Really Good, Actually(20)
“I’m going to look around for a bit,” I offered, unconvincingly fingering a monstera leaf. The florist maintained his cheerful demeanor. I could tell he saw he was losing the sale, or perhaps that the sale had never been there to begin with. He gave me a resigned smile and went back to his bouquet.
Maybe I didn’t need to buy my friends anything. After all, I had been there for them too: Lauren once had a breakup so bad we got in her car and drove to Montreal that same day; Jon and I provided a couch for Amirah during her final fight with the med student; it was me who nursed Clive back to health after a summer romance flew back to Brazil without warning; Emotional Lauren had never broken up with anyone, but was constantly having some minor meltdown in the bathrooms at work, and as the least regularly employed person in the group chat, I often fielded these as well.
I told myself they had just been doing what friends did, that maybe it was even my turn to become a kind of emotional labor vacuum, sucking up whatever they had to give. But I knew this was bullshit—and further, that it was not only the group chat who had gone above and beyond. My parents and sister deserved flowers too. And Merris, and my landlady, and the barista who’d let me down gently, and the upstairs neighbor who’d said, “It’ll get better,” so quietly, almost under her breath, one morning as we passed in the hall. The divorce had made me so beholden to others, I would have to bankrupt myself at this florist. I was going to be here every week.
“We have some tulips at the front,” the man said, scratching his bald head almost bashfully. “If that’s more what you’re looking for?”
I wandered to the front of the store, a little bell above the door clanging as I opened it. Outside the air was hot and patios were full, and that guy who hangs around downtown dressed like Spider-Man was haranguing people from his skateboard. The tulips were plentiful and vibrant and, crucially, ten dollars per bunch. As the florist wrapped them up—two purple, one pink—I expressed my gratitude by promising to leave an incredible online review for his establishment.
“Do what you like,” he said. “I’m just an employee.”
“I’ll mention you in the review,” I said. “Superlative city.”
“Very generous,” said the man, a hint of something other than warmth in his voice. He handed me the tulips, wrapped in a crinkled sheet of brown paper. “Have a lovely day.”
I strolled home and put the flowers on the kitchen table, dividing the bunches into six mixed bouquets, four for the group chat and two for whoever did the next kind thing. I considered the dishes in the sink, but the pile was enormous and there was a threatening crust on one of them, so I sat down and opened my laptop.
I was still working mostly from bed, which was isolating and surely doing something appalling to my spine, but I could not go back to the office until I looked and felt better. All the burgers and liqueurs and late-night crime shows had left me bloated and pimply, my skin a blur of grays and pinks and yellows.
A few weeks ago, I had posted on our department’s virtual message board that I was looking for a new place to live, and Jiro, a pretentiously dapper professor in his forties, sent me a link to a palatial two-bedroom it turned out he not only owned, but rented to others for profit. It was wildly out of my price range, and the idea of my rent checks directly funding Jiro’s pocket square collection made me want to hurl. I accepted the viewing he offered anyway, thinking it might send a message to my colleagues that I was doing alright.
“Are you okay?” Jiro asked as soon as he saw me. “Seriously, you look wiped.”
He showed me around his income property, pointing out its wood floors and big windows, the charming if nonfunctional fireplaces. I pretended to appraise it all and said I would let him know. At the door, Jiro rested both hands on my shoulders and told me “no good marriage ever ended in divorce,” which I found somewhat presumptuous; this was our first-ever non-work interaction, and he had called me “Magda” at the start of it. As I waited for the streetcar, I wondered whether he was right—if I’d had a bad marriage—or if Jiro was just kind of a dick.
I settled on the latter. If he was so rich, why didn’t he give me a discount on his giant apartment, or better yet, let me live in it for free? I wouldn’t need it long, and that type of thing was always happening to wan, melancholy women in the novels I read on vacation. Now that I was down and out, weren’t Jiro and his wife supposed to invite me into their summer house—and, eventually, their marriage? They could at least offer up a gorgeous, unused loft in New York for a couple of weeks!
I explained this to Clive when I went by his place to drop off the tulips, the second and last of my floral delivery stops after I’d called from outside Lauren’s house and discovered she and Amirah were with him.
“Don’t even think about it,” he said, showily eyeing up his own loft apartment, purchased years ago after the death of a childless great-aunt. It was small and charming, with exposed beams, built-in shelves, and one big, south-facing window in the mint-green kitchen. The rest of us were committed renters, so we treated Clive’s spot, with its tiny balcony and deposit-free interior, as a kind of clubhouse—our shared home. We had spent many Sunday evenings like this one, clustered on his sofa with snacks or foot masks or six bottles of wine and a movie.
“You’re so lucky you own this place,” I said, leaning back on some vaguely nautical throw pillows. Lauren took my hand and placed it on her head, a gesture I knew well. I put my drink on the coffee table and started separating her hair into sections for french braids.