Once I emerge on street level, I join the throng of moving people and walk north for five blocks until I reach Manhattan’s flower district. The street is filled with tall green trees, grass, even a large, tilting palm, potted in thick black plastic, its fronds cupping the hood of a Lincoln Town Car. The jungle street, we always called it. The macadam is wet from the misters, the damp pavement and lush greens providing a unique perfume. The early morning rush has dissipated, leaving only the workers, the warehouse movers, designers, shop owners, and a few passers-through.
I hesitate outside the door, just long enough for Javi to spot me and whistle. His fishnet shirt is pulled tight against his bulging chest and he’s paired it with white cutoffs and a pair of nude patent leather high heels. He slinks like a cat and, when he smiles, I can almost see the canary, caught and fluttering between his pointed teeth. I roll my eyes and straighten my back. Some ribbing will come.
“Well, well. I hardly recognize you, guapa.” He tsks at me and then calls over his shoulder, “Elisa! Eliiiiisa!”
When she appears in the doorway, she’s wiping her hands on a black work towel that is clipped to her waist. Her blonde hair is streaked with white and secured with an oversize blue bow. She hovers in the doorway, framed by protruding pink orchids and purple lisianthus. A sixty-year-old Alice in Wonderland. She steps aside and motions me into the shop.
“Zoe. Lydia said you’d come. I didn’t believe her.” Elisa has one tone. Clipped. Her diction always seemed slightly Eastern European to me, but years ago, she had family come to visit from Texas and Lydia swore they’d said she’d grown up there.
“Elisa,” I breathe out. I’m in her world now. This woman, who had on occasion reduced me to tears because the hydrangeas were not precisely the blue she’d “had in mind.” An image comes to mind of late nights in the warehouse, pulling leaves and bleeding as she towers over me, clucking with soft disapproval.
She straightens to her full five feet, her childlike hands patting down her pockets like she’s forgotten something. Soft, thin lines pucker around delicately painted petal-pink lips. A pair of butterfly glasses balances on the bridge of her nose.
“Are you back to work?”
“Not today.” I don’t feel as confident as I pretend but she nods, conceding. It’s the first time I can ever remember controlling the conversation. “Today is a . . . visit of sorts. Is Lydia in?”
“She is. We are starting to prepare for the Krable wedding.” She twirls a headless stem in her fingers, studying me. I shift my purse from one shoulder to the other and pretend to study the industrial shelving lining the walls. It’s new.
Krable? I cock my head to the side. “Norman?”
“His daughter, Sophie.”
I didn’t know he had a daughter. Come to think of it, he likely has several, and possibly some he doesn’t even know about.
She grins, all Cheshire cat. “I am surprised you are not invited.” She clucks and just like that, I’m reduced again. An outsider for life, an observer of certain circles, not a participant. Elisa with her award-winning designs and sought-after events. Henry with his charisma, a fat checkbook, and fluid pen.
The Saturday after Henry proposed, I had fled to the shop at six a.m., breathless and heady, in the clothes I’d worn the day before, my hair matted and bed-tousled, smelling of Henry’s cologne and the warm, soft, slight musk of sex.
“I’m engaged!” I flashed my hand in front of Lydia’s face and Javi snatched my finger, turning it one way then the other, whistling at the size of the diamond. We all squealed and jumped up and down, because of Henry Whittaker.
“Zoe Whittaker is the most elegant name I’ve ever heard.” Javi jutted out a hip and glided around the shop, twirling a make-believe train in his hand. “You gotta act the part now, bitch. You are not cut out for grace like that. Look at your face. I see three holes, not including that big-ass mouth. What is that fine man thinking?” He pointed his long, filed nails at my eyebrow ring, my lip ring, and my nose stud, and held up three fingers.
Lydia threw a bucket of clippings at him. “Shut up, Javi. You’re just jealous.”
“Who is jealous of whom?” Elisa stood between the shop and the warehouse, her sleeves rolled up.
“Henry asked Zoe to marry him,” Lydia supplied, and there was a beat of silence.
“Henry . . . Whittaker.” Elisa shifted a bucket of blooms from one hip to the other. “Engaged?”
“New York’s most eligible bachelor is no longer,” Lydia singsonged.
Elisa onced me over, head to toe, and then crooked her finger. “Come with me.” She pointed at Lydia and Javi. “You two, stay.”
I had followed her into the warehouse, a wide-open seemingly endless bay of stainless steel and concrete used to assemble millions of dollars’ worth of arrangements a year. Elisa plunked the bucket onto one of the long tables and turned to face me.
“Your courtship was what? A month?”
“Almost four.” I had five inches on Elisa and I used them. My chin hovered around her forehead.
“That is nothing. You know nothing about each other. Henry is . . . a complicated man, Zoe. I don’t know him well, but I’ve known him for a few years now. He wants a wife, he’s made no bones about that.”