It was ten p.m. when the last workers left the studio. Elly bid Anthony and Snarky Teenager goodnight and closed the door behind them, leaving only her and Greg, her favorite cameraman. The studio was a complete mess, but Elly took her time clearing off her design table, completely aware of the camera lens trained on her. Sure, it was a judgmental eye that sized up all her flaws, but Elly ordered herself—for once!—not to care. Dennis was safe, and everything was fine. She was delirious with relief. Working deliberately, she brushed all the stems off the table into the wastebasket and sprayed it down. She waded her way through a greenery carpet over to the CD player and popped in an old college CD, one that made her feel invincible and full of youthful hope. The sound of a drumroll and a seductive piano riff swelled up through the speakers, and Elly let her apron drop to the floor. She pulled the bun out of her hair, and laid out her design instruments on the table. She turned out all the lights in the studio except the design-table light, which made the table appear as if it was a stage.
Lifting her hands up above her head in a stretch, she channeled the most inspiring place she could think of: her mother’s garden in Peachtree. Visions of butterfly bushes, magnolias, and azaleas bursting with shameless sensuality rose up inside of her as she reached for the cooler, pulling out the buckets that Snarky Teenager had set aside for the bride’s bouquet. A garden didn’t need posh flowers or color coordinates. A garden was perfect in its random beauty. Its creator knew something we did not. This would be her inspiration. Greg adjusted the camera lens and sat on a stool nearby.
Singing out loud to herself, Elly began to assemble Lola’s bouquet with a perfect, focused precision. All thoughts of Keith and Dennis fell away as she reveled in each perfect bloom and its overall place within the bouquet. Besides, this bouquet was not about her, this bouquet was about Lola. Barbie-pink zinnias came first, with their rounded, propeller-shaped petals. Hot-pink dahlias with a creamy center hue came next. Coral peonies, already becoming lush with the heat, rounded out the corners. Bleeding hearts added drape, along with some champagne-peach oncidium orchids that trailed down near her hand. More dramatic pink-striped lady slipper orchids were added to punch the bouquet up to a whole different level. Elly began folding tea leaves and grasses into the bouquet, pairing them with silver berries and seeded eucalyptus so that the modern element wouldn’t overwhelm the flowers. Finally, she tucked just a few white-and-black anemones into the mix, making an eye-popping contrast. Stock, succulents, veronica—it all went in. Each one a bit stranger than the next.
She played for an hour, making sure that each one was in the right place, against the right flower. She shed and trimmed, plucked and curled. She added more peonies than should have been allowed. Into the design, Elly poured Lola’s life: her rise to fame, her disappointments, the media which loved and abused her, her affair with Caesar, her hopes, her dashed friendships, her new hope with Joe. When the bouquet was almost finished, Elly took twenty minutes to gently pull open each flower to its fullest bloom with a gloved hand. She spun it around, checking that it would photograph beautifully from every angle. And then, it was finished.
Yes.
The bouquet took her breath away. It was eclectic—in fact, not every bride would love this—but it was perfectly Lola. Shameless and lovely, a little bit damaged. There was an aura of youth to the bouquet, and just the right hint of glamor. Somehow, it was perfect in its bundled chaos. Dancing over to the side of the store, clumsily knocking over empty buckets, Elly pulled out the ever-so-expensive navy ribbon embedded with rhinestones—shipped from Dubai!—that she had had purchased for Lola’s bouquet about a month ago. She wrapped the stems with the dazzling gems and sealed them with some rhinestone pins. It was finished. With a happy sigh, she placed the bouquet in a cylinder from the dollar store. A low-key vase for a small town girl who has made it to the big time. The bouquet was complete.
Pushing aside the hordes of flowers that threatened to spill out of the cooler when she opened it, Elly made room for the bouquet so that it wouldn’t be touched by anything else, wishing that she could protect Lola in the same way. Shutting the cooler, Elly ignored the mess she had made on the counter and proceeded to clean up the studio. With a sigh, she reached for the lights.
“Uhhh … hold on.”
Elly jumped. In her design zone, she had forgotten that Greg was still there, filming. He took the camera from his shoulder. “You,” he said with a huge smile, “are spellbinding.”
As Elly walked up the stairs, she could hear the loud sounds of the TV blaring in her apartment, and Dennis laughing out loud at something ridiculous, probably the show where people bounced off of giant balloons and planted face first into muddy water. For once, the sound was like music to her ears.
Chapter Twenty-Five