"You are sick? You are well? You are all right? You need a doctor?"

"No, no, I'm fine, Mrs. Venito, thank you, just fine."

"It's just you are so quiet. You don't go nowhere. For a young girl you are so quiet. I worry."

"Don't worry. I'm fine. It's all right. I'm-making plans."

"Ah. Good girl. I see. Good girl."

Catherine stomped into the bathroom the moment Mrs. Venito went away, in order to curse without the housekeeper hearing her. "Old busybody!" she hissed. "Nosy old troublemaker! Why can't she leave me alone!" Then she saw her reflection in the mirror. She was wearing her terrycloth bathrobe. It was just after noon. She hadn't combed her hair. In fact, she hadn't washed her hair for the past week.

In a helpless fury at herself, at life in general, Catherine showered, set her hair, and dressed. She grabbed up her purse and stormed out of the apartment.

It was a perfect June day, but as she walked along she hated the day and she hated herself. Turning off onto Seventy-second Street, she caught sight of her reflection in a plate-gla.s.s window. She stopped, stared, and hated herself even more. There she was in her lavender linen dress with sh.e.l.l earrings, for heaven's sake, so original of her. When would she ever have any style of her own?

At first hazily, then with more clarity, as she stared at her reflection in the gla.s.s, ma.s.ses of flowers appeared. Spring flowers: periwinkle and pink hyacinths, sunny daffodils, creamy and flamered tulips, buckets and buckets of them. The flowers made her think of Everly.

Without another thought, she walked into the shop. She had only a little money left from her grandmother's Christmas check, but she had to buy some flowers to cheer herself up.

The bell on the door tinkled. A tiny old lady, rather a trollish-looking lady, came rushing up to Catherine. Clapping her hands together, she said, "Youf come about de shob!"

Catherine stared. The little woman was short and plump. Her hair was pulled back in a bun so untidy that most of it flew out around her head in a halo. Her eyes were bird-bright, dark as chocolate.

"I haf been nearly out of my mind, but now here you are!" the little bird-woman said.

"Excuse me?"

"You are here about de shob?"

"The job? I didn't-" The fragrance of flowers entranced her. A job! With flowers! "But I suppose-"

A short fat man in red suspenders and a red bow tie stormed in from behind the curtain that separated the front from the back of the shop. He glared at Catherine.

"Jan!" the little woman cried out. "She's come about the shob!"

Now the little man looked suspicious. He rolled onto the heels of his foot, tucked his thumbs into his suspenders, and squinted.

"So! You want a job. Where are your references? Do you have any experience?"

The little troll wife turned back to Catherine, looking worried, encouraging, and hopeful all at once.

Catherine took a deep breath. Then, in her best boarding school manner, she said, "My name is Catherine Eliot, and I've just graduated from Miss Brill's School for Girls. I have no retail experience. But I have spent many hours helping my grandmother and her gardeners in her garden in East Hampton, which is quite extensive, several acres, actually, so I know quite a bit about flowers and houseplants as well. As for references, I have none with me, but I would be glad to give you a list of names."

The little troll man looked surprised enough to explode right out of his suspenders.

"Gut!" he yelled at Catherine. He turned to his wife. "Henny, find her the forms. I am late for the church." He bustled off behind the curtain.

My G.o.d! I've got a job in a flower shop! Catherine thought. She wanted to run home to write Leslie, to call her grandmother.

The bell tinkled. Behind Catherine, the door from the street opened. A distinguished-looking man in a gray suit entered.

"Good afternoon, Mrs. Vanderveld. Do you have a dozen nice red roses for me?"

"For you, I have sublime red roses!"

Smiling, head bobbing, Mrs. Vanderveld led the man over to a large gla.s.s refrigerated display case full of flowers in buckets.

At that moment the phone rang.

"Could you, dear?" Mrs. Vanderveld asked Catherine, her arms full of roses.

"Could I ...?" For a moment Catherine didn't understand. Then, her face flushed with embarra.s.sment at her dimness, she raced for the phone. "h.e.l.lo?"

There was a long silence on the other end.

"h.e.l.lo?" she said again.

"Is this Vanderveld Flowers?" The voice was disdainful. At once Catherine's euphoria dissolved. She had begun all wrong. She should have answered the phone with the name of the shop. How could she think she could hold a job! She didn't even know anyone who worked, except for Patsy Wells, the scholarship girl at school.

Mrs. Vanderveld took the telephone, holding it to her ear with her shoulder while boxing the roses for the man. He paid and left. Mrs. Vanderveld hung up the phone. Catherine waited to be reprimanded.

"Oh, dear, oh, dear, I never can find a pen around here, and I must leave a message for Jan!" Mrs. Vanderveld cried.

A chance to redeem herself. Catherine looked down at the counter and the s.p.a.ce underneath. It was a wooden warren of cubbyholes stuffed with papers, ribbons, scissors, little cards and envelopes, magazines, cloths, receipt pads, order pads, scribbled-on notepads, and a jumble of pens and pencils. Everything was on the verge of falling out onto the floor-which was already littered with stems, leaves, and bits of ribbon and paper.

Catherine found a pen, tested it on a sc.r.a.p of paper, and turned to hand it to Mrs. Vanderveld, who had disappeared. Catherine stepped behind the curtain. The shop extended in a long and narrow rectangle to wide double doors at the far end. Two long tables stretched almost the entire length of the shop. They were covered, as were the shelves along one wall, with huge spools of ribbon, piles of tissue paper, cardboard to be folded into boxes, and sheets of bright foil. Here, too, the floor was carpeted with stem ends, leaves, flower petals, bright paper, and ribbon snippets.

Well, it's colorful, Catherine thought.

Mrs. Vanderveld was at the far end of the shop, next to an even larger walk-in cooler full of l.u.s.trous glowing flowers.

"Here's a pen, Mrs. Vanderveld," Catherine said.

"A what? What for? Oh, yes. I had to write a message for Jan. Now what was it?"

"Something about a phone call you just had-"

"Oh, yes, yes, of course-"

Catherine followed the little woman to the front of the shop, but the richness of all the colors at the back of the shop beckoned to her.

"Would you like me to do some flower arrangements?" she asked.

"Oh, no!" little Mrs. Vanderveld cried. "You can't do the flowers! Only Mr. Vanderveld does the flowers! Unless he's not here-and someone wants cut flowers in a box, or one of the arrangements Mr. Vanderveld has already made up. I can do that, sell his arrangements or wrap the cut flowers. But only Mr. Vanderveld makes the arrangements." The little woman smiled to soften her words. Leaning forward toward Catherine, she said confidingly, "He's an artist, you see. He's really an artist with flowers. I just a.s.sist him at sales, and of course I do all the bookkeeping. That's my talent."

Catherine, puzzled, asked, "Well, if I won't be arranging flowers, what will I be doing?"

"Why, sweeping up, of course. You can see how messy it's gotten, and helping Mr. Vanderveld by bringing him what he needs when he's designing his arrangements. We will teach you how to unpack and clean the flowers when they arrive. That's extremely important. We need you to run errands, go out for our lunch, deliver the flowers sometimes-you'll enjoy that. People are always so pleased. Many of our customers are in this area, so you can walk. You'll collect the used containers-"

The phone rang again. This time Mrs. Vanderveld took it while Catherine stood, stunned, watching. She was supposed to run errands and sweep? She had never swept anything in her life except for the summer she was at that stupid camp where all the kids had lists of ch.o.r.es. She was supposed to sweep the cabin but had traded with a girl who was afraid to unsaddle the horses.

"Oh, dear," Mrs. Vanderveld said despondently, hanging up the phone. "I haven't paid the ribbon bill. That's the second time they've called me. I really must get my books organized. You go on back and get started, dear"-she waved her hand vaguely toward the curtain-"I'll be fine out here with the phone." She began digging through the cubbyholes and pulled out a black checkbook. "No, no, that's the wrong one," she muttered to herself, putting it back and searching again.

Catherine stepped through the curtain to the back of the shop. She looked at her watch. She had been here less than half an hour. It had been fun and would be a good caper to write Leslie about, but enough was enough. She wasn't about to spend her life with a broom in her hand.

Still, there was something challenging about the chaos of the back room. It reminded her of the child's playhouse, complete with furniture and window boxes filled with pink geraniums and trailing ivy, which Grandmother had had built on the back lawn of Everly for Catherine and Sh.e.l.ly and Ann. One summer after they'd all been abroad, they had returned to find the playhouse in a shambles. Racc.o.o.ns had gotten in, tipping over furniture, pulling down the curtains, prying lids off the cookie tins, chewing on the legs of the chairs. Putting it back in order had been fun and even satisfying. They had played Little House on the Prairie-since that was what Catherine had been reading that summer-and she insisted she was the mother, Sh.e.l.ly the father, and Ann Laura. By the end of the day they had reclaimed the little playhouse for their own. In a way it was really more their own after they had saved it, cleaned it, and rearranged it to suit their fancies.

Really, at least she could roll up the ribbons on the spools before they got into an even more hopeless tangle. Catherine reached for the ribbons, which were the colors of sherbets, shining, satiny to the touch. But instantly she stepped on the end of a small branch-apple, she thought-which flipped up and sliced her leg, tearing a run in her hose.

"All right," she said to the floor. "We'll do you first."

After a search, she found the broom, dustpan, and trash sacks at the back of the store, next to the card table, which held a hot plate, a pot of water, some crusty jars of instant coffee, sugar, and a jar of fake cream. Little bits of chicken wire were scattered on the floor, with dust, leaves, petals, and paper stuck to it. The wire caught on the edge of the dustpan and refused to slide in without a fight. Catherine swore under her breath, but she was not about to give up yet. She found two perfectly good folding knives hidden in the mess on the floor and a pair of wire cutters under the table.

Catherine washed off the shelves and tables. She stacked and rearranged things: cardboard boxes and tissue paper, vases and bowls and containers, sheets of foil, ribbons, chicken wire. All the tools, knives and scissors and shears, their edges wiped clean and closed up, together.

Finished, she looked around at her work, quite satisfied. She felt like a child with a very pretty dollhouse.

"Oh, my dear! How nice! He'll be so pleased!"

Mrs. Vanderveld stepped behind the curtain and clapped her hands like a child.

"You are just heaven-sent!" she said. To Catherine's surprise, she grabbed Catherine in a hug.

Catherine couldn't remember the last time anyone had hugged her. Well, of course she could, Leslie had hugged her good-bye before she got into the taxi. But that hug had been over almost before it began, it was little more than a flurry of promises and perfume-"Write, take care, I'll send you postcards from Paris"-before Leslie had hurried into the cab, all her black layers fluttering in her rush.

This hug was a real embrace. Catherine was surprised at the little woman's strength. She could feel Mrs. Vanderveld's plump arms through the gray cloth of her dress. She was so tall and Mrs. Vanderveld so short that the older woman's head came only to her shoulder. When Mrs. Vanderveld hugged her, a floral scent wafted up from the older woman's hair and dress and body. For just a few seconds Catherine was enclosed in the smell of summer.

The phone was ringing. Wanting to please, to show her competence, Catherine rushed to the front to answer it.

"Vanderveld Flowers," she said, this time feeling very much in control.

A woman with an arctic voice wanted to make an order. Catherine scrounged around in the cubbyholes, at last closing her hand on a pen and a blank piece of paper. At first she intended to write down everything the person told her so she wouldn't lose any information. But the woman on the phone seemed intent on telling her not only what kind of flowers she wanted, but what the occasion was (a dinner party) and where the flowers were to be (on the dining room table, which was twelve feet long, and on the dining room buffet) and what colors she'd prefer (pink, red, white, yellow, purple, but not blue, blue depressed her) and what time she would be home tomorrow to accept delivery of the flowers (four-thirty in the afternoon and not a moment earlier: she had a hairdresser's appointment).

"This is an important dinner party. Everything should be perfect," the woman said sniffily. She reminded Catherine of her mother.

"In that case," Catherine replied in her snootiest Miss Brill's voice, "shouldn't you have a corresponding arrangement in your entrance hall? And perhaps one or two in your living room or library, wherever you'll be having c.o.c.ktails?"

From the other end of the line came a gasp of surprise. But Catherine's mother and grandmother always had every room filled with appropriate flowers when they gave parties.

Catherine noticed that the little woman was looking at her with dismay, shaking her head wildly, so that the strands that had escaped from her bun waved back and forth like antennae.

"Yes, actually, you're quite right, what a good idea," the woman said, her voice slightly less chilly.

"A large one for your entrance hall and two or three smaller arrangements to be set around your living room?" Catherine's voice was proportionately more haughty. She knew what was right. That was the way Catherine's mother always had it done.

"Yes, fine, perfect," the woman said, now almost friendly.

Catherine double-checked the woman's name, phone number, and address before hanging up. She smiled at Mrs. Vanderveld, who was now looking back at her, nearly trembling.

"Oh, dear, did she cancel her order?"

"Oh, no, she agreed she needed more flowers," Catherine said.

"Oh, my. Well, that's good, that's all right, then," the little woman said.

Catherine was surprised at how worried Mrs. Vanderveld looked when the phone conversation had gone so well. There had been something quite satisfying about telling the haughty woman on the phone what to do, even if it was only with her flowers. She was beginning to think she would like working here.

"But I don't want you to answer the phone any more, please," Mrs. Vanderveld said firmly. Seeing Catherine's expression, she continued hurriedly: "You did beautifully, yes, it's obvious that you know a lot about what flowers people like for their dinner parties. But you don't know what flowers we have available, or which flowers we will be able to get for which days-and still make a profit. So you see talking on the phone with a customer is not just a matter of helping him decide what he wants, but helping him decide that he wants what we can give him, what we have available or know we can get, and for a reasonable price to him and yet making some little money for us."

"Oh," Catherine said. "I see. There's so much I don't know." She felt her good spirits evaporate.

"You will learn, my dear. You are a smart girl, I can tell you will learn very quickly. Now I am exhausted, all this talking! Why don't you go to the back and make us a cup of coffee? It is getting close to five o'clock. Often we have a rush then, people leaving for work, on their way to dinner parties, wanting to pick up a little something. I always try to have a little sit-down and a cup of coffee around now."

Catherine looked at her watch. It was already four o'clock. Mrs. Vanderveld climbed onto a high cushioned stool behind the counter. Catherine pushed aside the curtain and went into the now clean, garden-scented back room toward the hot plate.

The back doors flew open and a slender, dark young man entered, his arms full of bags of potting soil. Grunting, he bent to set them on the floor, then straightened and looked at Catherine.

"h.e.l.lo," he said formally. His face was terrifyingly beautiful, cla.s.sic, exotic, as if carved in high relief.

"h.e.l.lo," Catherine said, equally formal. Her legs had gone weak.

"I'm Piet Vanderveld," the man said, holding out his hand.

"Oh," said Catherine, taking it. His hand was warm and hard and callused. "I'm Catherine Eliot. I'm ... I guess I'm ..." She didn't know what she was. A salesgirl?

"The new help," Piet said. "Good. We can use you. I've got another shipment to bring in. Could you hold the doors open?"

"Oh, of course," Catherine said, moving quickly, thinking: The help? Her mother would die. Good.

She could not stop staring at Piet Vanderveld as he pa.s.sed in front of her, carrying bags from a van in the alleyway. He was wearing jeans, a white b.u.t.ton-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and a dark narrow tie. Nothing unusual there. But he was unusual, that was obvious. He was so ... foreign. He was slender, with black tulip eyes and sleek black hair. His face was long and narrow, his eyes slanted slightly, his eyebrows arched up like a devil's. He had a deep cleft in his chin. His looks were exotic; he would have looked perfect naked, frozen into marble, a wreath of flowers on his head, a chalice of wine in one hand, a cl.u.s.ter of pearly grapes in the other. His beauty was excessive, satyric. When he pa.s.sed by her, she thought she smelled sweat, and immediately she sensed him on the back of a horse, or part of a horse, a centaur, slathered with sweat from the rider's legs....

Piet set down the last box. "I'm Dutch," he said as if answering a question. "I'm the Vandervelds' nephew." He was panting slightly. "I help them, sometimes here, sometimes from Amsterdam."

"Oh," Catherine said, embarra.s.sed but caught in her intoxication. She wanted only to stand staring, even sniffing, like an animal trying to place a scent. Finally her old school manners saved her. "This is all just so new," she said as if that would explain why she was staring, dumbfounded. "This is my first day. I have a lot to learn."

"I'm sure you'll do well," he said, smiling. His teeth were very white and even.

"Catherine? Dear? Have you started the coffee?" Mrs. Vanderveld called from the front.

"Oh! I'm doing it right now!" Catherine called back.

She moved quickly to the hot plate. But she was spellbound, and for a few minutes more she could only stand, watching the rings turn from dull black to glowing red as heat rushed through the coils.

The afternoon rushed by. Catherine brought Mrs. Vanderveld her coffee and drank a cup herself as she filled out the employment forms. She held the door for Piet as he carried arrangements to be delivered out to the van. She didn't see Mr. Vanderveld again that day. She promised Mrs. Vanderveld she'd be at work at nine on the dot the next morning.

Stepping out onto the street that evening, she felt buoyant. It was still light, and the June sun gleamed off taxi b.u.mpers, store windows, and doork.n.o.bs like golden blasts from heavenly trumpets. It had come to her! She had a job; she had a home; she had a future. She was starving. Stopping by a bakery, she bought a sandwich and, in her glee, an apple pie for herself and Mrs. Venito.