It started on an unseasonably hot May afternoon. The air was as thick as a Midtown July. I'd already brought the exotics inside--much as I hated to since exotics lured the casual buyer, the out-of-towner, the newly arrived soon-to-be-jaded Manhattanite. Exotics were what they expected from the city. Something unusual, something strange, everything they wanted available for a price.
The shop's interior was as cool as it could be with the front door open. In the summer, I kept the air at frigid, but I didn't have the budget for that in May. So I had the air at luke-cool and kept the misters running. The plants would survive a day or two of this, and if the weather stayed the same, I'd have to spring for the extra electricity.
I was rearranging everything when she came inside. I saw her in the big round shoplifter's mirror I'd installed long about 1985: before then, I thought that my mirrored cases protecting the most fragile blossoms would give me enough reflection to prevent the occasional theft.
Then I was naïve enough to wonder who would steal plants. After all, resale was hard. But four teenagers with their eyes rolling inside their sockets from some drug I couldn't identify, waving semi-automatics and shouting, Mister, hey, Mister, open the goddamn cash register, changed my focus on security forever.
She peered through the fronds of an apartment fern, bumped a bucket of past-their-prime rosebuds, and somehow managed to knock over--and catch--some pansy starts I saved for the locals who liked to put them in their windowboxes.
I watched her work her way to the counter, not liking the long white box she carried under one arm. She slammed the box on the counter and looked around, hoping to find someone who would answer questions or take a complaint. I sighed as softly as I could, left the calla lilies I'd been shearing for a funeral in the Village, and headed toward her, trying not to let my reluctance show on my face.
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