fwriction

We know their faces by now; greet them like friends. Good evening. No thank you, nothing for me tonight. Sometimes I forget to buy flowers at my usual stand during the day and take advantage: A sunflower, please. It dies the next day, dropping sad petals all over my dining room table. So later, after another snack at the pub and a Sprizz at a club, it’s our guy, and he’s got red roses and blue roses tonight. Buy, signorina, he says.

Hey, I say. That sunflower you sold me last night? It was dead this morning.

Without a word, he hands me a blue rose and says Prego – as in, take it. I’m pleased and touched. Riccardo tries to tell me that it’s not blue because it’s manipulated – it’s blue because of something something something, I’ve had three Sprizz and I’m not even sure it’s Riccardo talking to me to tell you the truth.

But I take the blue rose home. I put it in water in my bedroom. It dies the next day, too.