It’s Valentine’s Day, cold and snowy in NYC, which basically describes our entire snowpocalyptic winter. I was almost home for the evening, but waiting for the bus, so I decided to duck into the liquor store — the one that is conveniently right next to the bus stop but inconveniently super creepy with a greenish fluorescent glow coming from the dirty windows and the half-broken neon sign outside flickering a big red “OR” to the street, which customers of a philosophical or superstitious turn might take as not such a great omen.
I am neither philosophical (well, kind of) nor superstitious (only sometimes and mostly about fraternities) so I use this store from time to time when planning has gone awry. The people who work there are very nice and it’s right by a cop station. (That sentence is both true and written solely for my mom.)
So I walked in on Valentine’s Day to find quite a little crowd huddled around the opening in the glass barrier separating us as customers from them as purveyors of the alcohol. Six big guys were sitting around behind the glass, doing apparently nothing really in particular, while one scrawny and harassed-looking young guy I’m used to seeing there was dealing with all the customers. When it was my turn at the window, I asked for a bottle of any cabernet cheaper than $15.
“What?”
“Just a cabernet. Like whatever you have that’s around ten dollars,” I repeated, shrugging my arms full of bags and an enormous vase of flowers, attempting to indicate, “I am too preoccupied with not dropping these things to be a part of making this decision.”
He yells to the other guys: “Cabernet??”
“Eh, what kind you like?”
“Any kind, really, just like a $10 bottle,” I repeat.
Confusion ensues with three guys yelling names of wines through the glass door and me trying to say that really anything is fine if you would just bag it up and take my money. This does not go well. Everyone in the store is like Who is this chick with the books in her arms and the flowers in her face trying to gesticulate with her elbows.
Finally this really big guy – like enormous like a mountain, bald-headed and scar-faced (okay, that part is embellishment) – heaves himself up and unlocks the glass door and gestures me inside saying, “Let’s do this the easy way.” So I step inside and they start showing me the bottles and I pick one as quickly as possible since I already feel like a nuisance. Mr. Enormous Man stands by the door watching all of this silently. As I turn to go back out the door to the customer side of things, he says, “HEY—” and something I can’t quite pick up.
“I’m sorry, what?” I ask defensively.
“You know those lilies are gonna open up in a couple days. You gotta water ‘em good and give ‘em some sun.”
For a second I have no idea what he’s talking about, then he points at the tight green buds nestled into the bouquet I’m clutching. I hadn’t even noticed them.
I give him a closer look. “You seem to know a lot about flowers.”
The gruff face cracks into a bunch of craggy smile lines, “Yeah, four daughters and two wives. That’ll do it to you.”
I’m laughing, too.
I pay for the wine, add it to my assorted burden, and turn to leave. As I reach the door, he comes to the window, points again at the flowers and says, “Just wait. Those lilies will be the prettiest of them all. Happy Valentine’s Day.”
