Bailey's Flowers
Note: I changed the title to this post as some people might not have understood it was ironic, which they wouldn't have unless they had read the post. Just another reason to have good post titles!
I did all kinds of things around the shop, but nothing in particular. That was another problem. No one had spelled out what my function was. I wasn't the delivery man; that was Juan's job. I wasn't the flower designer; that was Filipe's job, and besides, I didn't know how to do it. I wasn't even Filipe's assistant- that was Lucia's job. I certainly wasn't the boss- Jack was the boss. My job must have been to run the cash register and deal with customers. However, this was never clearly spelled out to me. My job seemed to be to stand around and water the plants. It wasn't long before the plants were drowned from over-watering.
They didn't need so many people. It wasn't like we were swamped with people buying flowers. The shop wasn't downtown near the plaza, it wasn't in De Vargas shopping mall, and it wasn't even on the main drag of Cerrillos Road. It was close to the hospital and funeral homes, though, and the big flower money is in funerals.
I was hired because Mrs. Bailey didn't trust her son Jack to run the shop, and of course this put me in conflict with him. Before his Mom went on vacation, he ignored me. Once Mr. and Mrs. Bailey were off on their vacation to Australia, he was free to torment me. He would sit in the back office and read the newspaper with his feet up on the desk, while ordering me to perform some ridiculous little task. He hated me because I had graduated college, and had a possible future besides working in my mother's flower shop. His violence toward me started with verbal jabs, saying things to humiliate me. When it was clear the verbal assaults had little effect, he began to punch me with his fists, begging me to fight back. It was an impossible situation. If I fought back, I'd be fired. So I just took the punches and humiliation, trying to keep the job until Ma Bailey came back from Australia.
I went on a few deliveries with Juan, who was the only sympathetic character in the whole place. The best part of the job was going on deliveries with Juan. I jumped at every chance to get out of the tiny, cramped dank little shop and away from Jack's torments. Juan was a Vietnam vet. He had been exposed to Agent Orange, which caused him serious health problems. He didn't expect to live very long, and had a morbid fascination with funeral homes. Juan often made floral deliveries to funeral homes, and his dream was to be a mortician. Morticians were very respected members of the community. They were sometimes even elected to public office, and there was a municipal building near the Plaza named after a mortician. They get to wear fancy formal clothes all the time, sit on heavy expensive furniture, and drive around in big gleaming black hearses with draped windows. They are enveloped in the solemn silent mystery of death.
I brought in reading material to the shop to read when the going got slow, which was most of the time. Of course, I wasn't really allowed to read on the job. There was always some ridiculous little busywork task to do to fill up the time, like wiring the stems of roses so the blooms wouldn't wilt. I bought "True West" magazine, and brought in novels.
Joe never read anything but the daily paper. But he saw me reading actual books, and one day he brought in what for him was some heavy reading material, an actual paperback book that he had picked up in the drugstore next to the shop. It was a sensationalized account of an extremely violent and brutal prison riot. The prison riot (one of the deadliest prison riots in U.S. history) had happened a couple of years before at the state pen just outside of town. The book was called The Devil's Workshop, and went into the gory details of the be-headings, tortures and mutilations that occurred during the riot. Jack enjoyed reading the accounts aloud to the flower shop employees.
Jack enjoyed The Devil's Workshop so much that when he finished it, he decided to purchase another paperback. He brought in Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs, of all things. Why he decided to buy Naked Lunch is inexplicable. In all probability he just liked the title on the cover. At the time I had never heard of William Seward Burroughs, although later I became a fan. Joe read a few words of the first sentence out loud in the back room of the shop to us employees, and then stopped. He thumbed through the pages, scanning them. Muttering about being "ripped off", he disgustedly tossed the paperback into the huge trashcan. I couldn't bear to see a book thrown away, so I fished it out. I read a couple of pages and had no idea of what was going on. I still have that paperback.
Throwing Naked Lunch into the trash was Jack's last literary act. After that it was back to reading the daily paper. As far as Jack was concerned, Naked Lunch demonstrated what he thought all along: Literature is the pursuit of degenerate fags.