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August 2008 
High Holiday Hold-Up •(A NYC Short Story)•
Posted on Oct 1st, 2006
by 
Delia
Delia
FTD's "Get Well Soon Cup of Soup" Arrangement
My boss at the flower shop in NYC was Greek. He and his brother, Stavros, ran the show.
It’s interesting to note that most flower shops in NYC are operated by Greeks. It seemed to be part of a larger theme in Manhattan. Most of the corner delis were Korean-owned. The large majority of 24 hour diners were run by Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe. And of course all of the pizza joints...were Italian (okay, that just makes good sense). However, when I lived in Astoria, the diner where I'd get my eggs every morning was Korean, the corner deli was Greek, and the flower shop was Italian. Apparently, all bets were off in Queens.
Another thing. I always found it very interesting that at least three-quarters of the waiters in the Cuban luncheries of Manhattan were Chinese. I did not understand that connection for a very long time. Years later I had the opportunity to become friends with someone from Cuba. He informed me that, in fact, many Chinese have immigrated to Cuba in the last few decades—positioning themselves only a stone’s throw from Miami, capitalism, and legally-sanctioned unlimited procreation. At any rate, while dining on yummy, greasy Cuban fair in NYC, I was often served fried rice with my fried plantains. It was a compelling and surprisingly delicious combo.
But I digress...
Back to flowers. My boss, Nick, actually owned two flower shops. Each caddy-corner from the other at 92nd and Madison. The fancy-schmancy, high-priced shop stood on one corner. And the low-end, mostly FTD-orders shop loitered just a jay-walk away.
Nick never let the customers know that he owned both shops. What, you may ask, is the purpose of paying NYC rent on two shops practically groping and feeling each other up with their closeness and intimate proximity? If a customer didn't like the prices at the fancy shop, Nick would just send them across the street to the FTD store. The stunned and baffled customers always respected him for his graciousness and understanding regarding their unapologetic cheapness and flagrant penny-pinchery. Little did they know, either way, Nick took their cash.
Nick and his brother Stavros argued a lot. Loudly. In Greek.
Have you ever heard two grown men with incredibly thick facial hair and considerable paunches yell at each other in an exotic Mediterranean language? If not, you still have something awesome to look forward to and seek out in this lifetime. I recommend getting started right away.
Arguing, fighting and emphatic cursing aside–the Greek language when spoken aloud already sounds like someone is calling you smutty names that you wouldn't dare repeat in polite circles. From the moment I first heard it spoken, Greek struck me as an unabashedly bawdy and obscene sounding language. Not like graceful Spanish or lyrical Tagalog. Not like ardent French or velvety Polish.
(Polish is actually a very romantic sounding language. It contains a lot of "mmmuushsh, mmmuushhsh" sounds, and needs to receive more accolades for it’s come hither consonance, I feel.)
No, Greek is not a soft, flouncy lacy vernacular. No hushed breathy whispers of "My beautiful angel, my darling...you fulfill me–my Love, my Heart, my Soul."
Greek is hard, gripping and explosive with the growling earthy tangle of "Baby...ah shit, Baby...you're so fuckin' wet...Baby, your pussy’s drowning my dick like a ride down Niagra Falls…Ahh fuck, Baby..."
Well, that's what Greek sounded like to my tender virgin ears.
There was always a thick veil of tension palpable within the shop after Nick and Stavros tenaciously railed against each other in bloody verbal fisticuffs over the price of daisies. At those moments it was important not to move too fast, lest one set off another storm of hurled insults and tossed stems of alstromerias.
One morning after a monstrous argument that seemed to go on for almost an hour, Nick sent me across the street to the low-end shop to fill the cooler with some pre-made $35-$50 arrangements. Fine by me.
It was Rosh Hashanah. Not a big flower holiday in NYC. Business was so slow tumbleweeds billowed lazily across the shop floor while echoed whistling emanated from a distant unknown background. I don't think we'd seen a customer all day.
It was just me, Lenox, and Aiko. Lenox was a tall, slender man of gay persuasion. He was a light-skinned, from Trinidad, and had no perceptible foreign accent. His eyes were large and protuberant. I often wondered if something was up with his thyroid. Aiko was from Yokohama, Japan. She hardly spoke any English, but was gregarious nonetheless and openly aspired to learn European-style floral design. For her, Ikebana was passé. Grass is always greener, I guess. While following her aspirations as a budding floral designer, Aiko was content to work as our shop girl sweeping the floors, watering the plants, and clearing the roses of their thorns. Etcetera.
Shop girl had actually been my job two years prior. I had been working for a bank as a teller, when someone suggested that I get a "fun job," at a bakery or at a flower shop. It was definitely NOT going to be a bakery! Chocolate éclairs had some kind of evil black magic over me that rendered me a helpless zombie of confectionary consumption. Forget that shit.
So I wandered up and down the streets of Manhattan for a few days looking for a flower shop that would employ me. I had no experience. I had no training. I knew nothing.
No one would hire me.
Finally, I ended up at Nick and Stavros' shop. Nick said he didn't have a job for me, but if I was interested in doing some kind of apprenticeship a few hours out of the week—he would be open to that. I lept at the opportunity. I only worked at the bank four days a week anyway. So I faithfully trekked to the store two days out of seven, offering my indentured services as floral design apprentice, lowly shop girl and grunt extraordinaire.
Gratis.
I continued offering my free labor for about six months, before Nick and Stavros finally figured out that I wasn't going anywhere, and they would eventually have to pay me for the work I was doing.
Two years later, I was a designer. And Aiko was shop girl. Aiko was perhaps smarter and more financially savvy, though. She got paid from day one. Hmpf.
It was the afternoon. Aiko picked through a few buckets of older flowers selecting those that would remain in the cooler, and those that would soon meet their end in a large black plastic bag. Lenox happily chatted me up while fussing and playing with a spectacularly ugly basket arrangement.
“What do they want for $37.50?”
“Yeah, but Lenox, that’s atrocious. Even the baby’s breath is embarrassed to be in that arrangement. And you know what a hussy that filler flower is.”
“Yes, girl. Baby’s breath will get with any flower any time. Ho! Cheaper than cheap.” Lenox giggled and flapped his hands a bit, “I don’t know…I sort of think the baby’s breath gives it that fresh from the salon hair sprayed look.”
“Hair sprayed and moussed and gelled and crimped…euchh…It’s hideous, Lenox.”
Lenox ignored me for a moment and continued to flit happily about primping each bloom with great self-satisfaction.
Finally, he relented, “Yes. Alright. It is. It is hideous. But there’s sort of a wretched beauty to it don’t you think?” With a quick swish and a flirty nod of his head, Lenox brushed me off again, “It doesn’t matter anyway, Sweetie. It’s FTD. Everything FTD has to have orange carnations, purple liatris, and bright fuchsia pompoms. I’m going to call the executives at FTD and tell them to name it ‘Rainbow Fiesta in a Basket.’ Catchy, eh?”
“I’m sure the bigwigs at FTD will love it.”
(BTW, in the floral industry FTD translates as “fuck that delivery.”)
I sometimes felt sorry for people who were forced to receive kitschy pre-named FTD arrangements from unwitting relatives in Hogsankle, Idaho. It wasn’t their fault that a large corporate entity maimed and blatantly disregarded the good looks of decent, upstanding flowers all across America for power and profit. It wasn’t the recipients’ fault that upon delivery of said FTD arrangements, they were then forced to display these stiffly embalmed floral contraptions publicly on their dining room tables for at least 3-5 days in order to stay in Aunt Polly’s good graces.
Seeing how pleased as a plum Lenox was, I dropped the subject and began picking thorns and wilted leaves off some Oceana roses in preparation for a dozen rose arrangement in a tall vase. Euchh! Another scary design format.
Someone way back when decided that roses would somehow be more impressive and beautiful the longer and straighter their stems were. No offense, but could this idea have possibly come from a man who was busy contemplating something else with his busy right hand? Just a thought.
No, my people. Roses do not naturally grow to be 80-100 cm in length with steel-pole straightness. That is only possible through the wonders of genetic manipulation.
On Valentine’s day, men everywhere pay through the whazoo for that extra 5-10 cm. That’s right. Every extra centimeter costs at least 20¢ more per stem.
Men. Listen to me now. You are paying good money for stem. Your hard-won earnings are not buying you bigger, fuller, more sweetly smelling roses. You are paying $135 (plus tax) for 12 skyscraperish stems in a glass vase.
And why it is that women have also bought into the idea that a dozen rose arrangement is lovely—is beyond me. Hopefully, one day we women will regain our lost souls—perhaps at a rural flea market in central Ohio when the devil is done using them for shower curtains.
Another thing. In order to grow the stems longer and straighter, fragrance is sacrificed. The same with taste and hamburger tomatoes. Fiber present, flavor absent. Genetically modified roses lose their rich potent scents the taller and more toothpickesque they are. Take a squatty, curvaceous full-bodied garden rose into a flower shop one day. Hold it to your nose and take in a deep breath. Heaven. Then select the tallest, narrowest long-stem rose and do the same. Nothin’.
There is only one kind of rose I know of that has beaten the genetic odds so far. Sterling Silvers. Purplish-grey and gorgeously scented regardless of height, width, form or function. Fight on, brave Sterling Silvers. Don’t let the geneticists keep your aroma down.
It was very soothing prepping the Oceanas. Scan, identify, pluck. Scan, identify, pluck. A meditation.
The jingly bells hanging in the doorway entrance began to sing. Two men entered. They appeared to be friends. One was a scraggly white guy with blondish-red hair peeking out underneath a Chicago Cubs baseball cap. He had a scruffy 5 o’clock shadow. His face was gaunt. His eyes hollow and sunken. I think he was missing a few teeth. His friend was a taller, more muscular black man with a scowling busy face. He wore a camouflage jacket with running pants and hi-top sneakers. I couldn not see his eyes behind his dark, reflective sunglasses, but I had the feeling they were irritated.
Baseball Cap stood in the middle of the store looking around and around. Kind of like a periscope in an ocean busy with communist submarines. Camouflage Jacket walked past my counter to talk with Lenox. I returned my attention to the Oceanas.
Suddenly, I heard a grunt and a shuffle. I looked up and saw Lenox pressed against the counter with Camouflage Jacket pushing something into his back. Everything went slo-mo.
Baseball Cap was behind me now, also pinning me to the counter. Camouflage Jacket demanded all the money we had.
Unfortunately, we had a whole lot of NO money.
Camouflage Jacket didn’t believe Lenox. Lenox opened the cash register for him. A couple of credit card receipts and paper clips was all that the drawer contained.
“Where’s the damn money?!” Baseball Cap barked.
“It’s Rosh Hashanah! There is no money” Lenox cried.
Camouflage Jacket looked in my direction a question mark remaining on his deciding face.
“It’s true. No one buys flowers in NYC during Rosh Hashanah,” I admitted.
Interestingly, I found myself to be remarkably calm in the midst of all this intense action. In fact, my breath began to slow, and the tension in my shoulders lightly released. My heart felt warm and tingly. Kind of like falling in love.
I felt like I was floating.
All I could see was these two guys so desperate for human life, so insanely in love with animal survival that they were willing to stick a sharp object in our backs and pillage our cash register if that’s what their mad devotion demanded of them. I was humbled by the fierce energetic presence now swirling around the room. A soft appreciative smile began to grow on my wide-open face. I felt something universal touch my soul. And for a brief flashing moment, I felt as though I understood the indescribable Zen of the cosmic play that had been on stage for eternity.
The reality that there was no money in the cash register finally awoke within Camouflage’s consciousness. In a fit of frustration, he thrust his paws down Lenox’s jean pockets and briskly delved about in search of any potential greenbacks. Front right. Front left. Back right. Aha! Back left. $60.
“Let’s go,” Camouflage Jacket commanded to his buddy, who was making it really hard for me to breathe at this point. My liver was starting to ache from all the pressure against the counter.
Baseball Cap released me. “Don’t fuckin’ move! Just stay right where you fuckin’ are!”
Lenox and I did as we were told. Huh. Apparently, I did receive some socialization growing up. Go figure.
The two flower shop bandits dashed crazily out the door, bumping into one another several times, and headed off somewhere in clumsy escape. I didn’t look to see where they went. I was too busy doing what I was told.
Vernon was pissed. “Nick better give me the $60 those pricks just took! That was my grocery money, damnit. Fuckers! Pricks!”
Aiko peeked her head out from the doorway to the backroom. “Why you mad, Lenox? Customer want to return flower basket?”
Aiko knew nothing. She had been in the backroom placidly rinsing and sanitizing Tuesday’s buckets of their accumulated mildew and biodegradable stench.
The police arrived very soon after. NYPD are remarkable that way. Very punctual cops. To this day I am impressed with their prompt arrival.
“Did you see which direction they took off?”
“No. They told us to stay put. So we did,” I offered.
“Too bad. Well, next time…try to see what direction they run.”
What?! Was he frigin’ kidding me? Next time?!
Whatever. Nutty cop.
But.
That cop was not so nutty.
One week later.
That’s right.
One week later. To the day.
Baseball Cap and Camouflage Jacket charged in the storefront entryway again…welcome bells a-jingling and all.
Up against the counter again. My poor frigin’ liver.
This time around I did not experience mystical union with the cosmos. Apparently, that’s a one-time only thing. What I experienced was comedy. Sheer universal levity. It was so hard not to laugh. I bit my smiling lips in order to hold back bubbling chuckles of delight.
Once again, we had no cash.
“Where’s the money?!” Camouflage Jacket demanded.
“There is no fuckin’ money!” Vernon exclaimed angrily. “It’s fuckin’ Yom Kippur!”
Camouflage Jacket swung his gaze my way. Why he seemed to trust me and not Lenox, I do not know.
“It’s true,” I conceded, “Yom Kippur is the Jewish Day of Atonement. It’s a very somber holiday. No one buys flowers.”
Lenox was wearing sweat pants so there were no pockets to rifle through for grocery money. Excellent wardrobe planning.
“Stay right where you fuckin’ are, man!” Baseball Cap yelled out once more as he and Camouflage Jacket ran out the door and down the street.
Lenox and Aiko did as they were told.
But I could hear that nutty cop’s voice in my head, “Well, next time…try to see what direction they run.”
A bolt of electricity surged through my receptive calves and hamstrings as I dashed for the doorway.
Baseball Cap and Camouflage Jacket were running northward.
My boss at the flower shop in NYC was Greek. He and his brother, Stavros, ran the show.
It’s interesting to note that most flower shops in NYC are operated by Greeks. It seemed to be part of a larger theme in Manhattan. Most of the corner delis were Korean-owned. The large majority of 24 hour diners were run by Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe. And of course all of the pizza joints...were Italian (okay, that just makes good sense). However, when I lived in Astoria, the diner where I'd get my eggs every morning was Korean, the corner deli was Greek, and the flower shop was Italian. Apparently, all bets were off in Queens.
Another thing. I always found it very interesting that at least three-quarters of the waiters in the Cuban luncheries of Manhattan were Chinese. I did not understand that connection for a very long time. Years later I had the opportunity to become friends with someone from Cuba. He informed me that, in fact, many Chinese have immigrated to Cuba in the last few decades—positioning themselves only a stone’s throw from Miami, capitalism, and legally-sanctioned unlimited procreation. At any rate, while dining on yummy, greasy Cuban fair in NYC, I was often served fried rice with my fried plantains. It was a compelling and surprisingly delicious combo.
But I digress...
Back to flowers. My boss, Nick, actually owned two flower shops. Each caddy-corner from the other at 92nd and Madison. The fancy-schmancy, high-priced shop stood on one corner. And the low-end, mostly FTD-orders shop loitered just a jay-walk away.
Nick never let the customers know that he owned both shops. What, you may ask, is the purpose of paying NYC rent on two shops practically groping and feeling each other up with their closeness and intimate proximity? If a customer didn't like the prices at the fancy shop, Nick would just send them across the street to the FTD store. The stunned and baffled customers always respected him for his graciousness and understanding regarding their unapologetic cheapness and flagrant penny-pinchery. Little did they know, either way, Nick took their cash.
Nick and his brother Stavros argued a lot. Loudly. In Greek.
Have you ever heard two grown men with incredibly thick facial hair and considerable paunches yell at each other in an exotic Mediterranean language? If not, you still have something awesome to look forward to and seek out in this lifetime. I recommend getting started right away.
Arguing, fighting and emphatic cursing aside–the Greek language when spoken aloud already sounds like someone is calling you smutty names that you wouldn't dare repeat in polite circles. From the moment I first heard it spoken, Greek struck me as an unabashedly bawdy and obscene sounding language. Not like graceful Spanish or lyrical Tagalog. Not like ardent French or velvety Polish.
(Polish is actually a very romantic sounding language. It contains a lot of "mmmuushsh, mmmuushhsh" sounds, and needs to receive more accolades for it’s come hither consonance, I feel.)
No, Greek is not a soft, flouncy lacy vernacular. No hushed breathy whispers of "My beautiful angel, my darling...you fulfill me–my Love, my Heart, my Soul."
Greek is hard, gripping and explosive with the growling earthy tangle of "Baby...ah shit, Baby...you're so fuckin' wet...Baby, your pussy’s drowning my dick like a ride down Niagra Falls…Ahh fuck, Baby..."
Well, that's what Greek sounded like to my tender virgin ears.
There was always a thick veil of tension palpable within the shop after Nick and Stavros tenaciously railed against each other in bloody verbal fisticuffs over the price of daisies. At those moments it was important not to move too fast, lest one set off another storm of hurled insults and tossed stems of alstromerias.
One morning after a monstrous argument that seemed to go on for almost an hour, Nick sent me across the street to the low-end shop to fill the cooler with some pre-made $35-$50 arrangements. Fine by me.
It was Rosh Hashanah. Not a big flower holiday in NYC. Business was so slow tumbleweeds billowed lazily across the shop floor while echoed whistling emanated from a distant unknown background. I don't think we'd seen a customer all day.
It was just me, Lenox, and Aiko. Lenox was a tall, slender man of gay persuasion. He was a light-skinned, from Trinidad, and had no perceptible foreign accent. His eyes were large and protuberant. I often wondered if something was up with his thyroid. Aiko was from Yokohama, Japan. She hardly spoke any English, but was gregarious nonetheless and openly aspired to learn European-style floral design. For her, Ikebana was passé. Grass is always greener, I guess. While following her aspirations as a budding floral designer, Aiko was content to work as our shop girl sweeping the floors, watering the plants, and clearing the roses of their thorns. Etcetera.
Shop girl had actually been my job two years prior. I had been working for a bank as a teller, when someone suggested that I get a "fun job," at a bakery or at a flower shop. It was definitely NOT going to be a bakery! Chocolate éclairs had some kind of evil black magic over me that rendered me a helpless zombie of confectionary consumption. Forget that shit.
So I wandered up and down the streets of Manhattan for a few days looking for a flower shop that would employ me. I had no experience. I had no training. I knew nothing.
No one would hire me.
Finally, I ended up at Nick and Stavros' shop. Nick said he didn't have a job for me, but if I was interested in doing some kind of apprenticeship a few hours out of the week—he would be open to that. I lept at the opportunity. I only worked at the bank four days a week anyway. So I faithfully trekked to the store two days out of seven, offering my indentured services as floral design apprentice, lowly shop girl and grunt extraordinaire.
Gratis.
I continued offering my free labor for about six months, before Nick and Stavros finally figured out that I wasn't going anywhere, and they would eventually have to pay me for the work I was doing.
Two years later, I was a designer. And Aiko was shop girl. Aiko was perhaps smarter and more financially savvy, though. She got paid from day one. Hmpf.
It was the afternoon. Aiko picked through a few buckets of older flowers selecting those that would remain in the cooler, and those that would soon meet their end in a large black plastic bag. Lenox happily chatted me up while fussing and playing with a spectacularly ugly basket arrangement.
“What do they want for $37.50?”
“Yeah, but Lenox, that’s atrocious. Even the baby’s breath is embarrassed to be in that arrangement. And you know what a hussy that filler flower is.”
“Yes, girl. Baby’s breath will get with any flower any time. Ho! Cheaper than cheap.” Lenox giggled and flapped his hands a bit, “I don’t know…I sort of think the baby’s breath gives it that fresh from the salon hair sprayed look.”
“Hair sprayed and moussed and gelled and crimped…euchh…It’s hideous, Lenox.”
Lenox ignored me for a moment and continued to flit happily about primping each bloom with great self-satisfaction.
Finally, he relented, “Yes. Alright. It is. It is hideous. But there’s sort of a wretched beauty to it don’t you think?” With a quick swish and a flirty nod of his head, Lenox brushed me off again, “It doesn’t matter anyway, Sweetie. It’s FTD. Everything FTD has to have orange carnations, purple liatris, and bright fuchsia pompoms. I’m going to call the executives at FTD and tell them to name it ‘Rainbow Fiesta in a Basket.’ Catchy, eh?”
“I’m sure the bigwigs at FTD will love it.”
(BTW, in the floral industry FTD translates as “fuck that delivery.”)
I sometimes felt sorry for people who were forced to receive kitschy pre-named FTD arrangements from unwitting relatives in Hogsankle, Idaho. It wasn’t their fault that a large corporate entity maimed and blatantly disregarded the good looks of decent, upstanding flowers all across America for power and profit. It wasn’t the recipients’ fault that upon delivery of said FTD arrangements, they were then forced to display these stiffly embalmed floral contraptions publicly on their dining room tables for at least 3-5 days in order to stay in Aunt Polly’s good graces.
Seeing how pleased as a plum Lenox was, I dropped the subject and began picking thorns and wilted leaves off some Oceana roses in preparation for a dozen rose arrangement in a tall vase. Euchh! Another scary design format.
Someone way back when decided that roses would somehow be more impressive and beautiful the longer and straighter their stems were. No offense, but could this idea have possibly come from a man who was busy contemplating something else with his busy right hand? Just a thought.
No, my people. Roses do not naturally grow to be 80-100 cm in length with steel-pole straightness. That is only possible through the wonders of genetic manipulation.
On Valentine’s day, men everywhere pay through the whazoo for that extra 5-10 cm. That’s right. Every extra centimeter costs at least 20¢ more per stem.
Men. Listen to me now. You are paying good money for stem. Your hard-won earnings are not buying you bigger, fuller, more sweetly smelling roses. You are paying $135 (plus tax) for 12 skyscraperish stems in a glass vase.
And why it is that women have also bought into the idea that a dozen rose arrangement is lovely—is beyond me. Hopefully, one day we women will regain our lost souls—perhaps at a rural flea market in central Ohio when the devil is done using them for shower curtains.
Another thing. In order to grow the stems longer and straighter, fragrance is sacrificed. The same with taste and hamburger tomatoes. Fiber present, flavor absent. Genetically modified roses lose their rich potent scents the taller and more toothpickesque they are. Take a squatty, curvaceous full-bodied garden rose into a flower shop one day. Hold it to your nose and take in a deep breath. Heaven. Then select the tallest, narrowest long-stem rose and do the same. Nothin’.
There is only one kind of rose I know of that has beaten the genetic odds so far. Sterling Silvers. Purplish-grey and gorgeously scented regardless of height, width, form or function. Fight on, brave Sterling Silvers. Don’t let the geneticists keep your aroma down.
It was very soothing prepping the Oceanas. Scan, identify, pluck. Scan, identify, pluck. A meditation.
The jingly bells hanging in the doorway entrance began to sing. Two men entered. They appeared to be friends. One was a scraggly white guy with blondish-red hair peeking out underneath a Chicago Cubs baseball cap. He had a scruffy 5 o’clock shadow. His face was gaunt. His eyes hollow and sunken. I think he was missing a few teeth. His friend was a taller, more muscular black man with a scowling busy face. He wore a camouflage jacket with running pants and hi-top sneakers. I couldn not see his eyes behind his dark, reflective sunglasses, but I had the feeling they were irritated.
Baseball Cap stood in the middle of the store looking around and around. Kind of like a periscope in an ocean busy with communist submarines. Camouflage Jacket walked past my counter to talk with Lenox. I returned my attention to the Oceanas.
Suddenly, I heard a grunt and a shuffle. I looked up and saw Lenox pressed against the counter with Camouflage Jacket pushing something into his back. Everything went slo-mo.
Baseball Cap was behind me now, also pinning me to the counter. Camouflage Jacket demanded all the money we had.
Unfortunately, we had a whole lot of NO money.
Camouflage Jacket didn’t believe Lenox. Lenox opened the cash register for him. A couple of credit card receipts and paper clips was all that the drawer contained.
“Where’s the damn money?!” Baseball Cap barked.
“It’s Rosh Hashanah! There is no money” Lenox cried.
Camouflage Jacket looked in my direction a question mark remaining on his deciding face.
“It’s true. No one buys flowers in NYC during Rosh Hashanah,” I admitted.
Interestingly, I found myself to be remarkably calm in the midst of all this intense action. In fact, my breath began to slow, and the tension in my shoulders lightly released. My heart felt warm and tingly. Kind of like falling in love.
I felt like I was floating.
All I could see was these two guys so desperate for human life, so insanely in love with animal survival that they were willing to stick a sharp object in our backs and pillage our cash register if that’s what their mad devotion demanded of them. I was humbled by the fierce energetic presence now swirling around the room. A soft appreciative smile began to grow on my wide-open face. I felt something universal touch my soul. And for a brief flashing moment, I felt as though I understood the indescribable Zen of the cosmic play that had been on stage for eternity.
The reality that there was no money in the cash register finally awoke within Camouflage’s consciousness. In a fit of frustration, he thrust his paws down Lenox’s jean pockets and briskly delved about in search of any potential greenbacks. Front right. Front left. Back right. Aha! Back left. $60.
“Let’s go,” Camouflage Jacket commanded to his buddy, who was making it really hard for me to breathe at this point. My liver was starting to ache from all the pressure against the counter.
Baseball Cap released me. “Don’t fuckin’ move! Just stay right where you fuckin’ are!”
Lenox and I did as we were told. Huh. Apparently, I did receive some socialization growing up. Go figure.
The two flower shop bandits dashed crazily out the door, bumping into one another several times, and headed off somewhere in clumsy escape. I didn’t look to see where they went. I was too busy doing what I was told.
Vernon was pissed. “Nick better give me the $60 those pricks just took! That was my grocery money, damnit. Fuckers! Pricks!”
Aiko peeked her head out from the doorway to the backroom. “Why you mad, Lenox? Customer want to return flower basket?”
Aiko knew nothing. She had been in the backroom placidly rinsing and sanitizing Tuesday’s buckets of their accumulated mildew and biodegradable stench.
The police arrived very soon after. NYPD are remarkable that way. Very punctual cops. To this day I am impressed with their prompt arrival.
“Did you see which direction they took off?”
“No. They told us to stay put. So we did,” I offered.
“Too bad. Well, next time…try to see what direction they run.”
What?! Was he frigin’ kidding me? Next time?!
Whatever. Nutty cop.
But.
That cop was not so nutty.
One week later.
That’s right.
One week later. To the day.
Baseball Cap and Camouflage Jacket charged in the storefront entryway again…welcome bells a-jingling and all.
Up against the counter again. My poor frigin’ liver.
This time around I did not experience mystical union with the cosmos. Apparently, that’s a one-time only thing. What I experienced was comedy. Sheer universal levity. It was so hard not to laugh. I bit my smiling lips in order to hold back bubbling chuckles of delight.
Once again, we had no cash.
“Where’s the money?!” Camouflage Jacket demanded.
“There is no fuckin’ money!” Vernon exclaimed angrily. “It’s fuckin’ Yom Kippur!”
Camouflage Jacket swung his gaze my way. Why he seemed to trust me and not Lenox, I do not know.
“It’s true,” I conceded, “Yom Kippur is the Jewish Day of Atonement. It’s a very somber holiday. No one buys flowers.”
Lenox was wearing sweat pants so there were no pockets to rifle through for grocery money. Excellent wardrobe planning.
“Stay right where you fuckin’ are, man!” Baseball Cap yelled out once more as he and Camouflage Jacket ran out the door and down the street.
Lenox and Aiko did as they were told.
But I could hear that nutty cop’s voice in my head, “Well, next time…try to see what direction they run.”
A bolt of electricity surged through my receptive calves and hamstrings as I dashed for the doorway.
Baseball Cap and Camouflage Jacket were running northward.
Access: Public
Screw homework, you should be writing. This is some good stuff. Loved this line: ” …loitered just a jay-walk away.” Also dug the comparison of Greeks to other languages.
This is awesome Delia. I love it. You should be writing, this is the most entertaining story I've read for a while. It rocks and so do you, shnookums. Thank you.