The Flower Shop Across the Street
He called it on the second Thursday, about nine at night, with a family sitting in his office.
“Jim, I’m not at Petrie’s anymore. You’ll want to call the shop in the morning.”
“I didn’t call the shop,” he said. “I called you. I’ve been calling you for thirty years.”
“I don’t open until Saturday. My cooler isn’t even cold. I can’t do right by that family this week, so I won’t take the order. Call Dale. He’ll take care of them.”
I hung up. I had just sent away the first order anybody ever tried to give me.
“You did that right,” Ray said from the doorway.
“I know. It doesn’t pay the light bill.”
The first Saturday, I was down there at half past six.
I had a clean window with nothing lettered on it, because the sign painter could not come for two weeks. No ad in the paper. A borrowed dairy case, and five buckets of peonies from my own fence.
Under the counter, still in its sack from the drugstore, was a guest book. Nine dollars, cream cover. Evelyn had always kept one at Petrie’s, going back to the day she and Dale Sr. opened in 1968, and I had bought mine out of pure sentiment. That morning I looked at it and could not make myself set it out. I could not bear to see it lie open and blank all day.
At half past seven I unlocked the door and stood in it with a bucket of peonies on my hip and Walt’s ring of keys in my other hand.
Across the street, Dale Jr. turned the sign in his door to Open. He stood there a moment. He looked at my bare window. I looked at his full one, at the gold lettering his father had paid for: Petrie’s Flowers and Gifts, Since 1968.
I nodded to him. He nodded back, barely, and went inside.
“Nobody’s coming,” I said to Ray. “You know that. Nobody even knows we’re here.”
“Walt knows.”
“Walt is one man.”
“Walt has sold a bolt to every person in this county in the last two weeks,” Ray said, “and he has not sold one of them without talking.”
I pulled the door shut until nine, the way the card in the window said, and we went in the back to cut stems. I told myself if I made forty dollars I would call it a day and be thankful.
At ten to nine Ray went up front to turn the lock. He said, in a voice I had not heard since our daughter was born, “Jo. You’d better come look at this.”
I came out drying my hands.
There were people on the sidewalk.
Not three or four. They were lined up from my door, past Walt’s window, to the corner by the bank. I counted twenty-six before my eyes blurred and I had to quit.
Connie Henderson was first, in her gardening shoes. Behind her was Jim Dahl in his dark suit on a Saturday. Behind him was Pastor Mark’s wife, and the secretary from the high school, and old Harold Weiss with his cap in his hands, and women I had made bouquets for when their daughters were not yet born.
I opened the door. I did not trust my voice, so Connie used hers.
“I’ve been standing here since eight-fifteen, Jolene Marsh, and I want Megan’s wedding on your book. Next June. I’ll leave a deposit.”
“Connie, I haven’t even got a book.”
“Then get one.”