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Robert Dall She came home one evening to find wrapped in green florist’s paper and taped to her door, a single rose. Red, long-stemmed, it sat in its sheath at an angle, petals pointing at the peephole, lush and precise. There was no note. She stood admiring it for some time, then peeled back the tape and tucked the flower under one arm as she opened the door. Inside, she laid the flower on a table and teased apart the cone of paper, unrolling it and staring at it till it became an abstraction, a flag of bright color against the blond wood. She slipped out of her coat, hung it on its hook, changed from heels and skirt into slippers and jeans. When she was done, she poured herself a glass of vodka and ice and sat on the sofa, sipping, thinking: Who? There was no one who could have left the rose on her door, and yet someone left the rose on her door. Why? Red stood for Eros, for passion, and that was such a distant memory that this possibility felt like a mockery. Could someone have done that—mocked her—on purpose? an ex-lover wanting to send a what-if message across the years? an adversary wanting to underline that it had been years? No, she had no adversaries (she worked in a watch repair shop for heaven’s sake), and as for her exes, did she even register with them anymore? It was probably a mistake. That, or something random: the pawning off of an unwanted gift; a piece of student performance art; maybe just a drunk’s random generosity. When? The flower looked fresh despite being out of water. It had to have been left recently—near the end of the workday, one of the hardest times to be stealthy. But maybe the idea wasn’t to be stealthy at all; maybe the idea was to be bold, to leave one’s mark if not one’s name. How? The rose was still there, describing its diagonal across the table, a portrait of arrested motion. Like water, or fire, something fluid. She thought of what it must have taken to leave it there—a bold gesture even if it was a random one, because the bearer might have been caught and made to explain… what, exactly? No one was going to confront a stranger with a rose; it would be like obstructing love itself. But there was the problem: everything was like something, but that didn’t mean you knew what it really was. She didn’t know what any of this was, beyond the thing itself, a rose laid on her table, red on green on blond. And now? She had no idea what to do with the rose, and was surprised at how much it bothered her just thinking about what to do with it. As if she were the one who’d placed it on her door herself, the one bearing whatever risk, real or imaginary, came along with the act. She raised the glass to take a drink and realized it was empty, couldn’t remember having finished it, then couldn’t remember whether it was her first. A strange disorientation took hold —more than the alcohol, if it was the alcohol; more like she couldn’t be sure if she was dreaming or if everything else up to that point had been the dream. To feel this way was maddening. She had to do something about it, and there was no way to opt out: if she decided to do nothing, which was doing something too. Get rid of it, she thought. Throw it out. She returned to the table, slammed down the glass, snatched the flower and began rolling it back up, but she was only a half-revolution into the task when a thorn caught her. “Damn it,” she muttered. A single drop of blood began welling on her fingertip. She rubbed it away but a second drop came, then another, and finally she gave up and went to clean the wound. The light in the bathroom was brighter and harsher; as she worked she saw, in lurid color, the crimson spatter of a blood droplet on white porcelain, the pinkish smear of blood and peroxide on gauze, the blanching of her finger squeezed beneath a bandage. She looked into the mirror and saw her face as it looked at the end of the day: a little tired, a little pale, the lines around her eyes a little more firmly etched. She stood there, examining herself, till she wasn’t sure what she was looking for anymore. It was too much to bear; she bolted out and paced the apartment, feeling something boiling inside her. There was a reason, there must be a reason, why she regarded that apartment more as a sanctuary than a place to live, why she was content to let things happen to her, waiting for the one gesture that would redeem everything. And of course the flower wasn’t that, but that was the point: you wait and wait and something finally happens and you don’t even know what it is or what it means, only what it’s not, what it doesn’t mean, a slash of beauty across a dull barren landscape, her landscape, but not for her. She picked up the rose again, this time more carefully, and rolled it back up, restoring the graceful geometry of flower and wrapper. She filled a bowl with water then, with her fingertips, flicked a few drops on the flower, just enough to make it glisten in spots. There, she thought: just so. A minute later she was dressed to go out again, the wrapped flower cradled in one arm like a baby, a roll of tape in her pocket. She knew nothing about where she was going and why, only that, for reasons she also didn’t understand, it was the only choice worth making. She drew a breath, listened for the click of the door behind her, and stepped forward. _ _ Robert Dall is a writer in Cambridge, MA. His fiction has appeared in Hunger Mountain, Evansville Review, Acorn Whistle, and Beacon Street Review. He received his MFA from Emerson College, has completed two residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, and has been a member of the Writers’ Room of Boston since 2001 (and a board member since 2009). He’s currently at work on a novel, In the Box. |
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ISSN 2150-6795 |