Little & Lion Page 10

  “Well, domestication probably has something to do with it,” I say with a grin.

  Just then, as if Rafaela’s comment registered with him, Tucker jerks away from her, stands tall on all fours, and struts to the other end of the counter, pointedly swishing his striped tail back and forth.

  “All I’m saying is my mom should have been more open to the idea of getting that hedgehog.”

  I laugh. “Hedgehog? Do they even do anything?”

  She purses her lips in mock agitation. “Suzette. You sound like my mother, and let me tell you, that’s not a good thing. My friend growing up kept one as a pet and she was so affectionate and sweet. Better than a hamster but not as needy as a dog.”

  “My brother wanted a tarantula,” I say, but Rafaela’s not listening. She’s leaning toward me, staring at my necklace.

  “Is that a Star of David?” Her tone is unsure, like she’s not certain she has the right name.

  “Oh. Yeah.” I hold it out so she can get a closer look. I call it a Magen David because that’s what Saul has always called it. “My brother gave it to me.”

  “I didn’t know you were Jewish.” I can’t read her voice this time, and I feel my chest tighten like it did every time I was sure the girls on my dorm floor were about to say something offensive.

  “Since I was eleven. My mom and I converted.” I don’t mean the words to sound so short, but it’s habit. I’ve had this conversation what seems like hundreds of times. It generally goes one of two ways, and I really don’t want it to go the bad way with Rafaela.

  She nods slowly, her eyes running over each point of the star. “That’s cool. I grew up Catholic. My mom’s a big believer. I’m… undecided.”

  “That’s how my brother feels, too,” I say, just as the shop phone rings.

  I look at my messenger bag, wondering if I should be taking notes and if there’s any paper left over in there from last semester. Next thing I know, she’s picked up the phone and is shoving the receiver in my face. I shake my head. I haven’t even been here five minutes and I’ve never answered a phone in any professional capacity.

  But Rafaela won’t take no for an answer, so a moment later I clear my throat and say in my best phone voice—one thus far reserved for elderly relatives and my parents’ friends—“Good morning, Castillo Flowers.”

  She nods with smiling eyes and leans against the wall, watching me.

  The customer on the other end wants to order two dozen roses: red. Simple enough. I repeat his order aloud and Rafaela slides a notepad in front of me, along with a pen. I jot down his information and then don’t take my eyes off Rafaela, who guides me through the rest of the call: finding the next open delivery slot in the book by the register, taking down the message the customer wants written on the accompanying card.

  “That was intense,” I say after I’ve hung up the phone.

  “No better way to learn than jump in, right? You were a total pro.” She peers down at the pad of paper, inspecting the customer’s note for the card. “‘For my sweet Darlene. My love for you is irreplaceable. My heart is for you, always.’ Christ. That’s pretty sappy, even for someone who’d order two dozen roses.”

  “They’re not all like this?”

  “You have no idea.” She turns the book of scheduled deliveries back toward her. “So much of our business is apology bouquets. My favorite was the one that said, ‘I didn’t know she was your cousin. Sorry.’”

  “Seriously?” My apron is hanging loose on the sides and the strings dangle by my legs, tickling the backs of my knees. I loop them around my waist, but my strings don’t wrap around me twice, like Rafaela’s do.

  “It was my favorite, but not the worst I’ve seen, by far. It’s amazing to me that people think flowers make up for acting like a fuckface.”

  “Well, what would you do?” I ask, genuinely curious. “You know, to apologize for acting like a fuckface.”

  She taps her pen against the delivery book. “All I’m saying is flowers are lazy. If I pissed off the person I was sleeping with, I’d show them I was sorry, not just say it. I’d cook their favorite meal and do something that they loved and I hated, like taking a long motorcycle ride, or going to the ballet. I would just—I don’t know. Life’s too short to be so predictable.”

  My arm tingles at her words.

  Before I can think of a response, the front door opens: a woman wearing an armful of jangly bracelets who has wandered in to find a housewarming gift. Rafaela walks over to help her and I stand close by, observing the way she interacts with the customer. She sends her off with a wave and a potted plant I don’t know the name of.

  “What type of succulent was that?” I pick up an identical one sitting on the table. Its thick, waxy leaves are ringed with red, and the sturdy stems holding it up look like miniature tree trunks.

  “You really don’t know anything about flowers or plants, huh?” Rafaela says, coming to stand next to me. “That’s a jade plant. Crassula ovata. They come from South Africa.”

  I gently finger the smooth, rounded leaves. “I knew it was a succulent!”

  “You’re cute,” she says with a little smile.

  And from the corner of my eye, I can see Rafaela watching me. I feel shy being watched by someone I have a crush on, and it reminds me of DeeDee’s pool party when I wore my bikini in front of Emil. Did she mean I’m cute in the way people mean when you say something they think is funny? Or cute like she would be interested in kissing me, too?

  I smile back, but I feel like I can barely breathe. My hands are starting to sweat again, and when I squeeze past her, pretending to need a drink from my water, our arms brush and mine tingles again from the contact. I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to how small it is in here, how Rafaela is close by almost anywhere she’s standing in the room.

  Ora walks in a couple of hours later, as I’m ringing up what Rafaela informed me is a moth orchid. The cash register is old and I’m flustered trying to work it under the gaze of three sets of eyes, but I get through the transaction without needing help, if a bit slowly.

  “First day and you’ve already sold an orchid?” Ora says after the customer has left. She smiles her warm smile at me. “Impressive.”

  I nod to my left. “Rafaela talked him into it.”

  “You’re supposed to be lying on the beach,” Rafaela says to her aunt.

  “Oh, I never made it over there.” Ora peers into a couple of the refrigerated cases, taking some sort of mental inventory. “Too much to do at home.”

  Rafaela rolls her eyes. “We hired someone so you wouldn’t have to come in so much. What, you don’t trust me to hold down the fort?”

  “You know that’s not true,” Ora says in a voice that conveys it to be entirely true. “Where’s Héctor?”

  “Out on a delivery—imagine that!” Rafaela’s mouth quirks up as Ora turns to her with a raised eyebrow.

  “Okay, okay.” Ora rearranges the glazed ceramic pots of African violets on a table near the front of the small room. “I know when I’m not wanted. Call me if you have any trouble locking up?”

  “Will do. Want me to bring something home for dinner?” Rafaela asks as her aunt leans over Tucker, planted in the window seat, and reaches down to give him a head rub.

  “Well, with all this extra time I have now, I suppose I should cook something,” Ora says thoughtfully. “I’ll stop by the store.”

  We watch Ora cross the parking lot to her car. “You two seem to get along okay,” I say.

  “She’s a little overbearing but not so bad most of the time.” Rafaela shrugs but still offers up nothing else. She plants herself in front of the case of peony blooms, same as the first day I was here. “Want to learn how to do an arrangement? Ora’s going to make you start doing them soon, probably. She makes me do two a week.”

  “Sure.” I follow her to the back room, which is bigger than I thought it’d be. It has a long table with shelves above it, a refrigerated case full of blooms, boxes
of unpacked vases and ribbon, and a small table with two chairs next to the same type of fridge Iris and I had in our dorm.

  Rafaela clears the table of debris, sweeping cut stems and dead petals and loose leaves to the floor. Some of the potting soil sticks to her arms and I want to brush it away, find some excuse to touch her again. I don’t think she’d mind, but I clasp my hands behind my back. I watch her place the burgundy-colored peonies on the table, along with a handful of broad, ribbed leaves that she tells me are called hosta.

  “Are you right-handed?” she asks, and when I nod, she says, “Then you start making the arrangement in your left hand. Put the largest flower in the center.…”

  Rafaela may act like she doesn’t care much about her job, but she’s good at it. She treats the blooms and leaves with care and never takes her eyes off them, as if she’s creating a work of art like the one inked on her arm. I guess she is, in a way.

  I watch her instead of her hands forming the bouquet, taking in the small curves of her profile—the way her lips pout from the side and the smooth line of her tattooless shoulder. I’m not listening to what she’s saying as she walks me through the composition and I’m certainly not retaining it for later. The bell from the shop floor snaps me out of my daze.

  Rafaela wipes her hands on her apron. “Want to take care of this one?”

  I walk out to the front and immediately stop when I see who’s standing at the counter. “What are you doing here?”

  Lionel’s red hair and wrinkled gray pants and freckly arms look foreign in this room—too familiar in a place where I’m still getting my bearings. He usually avoids putting himself into new situations if he can help it, and him being inside the shop when he doesn’t have to be makes me wonder if something is wrong.

  He doesn’t answer me, at least not right away. His eyes are glued to a point behind me. And something in me drops when I realize he’s looking at Rafaela.

  “You told me to pick you up now,” he finally says, his eyes moving to me. But only briefly, before they slide back to Rafaela, who’s standing next to the bonsais, pretending not to notice the attention.

  “Oh. It’s already four?” I look at the clock above the counter. It’s five past, and I can’t believe how quickly the six hours have gone by, being in such a small space with just Rafaela, a snoozing cat, and countless containers of flowers and plants.

  “I can come back if you’re not ready…?”

  “No, it’s okay.” I begin untying my apron. “Rafaela, this is my brother, Lionel.”

  “Your brother—?” she begins, but then a flicker of understanding passes through her eyes as she remembers my explanation about Saul and my mother. “Oh, right. Cool.” She walks toward Lionel and offers a hand. “I’m Rafaela.”

  The grin on his face is big enough to light up the sky, and I can’t recall the last time I saw him this way: happy and hopeful and at a complete loss for words.

  I didn’t know you could identify such moments from the outside—that emotions that have nothing to do with you could be so evident, so tangible—but I am positive I just witnessed my brother falling in love at first sight.

  eleven.

  Before I left for work, Mom said Emil still isn’t well, and I feel guilty about all the time I just spent with Rafaela, all the different points throughout the day when I thought about what it would be like if she and I were together. Would we sneak off to the back room to kiss, or would we flirt with each other all day, letting the tension build up until we could leave the shop for the evening?

  “I want to bring Emil something,” I say to Lionel as we pull away from Castillo Flowers. “Matzo ball soup, from Langer’s.”

  It takes him a moment to respond, and I know it has everything to do with Rafaela. The dopey look on his face, the shine in his eyes, hasn’t gone away, even after we walked out of the shop. He turns down the volume on the radio.

  “Langer’s, huh? You really like him.”

  “Lion.” I flush because he’s not making this easy for me. I can admit to myself that I like Emil, that things have changed between us this summer, but it’s still not easy to talk about it. “He’s sick, and I want to help. I’d do it for DeeDee.”

  “No, DeeDee’s girlfriend would do it for DeeDee. And is he even the kind of sick that soup helps?” He takes a right onto a side street to turn us around. “But yeah, I’ll drive you. Only because you look so desperate.”

  I shouldn’t let him get away with that, but he’s helping me, so I bite my tongue.

  “Should I let Emil know we’re coming?” I ask when we’re headed toward the deli.

  “I don’t know, I’d probably like it if someone surprised me with food when I was sick,” Lionel says contemplatively before a pause. “Especially if it was someone I liked back. Speaking of liking people…” He clears his throat and I know exactly what’s coming next, but I feign ignorance. “What’s up with that girl you work with… Rafaela?”

  “What do you mean, what’s up with her?”

  He grins. “You know what I mean. What’s she like?”

  “I don’t know her very well.” I shrug and look out the window. I’m telling the truth, but I’m also trying to sound like I’m not interested in her. After the way Lion looked at her, I can’t tell him about my crush. Although I wish I could admit I understand why he was so instantly smitten, I’m weirded out that we can like the same person. “She’s friends with DeeDee’s girlfriend.”

  “Oh.” He pauses. “Is she into guys?”

  I think of the guy from the Palisades, the one who showed up looking for her at Dee’s party. “I think so. I know she’s dated a guy and a girl… but just because she’s friends with lesbians doesn’t mean she’s a lesbian.”

  “Thanks for stating the obvious, Little. It’s a valid question.” He looks at me. “What about you? You think she’s cute?”

  My face is so hot it’s in danger of catching fire. He never would have asked me this before I came out as… whatever I am. I shift in my seat. “She’s okay.”

  “Well, she seems cool, right?”

  “If you want to ask her out, ask her out.” I look straight ahead, at a faded pickup truck with ten thousand pieces of lawn equipment weighing down the bed.

  “It wouldn’t fuck things up at your new job?” He sounds genuinely concerned, and it seems unfair, withholding information from him, but telling him I have a crush on Rafaela seems pointless and a little cruel.

  The last girl Lionel dated was shortly before he was diagnosed, and he hasn’t expressed interest in anyone since then. Her name was Grayson and they had loud, passionate discussions about books and we all liked her a lot. He tried to hide it, but I know how upset he was after her family moved to New York the spring of his sophomore year.

  So I can’t say anything about Rafaela; I’d feel like I was crushing what little hope he has for normalcy these days. If he knew I was into her in even the smallest way, he’d step aside. He’s good like that.

  “You should do what you want. It’s just a summer job.” I shrug, and out of the corner of my eye, I see Lionel smile.

  The deli isn’t unreasonably far, but it’s out of the way. Emil’s house is in the same neighborhood as the flower shop; Lionel was nice to drive me. He complained during the trip to the deli and complains that the parking lot is a block away from the building, but he stops grumbling long enough to order a pastrami sandwich to go once we’re inside. I get one, too, along with Emil’s soup, which comes packaged in a tightly sealed mason jar.

  Soon we’re back on Sunset, heading up to Emil’s house in the hills of Silver Lake. This stretch of the street isn’t anything like the Sunset Strip, the flashy length of clubs and restaurants in West Hollywood, sunk down below the mansions on the hills. Over by us, on the eastern side of L.A., the street is a blend of bars with dark windows and brightly colored murals and strip malls that house everything from vegan restaurants to specialty sneaker shops.

  The sandwiches sit next to me
in their takeout containers, snug inside a bag, but I’m balancing the soup on my lap. The warmth against my thighs contrasts with the air conditioner blasting in Lion’s car. But as he makes a right turn and begins chugging up the hill, my legs start sweating, and I wonder if this is a mistake. Showing up at Emil’s unannounced, bringing him food like we do this all the time. I don’t even know what it means that he’s sick from the Ménière’s; he said he needed to stay home, but maybe he doesn’t want to see anyone at all.

  Too late now.

  The car is crawling along the incline, the houses spreading out farther the higher we go. I pull down the sun visor so I can look in the mirror, realizing only now that I haven’t seen my reflection since before I left work. Does it even matter, once someone has seen you in your pajamas after you just woke up, wrecked with jet lag? I guess it matters to me, because I run my fingers through my dreads and use the tube of peppermint lip balm sitting in Lionel’s console as we near the steep driveway that leads to the Choi home.

  “I’m gonna wait out here,” my brother says once we’ve pulled up in front.

  “You sure? Catherine will want to see you.” I nod toward Emil’s mom’s car parked in the driveway ahead.

  “Nah.” He starts fiddling with his phone. “Catherine knows too much.”

  He doesn’t have to say any more. There are no secrets between our family and Emil’s, and while we both like Catherine, it’s easier to deal with that discomfiting fact the less we see her.

  She greets me at the front door with a huge hug and a kiss. “Oh, honey, I have missed this face. Emil didn’t tell me you were coming over—I thought he was sleeping.”

  “He doesn’t know,” I say, admiring the long, jet-black Senegalese twists that drape over her shoulders. “I’m here to bring by some soup. I probably should’ve called—”

  “You should’ve done nothing of the sort, and your mother would be angry with me if she knew how long you’ve been standing on this porch. Come in, honey.” She looks past me to the car. “Is that Lionel?”