A Bouquet of Dreams

Chapter 7

In joy and in sadness, flowers are our constant friends.

—Kakuzō Okakura

Lunch. Awful. A buffet of beige food. Even the sweet tea was beige. No vegetables, no fruit. Claire was going to give feedback after this conference ended and let them know that beige was an offensive color to florists, unless it happened to be a rare cappuccino rose, just flown in from Kenya.

She liked to follow wedding planners and see what the latest trends in flowers were. Her favorite wedding planner was Liam McMillan, a Scottish event planner who lived in New York City and did all kinds of “wow” weddings. Her high school friend Jaime Harper landed a job with his Epic Events, which was how Claire first found out about him. Even though she hadn’t talked to Jaime since that August day, she did follow her on social media. Claire wasn’t really into “wow” weddings, not like Jaime had always been, but she did love to follow the latest, greatest trends in flowers. It helped to balance out the limitations on her daily work at the shop.

“So how come you got sent to customer service rehab?” Sophie asked.

Got sent?Sophie was funny, in her own way. “I’m here because I plan to have my own florist shop soon, and I want to be as ready as a person can possibly be.”

Sophie stared at her with wide, admiring eyes. “Then you could do arrangements the way you’ve always wanted to.”

“YES!” Claire could have hugged her. Someone understood! “Yes, yes, yes. Exactly that. I can’t wait to have the freedom to do my own arrangements.”

“My boss won’t even let me touch the flowers.”

“Why not?”

“I have no formal training. He just wants me to ring up customers and take orders and sweep the shop.”

“So then,” Claire said, “why were you sent to customer service rehab?”

“I’ve been told I flirt too much with the male customers. I don’t even realize I do it. But I must say I get asked for my phone number a lot.”

That explained so much. Sophie was cute, in a wide-eyed, naive way. And very, very well endowed. Her outfit revealed a lot of cleavage. Quite a lot.

Midafternoon, the conference took a decided upturn for Claire. The floral stylists were given time to create an arrangement. Cut flowers in buckets were brought in, and while they weren’t Claire’s taste (so many carnations!), there was definitely more variety than she usually had. They said they were going to have a prize for the best arrangement.

Nowthe conference was cooking with gas. Claire loved competition. She thrived on it.

Sophie trailed Claire as she examined each option, choosing the stems that fit in the arrangement in her head. Whatever flower Claire picked out, Sophie chose as well, right down to the number of stems she’d taken. Sedum, yarrow, smoke bush. All textures. To Claire, textures added structure and interest. But she needed a focal flower, a star—something to make your eyes pop. She walked up and down the table of buckets, and then, in the back, she saw what she wanted: protea. She picked out sprays of it and one king protea. Gorgeous.

As Sophie reached for the proteas, Claire let out an exasperated breath. “Don’t you want to show off your own style?”

Sophie squinted. “I never really thought about it. Do I need one?”

Claire nearly dropped her king protea. No wonder Sophie’s boss didn’t let her touch the flowers. Every flower shop had a distinctiveness. Even MaryBeth’s old-fashioned style was her own. “You can’t argue with a classic” was her mantra. Everyone in Savannah knew that if they wanted a traditional flower arrangement, go to Same Day Delivery.

Claire had to set aside concern for Sophie’s future so she could focus on her own composition. “Well,” she said, “you can learn a lot by looking around.” She certainly had. Most of Claire’s spare time was spent studying other florists, or botanical information, or walking around Savannah to get inspired with new ideas. And, of course, to forage.

She chose an oval white ceramic vase—ordinary, common. Ideal for what she had in mind. She didn’t need a personality piece for this arrangement; the flowers would provide the drama. Oftentimes, a vessel could add to an arrangement by providing an exciting backdrop, but a king protea needed no help. It could speak for itself.

Claire cut off some chicken wire from a big roll to create a “pillow” in the vase. It was going to be a dense arrangement, so it would need the support. She went off to a table in the corner where she could work with minimal distractions. Sophie followed. Claire started with the king protea, resting the bloom on the rim to one side of the vase. Next, she trimmed the sprays of smoke bush. She tucked them into the chicken wire on the opposite side of the king protea. She trimmed the sprays of small protea and stood back to appraise it with a critical eye. She wanted a nearly horizontal line of protea sprays from one side to the other, so she cut the stems to sit slightly above the rim of the vessel. Next came the yarrow stems. She trimmed them and placed them in tight, low clusters at the front of the vase, filling the space under the proteas. She finished by adding in the stems of sedum, trimming one to pop out through the yarrow at the front of the vase and others at the back. A cardinal rule: Never forget about the back of an arrangement.

She stepped a few feet away to peer at what she had created. Knowing when to stop was tricky. A smile came over her face. Yes. She was happy with this.

Claire realized that someone was nearby and looked up to see a guy she didn’t know staring at her with odd intensity.

“Are you Claire Murphy?”

“Sorry?” she said, blinking.

“Are you the same Claire Murphy who won the Blooms Proclaim contest?”

“That’s me.” She wondered how he knew. This guy was in his late teens, she guessed. He wore bland clothes—blue shirt, black pants. Terrible acne, which made her feel a little sad for him. But that didn’t mean she wanted him to hit on her. It was nice of him to try, but he was way too young for her.

“Will you sign this?” He held out a paper napkin to her.

“You’ve got to be kidding.” He wanted her autograph? She could not have been more mystified. “You like flowers?”

He shrugged. “Eh, they’re okay. I don’t not like them. But this is for my mom. She loved your bouquet. She tacked up the newspaper picture on the bulletin board in our garage.”

Claire would have liked to say something, but no words came to mind. She just stood there, gaping like a hooked fish. This had never happened to her before. Even when she won the contest, there was little fanfare. A picture of her arrangement, plus the recipe, had gone into the local newspaper. Her housemates didn’t notice and used it to line the cat’s litter box.

Sophie stepped in to help Claire. “So, sweetie, is your mama a florist?”

The guy did a double take when he turned to Sophie and caught sight of her cleavage. “No. She wants to be, but for now she’s just doing flowers for friends out of the garage. I work here at the hotel. I was sweeping up leaves and flowers that you people drop everywhere—”

True. The floor in the conference room was littered with discards. Typical of florists.

“—and overheard that guy”—he pointed to Jim Turner—“complain about you. When he said Claire Murphy, I started looking around. Then I saw your flower bouquet. I figured it must be you.”

He again held out the napkin to Claire and a pen, and something about that jerked her into action. “What’s your mother’s name?”

“Lisa.”

Claire wrote: To Lisa. Keep arranging! Claire Murphy

Claire’s birthday had taken a turn for the better. She couldn’t keep from smiling.

Then came the afternoon breakout circle. Like the morning circle, it did not go well. Claire wondered about Jim Turner’s phone call with his girlfriend—he seemed to be in a particularly foul mood.

Jim Turner read from his notes in a monotone voice. “Businesswoman Mary Kay Ash always said that you should imagine every person who comes into your store is wearing a big sign that says, ‘Make me feel important.’ If you keep that in mind every day, your business will flourish. So will your life.” He dropped his notes in his lap. “That’s bogus. I tried, every day, to make my girlfriend feel important, and now she’s breaking up with me.”

See? Just what Claire had thought. Those yellow carnations had been a clear message.

“Bless your heart,” Sophie said, placing a hand on his shoulder as the rest of the circle nodded sympathetically.

Claire had no sympathy for him. “How did you try to make your girlfriend feel important?”

“She loves flowers,” he said. “That’s how we met. She came into my shop to get flowers just for herself. That doesn’t happen very often. So I sent her a bouquet of flowers and asked her for a date.”

“What kinds of flowers did you send her?” Claire said.

“Just whatever we had too much of.”

“Remainders,” Claire said, pinching her eyes shut, squeezing her hands together. This was painful. “There’s the problem, right there.”

“What?”

“Well, if she knows flowers like I think she does, she would be aware that you’re sending her a careless bouquet. No theme. No message.”

He rolled his eyes. “I sent flowers to her every day until she agreed to go out with me. And every day since then. There’s a theme in that.”

“Every day?” Claire said. “You might be overwhelming her. Some women wouldn’t like that.”

“But some would,” Sophie said. “I would love it if a man treated me like that.” She cast a side-glance at Jim Turner just as he looked at her. Their eyes met.

What was happening here? “Um, should we role-play how to make customers feel important?” Claire asked.

Eyes still on Sophie, Jim gave a slow nod, then his phone buzzed and he answered it. Seconds ticked by as the group sat watching him until he pulled the phone away long enough to say, “Do the role-play. I’ve got to take this call,” and left.

All eyes turned to Claire as she pointed to a woman whose bottle-blond hair was scooped up like an ice cream swirl. “Here’s an example from my shop. Let’s say the store is full of customers and you’re working alone. A customer has called in to order flowers, but she keeps changing her mind about what to say on the card. Now a line is forming at the register and the customers are glaring at you while you’re on the phone. How would you handle the customer on the phone?”

The woman crossed her ankles and put her hands in her lap. “She is my top priority. I would tell that customer that I had all the time in the world.”

“Really?” Claire didn’t expect that.

“That’s exactly what we’re supposed to do, aren’t we? Make each customer feel like they’re the reason we’re in business.” The ice-cream-swirl woman looked to Jim Turner for confirmation as he rejoined the circle.

“Exactly right,” he said. He turned to Claire, eyebrows raised. “So how did you handle it?”

Claire cleared her throat. “I told the customer to call back when she knew what she wanted to say on the card.”

The woman across the circle looked horrified. Jim Turner let out a loud scoff. “Yet another reason why MaryBeth sent you to customer service rehab.”

Hold on a minute. Just hold on. Claire narrowed her eyes. “How do you know MaryBeth?”

“MaryBeth? Our families are old friends.” His lips lifted in the corners, like he was attempting a smile. “She asked me to get to know you during this conference.”

“Why?”

More of that odd smile. “You know MaryBeth. She wants everyone to be friends.”

That, Claire knew, was true. But there was something else in his eyes, like he knew something she didn’t. Something was afoot.