“Like a nice flower, mister?” boy’s voice behind me. I turn. Foot shorter, slim, around fourteen, dark-skinned, seems like black hair, olive skin more like it, Mideastern, smiling, insincerely, continuously, tiny chipped front teeth, gypsy could be, seen plenty but much more aggressively and usually choosing to go after a man holding a woman’s hand or two men doing the same, holding out to me a carnation and I say “No thanks, just window-shopping.”
“Yes, from me,” and sticks it in my hand, closes my fingers around the stem, “Looks nice,” and I say “Christs, what do I do with you?” and he says “Buy it,” and I say “Maybe just to get rid of you,” and think quarter? two? and he says “A dollar please.”
“A dollar please? Thought you were giving them away at first, though figured pretty quickly once it came back to me what city I was still in that — forget it. I’ve really nothing against this city. Don’t want to make generalizations about it either and no doubt because this city doesn’t make it easy to make them, though I knew soon enough I’d have to cough up something to you, but a buck?”
“No, not giving — selling. Beautiful red rose. One no more anywhere like it in the city. True. You shake no but flower is fresh, like new. Smell it.”
“I know what it smells like. And it’s a beautiful red carnation — at least one of those in the caryo I think it is family — and not wilted but certainly not new. But okay. Let me smell one again. I can use a big lift.” I sniff. Nothing much. Harder. I smell car and bus exhaust. Even deeper. Trace of burnt coffee from someplace, but didn’t May say that was toxic to noxious petrochemical fumes drifting over the ridge and river from New Jersey’s gasworks? “Gorgeous. Never smelt a flower that smelt so much like a flower before. Seriously, I’ve a cold in my nose, but thanks,” and I try giving it back to him.
“No, true. Brand-new. And cost me not a dollar each but close.”
“Come on, kid, what do you take me for? This is my city. I used to shine shoes on these streets when I was half your age, but only in the daytime.”
“So what do you say to me this for?”
“So what am I saying?” He nods. “I’m saying, you work this late, it’s not healthy for a kid your age. I’m also saying, up and down Brooklyn’s biggest boulevards I went with my wooden shoeshine box my dad made me pay him back for on time payments, so I’m saying I’ve known the price of things and value of a nickel and dime. So if you paid twenty-five cents, I’m saying finally, for one of these flowers, it was a lot, not that I’m saying anything bad or angry against you, remember that.”
“No, wrong. Ten dollars a dozen to me. Maybe I was cheated, because they tell me where they sell them that Mexico flower fields where they grow are drowned by rain all year. Still, give it to a beautiful lady. Wish her on it. She make you her first mate.”
“Now that’s what I’d like, no horsing around there, but not a dollar. Let’s say fifty cents, since you sure ain’t looking at a pile of money, my friend. And just for the smell and to have held it, because right after I pay I’ll give it back for you to sell to someone else.”
“No, you pay for, you keep. That’s the fair bargain, so a dollar,” and smiling again he sticks out his hand. Hungarian or Basque or even Berber letters though familiar numbers except for what looks like an upside-down nine are tattooed on his palm.
“What language is that?”
“Of what?” Closes his hand.
“Those letters and numbers mean anything? No harm in telling me. Numbers aren’t, except for at the top and bottom of pages, but written words are my business.”
“You want to know?” Opens his palm, presses it over his right eye and closes the left eye. His smile widens. Carious too. Lights flash off them, move. From streetlights, headlights. “They say things only my people know.”
“And what’s that and who are they?”
“Plenty.” Presses the same palm against his left eye and closes the right. “Always many different things to many different people on many different times of the nights and days of the years in the ways only we have in our heads of telling, so only we can say. But they go back thousands before the Roman and Etruscan gods, and no two messages in all time to any two people or to the same person the same.” Takes his hand away, right eye stays closed. “You pay for what it will say to you, only one more dollar, and I am allowed to tell.”
“You’re not saying what language it is then?”
“I haven’t said? Our own. But what people me and my language is from I can only say for that one more dollar, so two.”
“Your people have a poetry?”
“One we talk to only to ourselves and the wise wings of the night and the wolves.”
“You mean real wolves in whatever country you and your language come from, and those wise night-wings are owls?”
“I mean no poetry but what is written into our hands and heads, like everything else in our language. Newspapers. Whole-day tales. You think that funny?” He opens his eye.
“I’m not laughing, I’m listening. This smile’s my regular look.”
