The Art of Arranging Flowers Read Free Page B

If he hadn’t called this morning, I was going to make him up a sermon title.”
    I laugh again. “I’ll see you, Madeline,” I say.
    â€œSee you, too.”
    And we hang up.
    I glance out the window, and the boy I saw before the phone rang is gone.

• T HREE •

    I HEAR the sounding of the bell on the back door. Cooper has arrived.
    â€œRuby!” He sings out my name. “Ruby Jewell!”
    And I smile. I love how Cooper thinks of me as a musical number. He walks through the rear of the shop and into the front part of the store. His face is hidden behind an armful of gladiolas. White ones and pink ones, they are beautiful even if they are out of season and grown down in California in a greenhouse.
    â€œGladiolus,” he says, his face still shrouded. “Diminutive of
gladius
, which of course means ‘sword.’ Sometimes called the sword lily.” And he tilts his head around the blooms.
“En garde!”
    â€œThey are lovely, Cooper.” I reach out and take the handful of long stalks to smell. The fragrance is slight, easy. “Do you just have the pink and white?”
    He shakes his head and walks over to the glass candy jar that is sitting by the cash register on the counter. He reaches in and takes out a cinnamon fireball. He unwraps it and tosses it in his mouth.
    â€œWe have lavender with the white markings, creamy orange, and red.”
    â€œPerfect.” It is the week of the Ladies’ Auxiliary Annual Luncheon and they always love the long, thin flowers, iris and glads. They say the tall ones improve their posture, make them sit up in their chairs.
    I take the stalks he has given me and walk back to the cooler. I open the door and place them in the large black plastic bucket.
    â€œO my darling, O my darling, O my darling Clementine.” He sings the lyrics while he bends down and scratches Clem’s head. He stands up as I walk around the corner, and he takes a seat on the stool next to the arranging table.
    â€œWill you marry me, Ruby Jewell?”
    And I laugh. I pop him with the stem of myrtle I just picked off the floor. “You were married once before, Cooper,” I remind him. “It didn’t go so well.”
    â€œYes, but that was because she didn’t understand me. She knew nothing of beauty, nothing of queen cups and bluebells. You know my heart.”
    I study him for a minute and I almost take him seriously, and then I remember that it’s Cooper saying these things. I swat him again.
    â€œYou cheated on her with the florist from Spokane Valley,” I say. “And when you were engaged to her, you slept with the florist in Moscow. You’re a rogue, Cooper Easterling, and I know better than to believe anything you have to say.”
    He shrugs. “It’s the flowers,” he says with a sigh. “They intoxicate me, make me do things I shouldn’t do.”
    I walk over and straighten the green tissue that is stacked on the edge of the table. “I somehow think you’d be the same guy even if you sold cuts of meat.”
    He shakes his head. “Have you ever seen a butcher?” he asks. “I seriously doubt I’d have the same reputation if I were hauling slabs of elk and sides of pork across the state. I don’t think that cargo lends itself to romance.”
    â€œTrue.”
    He holds his hands in front of him, interlocks his fingers, stretches out his arms, and raises them above his head. His shirt rises and I see the gray hairs covering his belly. I turn away. The sight of his exposed abdomen makes me nervous. It’s too naked. He’s too vulnerable.
    â€œSo, who are you working on this week?” he asks as he drops his hands on his knees. His lips are starting to turn red from the cinnamon candy.
    â€œI’ve still got more to do on Conrad and Vivian,” I answer.
    â€œI thought you finished with those two. I thought the winter arrangement of