by Sean Platt
A strange uncertainty kept Lily from knowing what to do with herself. She’d look pathetic waiting behind the counter with folded hands, and even worse reading to pass the time. She couldn’t loiter outside, or inside; the shop simply wasn’t large enough to disappear, but Lily didn’t precisely want to be visible, either. She needed something to do — to arrange the pale bouquets in the cooler and repeat the job of breaking blushes and tans and maybe moving ivories up with greens — but it had all been done.
She’d cleaned. She’d decorated. She’d organized. She’d stocked. There was a small sitting area to one side where she supposed tired high-heeled shoppers could rest their tortured feet, but she’d already fluffed the chair pillows, polished the glass table, and even filled the Keurig coffeemaker she’d set atop with water.
The Keurig.
Lily turned, looking at the machine, suddenly sure she’d made a massive mistake. The Palms wasn’t Beverly Hills, but it might as well be. In Lily’s world, a store offering shoppers fresh-brewed coffee would feel luxurious and kind, but if there was one thing Lily had learned in the past few months away from the breadbasket it was that she was no longer in Lily’s world. Wouldn’t they require espresso crafted from a shiny machine with an eagle on top, the brew’s smooth crema shaped into an expert barista’s signature heart, rather than a basket of Starbucks K-Cups from Costco? And she’d set out paper cups. How had she been so stupid? She wanted to let customers take their brew to go, but Palms shoppers wouldn’t drink from paper cups. They’d want mugs. Made of fine china. Or perhaps solid gold.
Just as she was preparing to rush toward the Keurig and stow it (better to look inhospitable than uncultured), Lily heard the light treading of feet behind her and turned to see the man from the food kiosk in the courtyard, standing in the doorway. He was tall and well built, but as she caught sight of him he was slightly stooped with his fist raised as if to knock on the open door — a parody of hesitancy.
Lily had her hands outstretched toward the coffee machine as if planning to steal it. She supposed she looked guilty and, for some strange reason, felt it. She straightened, trying on a smile that felt a size too small.
“Hi,” she said.
The man still had his fist raised. “Sorry. Are you open?” He had a slight accent, maybe Australian.
“Sure as sugar.” Lily cringed. It was one of her grandmother’s expressions, not even Mom’s. Why her subconscious was trying to sabotage her with something so hayseed was beyond her.
But the man just smiled with an expression that happened more on one side of his mouth than the other. He had trimmed light stubble — engineered, not from forgetting to shave — and blue eyes. They weren’t as blue as the Italian’s from Bella by the Sea, but they were an enchanting blue, all right. Lily, whose own eyes were what she’d lately been feeling was a pedestrian shade of brown, was starting to wonder if Cielo del Mar screened its residents in a way she hadn’t seen: You must be at least this charming to enter. And yet somehow the country girl had squeezed through.
“I saw the sign,” he said, pointing to the A-frame boards Lily had placed in front of the shop, “but it’s early, and your lights were still off.”
Lily wanted to roll her eyes but didn’t dare. Instead she reached behind the counter and flipped on the overheads. How had she missed something so obvious? It was bright outside, yes, but she’d been tidying and trying to hide coffee machines by mood lighting at best.
“Just opening,” she said, trying to hold her smile like a race car driver tries not to lose it on a tight turn.
“So … ” The man stepped forward, raising his trailing arm toward the sign. “You’re giving out free flowers?”
Lily’s white smile widened. Her heart began to slow. “Sort of a welcome gift.”
“Well,” said the tall man, his accent skewing the word closer to something toward while, “that’s just plain ridiculous, now isn’t it?”
“I’m sorry?”
“We should be welcoming you.”
“Oh,” said Lily. “No, that’s not necessary.”
“Sure it is.” Shore it is. Lily felt herself disarming. Perhaps the Palms theme wasn’t that everyone was the same. Maybe the tenants had their differences in common. The father at Bella had an accent; the food cart’s proprietor had an accent; Lily had a slight Midwestern accent. She’d never thought of it as an accent until she’d come here, but the widower whose above-garage apartment she was renting, Dusty, had commented on it enough times to make her feel brainwashed. The Californians were polished, and she was the one whose soft vowels made her unusual. But maybe that was okay after all.
Except that the rude girl in Bella’s lobby hadn’t had an accent. The clerk at Fancy That! hadn’t had an accent. And Kerry Barrett Kirby, at her high-end furniture shop across the courtyard, didn’t have an accent.
“It’s not,” Lily insisted.
The man shrugged, acquiescing. “Your party, I suppose. But I should warn you: as nice as the gesture is, you’re likely to get some guff from a few tightasses around here for that sign.” Again he gestured toward the A-frame.
“Why?”
“Oh, it’s not fine enough. If you got one made of pewter, maybe. He nodded beyond the sign, to the sliver kiosk beyond. It was really just a trailer, bunkered in by attractive brick. “Ask me how I know a thing or two about people here not thinking things are fine enough,” he finished.
“I’ve seen you. You run the cart?”
The man extended a hand, fixing Lily with his serious blue eyes. “Len Farrell.”
Lily shook it. “Lily Whistler.”
“Yeah, that’s my baby out by the fountain,” Len continued. “The thing about carts is they’re just a different way to make fine foods, basically skipping everything about a restaurant other than the kitchen, which in my humble opinion is the only part that matters. But some people don’t see it that way. They think trailers are for trailer parks, and don’t see them as worthy of a spot like this.”
Lily looked through La Fleur’s front window and studied the kiosk with new eyes. Its long, slivery shape gave it away as a trailer, but the brick foundation had turned it into just another building — and, really, not at all an unattractive one. Len had appointed his trailer as well as any of the other residents had appointed their patios, and its position was off to one side, mostly under the shade of a large tree. It looked like a charming fairy tale alcove if anything, and not at all trashy.
“I think it fits perfectly,” said Lily.
“Well, thank you for that. But why haven’t we met? Don’t you ever get hungry?” Again, Len gave her that sideways smile.
“I’ve been busy.”
“I’ve seen that.” The statement was innocent, but Lily felt herself wanting to blush. She’d caught his eye before, but then again it felt like the world was staring.
Unsure how to reply, Lily let their exchange lapse into silence. She could hear gulls outside, but decided the place was too quiet without the music in the background she’d have to add later.
“So,” she said. “Go ahead and pick your flower. My gift.”
Len gave an almost-chuckle. “Naw. Thanks heaps, but I’m not really a flower kind of bloke.”
“All men say that at first,” said Lily.
“‘At first’?”
“Yes. But then, if they’re lucky, they get won over.”
“Because the ladies like them.”
“Maybe,” said Lily. “But the best kind of flowers are those you buy for yourself.”
“Maybe.” Len laughed. “But I happen to know I put out with a nice dinner and some wine.”
Lily held her composure for a second, and in that second Len seemed to wonder if he’d said something too uncouth for a first meeting in a chichi shopping center. Then Lily laughed, and the release felt like something she’d needed and yet hadn’t realized.
“Sorry, I guess I really am just a lowbrow food cart guy.”
“It’s okay,”
Lily said. In truth, Len’s borderline indecency was a huge relief. Not everyone here crapped gold nuggets after all.
A tall figure — a black man in a pristine blue suit and a lavender tie — appeared behind Len. Len stepped aside, allowing the man to enter. The newcomer had a shaved head and, per the norm around her, a model’s jawline. He gave Lily a friendly smile before moving past the conversing pair. Another friendly patron — a good sign.
“Well,” said Len. “I should go. I just wanted to say hi and introduce myself. Pardon my delay. I should have done it days ago, but you seemed so busy getting ready.”
“They gave me two weeks rent free to get started. I wanted to be open by the second.”
Len nodded. “Sure. I doubt your rent is much better than mine. And look, you got two customers in your first five minutes. That’s a good start.”
“But you’re not a customer.” Lily playfully touched his sleeve. “You’re not even taking a free flower.”
“Taking a free flower doesn’t make me a customer either.”
Lily lowered her voice to a faux whisper. “But it’s like anything. You take the free sample, and it tricks you into coming back to buy more later.”
“Fat chance,” Len laughed.
“I won’t let you leave without one.” Lily drew a white rose from its bucket and pressed it into his hand. “You’re going to take this rose, and you’re going to put it in whatever you have, maybe a pitcher, and then you’re going to look at it for two weeks. That gives you a half month to decide you should come back for more.”
“I’ve never seen roses last for more than a week.”
“Well,” said Lily, “then you haven’t been buying very good roses.”
Len shrugged, then stepped toward the door and raised the flower to Lily in a salute. “Cheers. I guess we’ll see, then. Good luck with your first day.”
“Nice to meet you, Len. And thanks.”
Lily watched Len cross the courtyard, then turned to the man in the suit. He was browsing through the all-white displays with interest, showing no surprise about the lack of color.
Before she asked the man if she could help him, Lily took a breath and tried to reset, to become a merchant with fine merchandise rather than a shop girl. She was going to spend her day giving flowers to beautiful people. A new chapter in her life was at its dawn, and the blossoms around her weren’t the only life blooming.
She belonged here. Sure as sugar.
CHAPTER THREE
FREE FLOWERS
The man entering as Len left turned out to be the owner of a tiny art gallery, wedged into a crook of the plaza, named Things. Like Bella by the Sea, the gallery had an interesting marketing angle: It actively tried to hide from passersby. In addition to the obscure location (which the man, Silas, said he’d specifically asked for, and which had required conversion from a glorified utility room), the gallery had subtle signage and drapes across the windows. You had to know where the place was before you could look hard enough to find it, and Silas’s art lovers knew his gallery by reputation first and location second. It was nice to steer clear of random, “non-art folks,” Silas said, but that was a side effect. Like Bella’s tiny dining room, exclusionary prices, and booked schedule, the gallery’s primary allure seemed to be that Things didn’t need your attention or business, thank you. A lack of options, rather than an abundance, made it attractive.
“So it’s no surprise I like your shop’s idea, here,” he said, looking around, inhaling deeply from a Casa Blanca lily, his eyes closing as if to purify the experience — limiting sensory options in a shop that had already eliminated many of the visuals. “You’ve said, ‘This is the color you get. Take it or leave it, and either way I don’t care.’”
“Well, of course I care,” said Lily.
Silas made a small, laughing exhale. “You might want to stop caring. Attitude is everything. How well a place like this does will depend as much on you as your flowers. You own a shop that makes a statement, whether you mean it to or not. For that to work — and it does work, approached correctly, I think — you must reinforce that attitude the moment people enter. Or at least not blatantly contradict it.”
Evelyn had told her the same thing. She didn’t like being reminded. Lily wasn’t a Cielo del Mar girl. If her success depended on being one, the deck felt stacked.
“And if you don’t mind a suggestion,” Silas continued, “you might want to find another way to advertise your first-day promotion if you don’t want to attract the ire of certain pesky elements around here.” He nodded toward the propped-open door, toward the A-frame sign Len had already pointed out. She’d just bought the thing, too, and the more expensive option — that was apparently appropriate for a Salvation Army clearance sale.
“So I’ve heard.”
Silas returned the lily to its bucket, swapped it for a rose, and inhaled. The small soul patch on his chin tickled the rose as he raised it. The bloom’s ivory petals contrasted starkly with his dark skin. “This smells redolent.”
Lily had never heard the word redolent, and figured Silas was just showing off. “You can have it. Everyone gets a free flower today. My way of saying hello.”
“Hello back. And thank you.”
Lily thought, given the beret-wearing-artist way he handled his words that Silas might tell her he’d put the single rose in a vase shaped like a nude figure and place it in the precise center of his gallery, on a pedestal, under a Tiffany blue spotlight. But he didn’t, and inhaled again.
“Beautiful.” He smelled the rose a third time. “But not strong.”
“Good flowers aren’t as fragrant as most people expect. The more moisture in the petals, the shorter their vase life. People want their flowers to live a long time.”
“It’s better than strong. It’s real.” Silas looked at Lily and smiled. The rose’s scent wasn’t the only thing in the shop that was beautiful. She felt out of her skin. Lily wasn’t usually easy to rattle, but both of these men made her feel like a ditz. It had to be first-day jitters unseating her.
“Thanks?” said Lily.
Silas nodded, returned her thanks (his a statement rather than a question), and left with a promise to return. An exclusive gallery needs exclusive flowers. Flowers that, as a bonus, would enhance the environment without drawing attention from the art.
Lily sighed, then took her Free Flower For Everyone Today sign from the front walk and rummaged in the storage room until she found a dusty black iron sign that looked like an ornamental cigarette depot. The thing worked with small, plastic, press-in letters, but somehow managed to look retro and classic rather than cheap and old. Once she’d transferred her message to the new sign and put it in the A-frame’s place, it actually seemed to work. Lily crossed her fingers that she was finally in line (though her enthusiastic personality still might contradict her store’s implied snootiness, according to Silas), and waited.
The new setup must have been satisfactory, because over the next hours dozens of people came through Lily’s front door. A few made purchases, but most came in to look around and — as the sign and promotion implied — make mutual introductions. Lily had been optimistic about her first-day promotion, and the three hundred Bianca roses (twelve bundles of twenty-five) she’d bought at market weren’t cheap. She wouldn’t be getting a return on her spend, so the idea was to do as she’d teased Len: to give people a taste, hoping they’d return for more. But even failing that, Lily would at least get to know her neighbors. That felt important. Based on small things Evelyn, Len, and Silas had all said and done (not to mention looks from Bella by the Sea’s desk girl and the clerk at Fancy That!), Lily was beginning to think there were politics at play among residents of the Palms Couture. Right now, she was the lone girl who’d stepped into a space where four similar businesses had already failed. She needed to make friends, and soon.
The morning passed, followed by midday.
Lily met a surprisingly bubbly blonde named Allison — a clerk at
a Palms store she never named — and which Lily couldn’t ask about because Allison never stopped talking. Most of what Allison said was personal, profane, or both. During the three minutes she was perusing La Fleur with Lily at her heels, Lily learned about Allison’s hatred of her boss, her father’s job at some impressive firm (and the accompanying impression that Allison would never want for money, ever), and how Allison’s mother’s job was to “blow my dad as soon as he comes home every day.” She also described the penises of several of the Palms shop owners, noting some as “impressive” and several as “meh.”
Allison was almost out the door, leaving Lily with a feeling like her hair had been blown back, when a thin but handsome young man in his late teens or possibly early twenties tried to squeeze by. Allison pushed him hard into the doorframe, causing the overhead bell to ring. This turned out to be her brother, Cameron, who, Allison informed Lily another five minutes later in a whisper, “totally wants to bend you over a sink.” This was probably supposed to be a compliment.
She met a woman named Eunice (yes, Eunice) who had a pug’s face and the queen’s wardrobe. Lily wasn’t sure where Eunice came from or if she was even a Palms regular or a store owner, but she did know that Eunice would never make a list of people Lily liked, no matter how long she lived. Lily tried to like everyone, and her mother had always taught her to find a way to see the best in anyone she met. “Kill them with kindness if they are unkind to you,” she used to say, but Lily felt her resolve falter immediately.
Eunice spent her few minutes in the store (cursedly alone; someone above liked making Lily sweat) making backhanded compliments about everything. She said that the white flowers were good for “certain kinds of places.” She said it was nice to see a fine young girl like Lily who “wasn’t afraid of making mistakes and looking so terribly foolish.” She made a joke that wasn’t really a joke about how Lily could do low-budget weddings or events that had to limit things to a single unfortunate color, or lack thereof.