“Looks like I’ll be leaving,” I say.
He closes the space between us. “Stay. Be my date for this horrible, boring, boorish dinner. Where everyone will talk about who they’ve fucked and fucked over. You can tell me about bat orchids.”
“I can’t. Tonight? No. I don’t have anything to wear. I have plans. I have a book to read. Just . . . no.” I back up, feeling the wall behind me for the door. “You don’t even know my name?” It comes out like a question, or possibly an invitation.
He laughs, a deep yet light sound. “I’m Henry Whittaker. What’s your name?”
“Henry Whittaker? I know who you are.” I swallow twice, the doorknob under my hand. Working with a high-end event florist means we know who’s who in Manhattan. We gossip about the major traders and real estate moguls the way other millennials follow the Kardashians.
“I’m famous, then? Does that impress you?” He steps closer to me, his face cracked in a grin. He’s joking, teasing me.
“No. You’re a player. That doesn’t impress me.” I turn the handle and back through the door. “Have fun, though, really. I don’t need to be added to the list of women you’ve . . . fucked or fucked over or whatever you said.” I back through the banquet room door and into the main restaurant where wait staff are setting tables for dinner service. A few of them look up, startled. I rush through the dining room and from behind me, Henry calls, “Wait! I was kidding!”
I push through the doors and into the street, where Javi waits with the van, the bass thumping. I fling open the door and heave myself in the front seat. “Just drive.”
I look back to see Henry standing in front of Br?lée, watching the van peel away, his hand raised in a jaunty wave.
? ? ?
Back at La Fleur d’Elise, I clean up. Putter, wash buckets, rinse bins, inventory foam bricks, wire, beads, dusting spray. I have nowhere to go. I could go home, rattle around the apartment, wait for Lydia and her terrible date. The worst that could happen is that she’d come home, draw the curtain between our beds, and engage in raucous sex. No, thanks.
The bell clangs out front and I dump the last bucket before wiping my hands on my apron and making my way out front. Henry Whittaker stands in the showroom, eyeing the refrigerator filled with arrangements. I stop and stare, unable to find the right words. The right tone. Haughty? Bitchy? Funny?
When he sees me, he smirks. “These are your plans?” He gently extends his hand, a large white box wrapped with a red bow.
“What is this?” I tilt my chin at him but I don’t take the box.
“A book and a dress.” He bows slightly. “Zoe Swanson.”
I push my hair out of my eyes. “How did you . . . ?”
“I have connections.”
I can’t tell if he’s serious. He sighs, sets the box on the counter, and pushes it with one finger in my direction. “Go on. Open it.”
I do. On top of a pile of tissue paper, sits a book. I pick it up, turn it over in my hands.
“Anna Karenina?” I raise my eyebrows.
“What’s not to love? Suburban unrest in nineteenth-century Russia?”
I set the book aside. It’s old. I wonder, briefly, what edition. I wonder if he somehow knew it was my favorite, or if it was just a guess. A guess.
The dress underneath is heavy, beaded and eggplant. The book was a hit, the dress, a miss.
“Eggplant is my least favorite color,” I tell him. Rude. Evelyn would be appalled.
“It’s not eggplant. I prefer to think of it as bat orchid.”
I can’t help but laugh at this. Truly, men in general are fairly bad at banter. I’ve spent many a night tossing out jokes to good-looking dates, only to have them fall flat on the two-top table between us, with a puzzled smile. Henry is surprising.
He elaborates. “I heard once that there’s no such thing as black flowers. That if you were to breed a true black, you’d make a million dollars. That all flowers are really deep shades of purple. Some might say . . . dark eggplant. Is that true?”
He steps closer to me, his chest inches from my face. He doesn’t seem to care about personal space or social acceptability or my not-so-subtle back-off signals. He doesn’t know how much I loathe the touch of strangers.
“That’s true.” I whisper. “But you already have a million.” I’ve turned into that girl. The one who plays it cool then gives in, much too quickly. The coy temptress turns giggly. I straighten my shoulders, try to get it back.
“I do.” He whispers back. “Come with me. Please?”
“I . . . I need to shower and do my hair, makeup. I live all the way in Hoboken,” I protest weakly.
“Come to my apartment. I’ll give you all the privacy in the world. I promise. I have a car.”
“I . . . no. I can’t.” I smooth the back of my hair flat against my skull, a nervous tic.