HEARTS AND FLOWERS
I made my way down the open stairway from my apartment, the mystery card secured to the tray of drinks by my thumb. My two friends sat beside the pool. Audrey, in a bright red splash of tropical print, sprawled in a chair, smoking. Naomi sat across the table from Audrey, smoothing her dripping blonde hair with her hands, an ivory beach towel draped across her shoulders. My two friends, so different from each other, so different from me. Audrey is wild ginger to Naomi's cool Cala lily. Me? I'm a simple daisy, filling out a mixed bouquet.
As I approached, Audrey stubbed out her cigarette and stretched her arms languidly. "We really should have come upstairs and saved you the trouble. It's getting kind of breezy out here." She reached over and passed Naomi the Calistoga and took her own rum and Coke.
"But it's so nice to get together again! It seems like we never see each other anymore." I sat down and stretched out my legs. "I want to get a head start on a tan this year." I tried to arch my eyebrow meaningfully as I sipped my unadulterated Coke.
"Sun's bad for you!" said Audrey, rolling her eyes.
Naomi nodded. "A good sunblock can help, though."
Audrey laughed, mouth wide open, showing her fine teeth. "That nice tan will age you before your time and give you skin cancer." She reached for her cigarette case. "Not that it's ever stopped me !"
Naomi's lips curved into a half smile. She glanced in the direction of the envelope on the tray and then out across the vacant pool. The breeze rippled the surface of the water so that ripple-reflections danced on the shrubbery and the cement block wall behind it.
"Oh, the card!" I said. "Remember that unsigned card I got in the mail?"
Audrey picked up the card, a florid Victorian affair featuring an arbor in a garden of pastel watercolor blossoms with an "of course you mean so much" verse and more flowers inside. "Someone who cares," was carefully printed in neat block letters below the verse. "Yeah. Gee, I remember, we sat around trying to puzzle out who could have sent it to you."
Naomi looked thoughtful, her chin resting in her clasped hands. "It was raining that night."
"Raining cats and dogs! It was a good thing you only live downstairs. I had a heck of a time when I left. Didn't we decide it could only have been Bill who sent it?"
Naomi pushed her damp hair back and looked from Audrey to me. "I don't remember that."
Audrey shrugged. "Maybe you'd left by that time. But at least you ," she said, stabbing a red-painted nail in my direction, "did just as Auntie Audrey would have done and you boldly asked him out to dinner!"
I nodded, unable to suppress a grin.
At Naomi's perplexed look Audrey explained, "Bill's a guy from work. I'm surprised you haven't seen him hanging around here." She waved her cigarette in my direction. "See! You throw caution to the wind and now you've got your man! Listen to the voice of experience."
"Sure. Three ex-husbands that's some experience!" Audrey scowled and I continued, "The only thing is, Bill didn't send this card."
"What? So how do you know? Did you actually ask him?"
"Yep"
"Come on! Would he tell you if he did send it?" She eyed me speculatively. "Have things gone that far?"
"Oh, I know." And I did know. Things have really gone that far. "Bill is definitely not the hearts and flowers type. I could see him sending something along the lines of a Far Side card, maybe. Anyway, he said he didn't send this one. We had a good laugh over that."
"So that's great, too! You never would have gotten to know each other in a million years if you hadn't taken my advice and made the first move. And you wouldn't have done that without some encouragement from him . Even if you only thought it was from him."
In my mind the light was beginning to dawn. "So did you send it Audrey?"
I knew I'd caught her off guard. Audrey can lie, but I've known her long enough to recognize the evasive look in her eye. Her surprise at my question was genuine. For a moment she couldn't speak.
"Hmmm. No. But it's a good idea! Hey, I wish I'd thought of it! Well, anyway, think what a good lesson this is. Next time you can go up to a guy and just ask him out. You've done it once, you can do it again."
"The way things are, Audrey, it'll be a long time before next time. If it ever comes at all"
Both of my friends stared; Audrey with narrow-eyed smug satisfaction, Naomi with a bewildered pout.
Finally Naomi asked quietly, "When did all this happen?"
"I guess it has happened fast. I really believe this is Mr. Right. I can feel it. I'm thinking of moving in with him."
Audrey looked up at the sky, wistfully. "I know the feeling. At least three times I've found Mr. Right. Lordy, it's always so..."
"Oh come on Audrey. You know I'm not like you."
She cocked her head and grinned. "And thank god! Well, back to the mystery. Who did send the card? You have a heartbroken admirer out there somewhere. Did you think of that? Someone who wants you to know he cares about you. If it isn't Bill, I guess he's out of luck!"
Naomi had been sitting quietly. Suddenly she rose to her feet, gulped, and casting a helpless vacant glittery glance at me, hurried off around the hedge toward her apartment, head bowed, bare feet slapping on the cement.
"Did I say something?" Audrey watched Naomi's retreating back, a furrow between her brows. She turned to me and our eyes met with the same question, the same answer. The light breeze picked up the hearts and flowers card and plopped it onto the cement, where it skittered along in the direction Naomi had taken, veered slightly and tumbled into the pool, where it bobbed uncertainly.