There’s something outrageous in the soft budding implications of the right kind of whorled red roses. My fingers want to slip inside the warm coloured heart of them and stroke outward. Then lick. Usually I am a sane girl, careful in my associations, not prey to flighty fancies, but occasionally there’s just something about flowers. The impulses leap, as if from a slipped leash, and land, quivering, in front of a garden of alluring possibilities, fiercely demanding meaning to be applied to simple explainable mundane things.
“I bought him flowers here before I left. I wonder what happened to them. They were beautiful enough to eat.” She’s standing, weight on her hip, with her head slightly tilted to the side, one hand making vague gestures in the air. In her pocket was a gun made of black ink, a paper paged monstrosity of honest secrets, his phone number. He hung the moon. Her eyes tighten. “No, I don’t want to know.“
The owner of Love’s Touch is a pleasant coppery woman, friendly and prosaic. She’s asked me to start tomorrow for a short shift beginning at eleven. In my interview she asked my age and after my family. Both of which are usually not allowed, but in this case I understand. Significant others or parents are known to threaten girls who work in such places, as if the sex toys on the back wall mitigate them from all social responsibility. All bet’s off, there’s latex present. “You don’t have the kind of boyfriend who would crash in and grab you by the neck, yelling, if he found out you worked here, do you?” My first reaction is, “Dear me, people would put up with those people?” before I remember, well, yes. Of course they do. Everyone does at some point or another, it’s just a matter of extremity, how willing one is to be victimized.