La Fleur de Blanc

by Sean Platt

  Looking her over, Lily supposed they could be mistaken for sisters, but sisters who’d been separated at birth. Despite their height difference, they were both thin and blonde and not terribly different in their features. But Allison had a California tan and a loose way of speaking, plus the swagger that came with knowing she’d never, ever have to work for a living. And that, as Lily looked at the closest thing she had to a gal pal at the Palms, raised a question she’d been meaning to ask.

  “Why do you work here?”

  “What?”

  “You hate your job. You keep saying how much money you have.”

  Allison popped another Kiss into her mouth. Lily was immune to the sexy spin Allison put on the gesture, but something told her she’d practiced it in the mirror until it looked perfectly seductive. She didn’t simply eat the chocolate; she sort of rolled her lips behind it as it entered her mouth, almost as if she’d sucked it in from a distance. Then she parted her lips just slightly as she worked it around, turning the act of eating into something vaguely arousing.

  “How much money my dad has.”

  “Not you?”

  “Sorta. But no, not really.”

  “What do you mean by ‘Sorta’?”

  Allison smiled. “You ever own a big giant farm?”

  “My parents did.”

  “Well, there you go,” said Allison, as if this decided things.

  Lily watched her.

  “He makes me work,” Allison went on. “To teach me values and stuff.”

  “And after you’ve learned values, you can spend all the money you want.”

  Allison came out from around the counter and began arranging the flowers in the buckets as if her hands felt itchy and idle. Then she stopped, turned around, and stared hard at the middle of the floor. She looked outside the front window, where she saw only pedestrians and the spray of the huge courtyard fountain.

  “Wait a minute,” said Allison.

  Lily almost didn’t hear her. She’d been skating through a mental fantasy. When the lawyers, with her blessing, had sold the farm and Lily had her share, it briefly felt like Mom and Dad had given her a no-limit credit card from beyond the grave and told her to go out into the world and do what she wanted. Reality came crashing down rather quickly, and Lily realized how little even the previously impressive sum of nearly fifty thousand dollars really was. She’d had a few months to feel wealthy and unsinkable, but that was how Allison lived every day. She worked for Fancy That! instead of owning her own place, but that was just circumstance. If Allison had wanted to open a white flower shop in the Palms Couture, her father would probably have bankrolled it, and it wouldn’t matter what bitchy bitches did to sink her, because her reserves would be a bottomless well. It was a compelling thought, calm as the cool ocean’s depths.

  “Something’s different,” Allison said, still looking around. She sat in the middle of the floor, as she had the other day, then looked out the window again. “The thingy. The thing that used to be here that you’ve had out front. Do you have a clerk out wheeling it around selling bouquets or something?” She stood again, peeking out the window, to look. She appeared to be serious, and Lily almost wanted to laugh. Kerry had plenty of problems with La Fleur’s cart when it dared to decorate its front stoop; she’d send a lynching posse the day Lily decided to wheel the cart around like a vendor selling hot dogs.

  “No,” said Lily.

  “You send someone out to have it stocked up or something?”

  “No.”

  “You sent someone to have it repaired because it has a bad wheel like a shopping cart.” This one was a sentence. She wasn’t really guessing anymore. Now Allison was making statements without thought. The next one would be a joke, almost for sure.

  “I love that you think I have this big staff of people to sell for me and get things stocked and repaired.”

  “Oh.” Allison looked around, perhaps realizing for the first time that Lily didn’t have a single employee. “Well, then why’d you get rid of it?”

  Lily exhaled. She nodded across the courtyard. “Kerry.”

  “You got rid of it for her? That was stupid.”

  “No, I mean she got rid of it.”

  “How the hell can she get rid of … ” Allison’s face instantly transformed into an expression of wide-mouthed disbelief. “Nooooo … ”

  “I came in this morning, and it was gone.” Lily told Allison about her rough morning, showing her the flimsy from the leasing office and describing Kerry’s showy little vigil across the way, as she sat in her own illegal furniture display.

  “Oh. Oh no she dinnint.”

  “Allison … ”

  “Oh no she dinnint!”

  “She did.” Lily felt a strange mixture of renewed defeat and amusement. Allison seemed easily as angry and disbelieving as Lily had been, but she offered a caricature’s reaction. It was nice to have someone else’s indignation added to her own, but it changed nothing. She was still under Kerry’s heel, and she clearly had the might of the leasing office behind her. If Kerry could walk in and take her property, how long would it be before she got La Fleur kicked out, or possibly moved to a tiny nook of the plaza where she’d pay twice the rent for a tenth the visibility?

  “You have to do something,” said Allison, a note of finality in her voice.

  “What am I supposed to do?”

  “I don’t know. Something.” She pointed past the fountain. “Go over there right now and pee on those chairs.”

  Lily laughed. “Gross.”

  “I’ll do it, then.” Allison was wearing a knee-length skirt. She gathered it halfway up before letting the joke go, but it was enough of a bunching and rearranging for Lily to strongly suspect Allison wasn’t wearing underwear.

  Allison stood beside a tall wrought iron vase stand near the door, crossed her arms, leaned her hip against the doorframe, and nested her tongue in her cheek. It was something she seemed to do while thinking, as if she might find some bit of knowledge stuck between her teeth from an earlier meal.

  “Well,” she finally said. “Then I guess we’ll have to get smarter.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “We could pee on all the chairs we want, but—”

  “For the record,” Lily interrupted, “I don’t want to pee on any chairs.”

  “But it won’t change anything. A lot of people — less intelligent people than two fine-ass broads like us, Lil — would go peeing all over chairs without thinking things out fully. What happens after you go over and pee all over some bitch’s chairs?”

  Lily thought the question might be rhetorical. She waited for Allison to continue.

  “You just end up getting busted,” she answered. “Oh sure, it feels good to pee all over someone’s stuff—”

  “Is this something you do often?”

  “But it changes nothing. No. The best revenge is success.”

  Lily thought that sounded like a Tony Robbins quote. With or without the peeing.

  “Okay.”

  “So we have to get smarter. We have to get better, and make this place so successful that Kerry can’t touch it. Agreed?”

  Allison was still by the doorway, hands still crossed, hip still against the doorframe. Her tongue-in-cheek expression (which strangely hadn’t birthed a tongue-in-cheek suggestion at all) had given way to a wide, white smile. She was waiting for Lily’s response, but Lily was too busy being touched. It was easy to feel, here among the Cielo del Mar elite and the beautiful people, that she was alone. But her new sister hadn’t spoken in terms of ideas for Lily to try. She’d said “we,” because the two of them were somehow in it together.

  “We have to get smarter,” said Lily.

  “Yep.”

  “So that we can make La Fleur successful enough to … to make it untouchable.”

  “Yeah.”

  Lily wanted to cry. Instead, she hugged the dirty-mouthed girl who wouldn’t leave her shop alone, almost knocking a small mirror fro
m the wall.

  “Ooookay … ” said Allison.

  “It’s great in principle,” said Lily, stepping back. “But … and I don’t mean this the way it sounds … but don’t you think that’s what I’ve been trying to do? To succeed?”

  “Well, sure. You’ve been trying. But that doesn’t mean you can’t do better. No offense, Lil, but … a lot better. Which is where my expert help comes in.”

  “What do you know about running a flower shop?”

  “Nothing. But my dad dragged me and Cameron around to all of his business stuff for most of our lives, back before he really made any money, because Mom worked a regular job but still wanted to homeschool us. So Dad got to do the school stuff, and he did a shit job, but we did end up playing in the corners while he conducted a whole lot of meetings, and we saw how he took his stupid little ideas that everyone thought would never work and made himself rich.”

  “That’s nice, but—”

  “First of all,” said Allison, turning around and taking in the shop as if she’d never seen it before. “You need some sort of a buffer product that you can count on that doesn’t have a shelf life. Everything you sell dies. How many flowers did you throw out last week because they got old?”

  “I’ve barely been in business for more than a week.”

  “Candles. I’ll bet candles would do really well. There’s this woman my dad knows, she sells these candles made out of … I don’t know … hippo skin or something…”

  “I’m pretty sure they don’t make hippo candles.”

  “Whatever,” said Allison, waving it away. “Fancy ones, is all I’m saying. Not like the Yankee Candle Company. Exotic oils and waxes and shit. The kind of things you can mark up 50 percent or more, and that you can set on shelves and never have to worry about spoiling or dying.”

  “I’m a flower shop.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” said Allison. “You sell flowers, sure. But I think what you really sell is … ”

  “An experience,” said Lily, recalling Marcello Vitale.

  “I was going to say luxury.” Allison looked satisfactorily surprised that Lily had cottoned on, meaning she’d come close enough. “But sure. An experience.”

  “They’d need to be white candles.”

  “Of course. I’ll bet I can hook you up. I used to fuck that lady’s brother.”

  “Is that a good thing?”

  “When’s the last time you got fucked?” Allison put one hand on a hip and stared at Lily. “Never mind. Yes, fucking is a good thing. Maybe you need more than a hookup for candles.” Allison looked for a second like she might make a joke about candles as sex toys but then moved on.

  “I’ll bet you could move a good number of candles. Women around here, they’re way into scents. And lotions, but I think that might be pushing it, to sell skin care and lotions and stuff. But candles for sure. They go with flowers, don’t you think? You get a bunch of white flowers to go around a room, and you grab some candles to go with them, for a romantic aura or something.”

  “Okay.” She was about to add that she was a bit low on funds to be buying more stock when Allison cut her off again. She seemed to have moved into a parallel Allison — one that might still spread her legs and beckon men with a finger, but who’d do so while calculating customer acquisition ratios.

  “And you need some sort of a loss leader. Dad said that over and over and over again. Didn’t matter what company he was working on, or what product line. Cameron and I learned about marketing funnels before we learned our ABCs.”

  Lily thought of Cameron, and how he had a beautiful physique, a sexy smile, and very little obvious intelligence. Maybe he hid it well, but she wouldn’t be surprised if Cameron still barely knew his ABCs, let alone anything Allison seemed to have absorbed from her time with their father.

  “Loss leader?”

  “Something you lose money on because it brings more people in the door to buy more expensive stuff.”

  “I gave away free roses the first day.”

  “Yeah, but you need something bigger. Is there a way to buy in bulk and just sell one thing ass cheap?”

  Lily assumed “ass cheap” meant very cheap. “I buy from the LA Flower Market. Roses come in bundles of twenty-five. One guy told me he’d sell them cheaper if I bought by the box.”

  “How many in a box?”

  “Eight bundles.”

  “Can you go cheaper? Buy by the thousands?”

  “Where am I getting the money for this, Allison?”

  Allison waved the question away as if it annoyed her. “We’ll come back to that. You can take me to this flower market some time. Who’s above them?”

  “Above them?”

  “Who does the flower market buy from?”

  “I don’t know. Growers?”

  “Okay, okay. Problem for another day. One step at a time.” Allison tapped her chin. It was amazing to think that this was the same girl who, their first time meeting, had told Lily of her plan to have sex with someone from every shop in the Palms that employed a man. It was like the Allison she knew had blown open and all of these strategic guts had come spilling out. She was a slutty little box with nothing but surprises inside.

  “I guess the first thing is to get production up,” Allison said. “I don’t know a ton about flowers, but lots of guys have given them to me, and I know I like them best when they’re arranged for me, not loose like that.” She pointed at the cooler.

  “I try to arrange what I can. I’ve just been short on time.”

  “So you need an employee.”

  Lily laughed. She’d been thinking the same thing since the first day, but it was impossible. She had to rush and hope when using the bathroom. She had to lock the door and hurry when she went for lunch. She had to work all hours, burning the candles she might soon be stocking at both ends.

  “I sure do.”

  “Well then,” said Allison. “Get me one of those fancy little aprons you’re wearing and start training.”

  Lily blinked. “You?”

  “Who else will entertain you?”

  “But you have a job.”

  “I think I just quit. I’ll go and tell them later.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  “Of course I can. Haven’t you been listening when I’ve complained about what a fucker my boss is?”

  “Yeah, but … ”

  “So I’ll work here instead.”

  Lily looked at Allison. A pixie, all bright eyes and shiny white teeth in a Cheshire smile. Her loosely curled blonde hair fell around her face, creating a visage nobody would want to refuse. She’d look innocent and naive if Lily didn’t know better. Lily couldn’t take her on, of course, but it almost felt like telling her might shatter the girl’s fragile pixie’s heart.

  “I don’t have any money.”

  “I know. That’s why we’re having this discussion.”

  “No. I mean no money. You can’t work for me, even though I’d love to hire you. Everything I have is tied up here or earmarked for rent.”

  “So?”

  “So I can’t pay you.”

  Allison laughed, then rolled her eyes. “Oh, that,” she said, batting the idea like a fly. “I figured you understood. I’ll work for free.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  FIGHTING BACK

  For Lily, the idea of work had always revolved around one of two things: Either you worked because the family needed work done and someone had to do it, or you worked to earn money. She’d done plenty of the former throughout the first part of her life, then skewed toward the second as she grew older. Right now, even though Lily owned her own place and clocked in for no one, the need to work for money was more pressing than ever. It never occurred to her that anyone might work for another reason — building responsibility, perhaps.

  But that was why Allison worked, in the eyes of her father. Same for Cameron. Their father had built his company from nothing. Those first years (when Mr. Deak
was still negotiating lease terms for Palms Couture tenants) had been spent in a small three-bedroom at the edge of the county line. Because he’d built his fortune — which now paid for a house in the Cielo del Mar hills and matching Mercedes for Allison and her brother — he didn’t want his children to coast. He wanted them to work for what they had the same as he’d worked for what he had. And while the system would forever be incurably flawed (both children had credit cards without limits and didn’t spend like paupers), he’d always insisted that Allison and Cameron at least have jobs. They’d clock in, and they’d clock out; they’d ideally try to build something new as their father had. If they did that, they could plunder the family coffers. If not, they’d be cut off.

  Working at La Fleur de Blanc satisfied the same need whether she got paid some piddly clerk’s wages or not. And Allison had already made it clear that she hated her old job.

  “I guess the idea was to force us to build a work ethic,” she said, arranging flowers into a hideous mess sometime after she’d beaten Lily into agreeing to hire her. “But that didn’t really work out, now, did it?”

  Lily didn’t say anything, but thought it might have worked out better than Allison’s cavalier attitude was allowing. From what she knew of Cameron, he barely worked the minimum at Abercrombie & Fitch before heading off to surf through the rest of his day, and until now, Allison had been phoning in her employment just as egregiously. But in her first few hours as a La Fleur employee, she’d already become a changed young woman. She swept floors with gusto. She did paperwork and Lily’s semblance of bookkeeping like a surprisingly adept savant. She turned her sarcasm and dirty mouth off when customers entered, effortlessly selling to the types even Lily, with her friendly demeanor, had failed to crack. She saw the reason immediately. Lily was friendly, but she was too honest. Allison, on the other hand, had no difficulty being as inauthentic as the sale required. Especially when the customers were male, and straight.