Stemming the Confusion

The first letter came under my door on a Tuesday, which matters because Tuesdays are when Toby the super supposedly fixes things in the building and mostly just stands in the hallway complaining about the boiler to anyone who makes eye contact. I live above my flower shop, which sounds charming and is actually loud, because the N train rattles past every ten minutes and the walk-in cooler below me hums like a fridge the size of a garage. So I was awake, making coffee, when I saw the envelope on the doormat.

It was a real envelope, cream colored, with a stamp, which already made it strange because nobody mails anything anymore, and it was addressed to "The Florist" in careful, slanted handwriting, like the guy had practiced his letters. My name is Maddie Graves, I'm thirty-four, I own the shop downstairs, and I have rarely received a handwritten letter that wasn't from my mother, so I opened it standing at the counter with coffee in my hand.

Dear Florist, it said. I am writing to arrange a standing order. Once a month, a dozen red roses, delivered to my wife Sheryl at the library where she works. Our tenth anniversary is in two months, and I have spent this past year on one surprise each month, so she never figures out the pattern. The shop I used has closed, so I need someone for the last few. Please bill me at the address below, or write to the email address beneath it, though I confess I never check it. I would prefer this remain between us, as the element of surprise is essential.

There was an address below, and it was not my address. It was not even my street. It was someplace in Long Island City, which is a whole different neighborhood, and I stood there reading it twice and then a third time, thinking, okay, this man wrote a whole romantic scheme, sealed it, stamped it, and then mailed it to the wrong zip code.

And the thing that got me was the "please bill me" part, because my shop does have a website, an order form, a phone number, and a big sign in the window that says GRAVES FLOWERS, and none of those things led to my apartment door. The mail carrier had apparently just looked at the store and thought, close enough, upstairs.

So I did what any reasonable person would do. I flipped the letter over and wrote on the back, in pen, because I was not going to buy an envelope over this: You've got the wrong address. I'm the florist but I live upstairs, and the shop takes orders online or by phone. Also, if the element of surprise is essential, maybe don't put the whole plan in writing. Good luck with the anniversary.

I taped it to my door at eye level, figured whoever was delivering this stuff would figure it out, and forgot about it for two days, which is how long it took for a second cream-colored envelope to appear in the same spot.

This one started with an apology, a real one, three sentences of it, and I remember thinking that was kind of charming in a hopeless way. Dear Florist, it said. I owe you an apology, both for the address and for the presumption. My wife will tell you I am terrible with logistics, which is why she does all of it in our house, and why this entire project has apparently gone off the rails at step one. If you would be so kind as to forward my original request to your shop, I would be grateful, and I will of course pay for your trouble.

There was a twenty-dollar bill tucked in the envelope. I sat down on my bed and stared at it. Who forwards a letter? Who tips the person for the privilege of doing their job? And yet, the order was easy money. A dozen red roses a month, standing order, delivery to a library in the middle of the day, billed to a guy in Long Island City. I run a small shop in a noisy stretch of Astoria and I am not in a position to turn down easy money because a stranger is weird about envelopes.

So I processed the order at my own shop, which involved me walking downstairs and typing it into my system, and I kept the twenty because he told me to. I did the first delivery myself, because the delivery date fell on a day my one delivery kid had a dentist appointment, and that is how I ended up walking a dozen red roses into the Steinway branch of the Queens public library and handing them to a librarian named Sheryl.

She was thirty-six, maybe, glasses on a chain, and she went completely red when I set the roses on her desk. "Oh my god," she said, loud enough that a patron shushed her. "Are these from Martin? He said he had something planned but he's been so weird about it, he keeps leaving the room when I walk in." Then she looked at me with these narrowed eyes. "Wait. You're the florist? He said the florist would be discreet."

"Very discreet," I said, and left before I could laugh in her face.

The third letter came a month later, right on schedule, and this one was addressed to Maddie Graves, not The Florist, which meant he had either read my note very carefully or done some kind of investigation, and neither option made me comfortable. I'll be honest, I read it standing up and pacing, because my apartment is one bedroom and eleven steps across.

Dear Maddie, it began. Thank you for your discretion and your kindness with the mix-up. Sheryl was beside herself. I write to you now with a second request, and I confess I am trusting you with something a little more personal. For the tenth month of my campaign, I would like an arrangement that says something specific: not roses, which are obvious, but something that reminds her of the beginning of us. We met in the library where she works, in the botany section, of all places. I was looking for a book on orchids because my mother had just died and I didn't know what else to do with my hands. Could you create something around that?

I put the letter down and rubbed my eyes. Here was the problem. This man was writing me, specifically, in my home, letters about his dead mother and his marriage and his feelings, when I had a whole email account set up for exactly this purpose, and I had never once had a client write me a letter about grief. My last relationship ended five years ago, when I was twenty-nine, because I chose the shop over a guy named Derek who wanted me to move to Boston, and since then my romantic life has been me and a heating pad and the N train. I was not equipped for a married man's tender correspondence.

And he was married. That was the purpose of the orders. Tenth month, he said, meaning this had been going on most of a year and I'd only been in on it for two months, and he was calling it a campaign, like a war.

So I sat down at my little table and wrote the longest email of my life to the address under his street address, which is a thing people put on letters when they want to look modern. I explained, in four paragraphs, that Mr. Banks had my home address, that he had begun writing me personal letters, that all orders needed to go through the website, and that if he wrote to the apartment again I would be returning his correspondence unopened, and also, the orchid idea was actually very good and I would be able to execute it beautifully if he would just use the damn form.

Then I hit send, and it dinged in my own inbox, and the train went by, and I thought, well, that's settled.

The fourth letter arrived the following Tuesday, right around when Toby was supposedly fixing the buzzer for the third time, which meant it was actually just