Excerpt: Sideways Study of a Brown Bag

CHAPTER 3
DAISIES, SIX

The violet orchid took no more than [two cubic feet of air], but it consumed the block, as far as Margaret was concerned. She spent the morning shuffling past it sideways, ducking under its room-length swing, shaking it off her shoulders, brushing it out of her hair. The violet, so loud, her weekly phone calls with [designers and dealers] grew nearly impossible to conduct, violet hue like a foghorn blasting out the windows.

When Victor chimed through the front door carrying a firecracker spray of [daisies, black-eyed susans, and clownish pink pansies], she very nearly came undone. “No,” she threw up her hand. “This is not what we do now.” She shook her head and closed her eyes.

Victor stopped, peered at her curiously over his thick-rimmed, half moon glasses. “Madam Margaret,” he said slowly. “You told me to get them.”

Her eyes closed, and she pictured them, counted them, by memory: daisies, six; black-eyed susans, five, two in front, three in back; pansies popping through green [garnish] one, two, four, six.

“They’re Gabe and Audra’s, Dear. Our new best friends.”

“No! I told you to have them delivered!” She dropped her hand, open palm down, rumpling the open pages of a catalog on the counter. She smelled them. They reeked of florist coolers and chloroform. The hairy eyes of the Black-eyed Susans waggled, barely detectable. For a moment, she was sure she felt their pulse.

Victor waved her away and plunked the vase of wildflowers on the end table beside the [sofa]. “They’re next door. We’re not going to have them delivered next door. That’s ridiculous.”

“Fine,” she said. “Take them over soon, please.”

“Oh, you’re taking them over yourself.” He pulled a tissue out of the box on the counter. Margaret smelled his cologne--subtle, earth--when he strode past her and bent low over the floor in front of the door. He plucked a small piece of chewed gum from the freshly swept marble. “Disgusting,” he grimaced.

A small, thick cobweb hung in the corner above the door. It held something small and legged, wrapped into an ashy white cocoon. She lowered her face into a daisy and held it there while she pulled back the heavy, paint-chipped door.

Bells clanged, and Audra stooped into a deep-knee bend, stared into the bottom shelf of a glass display case full of thick, tarnished costume jewelry. “Margaret!” Twelve teeth. She flinched when she stood, and Margaret heard her knees crack. “So glad you came to visit! What are these?”

Margaret’s neck grew stiff with restraint. “These are for you.” She pushed them toward Audra. “An official welcome.”

“Beautiful! Thank you so much.”

Margaret followed her into the shadowed back of the shop. A child’s rusting fire truck nosed out from under a green table.

“Gabe’s in the back office,” Audra spoke over her shoulder, and Margaret noticed a Nike swoosh of hair clinging to the corner of her eyelashes. “Come say hello.”

“Of course. Yes.” Margaret said. A seamstress’s dress mannequin stood resolute, sentinel, beside a short and fatigued flight of stairs.

“Gabe!” Audra yelled. “Gabe!”

A file drawer slid closed, dull footsteps, and Gabe emerged, barefoot, at the top of the stairs.

“Margaret’s here.” Audra tipped her head sideways. Right here. Here she is. Do you see?

Margaret stared at his bare toes in the dusty floor. A faint line separated dust-caked skin from clean skin. It ran along the thick of the ball under his big toe all the way to the meat of his heel.

“Great flowers!” He said.

INSERT TOUR OF ANTIQUES AND RELICS AND SUCH AND SUCH.
...
She nicked her toe against a stone door stop on the way out. She stopped on the sidewalk outside and lifted her heel. A small scuff. She wet her thumb and rubbed it out.

As she stood upright again, she grew dizzy, felt her face drain pale, and she pressed one palm against the cool window of the Lost and Found, gave her weight to her arm. As she pushed herself up, she spied resting against a small kitchen stool, one brushed brass letter box--a stoic, thick-maned lion guarding the [lid]. She stared at it solidly, and it stared back. Her finger smudged the glass, and she left its image. Pointing.