Free Julie and Romeo by Jeanne Ray

There was a dim automatic light. It was exactly like mine. It must have been made by the same company, the same year. It was Tuesday, so a shipment had just come in. There was just enough room for the two of us to stand. The flowers were packed in tight, bundles of twenty-four roses in plastic wrap, gerbera daisies and five kinds of lilies, pink and yellow stock, larkspur, Japanese iris, and buckets of leatherleaf ferns, jade, and galex. The flowers were up on shelves, they were everywhere. They surrounded us and pressed in against us. I loved the smell, too many smells to separate, blending and mixing, becoming one another. Everyone complains about carnations. They think carnations are low rent but they smell like heaven and they last forever. Give me carnations any day.
    Then, up on the top shelf, I saw an arrangement. A beautiful arrangement.
    “What is that?”
    Romeo looked up. “It’s for a birthday, first thing tomorrow morning.”
    “Who did it?”
    “I did it. Who do you think does the flowers around here?”
    “You made that?” I said, my voice so soft it was hardly my voice at all. “You did that yourself?”
    “Sure.”
    “Oh my God,” I said. “You really are a better florist than I am. That’s brilliant. I mean it. That’s one of the best looking arrangements I’ve ever seen.” It seemed reckless and at the same time had perfect balance. I never would have thought to use the tiny lilies of the valley and the foxgloves in with these giant white peonies. Almost white, they were a little pink around the edges with a few thin veins of red, and then there were white English roses, as big as the peonies. Where did he find roses like that? How did he dare to spend the money on them? White tulips came up from everywhere and all of it balanced, balanced like it was a painting, a perfectly composed still life, a carving in white-pink marble. But it was nothing like art. It was more like something that had simply occurred in nature and soon would grow and spread and take over the room. I had been looking at flowers for as long as I can remember using my eyes, and I had never seen anything so perfect before. “I think you may be a genius.”
    “What a nice thing to say.” And when he kissed me this time, we both knew we were ready. I wasn’t nervous at all now. I was happy, so happy it was all I could do to keep from laughing. Where else should two florists come together than in a walk-in cooler stuffed to the rafters with flowers? It was cool, right at forty degrees, but that was a cool that I was plenty used to. He pulled my sweater up over my head and I unbuttoned his shirt, buried my face against his chest. Tomorrow I would walk into my own cooler and open up the packages of South American rosesand it would never be the same. There was only a dim bulb in there, maybe forty watts. If there had been more time or more light I might have thought about my weight, my underwear, but maybe not. In that moment I was so happy with Romeo, I felt happy with myself. We took off our clothes and stood together naked and holding each other as much for warmth as for love.
    “Julie, it’s freezing. There’s a bed in the back.”
    I nodded and we let ourselves out of the freezer. To all the magazines that only document sex up to forty, I say this: Have you ever walked naked with your lover through a florist’s shop at midnight? No? Then don’t tell me about sex.
    The way was dark and he held my hand, stopping to kiss me and touch me. The very hands that had arranged those flowers arranged me now. We were Adam and Eve and this was a dark, flowered Eden. “In here,” he said.
    “Who’s that?”
    “Romeo?” I whispered. “Is that you?”
    “Raymond?” said Romeo.
    “Dad? Dad is that you?”
    Maybe a better woman would have stuck by her man, but my reflexes were too good for that. I was flying naked through the store. The lights came on just as I leapt for the cooler door. If Raymond Cacciamani caught sight