La Fleur de Blanc

by Sean Platt

  “Dad didn’t like it, but he sort of accepted it because he had so much else going on with his business, and he was working these eighty-hour weeks, and stuff slips through the cracks. My mom … I love her, but let’s be honest. While Dad was training us to be self-reliant and business minded, Mom was training us to be just like I was being at the time. Dad earned his money from nothing and grew up poor, but my mom grew up right here, rich. She partied and drank and fucked a lot of guys growing up. So it’s not like I got a huge amount of pressure from that direction.”

  Lily nodded, squeezing Allison’s hand.

  “After a while, I kind of accepted something: My dad just didn’t respect who I was going to become. When I was fourteen, I couldn’t have cared less. When I was sixteen, I imagine I saw it in an abstract way, but again … there were always lots of parties and plenty to drink. It wasn’t until I was seventeen or eighteen, I guess, that it really hit me.”

  “What hit you?”

  “That I didn’t like who I was becoming, either.”

  Lily squeezed again.

  “I cleaned up at the end of high school, but what can I say? I still like to have fun. I still like to fuck. Dad always had that rule about us working, so I phoned it in, figuring I’d clerk my way through, at least trying not to be a total mess. I knew Dad was disappointed, but that ship had sailed. Not a lot I could do to convince him I was worth much. And hey, Cameron had accepted it. He’d had his job at Abercrombie since he was sixteen, and he put in the minimum time and surfed with the rest. He’s a really smart guy, but he comes off dumb because … well, same as with me, I guess. We decided to be spoiled rich kids, we decided our parents knew we were just spoiled rich kids, and we closed the loop by acting like spoiled rich kids to satisfy what they already thought. So I did like Cameron.

  “But I’m restless,” Allison went on. “The stuff I’ve done with you — just because I’m bored and my mind won’t slow down — I did at Fancy That!. I rearranged racks so they’d draw shoppers in, then lure them to the more expensive items piece by piece. I made a few signs. I suggested promotion ideas. Mostly my boss just yelled at me for ruining his shop, so whatever. But it turns out Big Brother was watching.”

  “What, they were spying on you?”

  “No, but my dad has this long history with the Palms, and he’s worked with a lot of the tenants. He actually negotiated the original lease for Fancy That!, and he and the owner still talk. He’d had them keeping an eye on me. He’d been asking them about me, too.”

  Lily shifted in her chair. “Why?”

  “At first, I thought it was just to be an asshole. Then I decided it was to keep me out of trouble, because I’m this loose cannon just waiting to embarrass my family. But …” Then she forcibly blinked and turned away.

  “What?”

  “But he was doing it because he was proud of me.”

  Allison barely got the words out before hitching again. Lily moved closer, wrapping an arm around her shoulder.

  “That’s sweet, Al.”

  “He had this whole idea about asking me to move into management at his company,” she said once the wave had rolled forward. “It was like … like a testing ground. He knew all about the improvements I’d tried to make at Fancy That!. He told me that it was the kind of thing he used to do, back when he was younger. ‘I saw you as the kind of mind I was proud to have shaped, and could put to good use,’ was how he put it.”

  Lily didn’t like the way Allison had said that: past tense.

  “When did he say that?”

  “The other night. Right before he told me how disappointed he was in me. Again.”

  “Disappointed? Why?”

  “Because I was on the right path at Fancy That!, and he was all ready to offer me this job, and … I don’t know … like, groom me to take over the family business some day, maybe. And then … ” Her face contorted, an angry sob bubbling up to the surface.

  “Then what?”

  “Then I ‘quit my responsible job to hang out with some girl who moved into the Palms and gossip all day and party all night long.’”

  “Some … ” Lily put her hand over her mouth.

  “Yeah. That’s you.” Allison pointed at Lily. “Some girl.”

  “We don’t party!”

  “Of course we don’t party,” said Allison, voicing a cynical laugh. “God knows I’ve tried. You’re like partying with a practicing Amish person. And not even one of the women. You’re like an Amish dude.”

  Lily, unable to help herself, punched Allison’s arm. “This is from Kerry?”

  Allison nodded. “She made a special call. My dad said he was surprised to hear from her, but she just had to say something because she was so concerned about me. She’d seen how responsible I’d been — because of course, Cunty has been here since the Stone Age and knew how I used to be — and was just crushed to see what was happening.” Allison was rolling her eyes and flapping her wrists with each emphasized word, doing her best, most upstanding Kerry Barrett Kirby impression.

  Lily’s mouth had come open. She just shook her head, unsure how to respond.

  “They didn’t just talk on the phone, Lil. She took him to lunch. She took him. She actually grabbed the restaurant manager ahead of time to pay, making sure Dad couldn’t grab the check. You don’t know my dad, so you can’t know what a brilliantly bitchy little move that was, either. He always pays for every meal like that, no exceptions. Kerry paying was her way of showing him just how bad she felt for him, like he needed her to cheer him up after the way his slutty, drunken, partying daughter’s backsliding had wounded him.”

  “But you haven’t done anything! You’ve saved my store! You … you had the idea for the candles! You figured out how to solve the cooler problem! If it weren’t for you, La Fleur would be out of business!”

  Allison shrugged.

  “Give me his phone number,” said Lily.

  Allison was shaking her head, eyes soaking and sad.

  “I’m serious. I want to talk to him. She can’t get away with this.”

  “Sure she can.” Allison put a hand on Lily’s. “He’s never believed me about this stuff, and I used to do everything she said.”

  “Used to.”

  “How many times do you believe a drunk when they swear to you they’ll stop drinking?” Allison countered. “I used to feed him all kinds of self-serving bullshit. I’ve cried wolf too many times. Don’t you think I tried to tell him all this the other night … and every moment since? Do you know how much it hurts to find out your father respects you in the same breath as finding out how much of his respect you’ve lost? He’s not listening.”

  “He’ll listen to me,” said Lily.

  “No, Lily. He won’t,” Allison insisted. “He’s worked with Kerry for thirty years — since the day she bought The Gallery from her old boss and turned it into nouveau house at something like twenty years old. You should hear the way he talks about her. It’s disgusting. Her, he respects. ‘The Gallery couldn’t stay afloat, but she took the same basic business and turned it into a giant,’ he says. But you? He doesn’t even know you. You should hear the things Kerry told him about you. You’re a terrible influence on me. You put me back on the wrong path, because you’re just a giggly farm girl who likes to get down and dirty. All we do in here all day is gossip and drink, while my dad’s money holds up the store. We don’t even manage to do any real business. We’re irresponsible bimbos. That’s why Kerry was so concerned.”

  “But she’s lying!” Lily felt her ire rising, building a volcano of pressure under her reddening skin. She hated liars, she hated mean people, and most of all she hated being painted with disrespect she hadn’t earned. She’d accept negative truths about herself, if need be. But if she hadn’t played the game, then she didn’t deserve the name to go with it. It wasn’t fair.

  Allison sighed. “The best lies are propped up by truth. Kerry showed him copies of the tenant complaints: repeated lease violations, mis
use of Palms property … ”

  “Complaints she made herself!”

  “He said they ended up — quite spontaneously, I’m sure — calling Stefano from around the corner, who told my dad all about some big fight you started in the courtyard. How you caused a scene. There are all sorts of customer complaints about that one in the leasing office too. And of course, records of how you’re running a polluting appliance … and solved the problem by running a loud, polluting truck out back all day long. And once Kerry started pointing in the right places, he of course thought to poke around, looking through what I’d spent recently, on the credit cards he pays: flowers. Candles. A big polluting truck.”

  “I could have paid for those things! I’ll pay him back right now!”

  Allison squeezed Lily’s hands. “I have to go back to Fancy That!. I’m so, so, so sorry, Lil. You understand, don’t you?”

  “You can’t just lie back and take it, Al!”

  “According to Kerry,” said Allison with a defeated little smile, “that’s exactly what I’m always doing, all day long.”

  Lily felt like a bomb was about to detonate inside her. She wanted to fight and claw and bite and hiss, but she had no one to strike at. Unless she wanted to embark on something terrible and over the line — something Len would do — there was nothing to be done. Kerry had history on her side, and Allison had earned distrust on hers. The facts played nicely into Kerry’s story, twisted though they may have been. It was over. She and Allison had lost — Kerry had won.

  “I’m sorry, Lily,” Allison repeated. “But he’s my dad.” She blinked back tears. “He’s a good man, really. But I haven’t given him many reasons to trust me in the past. And I have … I have to … ”

  Lily swept her into a hug. “I know.”

  “She’s a bitch,” said Allison.

  “Such a bitch.”

  “And a giant, sloppy cuntface.”

  Lily laughed.

  “You, you’re nice,” said Allison. “I guess it takes a cuntface to turn a useless old furniture store that couldn’t make a buck into a successful one. I suppose you never stood a chance against someone like that.”

  “Maybe I’m too nice,” Lily said.

  Allison pulled away, now holding her sister at arm’s length.

  “No. The amazing thing about you is, you actually care what other people think about you.”

  Lily felt touched. “Thanks.”

  “Take care.”

  Allison left the store for perhaps the last time while Lily found her mind turning over an uneasy feeling about Kerry’s past — about all that Allison had implied and Antonia had all but confirmed. Maybe Kerry was more vicious and ruthless than she’d even imagined.

  Lily thought about herself, her store, about being too nice, and most of all about Len and the advice he’d given her.

  Maybe Allison wouldn’t need to “take care.”

  Maybe Lily would take care of her sister, after all.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  SIGN HERE

  Lily looked at her cell phone, again.

  Antonia looked up at Lily. “You waiting for a call?”

  Lily smiled, said nothing, and pocketed the phone.

  “So I just put the white ones next to the white ones,” Antonia said, returning to her work. “This is the easiest job ever.”

  Lily looked over. The baker, still in her apron, was making what might have been the world’s worst arrangement. She was holding the base of greens tightly enough to punish them, strangling the bouquet’s potential. She’d been instructed to stick the Vendela roses through the head of antiqued hydrangeas, just as Aunt Bev had taught Lily, but Antonia was roughly shoving them through. A Casa Blanca, too bright white for the softer roses and hydrangeas, and far too large for the lacy arrangement, dangled to the side like a head half-lopped from the shoulders. There was a definite finesse to floral arranging, but still Lily wouldn’t have thought it possible, using only shades of white, to create something so jarring. Antonia had created the equivalent of a body shop, sawing the rear from a pickup to provide a back to the front of a mangled sedan.

  “You don’t have to do that,” said Lily.

  “You want me to leave my shop for an hour in the middle of the day, I get to play with the purty flowers,” said Antonia, fussing.

  “You’re right. Knock yourself out. You can even take that one home.”

  Antonia smiled and turned. “I told you, nobody could buy my time away from Buns. I’m here because I like you.”

  “Let me rephrase that,” said Lily. “Please take that one home.”

  Antonia fluffed the bouquet, bending half of the roses sideways. “I don’t see how this is different from what you’ve arranged for me. I could do this myself and save money.”

  “And I keep saying, you don’t have to pay retail for the flowers I give you.” Lily had tried to give Antonia her orders at wholesale, practically since day one. Antonia was a wonderful friend, confidant, and ally. But Antonia always refused, saying she had more money than she could spend, and wanted it to go to Lily if it went to anyone.

  “Lily.”

  Lily turned. She’d just pulled her phone out again, but now pocketed it.

  “Stop worrying about money. Okay?”

  “I’m not worrying about money,” said Lily, though it was a lie. She worried about money almost nonstop. She only meant that she didn’t care about income when it came to Antonia; she wanted to show her appreciation for all the woman had done.

  “You can’t pay me what I’m worth. Right now, there’s a line of people outside my place and employees wondering where the hell I am, but you needed help, and I came. Friends don’t keep score. Okay?”

  Lily gave her a little smile, touched. “Okay.”

  A few customers had come and gone. Lily had handled them quickly, wanting to keep the store empty. Antonia’s presence was also making things awkward. Allison was foul mouthed and inappropriate, but at least she looked the part: a petite blonde who looked like she belonged in a flower shop, so long as she kept her jaw shut. Antonia was a foot taller, with bright-red hair, older, rounder, and with a demeanor that sometimes reminded Lily of a trucker’s. Her direct manner was part of the bakery’s brand, but at La Fleur, she was like a caution sign.

  Lily watched Antonia work, reminded more of a kid playing in a sandbox than a clerk in a store. So far, Antonia hadn’t even asked why Lily needed her, which was good because Lily had no sensible answer. The baker was possibly the plaza’s least logical choice as Lily’s second, even for an hour. Silas from the art gallery would have made more sense, but when you got right down to it, Silas wasn’t who she’d really need.

  Lily pulled out her phone, woke it, then pocketed it again.

  Antonia wrinkled her nose. “What the hell do you keep doing with that phone?”

  “I’m just checking the time.”

  “What for?”

  “I’m waiting for one o’clock.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s when the leasing office comes back from lunch.”

  “Okay.”

  “And I think we might be getting a visit. Once they come back and see a new anonymous complaint someone slipped through the mail slot.”

  “Kerry,” said Antonia.

  “Maybe.”

  “She’s such a bitch,” Antonia said matter-of-factly, now fussing with the bouquet aggressively enough to break stems. “We won’t let her win. That’s hell what she did to Allison. She doesn’t intimidate me, honey. I’ll keep you afloat no matter what she does. You just let me know what you need. Money, whatever. Who’s this bouquet for, anyway?”

  Lily eyed Antonia’s monstrosity. Lily hadn’t asked her to make it for anyone, or at all.

  “I can’t take your money, Antonia.”

  “Can and will. It’ll do Kerry good to get knocked down a peg, but it’ll do a whole lot of harm if she wins this one, and we all know it. You remember the domino theory, with Vietnam?”
r />   “No,” said Lily.

  “Fucking schools these days. Never mind. Let’s just say that if she eats your lunch, she’s just setting precedent to eat more lunches in the future.”

  “Why lunches?”

  “I’m hungry.”

  Lily raised her chin, nodding. “Look.”

  Antonia looked at the official-looking contingent crossing the courtyard. Lily counted two men, Evelyn Pierce, and of course Kerry Barrett Kirby.

  “Son of a bitch,” said Antonia. “You were right.”

  “Yep,” said Lily.

  “How’d you know?”

  Lily set her hands on the counter, nails on the surface. “Because I left the complaint.”

  Antonia looked toward Lily with a questioning look, but turned back when the first of the agents entered La Fleur. Evelyn was toward the back, clearly embarrassed. Kerry came in only after the others had taken up positions like bodyguards, arriving like a queen trailing her entourage. She stood across the counter from Lily, her long black hair immaculate, her eyes hard.

  “I see you found new help.” Kerry glanced at Antonia. “I guess your other girl couldn’t make it today.”

  Lily’s nails clacked the countertop.

  “I heard she got fired. Why would you do that to her? Was it because she was a bad worker? An unethical worker?”

  From the corner of her eye, Lily could see Antonia, usually so self-assured, glance between Kerry and Lily, Lily and Kerry, looking lost.

  “Or was it because she was a drunken, gossiping, partying whore?”

  Lily was watching Kerry from a downturned gaze, her eyes lifted up. “She’s a gem. She’ll be just fine.”

  “That’s not what her father thinks. I spoke to him the other day. Because I was worried about the poor girl.”

  Lily wanted to reply. She wanted to strike out, to grab the back of Kerry’s hair and slam her forehead into the marble. She wanted to claw Kerry’s eyes out. To shout her down. But that was exactly the kind of thing Kerry wanted the agents to see, and the threat of the anonymous complaint that had dragged Kerry along on this rather serious administrative errand.