by Sean Platt
But Allison didn’t just make a good and dedicated clerk. As the afternoon drew on, she took to opening Lily’s laptop during the lulls, pulling out her cell phone to make calls without being asked or requesting permission. She became more like a partner than an employee, sourcing candles through her connections and even finding inroads to new floral suppliers. By the time the shop had closed for the night, Lily had to admit that although she’d liked Allison from the start, she’d vastly misjudged her. She wasn’t a slutty California airhead. She was an astute businesswoman who’d never unfolded her wings but had now found a reason to. She’d been slowly indoctrinated all her life, absorbing her father’s lessons the way clay absorbs the sun’s warmth. Now it was all coming out. Now she was finally doing what her father had probably intended all along.
They went to the LA Flower Market together two days later, Allison piling into Lily’s Camry in the wee hours with her hair in a messy ponytail, her countenance pretty but plain, and holding a bag filled with “my face.” On the ride she slowly woke up, slowly applied makeup despite the road’s pits and ruts, resolving to “do my hair up awesome” once they reached the Palms for opening.
By the time they hit Market, Allison had woken fully, her ebullient self emerging from beneath her earlier blankets of sleep. And as they walked the aisles, Lily had to keep asking her if she’d been here before. Allison seemed to know everyone — something, Lily realized, she’d seen even at the Palms, when she’d ventured beyond La Fleur’s walls. She had an easy way with those she encountered, running over to clerks and shoppers no fewer than five times, giggling, greeting them as if it’d been forever.
The next day, Lily arrived to find Allison already at La Fleur ahead of her, the back door unlocked with her new key, the area behind the counter piled high with dozens of brown cardboard boxes.
“Check this shit out.” Allison handed Lily a small black box she’d pulled from one of the larger brown ones. It looked large enough to hold a single tennis ball.
Lily raised her eyebrows.
“Open it.”
Lily did. Inside was a small white candle in frosted glass that looked overly fancy. Even the box itself seemed exquisite. The lid came off like a gift box, tied with a satin bow. The front opened like a small set of doors. The interior was soft and plush and black.
“It’s a candle.”
“It’s a twenty-five-fucking-dollar candle,” Allison said.
Lily held the candle up with renewed interest. She sniffed it. The thing wasn’t much larger than a shot glass. It smelled like a mixture of orange and chocolate.
Allison said, “Hand-poured 100 percent soy wax, cotton/paper wicking, with carefully selected ultrapremium oils.”
“What’s that mean?”
Allison shrugged. She held up a slip of paper. “I don’t know. I read it off the product description. All I really care about is that they’re a proven seller through our distributor … ”
“Our distributor?”
“And they cost just under six bucks each wholesale.”
Lily looked at the dozens of large boxes. Even at six dollars each, the number of fancy-pants candles behind the counter had to have cost a fortune.
“I can’t afford this.” Lily supposed that sounded ungrateful, but the past few days, even with Allison working by her side, had been difficult. The weather had been uncharacteristically chilly and rainy. She’d overbought to begin with. If Lily didn’t start moving more of her flowers soon, she was facing a washout. She’d also had another two visits from Evelyn Pierce. One was to make sure that Lily had her papers in order after an anonymous complaint had reported her hiring a rather loud and obnoxious employee (in the eyes and ears of the complainant, anyway). The second was to cite her for another improper outdoor display. It was a single bouquet in a tall bucket that she’d placed near the door, mostly inside the shop.
“You don’t have to. I paid for it.”
“Oh, Allison. You can’t do that.”
“I’m making an investment.”
“But it’s my shop.”
“I’m making an investment in you.”
“That’s sweet,” said Lily. “But … ”
“Oh, shut your face.” Allison shoved her. “You can pay me back when they’re all sold if you insist.” Allison started unboxing and stacking, quickly making a display.
Lily had stopped paying attention, sending it instead across the courtyard where Kerry Barrett Kirby was wheeling something out into the middle of her outdoor furniture display. A collection of small items — more of the overpriced, useless odd and ends that nouveau house was known for. Lily’s first impression was that nouveau house was begging for shoplifters to walk by and steal from them, but before she could weigh that thought (and probably dismiss it; there weren’t many shoplifting types in the Palms), her attention was hijacked by a second impression. This one centered on what the new items were arranged on.
“That’s … ” Lily began.
“Just think of it, Lily,” said Allison, stacking candles behind her. “Three hundred percent profit on these. Holy balls! Or is it 400 percent? Do you include the original price?”
“That’s … ” Lily felt like she’d been punched in the chest. She was having trouble catching her breath.
“It’s a 400 percent return for sure. But does it change if I use the word ‘profit’?”
“That’s my cart!” Lily finally spat.
Allison stood, then turned and followed Lily’s eyes.
“Oh. Wow.”
“She’s got my cart! That’s my fucking flower cart!”
“She’s using it wrong, then,” Allison said. The thing was piled high with carved wood items, stainless steel flatware, burnished aluminum sculptures. Kerry had put some sort of a mat across the top wire shelf to keep her items from slipping off, but she’d done nothing to conceal its identity. It wasn’t remotely appropriate for what Kerry was using it for. Its oversized metal wheels looked odd amid its burden of foofy finery, and the cart itself seemed to detract from, and clash with, the existing furniture. Even as it stood, stocked as it was, it would have benefitted from a few flowers in its mounted chrome buckets, a potted arrangement or two on its upper shelf. Right now it looked ridiculous, as if she’d brought her wares out in a dirty wheelbarrow.
“How can she take my goddamned cart? How can she do that?”
Allison was shaking her head. She kept looking at Lily. Probably because Lily seldom swore, and now she’d done it twice in ten seconds. Allison, always bold and never shy, seemed suddenly speechless. She started to walk toward the door, but Allison grabbed her arm.
“Let me go!”
“Hang on just a sec, Lil. Look at what she’s got going on there. Do you seriously think she’s putting that out for artistic reasons?”
Lily’s vision was turning red. Her skin was hot, her hair feeling like it might be standing on end. Allison had her by the arm, and for some reason Lily wanted to use one of her self-defense moves on it, snapping around to break the hold and perhaps her only true friend’s wrist.
“Or,” said Allison, “do you think she might be putting it out there to make you do what you’re about to do?”
Across the courtyard, Kerry had set the cart in place and was now bustling fussily around it, straightening like a dusting housewife, her steps small and busy in her shiny black heels. She had yet to look over at La Fleur, but hadn’t put her back to the shop, either. She was putting on a show, making sure everyone could see.
“Pretend you don’t see it.”
“I see it fine.” Lily’s fists were clenched. She could feel her breath grating through gritted teeth.
“That’s why I said ‘pretend.’”
“Len and Antonia both said she’ll keep pushing me until I fight back, because she thinks I’m too goody-goody to raise a fist.” She turned her eyes on Allison, something like betrayal running through her head. “Even you said it!”
“Well, sure, but not now.
”
“Why not?”
“You can’t fight back when someone is obviously specifically trying to get you to fight back! Just look at her, Lil! She’s practically wearing a bull’s eye!”
Lily looked. Then she saw something else. Something that snapped her anger like a branch — a tall man with thinning blond hair standing near the entrance, a clipboard clasped against his chest.
“Hell,” said Lily.
“So you get me.”
“No. I mean yes. But also, look by the door there.”
“The antique birdcage thing?”
“No. The guy.”
“What guy? Oh. Yeah, I think that’s Bobby Ray from the leasing office. Literally Bobby Fucking Ray, gayer than Sesame Street, and don’t I know that for sure because one day I tried to … ” She stopped. “Nooooo … ”
“That … that bitch.” Lily wanted to cry in frustration. Bobby Ray was sipping something from a small China cup with his non-clipboard hand and watching Kerry, who kept raising her head as if to tell him to hang on for a second. But she was taking too many moments, now finally casting glances past the fountain. And to think, she’d almost stormed across the courtyard and made a scene, right in front of Bobby Ray. Bobby Ray, whom Kerry had almost certainly told all about the undesirable tenant across the courtyard, whom Kerry might be arguing to evict, who might already be on some kind of secret probation — thanks in large part to all the anonymous complaints she’d received in her short time at the Palms.
Lily staggered toward the back of the store on leaden feet. She dropped into one of the chairs Kerry had told her she should replace because they were so lowbrow, even if they were the best she could do.
“Why does she hate me so much, Al?”
Allison sat in the other chair. “Because she’s a raging cunt.”
“She doesn’t hate you, does she?”
“Oh, I think she hates everyone. The only reason she doesn’t hate me more is because I know so many people around here.”
Lily looked over and tried to decide if she’d just made a sexual comment. Everyone really did seem to know Allison, and already La Fleur had seen the benefits of the network she’d expanded unintentionally and without effort. But somehow Lily doubted she’d simply slept her way to popularity. She was highly sexual and even more social, but the two were on separate tracks. Allison didn’t even have unofficial power at the Palms, but she knew a lot of people who did. And what was more, judging by her reception all the way down at the flower market (and on the streets when they’d gone out together for a rare lunch, shutting the shop for an hour to do it), Allison’s network of friends extended further. She was seeming less and less like an average beach girl by the day, and more and more like the daughter of a titan.
“She probably hates me more now that I work here,” said Allison, “if that makes you feel better.”
“I just wanted to open a flower shop. What’s more innocent and unassuming than that?”
“Maybe she finds you threatening.”
“I don’t sell furniture! I don’t sell brass telescopes and … and … cartographer’s desks!”
“Maybe you should take it as flattering. Like, you’re an upstart and you’re going to take the Palms by storm.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Or maybe you’re attracting all the hot guys, and she resents it because she has to stick room deodorizers up her own dried-out … ”
“That’s you.”
“Excuse me,” said Allison, “but I’ve never stuck a deodorizer in my pussy.”
“I meant—”
“I know what you meant. I’m trying to cheer you up. Is it working?”
Lily laughed, wiping her eyes. She’d never felt such an unending rollercoaster of emotions. Being in Cielo del Mar, being at the Palms, and owning La Fleur de Blanc were alternately exhilarating and exhausting. One day she’d feel excited and optimistic, and the next day she’d feel crushed. Terribly, the latter feeling seemed to be winning. It was beginning to feel like the seesawing itself wasn’t worth the few moments of joy she’d had so far (meeting Antonia, meeting Allison, her simmering non-dating with handsome Len). If she couldn’t count on staying up, what good was it? She’d built a house on shaky bedrock, never quite sure when the bottom might drop from under her. The uncertainty was exhausting. Maybe it would be better back in Kansas, where few exciting things happened but at least she could count on the predictability of neutral.
“It’s working a little.”
“You can’t let her get you, Lil. She’s trying to trigger your reaction. But you’re not doing anything wrong. You don’t even have your cart out there anymore.”
“Because I don’t have a cart. Because she took it.”
“It’s technically Palms property,” Allison said.
“What use does she have for a flower cart?”
“Hey, you don’t have to convince me. But she’s got it, whatever. And they can’t throw you out or anything. She can bitch all she wants. You think the office really thinks those complaints are anonymous? You think they’re not as tired of her as we are?”
It was an excellent point. Lily had been thinking of the office and the landlord as Kerry’s enforcement arm, but they were their own entity. They let Kerry have her way most of the time because nouveau house was the plaza’s biggest anchor. That didn’t mean they liked her, or even agreed with her.
“You told me to stand up for myself.”
“I told you to stop caring what other people thought.”
It was Len who’d told her to stand up for herself. Len had told her that she had every right to do what she needed to protect what was hers. More: He’d told her that if she didn’t fight back — not merely turning the other cheek but actively fighting back — then she’d go under. Len seemed to know what he was talking about. Over the past few weeks, lunch lines in front of Hit N’ Run had been growing longer. Whatever changes he’d made (to his prices, to his business, to his food, who knew?) were obviously paying off.
“You said we needed to get smarter,” said Lily.
“Right.”
“And run a better business. And get more successful.”
Allison looked like she was waiting for the catch. “Yeeeeah … ”
Lily sat up. Something had caught her eye outside. The cart was still in front of nouveau house, practically daring Lily to walk over and take it. Kerry had gone in and so had Bobby Ray, but she could find them and ream them if she needed. Because that was exactly what Kerry wanted her to do, to get herself finally thrown out.
But Lily’s eye wasn’t caught by the store, or the cart, or Kerry, or the agent. It was a brisk little woman with jet-black, shoulder-length hair holding a small stack of papers. Those would be receipts, for just purchased furniture, along with a delivery estimate.
“Maybe we should partner with nouveau house,” said Lily, standing.
“Partner?”
“Wouldn’t you think that the kind of people who’d buy from there would be the kind of people who might like to fill their homes with gorgeous flowers?”
Allison was shaking her head. “You can’t seriously think Kerry would partner with you.”
But Lily, with thoughts of Len and his warning in her head, had other plans.
“That’s just the thing,” said Lily. “Kerry wouldn’t even have to know.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE PALMS COUTURE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT COMMITTEE
With Len firmly in mind — some times more than others; some ways different than others — Lily spent the next two weeks siphoning from nouveau house’s customer base before Kerry finally caught on and the brawling got started.
But for those two weeks, everything was literally roses. La Fleur was closing in on its first full month and its second biweekly rental period at a pace that was, thanks to Allison’s help, nearly break even. Lily was finding her customers’ ebb and flow, growing ever defter at ordering enough stock to satisfy their needs and ke
ep the shop full without overbuying and losing too much to spoilage. She was getting to know her native customers, and growing that base with more and more people who thought the idea of pairing a regular all-white floral order with their new, trendy nouveau house furniture was excellent.
It was too bad Kerry was a duplicitous bitch, Lily thought after the first week, because they would have made excellent partners. The first woman Lily cornered as she’d exited Kerry’s store (her name turned out to be Jeannine, and she’d just built a summer home near the beach that required furnishing and decoration) had taken to Lily’s offer of free flowers like a fish to the Cielo sea. So had the next person and the next after that. Given all the money they seemed to have, free wasn’t a motivator in and of itself … but it did keep them from thinking twice about accepting Lily’s offer. They even stopped asking “What’s the catch?” once Lily, at Allison’s suggestion, started beating them to the punch.
“Tell them what you told me,” Allison suggested. “Tell them you’ve partnered with nouveau house to beautify their homes, and the first order is complimentary, to go with their furniture purchase.”
It had been Lily’s idea, but after the second and third poached client, she began to wonder if she was engaged in a daring innovation of Allison’s loss-leader idea (a bigger version of what Lily herself had done on Day One, giving out free single-stem roses) or whether she was subconsciously trying to commit shop suicide so the store would go under and she could finally get a good night’s sleep. But Allison assured her it was brilliant and forced her to keep going, giving away over a thousand dollars’ worth of flowers before the first fiver returned. It’s all about getting our flowers into their homes without the friction of having to buy them, Allison said, before making many lewd references involving other kinds of friction, repeating over and over that Lily really needed some.
“Look at that fine-ass man over there,” she’d say, pointing obviously at Len inside his cart’s window for everyone to see. “I’ll bet he’d give you some friction.”
Lily would tell her to sweep the floor.
