The Flower Arrangement (21 page)

There were things beyond understanding. Anyone who even watched a couple of hours of the Discovery Channel knew that. What compelled eels to cross the Atlantic from the Sargasso Sea to spawn in Irish rivers where they'd been born? Or birds to cross whole continents, following precise lines that no scientist could identify, to land in the same trees every year?

He remembered those long summer nights the year he'd pulled the rickshaw. Hauling stupefied drunks from St. Stephen's Green back to their apartments up in Christchurch and Clanbrassil Street. He'd had the strangest feeling back then that he was running somewhere, that there was a point to it all, a destination, he just didn't know it yet.

He lay beside Katy, stroking her hair while she stroked the dog. Long, gentle sweeps along his knobbly spine, from the top of his head to the bump where his tail began.

“Even if Pat makes it through the night, I have to let him go”—her voice was full of tears—“don't I?”

The dog's breaths were so far apart that Phil thought the next one might be his last. He remembered his father's last few minutes, when his own selfish need to hold on to his dad had been burned away by
pity and by love. All he'd wanted was for his dad to be free of pain, to be released from the husk of the body that lay on the bed. He put his hand on the dog's rib cage and felt a faint, faraway flutter.

“Even if Pat does go, he won't go far, Katy.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think he loves you too much to leave you.”

“Maybe he'll come back and haunt the cheese compartment in the fridge. That's his idea of heaven.” She gave a shaky laugh that turned into a sob. She pressed her face against the dog's neck, then looked up at Phil. Her eyes were wild. She looked awful, he thought, and she looked beautiful.

“What will I do without him? Before he came along, I felt as if I was on my own. No matter how bad things were, with Mum and then with Ben, he was always there. If I let him go, I'll be on my own again.”

“You won't be on your own,” Phil whispered. “I'm not going anywhere. I'm here to stay.”

And suddenly he was sliding sideways, like the bike had, letting the weight of his body pull him over the edge of the bed, onto the floor. It was outside of his control. He couldn't have resisted the gravity of his heart even if he wanted to.

He propped himself up on one knee and looked up at Katy. For a long moment she didn't understand, then she put her hand to her mouth.

“You're kidding me!” Her eyes widened above her fingers. “Here? Now? No!”

“Why not?” he said.

“We've only known one another for four months—”

“On Saturday,” they both said together.

“I think it's what Pat wants,” Phil said. “I think it's what he was asking me to do earlier.”

“In that case, in any case, yes! I'll marry you!” She was crying through her laughter or laughing through her tears. It didn't matter
which. What mattered was that this was where he had been running all those nights when he'd been pulling the rickshaw. He'd been running here to this room and this woman—he'd been running home.

*   *   *

He must have fallen asleep, because when he woke up, the lamp was on and Katy was sitting up in bed, one hand on Pat's ribs.

“Is he . . .”

Katy nodded. Then she pointed to the vase on the bedside table. The daffodils had opened. Every single spear had blossomed into a yellow trumpet.

“But he's not gone far.”

Noah sits on the wall and watches the traffic inch past. The January cold seeps through his thin school trousers and into his bones. The wind slices the tips of his ears like a scalpel. He has to force his jaws together to stop his teeth from rattling.

Five. Eleven. Seventeen minutes. Why is Sharon always late? He doesn't want to look too anxious when she eventually turns up so he pretends to be fascinated by the people in the passing cars.

In all that time, only two people look back at him. A baby in a booster seat who gives him a dreamy smile, and an old woman who frowns and hits central locking. He hears the telltale “thunk” as she passes and he sees himself through her eyes. A youth, loitering on the street, up to no good.

It's been snowing on and off since the start of December. It starts again now. The first raggedy-edged snowflake flutters past, then changes direction abruptly and comes at him with purpose, as if it has been sent spiraling through the atmosphere specifically to find him. It lands, a feathery little guided missile, on his cheekbone. When he puts his fingers up to brush it off, they come away wet.

More flakes begin to fall. Noah should take the hood of his anorak out and pull it over his head but he'd rather turn into Frosty the Snowman out here than risk looking uncool to her. He kicks his heels back against the wall to deaden the ache of the cold, careful not to knock
over the brown paper bag on the ground in front of him. He hopes the plant doesn't freeze to death before he can give it to her.

He pictures her face when she opens the bag and sees it. A whole load of dark purple flowers stuck onto a tiny bendy stem like a bunch of butterflies about to fly off. Exposed roots like knobbly toes climbing over the rim of the plastic pot as if the whole thing is planning to get out and do a runner first chance it gets. It's a moth orchid. When the bloke in the shop told him the name of it, Noah thought at first he said “mother kid.” Weird.

He didn't even know what an orchid was until half an hour ago. His plan was to get her something from the Tesco Express next to school, but that was before he'd had the wake-up call. There was always a gang of fifth and sixth years hanging around in there after school. Prowling the aisles looking for girls from Teresa's, trying to shoplift crisps and stuff under the watchful eyes of the security bloke.

There was no way he'd get a bunch of flowers to the till without being seen. He got enough grief for being different as it was. The last thing he needed on top of it all was some smart-ass whipping his phone out and posting a photo of him with a bloody bouquet. #NoahCasey #PrinceOfGaylords.

So Tesco was a no-go. Instead he walked all the way into town, along Sandford Road into Ranelagh and out the other side. He passed a couple of flower shops along the way. He was going to nip inside, he really was, but they were brightly lit places with big windows, meaning anybody might see him in there, so he walked on, his eyes stinging with the cold, excitement and fear twitching in his stomach like two fish snagged on the same hook.

He stopped on Charlemont Bridge to look at the canal. There was a huge swan on the frozen water, slithering around, flapping its wings, trying to break through the ice. It didn't seem to understand that there was no way back. Noah knew that feeling.

He walked the length of Camden Street, then went back and stood on the other side of the road looking at this flower shop—Blossom &
Grow. It was completely and utterly pink except for a whole lot of real-looking leaves painted up the front and around the windows. It was the girliest building he'd ever seen in his entire life and normally there would be no way he'd go in there, but he only had a few minutes left before he was supposed to meet her. It had been hard enough to get her to agree to meet him at all. If he chickened out now, he'd hate himself for it later.

He tried to slip in quietly but wind chimes tinkled and jangled as soon as he pushed the door open. It was pretty dark inside except for a load of candles and Christmas lights and a little glass light over the counter. It was like church.

“Christ, close that door, will you? It's brass monkeys out there,” a deep voice said. Noah had thought only women worked in flower shops, but the voice belonged to a bloke with messy black hair who was wearing head-to-foot motorbike leathers, complete with gloves. He was leaning on the other side of a wooden counter with his head bent over a book.

Noah shut the door and stood looking around while his eyes tried to adjust to the dark. He'd thought the shop would stink like a perfume counter but the air smelled fresh and good. He took a deep breath and felt the tight band of worry around his rib cage loosen a bit. Then he saw them—the flowers. They weren't in neat bunches tied with ribbons; they were in big metal buckets on the floor and on shelves surrounding him. There were about a million of them and all of them looked expensive. He had exactly twelve euros thirty-two cents to spend. Thirteen fifty if he walked the two miles back to Milltown instead of getting the bus. He should have gone to Tesco. At least things there had price stickers and buy-one-get-one-free.

“Fair play!”

Noah looked around. “What?”

“I wouldn't have been caught dead in a flower shop when I was your age.” The bloke put the book down and crossed his arms. “Definitely not one painted bright pink.”

“How come you ended up working in a flower shop if you wouldn't be caught dead in one?”

“I'm helping my sister out. She's gone to see a medium.”

“A medium what?”

The man laughed as if Noah had made a joke. “It's a long story. Back to you. You must really like her.”

“Who?”

“The girl. I presume it is a girl you want to buy flowers for.”

Noah shrugged.

“Does she like you back?”

Noah tried to look blank but he felt the blood rush to his face.

“Ah!” The bloke frowned. “So maybe she likes someone else.”

His face felt like it was about to burst into flames.

“I'll take that as a yes.” The bloke sighed and shook his head. “I've been there, mate. What's your name?”

They told you not to talk to strangers, didn't they? But his mother never had. There were strangers hanging around the flat all the time when he was small. Blokes who left the toilet bowl full of dark, foaming piss and used his
Monsters, Inc.
toothbrush and finished his Coco Pops. Once, one of them had just walked off with his Nintendo DS. Sometimes they stuck around for a while and Noah was supposed to talk to them. Answer the same stupid questions. How old was he? What class was he in? What team did he support? When his mum wasn't listening he'd tell them lies. Most of the time they weren't going to be around long enough to catch him out. But his nervousness now made him blurt his real name out.

“Noah.”

“I'm Phil. Take a long look at me, Noah. I'm a good-looking guy, but I'm no Brad Pitt, am I?”

Oh great, Noah thought, it was turning weird. This was all he needed. He balled his fists inside the pockets of his anorak. He'd been looking after himself since way back.

The bloke didn't notice that Noah was giving him evils. He dug
around in his leather jacket and took out a battered iPhone and held it up.

“Now,” he said, “take a look at this.” He pointed at the screensaver with a scuffed leather-clad finger. “This is my fiancée. Beautiful, right?”

Noah wasn't sure where this was going, but it was better than where he'd thought it might. The woman on the screen had short, mad-looking dark hair and she was smiling. She was all right but the bloke obviously thought he'd won the EuroMillions, so he gave a sort of nod.

“Now, she liked someone else when I first met her.” Phil smiled down at the picture. “She had a boyfriend. She didn't want to know me. But I got her to change her mind and you know what helped win her over? Flowers.” He shoved the phone back into his pocket and waved his arm. “You think this is just a flower shop, don't you?”

Noah calculated the distance to the door behind him, ready to run.

“But it's not. It's an armory. And those”—he pointed at the buckets of flowers—“are your weapons. Inside these four walls, four
pink
walls—I know, my sister's idea, not mine—you've got everything you need to win that girl over. And you know what they say? All's fair in love and war.”

*   *   *

They're wrong, Noah thinks. Nothing is fair. It's been twenty-five minutes now and the snow is getting heavier and there's still no sign of her. He swings his foot back and gives the wall one final kick, feeling the sharp points of the pebble dash bite into the back of his shoe. And that's when he sees her making her way through the traffic between two cars, her red down coat swinging open, her head bare.

“Hey!” He is waving before he can help it, his face lit up with a big cheesy smile.

“Jesus!” She scoots up on to the wall beside him, avoiding his eyes, saying nothing about being late. “It's like the fucking Arctic, isn't it? All we need are the penguins.”

Penguins don't live in the Arctic. They live at the South Pole, Noah thinks. But it doesn't matter. Her voice turns the key in a locked door inside him. He has to sit on his hands to stop himself from reaching out and touching the sleeve of her coat.

“Yeah.” He starts swinging his foot again, trying to get his cool back. He pretends to be watching a bloke walking a boxer dog on the other side of the road, taking little secret sips of her out of the corner of his eye, though all he can see is her profile. The arch of one dark eyebrow, the small dip above her top lip, the tangle of frizzy blonde hair with its little crown of melting snowflakes.

She shivers and pulls her coat around her, still not looking at him. The zip is broken and the coat falls open again. Beneath it she's wearing a striped red and black top and a very short black skirt. Her tights are thin and black and the toes of her tan ankle boots are so wet they've turned dark brown. “It's fucking freezing.”

“It's minus two,” Noah says. “But the real feel is minus eight.” His foster dad gave him his old iPhone 3 when he got a new one. It has a weather app. He wants to show it to her, tell her about the dew point and the humidity and the wind speed, but he doesn't want to look as if he is showing off.

She tips her head back and looks up at the snow, which is falling steadily now. “We must be out of our minds,” she says to the sky, “sitting out here like this.”

“I'm not that cold.” Noah, chilled to the bone, stifles a shiver. “Do you want my anorak?”

She shakes her head. “No. I have to get going in a sec.”

“But you just got here.” The whine in his voice—why did he have to say that?—pushes one of her buttons.

“Yeah, well”—he hears her voice harden—“I shouldn't be here at all, should I? You know you're not allowed to just call me like that. That's the rule.” She is looking at him now.

He has never seen eyes quite like hers. Blue on the outer rim of the iris floating into green farther in. When he's not with her and he
imagines her eyes, they are full of warmth and love, but today they are empty, her pupils narrowed to pinpoints. He can't look into them when they are like that, so he stares down at the brown paper bag at his feet.

“This can't go on, okay?” she says.

There is a dusting of snow on the top of the bag. He nods. He wants it to stop too, but for different reasons.

*   *   *

“You need to choose your ammunition carefully!” the bloke in the shop said. “Is she tall or short?”

“She's tiny.” She used to tower over him but he caught up with her when he was fourteen, then passed her by.

“Petite—so no giant thistles or birds-of-paradise, then.” The bloke, Phil, began dragging buckets of flowers around. “Fair or dark?”

“Fair.”

“Is she predictable, does what she says she will?”

Noah shook his head.

“Okay! Let's lose the roses. Give me a hand, will you? Not those, they're anemones.” Water sloshed out of one of the buckets onto Noah's feet as he pulled it into the corner.

“Now we're getting somewhere.”

“Look, I probably don't even have enough money for—” Noah began.

“Don't think about money.” The bloke stood back from the dozen or so buckets that were left. “Just pick the one that feels right.

Noah looked down at the flowers. The pale pink pointy ones with a bunch of little bells. The big red ones with the trumpets. Some rude-looking ones with one big yellow finger sticking up.

Nothing.

Then he looked up and saw it on the shelf above the bloke's head. She used to have a dress the same color as the purple one. He pointed at it.

“The moth orchid?”

“Is that what it's called? A mother kid?”

“Moth orchid,” the bloke said again.