by Sean Platt
“But my cooler is fine. I even found last year’s inspection certificate.”
“It’ll get lost,” said Antonia. “I hope you didn’t give them the original.”
“How can she just disconnect it when there’s nothing wrong?”
“People sue my dad sometimes,” Allison said. “Just to slow him down. Even though he hasn’t done what they say, the lawyers have to get involved, freeze things, and force him to take time and prove his innocence. It must be like that.”
“It’s exactly like that,” said Antonia. “Kerry knows she has nothing. She just wants to cut you off, then waste a month shuffling paperwork. She thinks you’ll be out of business by the time it’s settled. Then the committee will say, ‘Oops, we’re sorry’ and reconnect the cooler for the next tenant.”
“Flower shop number five,” said Lily, planting her chin atop her arms on the table. The chocolate orgasm was near enough to smell. Boy, could she use the release. But it wasn’t a solution. There was no solution.
“Isn’t there something you can do?” said Allison.
Antonia looked at Allison. The two had barely known each other before La Fleur opened, despite Antonia being the Palms other grande dame and Allison’s sexual notoriety among the tenants. Over the past weeks, however, Lily had forged a bridge between them. Their relationship was somehow adorable. Allison looked up to Antonia as a mother figure, and Antonia seemed to look on Allison as a younger, sharper-tongued version of herself.
“I don’t see how. I’m not on the environmental committee.”
Allison, insistent: “But you can influence it.”
“Not without being on it. They’re not even really concerned about the environment. They’re busybodies who like butting into other people’s business. What am I supposed to do — ask them nicely to be sensible?”
“Threaten them,” Allison suggested.
“With what?”
“Take away their donuts,” said Lily, chin still perched on her crossed arms. From the corner of her eye, she saw Antonia’s sympathetic smile.
Allison rose from her chair to pace. Again, Lily couldn’t help feeling a swell of emotion watching her. If Allison and Antonia had become like mother and daughter, Lily slotted in nicely as Allison’s sister, Antonia’s second daughter. Antonia would hold her up in sensible, adult ways. But Allison, being the spitfire she was, approached the same problem with teeth and claws. She was going to protect her blood even if she had to bite and scratch to do it.
“I can fix this.”
“How can you fix it?” Lily managed to keep emphasis off of “you” so as not to be insulting, but if Antonia couldn’t swing her own large club, how could Allison swing her nonexistent one?
“I don’t know.”
“Well, that creates an implementation problem,” said Lily.
“I can. I swear it. Even if it means burning that bitch’s house down.”
“Don’t burn it down,” said Lily.
“Not literally. I just … I feel like something is on the tip of my tongue.”
Lily sighed. She had to respect Allison’s loyalty and determination, but there was nothing to do. They’d been through all of the permutations. They couldn’t keep enough stock on hand without a cooler. They couldn’t serve La Fleur’s best clients without flowers. They couldn’t get a new cooler large enough in time, particularly since it would require installation and they’d never get permission. They couldn’t accelerate the supposed fixing of the existing cooler because it was the paperwork, not any nonexistent damage, that caused the bottleneck. They’d even considered asking the restaurants — Buns, Bella, Len’s cart, maybe others — for space in their refrigerators, but the flowers would absorb the odors and make her customers’ homes smell perpetually like ham, and fruit emitted ethylene, which practically burns the flowers and turns them antique overnight. They’d even considered trying to place large customer orders directly through the LA Flower Market, but most of the places wouldn’t ship, at least not for what they could pay, and Lily or Allison would still have to make the runs.
“I need to sleep,” said Lily.
Antonia rubbed Lily’s back, smiling in a helpless sort of way.
“That’s a good idea,” said Allison, still pacing, still manic, still angry. Someone had messed with her sister, and she was going to take whatever futile, irrational action she could until the scales were tipped back in the proper direction. “Go home. Sleep. I’ll have this figured out by morning.”
“You need sleep too, Al.”
“I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”
Lily almost laughed. It was a macho sort of thing to say. Hearing it come from petite, blonde Allison would have been funny if the rug hadn’t just been snatched out from under her.
Antonia smiled, her face sad with apology. “I’ll sleep now. But I’ll put my brain on the issue in the morning. Promise.”
“I’ve almost got it, Lil,” said Allison. “Not kidding.”
“Then tell me what you almost have.”
“I said almost.”
“What do you almost have?”
“Are you new to the word ‘almost’?”
Lily stood, then turned to Antonia and gave a wan smile. Antonia went to the door, ready to let her out. Allison showed no sign of leaving Buns. Lily wondered if Antonia would have to lock her in for the night. Maybe put out a plate of cookies and a glass of water to keep her from starving.
Lily looked at Antonia. “Should I come in tomorrow, do you think?”
“Of course,” she said.
“I was going to run to Market. I guess there’s no point.”
“Yeah, I don’t know that I’d do that. Will the flowers you have survive?”
“Overnight? Sure. For a while.”
“Then come in and sell them. Don’t buy more until you have to. Who knows, maybe the committee won’t drag this on as long as we think. Or maybe Allison or I will figure something out.”
“Maybe Allison will wear a rut in your floor.” Lily looked again at her new sister, trodding back and forth ten feet away, muttering to herself.
“First thing tomorrow,” Antonia promised. “We’ll all come in with ideas. You too.”
Lily nodded, sighing. The only option was the one they’d already covered: buying fresh and trying to outrun the spoilage. Thinking about trying to operate that way made Lily nervous and sad. There would be no margin for error, and even in the best-case scenario her buckets would always be half-empty out of necessity, making the shop look stripped and desolate — not a good thing in a shop that sold atmosphere.
“Okay,” Lily said. “Thanks, Antonia.”
“Chin up, sweetie.”
Lily nodded, then turned and recrossed the courtyard toward La Fleur, hearing the door close behind her and wondering how much of the night Allison would fritter away trying in vain to help a helpless situation.
Halfway to her own door — and her own car behind the building, her own soft and beckoning bed beyond — Lily stopped.
There was a light on inside Len’s food truck, under the big, sprawling courtyard tree.
She turned, and walking toward it, decided that sleep could certainly wait.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
TELL ME I'M STRONG
Len was chopping shallots when Lily arrived, prepping for morning and his custom omelets. She could see someone inside with him. Paul, probably. She didn’t really want to have a conversation with Paul — he was friendly and used too many words. She didn’t want words, or friendliness. She wanted to wallow. To complain. To be put upon and sad.
But as luck would have it, the other man in Hit N’ Run wasn’t Paul. It was someone she’d never seen. A tall, thin man with a colorful tattoo sleeve on one arm. Lily was just deciding how to approach — and whether she’d be required to make small talk with the newcomer, too — when, thorough the front window, she saw him leave. Contrary to her usually welcoming nature, she thought, Good riddance.
Chiding h
erself for a total lack of hospitality, Lily circled to the back, to where the tattooed man had left, and let herself into the trailer. Len was wearing headphones and didn’t hear her. He nearly stabbed her on approach.
He batted the earbuds from his ears and set the knife down fast enough to almost drop it.
“Oh my God. Do you know how glad I am that I didn’t just disembowel you?”
“Is that a real question?”
“You shouldn’t walk up behind a man with a knife.”
“That’s not a knife,” said Lily, doing her best to impersonate his Aussie accent.
“Are you making a Crocodile Dundee reference? Aren’t you too young to have seen that movie?”
Lily felt like she was floating. She wasn’t sure why she was here. Len couldn’t be over thirty and was probably closer to twenty-five. Strange, given all she’d learned about him, that she didn’t know for sure.
“Aren’t you too young to have seen it?”
“Oh, I haven’t. That’s just something we constantly say down under. I used to say it to my mother every day at dinner.”
“Fascinating.”
“I said it whenever she gave me a spoon and told me to use it to cut my kangaroo meat. I’d say, ‘That’s not a knife!’”
Lily breathed a little chuckle, looking down.
“I know it’s not a good joke, but you should humor me. And for the record, I don’t eat kangaroo meat. Or wallaby. Or dingo.”
She smiled. “I’m out of business.”
Len looked at Lily for a quiet moment, but she was looking down and only saw from the corner of her eye. The cart’s floor was as utilitarian as its outside, boasting a thin layer of threadbare all-weather carpeting.
Len’s fingers were under her chin, lifting her gaze to meet his eyes.
“You’re not.”
“My cooler is an environmental hazard,” she explained. “And without a cooler, I can’t keep running my shop.”
“How’s it a hazard?”
“The environmental committee says it’s leaking.” For some reason Lily didn’t want to come right out and tell him that it was all a complex lie concocted by Kerry.
“You can still run it. Top it off with coolant and hunt out the leak. Then get it inspected in a rush. It’ll cost, but … ” He hesitated — not because he wanted to, she thought, but because he seemed desperate to spare her pride. “I could lend you money to get it done if you wanted.”
Three people had offered Lily an indeterminate sum of cash in the past few hours. But somehow, Len’s offer hurt her heart most of all. Allison had family money, and Antonia’s shop had thrived for decades, but Len wasn’t any better off than Lily. She wondered how he could possibly make such an offer. Maybe it was because he was tougher than her. Or maybe it was because he was a man, and she was a woman.
“There’s no point.”
“Sure there is.” Len set his knife on the cutting board then dragged Lily by the arm, through the trailer’s middle and down the steps into the still-warm California evening, not bothering to close the door behind him as he led her back to La Fleur.
“I said there’s no point, Len.”
“Go on, then. Open her up.”
Lily, still feeling that strange floating, detached sensation, pulled out her key, then opened the roll gate and door. Usually, Lily came and went through the back. But Len’s insistence seemed to make going all the way around feel like a waste of an insistently ticking clock, counting seconds with the thud of her heart.
Inside, Len walked back to the cooler. Lily flicked on the lights behind him.
“Where’s the leak?”
“Len … ”
“Come on, let me have a go. I can’t have my girl without what she needs to run her dream. I promise not to break it worse. They sent someone in, didn’t they?”
“You don’t have any tools.”
“I just want to see. I’ll have to run home anyway. I don’t exactly stash tools in my trailer.”
Lily blinked back a rogue tear. She felt broken. He wasn’t just going to save her from the lie. He was going to stay up all night to do it.
And he’d called her “my girl.” But she was nobody’s girl. Lily was an island unto herself. She didn’t need anybody … except that despite her self-determination, she’d made three friends who were ready to do anything, as if her dream held power for them all.
My girl.
Len tired of waiting for a response and opened the door. The dark of the windowless space was like a shroud, pierced only by an apron of light from the shop’s front.
“Flick the lights on, will you?”
Lily did. The air was still somewhat cool but had already warmed. Her flowers were all still in place. At first, in a panic, she and Allison had pulled the majority out as if the cooler might somehow doom the stock. But then they decided there was nowhere for the homeless flowers to go, and quickly returned them. At least the cooler would hold its chill for a while, and give them a few more days. Or hours.
“What happened in here?” Len stepped through the roomy center aisle toward the cooler’s rear, and what looked like an access panel. He was looking at the petal littered floor, shed by the flowers as she and Allison had rushed in and out, ferrying stems to nowhere and back. “Massacre?”
“You could say that.”
“Can I get at the leak through there?” Len pointed at the access panel. “Did they look back here after shutting the thing off, or did they just decide they’d find the leak later?”
“It’s … ” Lily had gone on long enough. What game was she playing? Was she trying to elicit sympathy before pity at her hopeless situation? Was she really that needy, that desperate?
But then, feeling her lips move as if on their own, Lily said, “Yes. Back there.”
Len crossed to the cooler’s rear. He ran his hands across the panel and muttered something about needing a screwdriver. When he turned around, Lily was two feet in front of him. He jumped.
“You scared me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I … ” He stopped. “I need a screwdriver.”
“There’s no leak. Kerry got it shut down.”
“Why?”
“Because I started stealing her customers. I waited for people to leave her store, then offered them free flowers ‘as a thank-you from our partner, nouveau house.’”
“You didn’t.”
“I did.” She tried on a tired smile. “Not very smart, apparently.”
Len’s hand touched Lily’s. “I think it’s brilliant.”
“Except that she won. Now it’s over.”
“It’s not over.”
Lily didn’t feel like explaining. She didn’t want to hear Len list the ways she might try to save herself. It was over. Now she wanted to accept it and move on. Lily wanted his comfort, not his solutions.
She shook her head, tears falling more freely. “It’s over, Len. Just trust me.”
Len’s hand came to her face. His thumb swiped a tear. “Hey. What’s this?”
“Me being emotional.”
“Rightly. Is there anything I can do?”
She vented a small laugh.
“What?”
“Men.”
“We call them ‘blokes,’” Len said.
“Blokes, then.”
“What about us blokes?”
“Always with the solutions. Always wanting to fix things.”
“You don’t want me to fix it?”
It was more complicated than that. It couldn’t be fixed. But even if it could, now wasn’t the time for repair. Now was the time for understanding. That was something that Jason had never understood, either. Sometimes, when she had a problem, Lily didn’t want his opinions on how to make it right. She wanted him to sympathize with how bad it was, and give her permission to feel whatever she felt.
“No.”
“But what if it can be handled, so it won’t bother you anymore?”
Lily took
Len’s hand and held it to her chest. She looked down. Again he tipped her chin higher, this time without wiping her tears.
“Blokes,” said Len, his voice soft.
“Blokes,” Lily echoed.
His hand moved up, cupping her cheek, its passage lubricated by her wet skin. The other hand joined it, on her opposite cheek, his touch softer than she’d expected. He studied her for a moment, then moved into her, gently placing his lips against hers.
He pulled away. Lily looked at Len for a long moment, meeting his beautiful blue eyes.
She wanted to say something. Something about how she didn’t have time right now for romantic entanglement, maybe. Or something about how she wasn’t in a position to be kissed, or to do any kissing. Something about how she had too much on her mind. How she wanted, for a while, to think of nothing.
But before she could say a word, his lips were back on hers. She felt her heart beat harder, her breath come faster. She had her hands on his chest as his hands — warm in the slightly chillier cooler air — slid down her sides and around her waist, drawing her nearer. Lily could feel the full length of Len’s body against her, could feel his urgency and his need.
He’d pressed her against one of the racks. Now he turned Lily and nudged her toward the floor, onto the carpet of petals.
“Len … ” But Lily wasn’t sure what she planned to say next. Should she tell him what her mind had insisted since his first advances? Or should she tell him the truth — the way she’d been drawn to him from the beginning, the way she’d thought about him during her intimate moments since? The way, lately, she felt a burning pressure inside when she saw him, though her sensibilities tried their best to deny it?
But Len didn’t respond. Lily felt her hips settle slowly onto the floor. She felt his hand on her chest, pushing her back. Then she felt the other hand join to unbutton her blouse, his dexterous chef’s fingers exposing more of her skin to the air with every inch. She arched up and shrugged it off. Rather than saying more, she raised her own hands to pull Len’s shirt over his head. Her simple, plain, hardworking hands, so out of place in a city as fine as Cielo del Mar.
