The Mezzanine

Cards and Flowers
By Dialecticdreamer/Sarah Williams
Part 1 of 1, complete
Word count (story only): 1052
[November 2017]


:: Not just cards and flowers. Loudmouth is confused, then intrigued. Written for the May Magpie Monday event, this story is prompted by readera, with my great thanks. ::




The meeting with the supplier of biometric locks was more circus than business, but it was finished in less than half the four hours allotted for the meeting. Loudmouth had taken a walk through the small town’s business district instead of carrying her terrible mood back to within a hundred miles of Torrin.

For a town the same approximate size as Mercedes, the commercial district seemed to be all of the shopping options, instead of the patchwork of parks, commercial and infrastructure spaces clustered among the residential units.

The store name caught her eye immediately. Loudmouth stopped, scanning the rows of tiny storefronts labeled in Korean.

Apologia.

She licked her lips, trying to dampen her suddenly dry mouth.

Loudmouth flicked her fingers, giving orders to the two pairs of bodyguards dressed as mid-level business workers. Two men offered business cards to the blonde businesswoman before the men continued on their way. The woman, who just happened to cross the street when Loudmouth did, ambled past as the redhead opened the door to the shop.

By the time Loudmouth’s eyes had adjusted to the soothing, yellow-tinted light in the store, a brunette woman entered the store and began quietly inspecting the four uneven quadrants of the narrow space. The runner carpeting lay only on the short crosswise aisle and the long central aisle, like the ribbon wrapped around a gift before the bow had been tied. The dark, reddish wood floor gleamed, marking out each quadrant.

A man with inky black hair just beginning to turn salt and pepper at the temples looked the redhead up and down, then clicked his tongue. “You need indirect apology. Look for green tag.”

Her brows puzzled together. “Wait, what?”

He beckoned, leading her to the smallest quadrant of display stands and shelves, which held a wild array of baskets in many shapes and sizes. Loudmouth bent to inspect the contents of a dark brown oval basket draped with an emerald green square of cloth the size of a bandanna. On the cloth, a smoky gray glass egg rested in the middle, with a leather thimble, a pair of tiny scissors meant to look like a stork, and a card of delicate sewing needles. Swirling letters on the card proclaimed that the needles were silver plated.

A simple bifold card stood on the far side of the supplies. Loudmouth lifted it to read the calligraphy. “Harsh words can break valuable things, like friendships. Mending requires the best tools, and are a sign of my heartfelt apology.” Inside, there was plenty of blank space to write a more personalized message.

She turned, studying the clerk’s serene expression. “What if I don’t like the sewing analogy?”

He flashed a grin that made him looks closer to fifteen than fifty. “To whom are you apologizing? What are their interests?”

Her shoulders tensed, twitched, then settled back in place. Loudmouth breathed out slowly, careful not to clench her jaw. “I have a person in mind, but part of the problem is that I don’t know their interests.”

He only nodded. “What can you tell me about them?”

“They’re male, somewhere between eighteen and twenty. Their family is small, only a few people, but incredibly important to them.” Loudmouth swallowed the rest of her thought, crossed her ams, and waited.

The clerk nodded, walking along the three tiers of slanted shelves that held the display baskets. One tanned, golden-tinted hand hovered over a natural willow basket shaped like a rectangle the size of a medium baking dish, but with sides as wide as her palm that sat at a sharp, flared angle. He lifted up a surprisingly realistic small, stuffed green frog, then put a tri-fold brochure into her other hand.

Curious, but cautious, Loudmouth read the front section of the brochure. “I jumped into something that didn’t turned out the way that I’d expected,” she read aloud.

The clerk didn’t bother to hide a smirk as he lifted up the only other item in the basket and put it into her free hand. It looked like a small egg made of glass. Inside, an image of a golden egg yolk with lines encircling it like a misshapen target. The outer section marked soft-boiled eggs, the middle ring indicated medium-boiled, and the inner circle, full of the yolk image, held the word “HARD” in bold letters.

“What does this quite literal egg timer have to do with a stuffed frog?” Loudmouth narrowed her eyes at the clerk.

“The story is common in English,” the clerk protested mildly. “Frogs in a pot don’t leave, because…" he prompted.

Loudmouth rolled her eyes. “They don’t have even half a gram of brains,” she protested. “They stay because they’re idiots.”

Shaking his head, the clerk explained. “It isn’t a literal story.”

She picked up the card, only to frown at it. “There’s nothing on the card.”

“Because this situation is best handled specifically<’ the Asian man declared.

Loudmouth smirked again, and bounced the frog in her hand. “I’ll take this set,” she declared.

It took a moment to ring up the purchase. The clerk slipped a business card into the basket, tied it with a length of dark green ribbon. “Thank you for shopping with us.”

She nodded, waving with her free hand, and stepped outside.

Both male bodyguards seemed to materialize at her side. “Are you well, ma’am?” the one on the left began. “We didn’t see you in the bookstore.”

“Bookstore?” Loudmouth repeated. “I wasn’t-” She gestured over her shoulder, without turning, toward the shop she’d just exited. “The sign is even in Roman characters.”

The guard on the right cleared his throat. “Perhaps you should look again, ma’am?”

Loudmouth spun on her heel.

Apologia was no longer there.

The same blue-gray door now stood beneath an arch of painted Korean characters. She couldn’t find a single word of English, not even the outrageously inappropriate words used to draw patrons into a store. On the window left of the bookstore, a long arch of letters formed the word “Extra!”. What was ‘extra’ in a candle shop, Loudmouth could not name.

Scanning the street to either side, she stiffened. “This makes no sense.” SHe looked down at her bag, then peeked inside. “I definitely didn’t buy this in a bookstore, though.”


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