FLOWERS

Ring!

"Debbie, you have..."

"What? No, I didn't call for a messenger this afternoon."

"No," the receptionist said, "you have more flowers!"

"Really? Guess what? I've got more FLOWERS!" Debbie shouted at the guys in the office.

"Well, hurry up and go get them so we can go to lunch," Rob told her.

She ran into the hall.

"No, wait, Debbie.  Come back."

Mike and Rob stood at the end of the hall.

"Close your eyes and sit at your desk," Rob instructed. "Don't open 'em. Keep 'em closed!"

"All right, all right.  I can't take the suspense." Debbie lay her head on her desk, hands over her eyes.

Steve carried in the present and lay it on her desk.

"It's here!" Debbie gasped.

She opened the pink and baby blue wrapping on the tallest bouquet she had ever seen. A silver balloon reflected her bright face.  She slowly tore the pretty paper, making her way down to the actual flowers. The balloon floated high above the red and white tulips and baby's breath which sprang from the dainty bouquet. Mike and Steve dug into the box which contained the glass vase for a card, for any sign of a giver's name.

Mike examined the curvature of the fancy glass vase.

"I knew you'd be surprised. No signature." Debbie stared at the scrawled words. She looked up at Mike but his grave red face was turned away.

"They're beautiful.  So fresh." And they left for lunch.

"I can't make up my mind.  Where should we go?" Debbie asked for the tenth time.

"KNow what? I've never gotten unsigned flowers before.  And I'm 27 years old." Debbie sighed.

"It's not me because I would sign them.  I  would want them to know I sent them," Rob said.  "But maybe I should, if it gets a reaction like yours. Do you have a secret admirer?" he asked.

"Is there someone special in your life, Debbie?" Mike asked.  But he was looking away from her.

"Not that I know of.  But you know me," she said.

"I do?" he asked softly.

"What's more exciting? Knowing or not knowing?" Rob said.

"Not knowing," Debbie answered emphatically.

Where should we go?"

"It's up to you. It's your birthday," Mary said.

"I have a taste for Japanese. But should we? What do you think, Mike?"

"Pearl's," he joked.  "No, Houlihan's.  Actually, it's on your T&E, Mary."

"Houlihan's? All right.  No. Let's go to Dosanko's!" And Debbie's mind was made up.

Mike's face fell. "Shoot!" he said with a grin.

"Good choice, Debbie," Mary said.

"I think so, too," she said.

The four sat at the wide round table at the sunny Japanese restaurant.  Debbie clutched the edge of the table.  The last traces of nervousness around her coworkers still remained. They always made her laugh and she hated to bare her smile. The teenage awkwardness that comes with wearing braces for years never left her.  Throughout the meal, Mike's red face was turned away from her.

"Who is it?!" she shrieked.

"Just stop with the 'who sent the flowers'!" Mike shouted.

"Who do you think it was, Debbie?" Rob pursued.  He looked snidely at Mike.

"No, let's stop," she politely waved it away.

She returned to the office. Crystal, her boss, Mary, Ann, and Rob stood or sat in chairs around her desk.

"No one signed them," someone was saying.

"Debbie," Mike said softly. "I wish they were from me, but they're not." Mike's voice when he said "wish" was filled with yearning and sadness. His face was still red and he looked sadly down at his typewriter.

"They're not? Really, they're not?" Debbie ducked down to look him gently in the eye and he shook his head no.

Debbie's face fell. She dragged her feet to her desk and sat down, staring through the stems of the beautiful bouquet and fingering the silver strand of ribbon that tied the balloon to the flowers.

So, it wasn't Mike.

And it wasn't Steve. It certainly wasn't Rob. Or was it Steve?

It had to be the guys at the coffee shop.  It had to be.  Debbie could not think of a single other.

"How about the gym," Mary asked her.

Debbie's face lit up in introspection.

"Ah, hah," Mike said.

"But they don't know my name," she said.

She thought of all the handsome guys in the office.

"Well, I work in an officeful of gorgeous guys," she said to Mike and Rob.

"Not us," Rob said.

"She did too mean us," Mike argued softly.

"I meant everybody," Debbie said graciously.

"See? Thanks, Debbie," Mike said appreciatively.

She thought of a good-looking guy, way off in Editorial. She thought of Scott. No, he wouldn't do that.

"Who were you with last night?" Mary said.

Debbie thought of the Marriott Hotel, The View they occupied at the top of the hotel. She had left with Ken to get her stuff at the office.  Ken...

"Debbie, you've got to find out who sent those flowers." Crystal said.

"Ugh.  I feel like I'm at work. I'm so tired of tracing things!" Debbie groaned. More follow-up calls. More paperwork.

It could have been Mike but it wasn't.

"Did you really think I sent them?" Steve asked her.  They were in the technology room.  Scott sat with his back to them at the computer.

"Well, I don't know." Debbie said bashfully.

"So, you have a Secret Admirer?" Scott smiled at her.

Kooch, sitting in his office across the hall, looked angry.  Debbie had stomped into his office and told him.

"Did you ever get flowers?" Steve asked Scott.

"No," he said.

"Well, maybe you should date a guy," Steve stated.

They all laughed and Scott shook his head and shrugged in embarrassment.

"Did you ever give anyone flowers?" Debbie asked Scott.

"Once," Scott admitted, abashed by this honesty. He kept his eyes on the computer.

"Once? What kind of guy are you?" Debbie said.

"Cheap."

"What?" She thought he said deep.

"Cheap."

"Oh. Well, you're smart," she said to his back.

"I really thought they were from Mike," she said to Scott and Steve, unafraid in her big disappointment.  "And when he said they weren't, I said, 'they're not?'" Debbie recounted the solemn afternoon.

"It was one of the guys at the gym, you Aerobics Dog," Steve said.

"They don't know my name."

"Do they call you Baby?"

"Hey, I like being called Baby," Debbie confessed.

"I think I know who they're from.  But I don't want to say," she smiled.

FLOWERS
Spring 1989
Denise Hickey

LA VERANDA

"Debbie, would you like to join us for a drink?"

"O.K.," she said to her boss.  She looked at her watch.  Ten after five. Good thing she had not left work right away.  She ran to the ladies' room.  When she returned, her attractive boss was applying lipstick in her office.  Mike wore his long tweed coat which she was especially fond of, soft white scarf around his neck.

A new rumor had just been circulated.  Steve sat in his office among his exotic unique plants, at the PC.  Word had it that the PC contained X-rated video games.  Crystal, Mike, and Debbie stood poised behind his chair.  They stared at the blank screen. Kooch joined them.  Still, the screen remained blank. Finally, an image flickered into view. But so far, the image remained in a gray blur of dots and bars. Suddenly, a woman's face emerged on the screen, a "private part" in her mouth.

Instantly, everyone shrieked in surprise and ran out of Steve's office, as if zapped by an electric shock.

"Debbie! Don't come near me! Unless you wanna touch me." Kooch's voice shuddered and he disappeared into his office in the small private hallway.

An editor walked by.  "What's going on? That was some loud laughter."

The Beanstalk was too crowded.

"Let's try La Veranda," Mike suggested.

They sat on stools at the elegantly quiet bar. Debbie drank in the dim cozy atmosphere. Small pizza squares were passed around by the bartender. Debbie handed Mike a napkin.

"Thanks," he said. He stood by her. Steve and Crystal were already involved in a deep discussion about work.

"Do you know what we do?" Crystal asked Debbie.

"Well, we can show her," Mike siad.

"Why don't you sit down?" the bartender suggested.

"I wanna get closer to the women," Mike said.

And he launched into a flood of work related advice to Debbie.

"I know George Behar," he said.

"Who's that?" Debbie said.

"CEO of McGrath-O'Connor.  He got me in. Told me this is the top company."

"Oh, George Behar.  You've got connections." Debbie said.

"You can say, 'Yeah, I work for Commodity Services, we've got a view of Manhattan..."

"Isn't life wonderful?" Debbie giggled.

Mike didn't say anything.

"Now, I have a feeling you came here on a whim," Mike said.

"Well, I may not seem ambitious, but I want to do something with my life," Debbie said.

"That's it.  Not ambitious," Mike said kindly.

"I have to get going.  No, that's alright, you can stay." Crystal siad to Debbie.

Mike went to the phones.  He stood there, puffing away on a cigarette.  In spite of herself, Debbie thought he looked cool. He smiled slyly at Steve, sitting at the bar.

"Another drink for this beautiful lady?" the bartender asked.

"You are beautiful," Mike said.  He stood a few feet away, looking at her in approval.  He looked like a little man.

"No, I'm not," she said.  She thought she might cry, any minute, if she accepted the compliment.  "But I don't think so when I look in the mirror."

"Esteem," Mike pointed out.

November 88
Denise
Corporate America

FOLLOW

C'mon people, now!  I'm beginning to think you're bored.  I only have one follower, someone from SECAPA (Southeastern CT Authors & Publishers Association).  Don't you wanna hear more about Debbie and Corporate Mike?  Click on the FOLLOW with Google Friend Connect -- you know the FOLLOW widget button gadget thing.  It's anonymous.  I promise.

Next: LA VERANDA

Corporate Mike and Debbie are back on the lively Manhattan restaurant scene.

RETURN TO THE EAST VILLAGE

RETURN TO THE EAST VILLAGE

("Well, I didn't expect it to be glamorous")

The evening at Grampa's Belle Gente Restaurant was lively and entertaining.  Red wine was poured by the waiter into the three girls' glasses without comment.  Grampa promptly seated his waiting guests, starry-eyed at their chance to glimpse a celebrity, or "celeb" as Scott called them.

"Are you on the waiting list?" Grampa, the perfect maitre d' asked Debbie, the oldest of the three.

"No," she responded.

"Why? Don't you want to eat here?" the famous Munsters star chided.

Debbie had lived in New York since June and was accustomed to surprises.  She was quite the envy of her younger sister Kimberly as well as her sister's best friend Carly, decidedly two of the more starstruck of the midnight crowd.  Once during dinner, Grampa had even winked at Carly.

Dinner was consumed, wine was drank.  "Drunk?" Debbie, forever the English major, queried.

The beat of Bleecker Street pulsated with the twang of rock n roll bands at the Red Lion Cafe and The Bitter End, the begging of bums and the bustle of the student-age crowd combining to form the hub typical of Central Greenwich Village.

Gradually, the girls walked to a cooler, less dense area, where the road widened, the crowds thinned.  Single students and groups of three walked along the darkened street.  Rock and roll bars and sidewalk cafes were left behind as the festive cheer gave way to dimly lit grocery stores and parking garages shut down for the night.  The echo of metal, like the banging of silver drums, each evening as the doors were rolled over storefronts, crashing to the ground, had long since died.

Broadway was barely recognizable.  Where by day, the funky melee of retail shops announced outrageous specials, unique outfits, blasted bouncy hit tunes, now it stood menacingly silent.

"Where's eighth?" Debbie wailed in a frenzy.  The girls walked forward, then at Debbie's request walked north.  Or was it south?

"Which way's east and which is west?" Debbie cried.  "I can never get them straight." The two other girls were growing weary, impatient.  Kimberly and Carly had thought Debbie knew her way around the city as, all day long, she had pointed out this tourist attraction and that.

Porch stoops became dilapidated; the cracked sidewalks, cluttered with dirty magazines, torn cardboard boxes, and rag-filled grocery carts, as the transformation from the avant-garde West to the decadence of the East became apparent.

Warehouses sighed with ominous secrets as the former jovial crowd became tense, ethnic, ignorant.

"Spare some change?" A beggar who smelled of an unwashed pile of laundry approached them in a hoarse voice.  Debbie handed over her packaged remnants of the evening's supper and he scuttled away, ecstatic.

A lone guitarist drawled mournfully in the middle of Astor Place, barren in the listless night, as a long-haired, blue-jeaned group mellowed to his lament.  The girls crossed Astor Place, burrowing further into the East Village to St. Mark's.

"Where...where's the Sockman? All the jewelry stands are gone.  No, there's two.  Over there.  The sunglasses...they're gone, too.  Everything..." Debbie bemoaned the loss of the all-night outdoor marts, a prevalent part of her frequent summer forays, the bargaining camaraderie of the summer crowd, the belligerent bums.

The trendy section of Eighth Street was grim without its usual array of all-night jewelry stands, piles of last year's magazines, tables bedecked with the summer's hottest shades and cheapest sunglasses, trendy tee shirts, French postcards, punk hairdos at the point of creation, sloppy pizzas, melting ice creams, all deftly displayed.  The former favorite GrassRoots Cafe was lost without its familiar counterparts.

Now dreary brownstones huddled together, as if in cohorts.  A sole punk rocker sought solace on the steps of his chosen haunt.  Two scrawny men, their black leather jackets flung over torn jeans, sauntered ahead of the girls, headed toward the somber shadows cast over the sign that read "St. Mark's Place."

Up past the Cloisters, that utterly charming old cafe that Debbie had wanted to try all summer.  By the wan light of the November moon, she peered through the black wrought iron gates which barricaded its dainty courtyard.

Doorsteps lay deserted, windows long since showed no light, no familiar tunes broke the jaded silence of the East Village.

"My old neighborhood," Debbie thought aloud.

"Oh, Debbie," Kimberly said in dismay.

"Yeah, I guess I didn't realize..."

"Well, I didn't expect it to be glamorous," the younger sister said matter-of-factly.

"You sound like Sherri," Debbie observed, mentioning yet another sister.

The temperature dropped, ever so slightly.  Its lead weight sank into the cold dull air.

A rude convertible containing greasy passengers screeched by, jarring their unspoken thoughts with ethnic rock.

"I'm cold," Carly complained.

Debbie tightened her denim jacket around her.

She turned to the girls.  "Let's get outta here," she said, as they headed for the yellow illumination of Steve's Ice Cream Parlor.

Doc. # 0444D
ALL THAT GLITTERS
Denise Hickey
Summer of '87

Next Up: RETURN TO THE EAST VILLAGE

Youngest sister Kimberly and her best friend Carly visit Debbie in New York City. Next, more scenes from Corporate Life in New York, followed by an impending sense of being called home in a serious sequence of events.

CAFETERIA

She sat with her comrades from the sales department in the corporate cafeteria.  She clenched her hands to her sides in girlish apprehension.  She tried to pay attention to what each person was talking about.  But it didn't matter.  They were here, they had just finished assembling the last of the information packages, "media kits," she called them, to mail to prospective customers.  They could joke around and talk about anything or nothing at all.

"Debbie, do you usually cook or eat out?" Rob asked her.

"Well, at first I ate out, then I ordered in every night, then I cooked, and finally, I can't afford to do anything."

Everyone laughed.

"I always wondered if you ordered in every night."

"Oh, it's so expensive."

The talk turned to the apartments with more than one room, backyards, and who needed the City, anyway?

Debbie launched her description of life in the East Village.  Two of the girls who worked in Circulation had lived in the Village all their lives and no one at the table could relate to it.

"Oh, but it was fun," Debbie said, and her eyes began to look far away.  "We lived in this building right on the bus route.  The bus used to squeeeeeak, come to a stop and then start again, all night long."

She paused, trying to recollect the flavor of the East Village, its sights and sounds, the feeling.  She looked up at Mike, sitting across the table from her.  His eyes had taken on a softness, as he gazed at Debbie, a look of longing on his young babyish face.

"Oooooh, I can't believe we lived like that," she managed to finish, startled by her co-worker's attention.

0522D

ALL THAT GLITTERS
Denise Hickey
Summer 88