Synopsis: Love is forever and though we yearn or mourn it sometimes – its everlasting quality means that we can always share it, its always there. Here is another brilliant story of life, loss and love by the best man who puts it into words, our very own FFJ author Chris Castle. His stories have appeared in Issue 04, Issue 06 and FFJ’s first annual anthology.
About the Author: Chris Castle lives and works outside London. His primary influences include Ray Carver, Bill Murray, the films of PT Anderson and the Y: The Last Man graphic novels.
In this beautiful emotional tale, we find that while seasons of our life may change, love can bloom in new ways and the flowering happiness can bring joy to its surroundings.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Florist
By Chris Castle
I twist the pins in the lock and finally it turns. There’s a snap and then I pull on the handle and the door opens. I have broken into my first flat, aged fifty-seven. The door swings open and I step inside, the bag in my hand. I look over the small kitchen, the plates gathered on the side, two cups; one for Lucas and one for Angelica. I stop at the bedroom door and don’t go inside. It is just the small kitchen and the hallway I’m after. I look at my watch and work out how much time I have. Then I go to work.
There were two distinct reasons why my wife fell in love with me. The first was because I’m clumsy and the second was because I am a terrible liar. Later, after we were married, she told me one night that she could only ever fall for a man who had as many faults as he did skills. She was telling me this in a certain way; she cupped a hand over my ear and whispered. We had been married a year and two months and we could play such games. That was my gift; to not be perfect.
The first reason happened when I had just moved into a new neighbourhood. I had just started work and had rented the flat at first sight. It was empty and bare and perfect. I washed in the sink when the plumbing worked and ate bread and cheese and ate out once a week. I waited for the sunny mornings and threw my clothes in a big steel pot and washed them the way other people would cook a stew. I watched them swimming in thick swirls, my arm elbow deep in the water, the colours pouring out. Then I would wring them out as best I could and set them over the railings outside my kitchen to dry.
This was the real reason I bought the flat. It had a balcony. It was only three foot by three foot but it was enough. On hot nights I could stand and smoke a cigarette and watch the town come to life. In the day time, the streets were busy and ugly, but at night, half covered and half lit they seemed okay. More than okay; beautiful even.
So that day, I put my clothes down on the railings, set them just so and set off for work.
That night, exhausted, I came back to sleep. It had grown hot and humid and a storm was coming. I put on coffee and pulled a cigarette from my packet and began to pull the clothes in before the rain broke. My fingers ached, that was my first and best excuse for what happened. I was tired, too. But the real reason, as my wife would always get out of me when I told her the story some nights, was because I was smoking a cigarette. Either by using one hand, or blinded by the rising smoke, I managed to brush my clothes, a shirt and two socks, clear off the railing as I reached for them. I wouldn’t have even noticed I was so bone tired, if what I did was not immediately followed by a woman’s scream.
I immediately looked over my railing, the cigarette in my mouth, causing me to squint for a second. I thought there had been an accident, or maybe even a mugging. I looked over and from the ground saw a girl look directly up at me. She had green eyes and was holding a paper bag full of groceries, a long loaf of bread peeking out of the top.
“Hey!” she said, holding my eye, even from that distance. “Are these yours?” she said, hooking the shirt with her foot and lifting it steadily out in front of her.
“Jesus! I’m sorry. So sorry. I’ll come right down. Sorry.” I pitched the clothes into the bowl and pulled the cigarette down to my side.
“Don’t. I’ll come up. What floor are you on?” she carried this on as other people walked by. Her face still bolt upright, my shirt still balanced on her outstretched leg. It was like she did this every day and nothing was out of the ordinary. I think that was when I started to fall a little in love with her. Because she did not care.
“Six,” I said, not thinking anything of telling her, too embarrassed to do anything but what she told me.
“I’ll be right up,” she said. I watched her shift the bag to one hand and then flip the shirt into her other, outstretched hand. Then she crouched and picked up the two socks. Then she made her way into my building and disappeared. As soon as she was gone, I rushed into the bathroom and straightened myself out, knowing this was the start of something, or at least a chance.
Later, she told me that what won her over on that first meeting were the flowers. I am a florist. My mother and father owned a florist and I was born into flowers. We lived above the shop and from a baby I have always been surrounded by them. Being around the shop as a child was like living in a small glass jungle, countless different species all within reach, all with a small price tag jammed into their stomachs. I would have adventures after closing times, living the life of an adventurer as my parents added the takings for the day at the till. But even that was included; the rattle of the tilling machine, the enemy gunfire whistling over my head. The flowers made my life an adventure from the beginning.
I began to learn from the shop the way other children would learn about dinosaurs or planets. I would learn each flower’s name and how they lived; if they were perennial, how many seeds they shed. No fact or detail was too small for me. I would spend one hour before school began and one hour afterwards learning every crumb of knowledge I could.
My favourite nights were the summer evenings before a storm, when the windows would steam with humidity and the flowers would drip sweat the way I or my parents would. My father had a fan running to keep the temperatures on a level, but every so often, just for a few minutes when they were out of the room, I would turn it off and watch the windows steam and the flowers bow and everything would be buried in mist and I would live in a foreign country or more than that, another world for just a few minutes.
My parents died when I was nineteen and away studying. I was studying botany and was reading a text on roses when I heard the news. I remember letting the book fall and looking down at it, thinking ‘Hey! I can read upside down, too! I never knew that!’ That was the first thing I remember after they told me. Then came everything else. It was a car crash, I was told and on the train home, all I focused on were the flowers I would pick out for them. Once I asked my father why he had bought a flower shop and he patted my shoulder and waved his hand around the shop. I followed his hand and looked at everything that was on display.
“Son,” he said, “look around you. Flowers are for every occasion. If there is a birth, a death, a wedding, a test, everyone always needs flowers.” His voice always sounded deep, as if he’d just finished smoking a cigar, even though he’d quit when I was born. Flowers for every occasion, he said and was right.
I sold the flower shop and for a year I tried not to look at another flower if I could help it. I stopped my studies and travelled to big cities, avoiding the parks and living in the most built-up, smoggiest, industrial parts of the world. Later, I visited deserts where nothing seemed to grow. Then after that year, I understood something. I missed my parents terribly, yes, but I also missed the flowers. It came to me while I sat in a café drinking a cup of coffee. The waitress went round each table, wiping them down, and when she reached my table she checked the two flowers sticking out of the cracked vase and took them away. She came back with a new pair and set them in front of me and smiled.
“Can’t beat them fresh!” she said and smiled to me. I walked into a florist the next day and took a job. A week later, I took the apartment that my future wife walked into on a summer’s night, clutching my wet socks in her palm.
She walked into my apartment and saw the flowers. When I finished each day at the florist, I tidied up all the waning stems and gathered them into a black bin liner. The old man who owned the shop was grateful for me doing this, but it was as much for me as it was for him. Each night, instead of dumping the flowers in the blue bin by the back door of the shop, I would carry the bag home and save what I could. Sometimes they would only last one more day, other times, a week. But I always had fresh flowers and for that reason I loved the job.
The place I lived in was small, but I dressed it up to make it look beautiful. Sometimes, when I was tired and could not sleep, I would walk the hallway, the bedroom, and out to the balcony, surrounded by all the flowers and it would feel like I was young again and lost in the jungle of my parents shop. This was what the girl, clutching my wet clothes, saw the first time she walked through my door.
The day I proposed to her was the second reason. We had been living in my small apartment for a year and I knew it was the right time. I worked long hours in the shop and had saved hard. My girl was a locksmith, born and bred, and the family business was going well. We talked of buying a bigger place and with it a future. When we talked this way, my heart soared. We lay in bed, building impossible dreams; I wanted a place with a five acre garden, she wanted a palace with fifty two rooms, just so she could learn to pick the lock on each one. Even when we dissolved into a fit of giggles at the end of our stories, there was still the sense that something was possible.
That night I put the ring in my pocket as she prepared dinner. We each cooked, or tried to cook, one night a week and the other days we left to the fate of the takeaway menu’s gathered at my door. Once a week we would eat out and those nights would be the happiest days of my life. But that night she cooked and I couldn’t wait any longer.
I watched her pop around the kitchen; that’s the only way I can describe it. In a small place like mine, she was like a champagne cork, bouncing off the walls, never stopping in any one place. That night she cooked vegetables while a strip of pork chops cooked in the oven. Pork chops we could both do; they were our winners. The vegetables were something new, and as she put them on the table, she smiled and told me to try them first.
I am not a big vegetable fan. I can eat some; I can push others round the plate like a champion, but on the whole, not for me. I explained this to my mother once, saying I backed the things that grew above the dirt and not below and as far as I was concerned they could stay where God intended them, i.e. buried. I tried a forkful of the greens and forced them down my throat. I was almost sick. I did not want to throw up and then propose to my girlfriend. I knew this would not be considered romantic. Instead I forced them down, using the old trick of taking a big slug of the drink by the plate to wash it all down. I looked over to her and smiled.
“How are they?” She asked me. Her brow was furrowed and rather than making her look older, they made her look younger, about twelve years old and trying to figure out maths.
“They’re great, honey,” I said, and pushed another heap to the side, ready to get to work on the chop. I looked back to her and saw her break into a slow, wide smile, like she’d just laid down the killer hand in a high stakes game of poker.
“Honey?” She said, the smile at full wattage. “Honey, indeed. I think that’s why I love you, baby. It’s because you’re such a bad liar.”
I looked at her and smiled. I leant forward and we kissed. Later, lying on the kitchen floor, I reached over to my trouser pocket and fished out the ring. I knew she was going to say yes now and I wasn’t scared. We were getting married. But we never did finish those vegetables.
We were married soon after at a downtown office. Her father and two brothers stood close by, while my friend from school, Billy Tompkins, held the ring for me. My boss from work closed the shop for the afternoon and we had drinks and a fat cake in the florists. My wife’s family cracked jokes about me having the girl’s job and her wearing the trousers, but they had a good time of it. That night we went back to my apartment and lay next to each other, watching our matching rings light by the streetlamps outside. We were ready to start over.
If you’re lucky, that’s the end of the story. For a lot of people, they marry, they have kids, they get old and the story ends down the line. Our story was different. One of the reasons my wife popped like a cork was because she had so much energy. Sometimes she would say she felt imbalanced by it. She would be high for days on end, and then she would be low for a day, maybe two. Sometimes it stopped her working, but her family covered for her. I had gotten used to it from the off, and had looked out for her on those days when even little things, making a cup of coffee or collecting the mail from the mat would seem impossible. Sometimes it would make her cry. But on those days I would tell her why she let me marry her; because I wasn’t perfect. And I would hold her hand and she would almost smile and we would wait it out, like a storm, until she was better again.
It was a part of our lives together, a small part, all things considered. For great swathes of time, it was perfect. She taught me how to pick locks and I showed her how to arrange flowers, and we kissed as if we weren’t married but starting out. I took over a run down, burnt out first floor building and made it my shop. It was small and popular and kept us going. I didn’t take on any help, I was happy to juggle all the sides of it. At night I rang up the receipts and took down the takings and I let myself think of my parents and smile. At night we would eat out and on weekends we would visit places, go to the museums or take in a movie.
We tried for a baby. We moved into a new place that had a garden. At the bottom of it was a tree, sturdy and strong, that we had ear marked for a tree house. We had a small bedroom next to ours that we wiped clean, a blank slate for a boy or a girl. We did not buy toys, but we lingered by shop windows and admired rocking horses or furry toys on department store floors.
On the fridge door we had a piece of paper where we jotted down names; on one side were our favourites, on the other side the ones we swore we would never consider in a thousand years. The good ones, the keepers, we talked about quietly, and when we were done, we would sit and look to each other and think about the future. Then we would carefully write down the name, as if we were signing a cheque for the house. The no-names, the shockers, we went through uproariously, laughing out loud as we tried to think of more outlandish, more terrible things we could possibly saddle a kid with. We would write these ones down in thick capitals, with exclamation marks, the way people wrote closing down signs. I think that was the last time we were truly happy.
We went to the doctors and the doctors ran tests on both of us. Then they ran more tests on my wife. She stayed overnight and I visited her, replacing the flowers they had in the vase by her bed with ones I had picked from the shop. She did not speak but instead held my hand. I asked the doctors outside her door what I needed to know. When I went back inside, my wife was looking at the flowers in the vase with tears in her eyes. I walked over and sat by her and took her hand. Neither of us spoke. Instead we looked at the vase. Flowers for every occasion.
After that, my wife got sick. The bouts grew worse. Her father and brothers visited and tried their best. They never called it depression. Instead they called it ‘the sadness’. That’s what we talked about in the kitchen while my wife lay in the bedroom upstairs. I hired someone, a middle aged woman who I remembered vaguely from my previous job who had stopped by the shop to buy some roses. I rang my wife every day, at twelve and two. I came home earlier, worried for my wife. Sometimes she would be reading and seem fine. We would watch television or eat dinner, fragile and almost happy. We didn’t go out. But on those days she was surviving.
Then there were other days. Sometimes I would arrive home and she would still be in bed and I know she would have not moved except to go to the bathroom, all day. Other days I would find her sitting in the spare bedroom, looking blankly at the walls or worse, sitting in the corner, with her knees drawn up to her chest, trying not to cry. And some days I would see her simply standing in the kitchen staring out to the sturdy tree in the garden, and those were the days that would scare me most of all, because I did not know what she was thinking at all. I would stand by her and she wouldn’t even know I was there, even when I called her name. Sometimes I called her ‘honey’ just to see if it would get a flicker of recognition out of her, but she would just kept on staring right ahead.
I talked about quitting work. We talked about medication, which she was prescribed and mostly took. But there would be days when I would shake pillowcases to freshen them up and pills would fly out from the folds and the flaps. We talked about moving, getting a place that would be better suited to the two of us, without all the constant reminders. We talked about adoption; or I talked about adoption, and my wife listened to me talk, but then it would drift out into silence. Some nights when my wife was downstairs, I would excuse myself and walk up to the spare, white room and sit in the corner, draw my knees up to my chest and try not to scream and cry.
I called my wife at twelve. It was a Thursday. It rang out and I knew something was wrong. On other days it would ring out, but there was something on that day that I felt in my heart. I let it reach the dial tone and then I held the phone’s receiver to my ear, feeling sweat rise over me. I put the receiver back in the cradle, my hands shaking and I put my head in my hands. I counted to ten and then reached for my coat, telling Vera, my assistant, that I had to head on home. She nodded without speaking, something she never did, and walked around the counter and opened the door for me. The bell rang as I stepped out and we both jumped at the sound of it, this bell we’d heard a thousand times before. The bell was my wife’s idea, a joke, which I had come to love.
I drove home, feeling the way I had done once when I had a fever and was bed-sick for three days afterwards. I reached our house and almost jumped out of the car, leaving the door open. Anyone could have stolen it, I remember thinking later, I had left the keys in the ignition in the rush, but no-one had taken it. Maybe they knew, the people who walked past that day, that it would have been bad luck to steal from us. The bad luck house, I remember calling it later.
I called out her name as I stepped through the front door, something I never did. It was always quiet when I came in and I didn’t want to scare her. Our house, by then, had become a fragile thing, I knew that much. But on that Thursday I hollered her name, screamed it, as I rushed from room to room, bumping into walls, the way she used to when she fizzed. I felt tears building in my eyes, streaking across my cheeks, burning my skin. I looked everyplace in the house and she was nowhere to be found.
Then I remembered all those times I had come home to find her looking out to the garden, to our sturdy tree. I thought of this while I was in the spare bedroom and as soon as I did, I understood what had happened. I slowed down. All the fizzing suddenly turned flat. I walked the stairs as slowly and carefully as an old man would do. Once, soon after we had moved in, I had done just that, walked slowly and carefully down the stairs, imagining myself old and still living in this house with my wife, both of us infirm and still together, supporting each other. Helping each other to unscrew bottle caps and listening to the radio. None of that possible now, I knew, as I reached the bottom of the stairs. I walked down the hallway and reached the kitchen. I looked out to the garden and I found my wife, her feet a dozen inches above the grass, hanging from the sturdy tree.
I did the same as I did for my parents, picking the best flowers, making sure everything was perfect. The service was small, but everyone we had cared about was there. We held the wake in a bar of her father’s choice and by midnight it was over. I walked back to the house and packed my things. I had sold it at a low price to get a quick sale. After Vera had sorted out another job, I sold the shop, again at a low price. The next day I was moving into a small apartment near to the one I had taken all those years ago, where it had all began. It had a balcony, I made sure of that. One bedroom, a kitchen, a bathroom and a balcony. A place that fitted me now. All that was left was the garden of my previous house.
I walked out onto the grass with my shoes off. The feeling of grass under my feet is a feeling I have always loved, and right now, it was all I had to cling onto. During the day I had hired a company to chop down the tree that had taken my wife. Now it was little more than a pile of wood, ready to burn. I dragged a large steel bin from the back gate and put each log in, carefully burning them, one by one. It took me the whole night to burn it down to a bin full of ashes. The sun came up and I looked around. It was a blue sky day. Without the tree looming overhead, it felt like I could see the entire sky, all over the world, forever. All the smoke had cleared and there was nothing but this perfect skyline. And then, finally, I let myself cry.
When I moved into the new apartment, I thought that was the end of it too. I couldn’t see beyond my wife and with her being gone, I had no idea what was left for me. I spent three days in the new flat looking over the city, following the traffic and drinking coffee. I had bought a pack of cigarettes and started to smoke again. I had quit when I met her and now that she was gone I would start again. It made perfect sense in my head to think that way.
But it was not the same as when my parents left me. Now, more than ever, I needed flowers. I bought them for the place, not as many and none as colourful but still there all the same. When I woke up at night in sweats, I would sit and look at them until my heart settled. When I cried out of nothing, I would walk over to them and hold the petals the way other people would hold someone’s hand. I knew I was probably crazy but I didn’t care. When I could hold it together, I would look through our photographs together and would be happy.
The balcony faced a small two tiered shopping centre. There was a supermarket on the ground floor and shops surrounding it. On the second floor were restaurants and a public library. Some days I would go there and grab a stack of books, music, films. Never music by anyone we had shared, no films we had watched together.
It was on one of those days that I walked past the supermarket and noticed the small flowers selection they had by the door. Eight buckets of wilting flowers, two days from being dead. I walked up to them and inspected each bucket; saw the dirty water, the too tight wrapping. I also noticed the price and whistled so loud a woman looked round and shook her head at me, thinking I had directed it at her. I walked outside and saw how far the pavement stretched before it reached the road. I walked over the road to my apartment and ran the four flights of steps. I sprinted to the balcony and looked back to the space in front of the doors that led to the supermarket. Something in my heart flickered.
I set up the flower stall within a month. At first people would see me and almost edge away, surprised. I didn’t use any fancy gimmicks or have a sign. I had spoken to my old suppliers and had simply selected the best flowers. I did not draw people in but simply spoke to the people who looked as if they needed help. I set up for eight in the morning, when the supermarket opened and stayed on until eight or nine in the evening, depending on the light. I worked myself to exhaustion and after I finished up, returned to the apartment and ate, smoked, thought about her, I found I could grab three or four hours of sleep each day.
Business became as quick as it had started slow. I would start to identify regulars, recommend flowers to the men and women who grabbed a bunch to freshen their house or office at the start of each week. There were couples, families with children, and people on their own. I talked to strangers and remained a stranger to them and in that I was happy. It was enough.
I also enjoyed the process of finishing up for the day. Unlike the shop, there were no details to follow. I would put what I had not sold into storage in a nearby lock-up and then simply dismantle the few props, the planks of wood I used, the chair I rested on sometimes, and put them in with the flowers. I would pour the buckets down the drain on the pavement and watch the few petals slide away down with them. I would leave my hands wet and run them through my head, feeling my fingers throb and my back ache.
One night I had finished for the night and had returned to the flat. It was too hot to sit inside and I didn’t take my photos outside. I only ever looked at them on the small table inside. I took my coffee and my cigarette and walked out to the balcony. I stood there, thinking about how my clothes had tumbled all those years before and tried to imagine her voice calling up to me once more. I stood that way for I don’t know how long, until the workers from the supermarket, the late night cleaners, began to file out into the street. They were Polish mainly, working nights and then some of them taking courier jobs in the day. I watched them all stand around nearby where my stall was set and smoke, make jokes. Then they all waved each other off and left for their homes. All except one man.
I watched him as he said goodbye to his friends and then waited on the pavement. I assumed he was waiting for a ride. I fished my glasses off of my shirt and put them on. He was a younger man, early twenties, blond hair and short. He looked nervous. Then just as I was about to go back inside to my photos, I saw him drop to his knees over the drain I used during the day and draw a screwdriver from his shirt pocket, the way I had done my glasses, and carefully loosen the drain cover.
He lifted the cover, watching left and right all the while, and then reached inside. He lifted netting he must have set there during the night and held it up. Gathered inside were all of my discarded flower petals. He held them up to the light and then emptied them into his inside pocket. Then he re-set the net and went about screwing down the drain cover. Then as quick as lightning, he pulled himself up and went on his way, down the street.
“Son of a bitch,” I said and laughed. I couldn’t help it. I turned and walked inside, realising that was the first time I’d said anything out loud, let alone laughed, since I’d moved in.
I checked him the next night and he did the same thing. Every night he went on the same way. The only day he didn’t do it was on Sunday night, the day I didn’t set up the stall. After the second time, when I realised what he was doing, I started to select the best petals from each flower and separate them from the stem before I set up the stall. In the evening I would stand, a little more to one side now, aware I was now spying, and see him fish them out. Sometimes I thought I saw him smile, other times he did nothing more than take them as quickly as possible, for fear of getting found out. I saw his name badge said Lucas.
This went on for a month. Then I made a decision. A decision you only make when you are alone and spying on a thief whose only crime is to steal from drains. I followed him. I watched him go about his task and then when he was halfway through I left the balcony and made my way down the stairs. By the time I came out he had just started off down the road, giving me enough time to follow him at a distance. He made his way down the main strip, and then down a side road, another, until he finally stopped at a block of high rise flats. When he went inside I crossed the road and waited. All the other windows were dark; it was 4:43 am. All of a sudden one lit on the twelfth floor.
I had followed him on a Saturday night. Now it was Sunday morning. I walked over to a café that was opposite the high rise and ordered breakfast when it opened. I ordered another coffee, another breakfast and the waitress looked me over once and said she didn’t know where I was putting it all. I smiled. It was true; it was the first time I’d eaten a meal, a proper greasy, well cooked meal, for a long time. It was almost ten when I saw the boy, walk out of the bottom of the building, arm in arm with a beautiful girl. Both of them wore uniforms and both of them were laughing.
I recognised both of the uniforms. The girl worked at a hotel nearby and he was working for a delivery company. I had delivered to both of them before.
I walked behind them, watching them talk close in each other’s ears like they were sharing secrets, until they went one way and then the other. I watched them wave goodbye to each other and then look back to each other once they had crossed the street. Even amongst the bustled of the city, they looked like the only two people that mattered, that were in love. I hoped, imagined, my wife and I had looked that way once. I went back to my flat and slept, exhausted, and didn’t wake for seven hours. Another first.
I already knew what I wanted to do; all I needed now was an approach. I felt giddy with the idea, like the times my wife and I had written our imaginary lives out on rough paper. I knew what I had to do, but not the invention. I sat thinking it through, holding my photographs in my hand. I looked at my wife and asked her out loud my questions. I smiled. I started to think like my wife, back when she was still a trainee with her family and catching flak from her brothers. ‘The key to success’ she would say as we fought over who got the best bits of the Chinese take-out ‘is to be sneaky.’ She would kiss me and I would kiss her back. I would look down and see the last chicken ball had gone, proving her point.
I started to map out my plan as if she was still there with me. I pulled out the notepad I used for the day’s takings and tore off a fresh sheet. On it I wrote my plan. I crossed out ideas and began new ones. I drank coffee but pushed the cigarettes away, wanting to keep sharp. I worked until it was late on Sunday night and then I folded the paper up, put it in my shirt pocket and readied myself for the working week.
It went like so; I rang up the courier company asking for Lucas, claiming I was from a language course and found out his shifts. I walked into the hotel on the busiest day and took coffee and lunch in the foyer facing the reception where the girls worked. I watched the pattern of them either beginning at eight and working until three thirty, or starting at three thirty and finishing at ten. The girl, whose name was Angelica, worked day shifts, to help her improve her English, when it was most busy. And give the other, older women, an easier ride in the evening, I noticed. The next week I checked in for a night to double check her pattern, and found it was the same. I left Vera in charge of the stall for a day.
That night I lay on the impossibly clean bed and folded my hands behind my head. I knew I was going crazy, but couldn’t you go crazy in a good way? I knew my life wasn’t what it was, but there was nothing that was going to change that and I understood that. If you love someone, you don’t stop loving them, even after they’re gone. I still loved and missed my parents. I still loved and missed my wife. Those were the things my life was built around. Doing this, this scheme, would be something else. Something good. I put the plan next to me on the bed. I set a photo of my wife, one from the stack, next to it. Then I put my earplugs in and listened to music waiting, for the next day. It was a Sunday.
I break the lock, it’s easy. When you love a locksmith, there are not many things that can stand in your way. I walk in and for a moment I hold my breath. I pad around the small place and see there is no-one there. I breathe again. Then I open the bag I’ve been carrying and go about my work. I put flowers wherever I can, taking what time I can to make sure they are set right and look beautiful. Outside in the hallway people walk by and that makes me stop, my heart in my throat, waiting for the door to open and one of them to come inside. But I’m lucky. I finish and look around and see flowers everywhere, and then I walk to the door. I fold the empty black bag into my inside pocket and put an ID, one for a gas meter reader that a man left once years ago and never claimed in my hand if anyone stops me. My wife made me keep it, instead of handing it in. She said you never know when a fake ID will come in handy. And no-one ever looks at the photograph. I remember her winking at me after she said that.
I walk out of the building and feel as if I am on fire. I put my hands on my knees and am aware of myself shaking. I know this is a good thing and I am alive and have acted. I steady myself and then walk on down the street. I walk the way I remember Lucas walking when he had grabbed his petals; I put my hands in my pockets and keep my head low.
I reach my neighbourhood. I look at the space where my flower stall will be tomorrow. It is a good thing and it makes people happy. I am proud of it and the work I have done with it. It may be simple the way a baker’s work is simple but it matters.
I walk into my apartment and lean against the door as if I’m keeping something out. I slide down and sit there for a second, taking things in. I have broken into a house and left two hundred flowers behind their door. I pull myself up. I make myself coffee and take my cigarettes to the balcony. I throw them over the side. They fall silently to the floor. No-one stops, no one looks up; it’s not the type of city people do that in, not any more. That was a different time. I drink my coffee and watch the day finish up and the evening begin. I walk to the bathroom and shower. I dress neatly, in a suit and put my wallet in my pocket. So many things have ended. One small, new thing has happened now. I take my keys from the tray. Tonight I am going to go to a restaurant and order the biggest finest steak I can find. It is something I have never done before; order the biggest meal on the menu. I pat my shirt pocket. The photo is still there, pressed against my heart. I open the door and I take a breath. Then I walk out into the night and the city.
**** THE END ****
Copyright Chris Castle 2010
Clipart Image: office.microsoft.com
In not so discreet huddles, they spoke of the woman whose kids picked and ate weeds, whose husband sat contently, playing recorder, on the boulder his spouse had intentionally set in their yard and who, herself, would rather go on slug walks than get a manicure. It was not so much that they were scandalized as it was that they were baffled.
Simon swithed off the circular saw and took an armfull of firewood to carry it inside the hut. Although he was only seventeen years of age, he has to do all the hard work now instead of his father who died a few months ago.
