Apology Flowers

I remember him well enough, a big shot. He was on his phone the whole time, yakking away, Zegna suit in that midnight blue, Italian wingtips, the whole bunch. I think it was the latest iPhone. Of course it was the latest iPhone. Not that that’s something I can assert with certainty, but a reasonable guess, I’d say, given he tells the time by his Wempe tourbillon. I had occasion to look closely at his wrist while he was paying.

He was sending flowers. Of course, that’s why he was in my shop. They were Apology Flowers, the bunch I make up with anthurium, cymbidium orchids, astilbe, sweet pea and bleached dried ruscus, what I've christened on the website, “Key to Her Heart,” the bouquet that makes any woman forgive you. Instantly. For whatever you’ve done. Short of murder of course, since, in that case, as the recipient of flowers, it’s too late to say anything, including, It’s okay bub, I understand why you did that rotten thing, and I forgive you. And short of adultery too, nobody likes that. No self respecting woman at least.

I remember he was talking about the shares of Moderna and how they were going to pop. Placing a trade through his guy. I pegged him for a banker. The kind who thinks florists are dumb old ladies and you can say anything in front of them. They won’t know what you’re talking about, all they know are which daisies to pair with which pansies. Nosirreee, not me. I know a little something about trading, I even subscribed to the Journal once, when they had the dollar for two months deal. I remember the machinations that sent Martha Stewart to jail. Did anyone mistake her for just a good little homemaker? So I wrote it down, Moderna. Did nicely for myself, gave me a first taste, it did, but not nearly enough. That wasn’t till later.

He gave me the address for the flowers. 235 Park Place. I remember it ’cos all the numbers lined up so nicely. Two plus three getting to five. An address paid for by the big bucks. And the card! To Keira Knightley, he said it was to say. Keira Knightley, my ass. I guess she looks like that. The other woman, as I figured, shortly thereafter. I did say, I think she’ll like these nicely mi’lord. And then he paid with cash. Cash! Who does that nowadays. Then, as an afterthought, a second bouquet. This one, nothing special, a humble clog in the shadow of the prior majestic Louboutin. Just the dozen red, yawn. What’s sent by everyman. That went to Tribeca, a Mrs. Headley. I gather she's no Keira. Perhaps when she was younger. Guilt Flowers, that’s what I called those. Usually they pick white, but he went with red. Maybe thinking ahead to what was coming.

Of course once he ordered the Guilt Flowers, I understood the reason for the Apology Flowers. That all fell into place.

There’s a bouquet for every occasion.

*

Then, just a few days later, I read about it in the paper, the manner in which it all went down. Mrs. Headley, how she’d drowned in the bathtub. Drowned in the bathtub, my little finger! As if. How does that come to pass? When that happens, I say the husband’s gone and done it. That’s what I say. He was away that night of course. Convenient. I bet he was at 235 Park Place. I never forget a face or an address, so I know. I can picture the scene: she in the bathtub with a glass of merlot, Guilt Flowers in the early stages of wilt in a crystal vase in the living room and the husband with his lover, somewhere else, where Apology Flowers were perfuming the air. So maybe he didn’t actually push her head under the water, hold her neck in a vise with his two hands, put arsenic in her fermented grape juice, maybe he didn’t do any one of these specific things, but simple neglect, that can do it, the act of not showing up, that can make a wife drink too much merlot and drown in a bathtub.

Is that not a type of murder, I ask you.

I perused the article with my morning tea. The one I have at 10.30 am with only one lump of sugar, having already consumed my extra sweetness at 7 am. Today I needed a second lump to swallow this bitter tale. No mention of Keira Knightley or whatever her name is. Right. Photo of Mr. Headley looking bereft. These guys are the best actors, they’ve got that whole grief stricken but stoic look worked out to a T, when it’s needed.

That’s when I thought of it, why observe from afar, the deck of a cruise ship, when one can swim with the sharks. I had to look up his number from the corporate website. He runs a hedge fund. Not the type of hedge that’s part of my business of flora, but the other kind, the one that draws a boundary between a crazy risk one takes and the abyss that lies on the other side.

For a guy who runs a hedge fund he took one helluva risk with those flowers to Keira from my shop. A story the tabloids would love. Not about the stupid flowers, but everything they’d uncover about her, when they sniffed out the who and the where.

*

I’m set up nicely now, I’m financially independent as they say, the moneyed class, after I made the call, threw the chum in the water. Oh, he thrashed about, then bit all right, once I said her name and dropped that address, now that really got his attention, and the names US Weekly and NY Post. How do you know, he said, and who are you, and what, what flower lady, and then finally, what do you want. I said to him, it’s not what I want, it’s what you want Mr. Louboutin (he didn't laugh), and I think what you want is a florist shop that costs two million dollars. Now I daresay I let him off cheap. It seems like he really wants to keep Ms. Knightley’s name out of the papers, there’s not been so much as a whisper of her anywhere. There’s no crime if there’s no motive, that’s the thing, and without her, he’s just the bereft widower.

Now I have to say, he’s a gentleman, he later told me there’s no hard feelings, he understands us ladies have to look out for ourselves, use market information to get ahead, and he laughed and said he’d made the mistake of giving me market data. Clever old girl, he said. Now he sends me things, baskets of fruit, wine, and the other day, you wouldn’t believe, hand crafted chocolates. A girl could get used to this. And what do you know, today, I even got a bunch of Apology Flowers, from my own shop. Made me go all nostalgic.

I daresay I did eat a few too many of those chocolates after lunch today, that addictive bitter liqueur staining my lips, and now I don’t feel all that well, so I think I’ll just have a little lie down, close my eyes a bit, before I call him to say thank you, thank you for those flowers, but really Mr. Headley, you have nothing to apologize for. Not that I can think of at least.