. But Darwin needed me at work. More so today than ever. Showing up was the least I could do despite what I’d done.
Valentine’s Day lacked any sort of meaning to me, even when I was married. Suffice to say, after the honeymoon stage was over, Bob took all romantic notions out of our marriage handbook and threw them at other women. Even as I thought of what Nica said yesterday about Mr. Ricci, it wasn’t enough to get me excited for today.
After a quick shower, and not bothering to dry my hair considering it would all be for nothing, I had a quick breakfast. My phone rang as I was about brush my teeth.
“Hello?” Only a handful of people had my phone number and only half of that would call, especially at quarter to five in the morning.
“Mrs. M?”
It took me a little while to recognize the voice on the other line. “Erik, why are you calling me?” I asked one of the college students Darwin had hired to deliver flowers today.
“Mr. D sent me.”
“Sent you where?”
“I’m downstairs. Here to pick you up. He said he didn’t want you to get all soaked from the rain.”
“He said that?”
“Yeah. So are you ready to go?”
“Sure. Just give me a minute to brush my teeth.”
“All right, Mrs. M.”
I hung up, not noticing the smile that bloomed on my face. Unfortunately, Erik noted it as soon as I slipped in his car…or his father’s car as I was told.
“There’s a smile that could brighten up any day,” he said, restarting his engine and handing me a travel mug. “Mr. D sent coffee. Hope it’s still warm.” A blush crept up my face as I held on to the mug and smelled the delicious aroma of freshly brewed coffee. “And here.” Erik passed me a tin, and when I opened it, that blush warmed my face even more.
It was filled with madeleines.
“Thank you.”
“I had some. They’re good. You ready for a busy day?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
I sat on the passenger, not leering at the cold, wet weather, listening to Erik talk about his plans after school. He was in his third year of Computer Science. Even if I tried, I wouldn’t be able to understand all the terms he used. But it wouldn’t matter. My mind took me somewhere else entirely.
We were all hands on deck. I’d never seen this much movement in the shop. The boys—Darwin and our drivers—figured out their delivery schedules. Meanwhile it was up to me and Erik and his friend’s girlfriend, who Darwin had hired as well, to take care of any customers coming in the shop. Even if it was only for a few hours, they were a huge help. Thinking ahead, Darwin had a pizza lunch delivered to us, but none of us stopped long enough to savor it.
Around two in the afternoon, while I enjoyed a lull in the activities, I answered a phone call, and wished I hadn’t. The woman yelled as soon as I picked up the phone.
“I want to know who this Melanie is.”
Perplexed, I stuttered a response, “I’m sorry…Who’s…Melanie?”
“Melanie. I want to know who this bitch is.”
“Ma’am, you’ll have to start from the beginning. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
The woman on the other line said, “Who is this? Is this the flower shop?”
“Which flower shop are you trying to reach?”
“Eva’s Garden Flower Shop. Is this you?”
“That’s us.” As soon as she said the name of the shop, I pulled up all orders for a Melanie in our system. Unfortunately for her, it was a common name in the bay area. “What can I help you with?”
“I want to know who Melanie is.”
“I don’t know. Is she your friend?”
“Hell, no. I don’t have a bitch friend like that. I got flowers delivered to my house half an hour ago.”
Now we were getting onto something. “That’s good. Was there a problem with it?”
“Well I’m not Melanie.”
“Oh, that’s odd. What’s your address?”
“I’m not giving you my address.
”
“Ma’am, I cannot help you if you don’t tell me what your address is.”
“No. You are not getting my address.”
As the person continued to yell, I caught sight of Erik and waved him over. I scratched the name Melanie on a piece of paper and mouthed ‘half an hour ago’ to him. He brushed a hand through his wet hair and raised a finger before pulling out his order sheets and spreading them on the counter.
“I want to know why my husband sent flowers to Melanie on Valentine’s Day.”
And there it was. I placed a hand on Erik’s sheets, then wrote on the same piece of paper I had the words ‘cheating husband?’ Erik grimaced.
I wished I had something good to say to the woman, especially when she started crying, telling me how she’d known all along that her husband was a cheating bastard, how she’d known he would see other women as soon she got pregnant, and wasn’t in the same shape as she had been before. I wished I could soothe her pain.
The two girls joined us by the counter, and the sudden quiet must have alerted Darwin. He peeked out of the back room. I sent him a distraught look. What could I do to make this woman better? Tell her she was better off without her husband? Not everyone had the same relationship as I did with Bob.
Darwin joined us at the counter and Erik was able to explain the situation to him. With a nod, Darwin gathered up the delivery sheets and perused it quickly. Half of them were sent to us by a call center, which handled nation-wide an international calls. The other half were taken down by either me, Emily or Darwin.
Darwin tapped on the counter to get my attention and circled two orders for the half past hour in question, and underlined two names of the people who’d placed the orders.
The woman kept talking, stuttering incoherent words between sobs.
“Ma’am,” I paused, hoping she heard me, “What is your husband’s name?”
She could either refuse or give it to me. After a hiccup, she told me his name and my shoulders relaxed visibly. “There was a mistake.” I explained to her how two orders had been placed under the same first name—Julian, her husband’s first name, for the same time, around the same area, to different women: Melanie and Bianca. But the last name was the key.
“Are you Bianca?”
“Yes.”
I sighed into the phone. “Good. Please accept my apologies, Bianca. There has been an error. One of our drivers will deliver the correct flowers to you in about ten minutes.”
“So my husband is not cheating on me?”
I sure hoped not, but how could I reassure her when it could still be a possibility. I didn’t know Bob was cheating on me until the evidence slapped me in the face. Hands shaking, I handed the phone to Darwin. Let him handle this mess. I needed a break or he’d need to find someone to work days.
After cutting the long stems of a dozen, de-thorned red roses, I wrapped a square of clear plastic around the flowers, and tied varying widths and lengths of white and red ribbons around the stems. I presented it to the customer, who then leered at it like the roses were going to jump out of its plastic wrap and prick him with their non-existent thorns.
"That'll be fifty-five dollars with tax." I continued to hold the bouquet up with one hand, while I entered the sale in the computer. The man scrunched his face, making him look like he was about to sneeze.
He looked up to me with a firm scowl on his face. "Fifty-five? Dollars?"
No, cows, I wanted to say, instead, I offered him the most pleasant smile I could muster after what had been the longest day at work.
"Yes, fif-ty-five-dol-lars...including tax," I enunciated each word. Normally, I'd try for a joke, but the comic relief had ran out sometime between after the call from the distraught wife and when I lost feelings on my big toes.
The customer, with beady eyes and an unkempt beard, glanced alternately at me and the flowers. The minute hand ticked on the clock beside the cash register. Ten more minutes and I could finally call my self 'free'.
"You can pick a card with it." I nodded at the stack of special handmade cards in a small basket on the counter. "They're made by local artists."
Beady Eyes, Bad Beard rifled through the cards, ignoring the flowers. The roses weighed heavily in my hand. Ignoring the temptation to slap the man with the bouquet, I carefully placed it down the counter. Just to be on the safe side.
"The card's free?" Beady Eyes picked up one of the cards and sniffed. It was a watercolor sketch of love birds sitting on a thin wire—my favorite—that was until, the man stuck his tongue out and licked the card.
Keeping my disgust at bay, I folded my arms over my chest and transfered my weight on one foot, leaning against the counter for support. The spider veins on my legs gave me heck when I stood for long periods of time. I couldn’t wait to get home, put on some relaxing music and soak in the tub. And have more than one glass of wine. It was Valentine's Day after all. It was as romantic as my day would get.
Reaching forward, I took the card from the man, careful not to touch the corner he licked, and dropped it beside the flowers. "Yes, it's free." Then I added quickly, "With purchase of a bouquet." This bouquet you've asked for. I patted the flowers on the counter to remind the customer why he came in the first place. He was the sixty-seventh customer to visit the shop that day, asking for a dozen long-stemmed red roses for their loved ones.
The man narrowed his eyes at the roses, his beady eyes almost disappearing. Bending his knees, he flattened his palms on his thighs, and studied each rose. Worried that he was going to lick them too, I reminded him of the cost.
"Fifty-five dollars? For twelve flowers? This is bullshit." He shook his head and took his wallet out of his back pocket, then handed me a shiny black credit card.
I kept myself calm, plastering a fake smile on my face and swiping the card on the machine. The man could probably afford more than a fifty-five-dollar bouquet of flowers, but he continued to grumble under his breath. I suspected his next stop would be the drug store next door for a box of discounted chocolates. More than a handful of people had gone in the flower shop carrying heart-shape boxes with them.
After processing the purchase, Beady Eyes raised the bouquet and sneered at me. "This better get me laid."
You're not really my type, I struggled not to say. But no man really was. Not for a while. Are you sure about that? My conscience asked, and my eyes flitted to the door to the back room. The entire day, I found myself repeating the same sentences:
"Yes, that's the price because it's Valentine's Day."
"No, we are not crooks, we are florists."
"Yes, they are real flowers and they will wilt."
"No, we cannot guarantee that you will have copious amounts of sex if you give this to your wife/girlfriend/partner."
I could have answered the current customer's mutterings with that last sentence, but Darwin popped out from the back room, carrying another pail of fresh red roses. Beady Eyes' jaw dropped. I could tell he wanted to say something offensive, but one look at the much older, yet undoubtedly a lot stronger man, Darwin made him think otherwise. The bell rang above the door upon the customers exit.
“Bye now!” I relaxed, shoving my fingers into my messy curls. "Men," I muttered under my breath.
"D'ya say something?"
I raised my head a smidgen and turned to my employer. He would be better looking if he smiled every now and then. "Are those the last of the roses?" I straightened and crossed my arms over my C-cups, which, according to Bob, were my best features. Correction: my only feature, he had said far too many times in the past. That should have been a sign he was going to leave me for another woman.
Following my line of sight, Darwin nodded. "Yup."
"Do you think we'll actually sell out of them? It's almost closing time."
He shrugged. "Yup." A man of a thousand words.
I’d learned to deal with him, ignoring his low mutterings. Then my mind reminded me around Thanksgiving and surprisingly, Christmas, when I
almost quit. Darwin may be a genius with flowers and plants but he often forgot that he sometimes had to deal with people with feelings, like me. At the end of my shift on Christmas Eve, I almost threw in the towel—in the shape of my floral apron with the shop's emblem on it—at Darwin's surly face after he’d yelled at me for getting the last two orders wrong. But I returned two days later, to don my apron once again. We avoided each other that week, but eventually, we’d learned to respect each other's spaces.
I’d been on my feet for more than twelve hours. With the clock ticking, I had severe doubts that the last pail of roses would get sold. But, within the last eight minutes, people came rushing into the store, asking for them, each desperate customer whining about the price. And each time I replied with a cheery, "Happy Valentine's Day!"
The last customer left five minutes after the store's closing time. Darwin held the door open for the man, and then quickly locked it behind him.
"Finally!" I breathed out a heavy exhale, slumping my shoulders forward.
“That was quite a day,” he said, rubbing his hands together.
“I’m just glad it’s over.”
“You did a great job handling the phone call earlier.”
Shrugging the stress off my shoulders, I waved at the thought and scoffed. “You handled it. I felt horrible for that woman. I'll get the broom from the back."
"Morgan...actually..." Darwin hesitated by the door, rubbing the back of his neck with his hand and avoiding eye contact. "If you have a moment, I'd like to show you something."
Struggling to keep my eyebrow from shooting up to my forehead, I replied, "Sure. If you don't mind though, it needs to be quick, I have to catch the bus. It runs every hour after a certain time."
Darwin continued to look uncomfortable, fussing with the collar of his shirt and running a hand through his already mussed up hair. "It will only take a few minutes, but I promise you, it's worth it."