1. She is the one.
I race through traffic. I race against time. I ask the lady how many flowers are needed to make a path filled with petals from the front door to the bed in the bedroom. She says she doesn’t know. She is looking at me puzzled. I tell her I’m proposing. Her eyes light up and her tone changes completely. She turns her eyes upward and puts her finger to her lips, thinking. She finally answers that I’m going to need a lot of roses for that. I already know this. I did it all once. Not the flowers, the proposing. The first time around she was taken by another man.
I fill the trunk of my tiny car with red roses, twenty four dozen of them. The heat is brutal, and I’m already sweating profusely. I’m using my lunch hour to do this and my boss won’t like to wait for the two o’clock meeting. I’ve spent 45 minutes already and I’ve yet to find a ring.
The traffic is not too heavy. The car’s AC is trying very hard to keep me cool. I’m starting to believe I’m not sweating because of the heat. I listen to a tune on the radio, trying to forget what I’m doing, where I’m headed. The song doesn’t fit the moment. I change stations, but they’re all in commercials. I turn the radio off.
She’ll be here tonight. Her flight arrives at 4pm. I won’t be able to be at home, waiting for her. My coworker asked, why not propose at night after work, in a restaurant, like everybody else. I don’t know, I replied. I do know.
Her whole existence is a surprise. I would’ve never guessed I would fall in love ever again. Sex was my only drive, I was going to show her what it feels to be cheated on. I was going to trap women, use them, have a good time and then get the next one. I wasn’t going to fall in love ever again. How could I?
I’m not a man enough to face her and ask her will you marry me. I think I sort of know the answer, but I don’t know what I’d do if she says no. I know she will be okay. I will be okay, eventually. The only thing I’ve learned about love is that time heals its wounds. No matter how deep. Of course time doesn’t erase the memories, which are sometimes needles that sting your breath for a moment when you hear a song or see a photograph or visit a place where you’ve been together or run into a common friend or (worst yet) run into one of her brothers. That’s why I moved far, far, far, far away. I’m not even in the same country, I don’t even speak the same language, I don’t even remember her face or the tone of the voice or the places we used to go to or her brother’s names or the songs we used to listen to or the smell of her perfume.
The jewelry store is not fancy. The ring is pretty. The woman behind the counter smiles. She knows what’s happening next, another fairy tale in these bleak times. I don’t smile back. I look at the watch and it’s ten past two. I ask the woman to put the ring in the black box. Thankfully I’m not far from home.
I open the apartment door. It’s a rental with hardly any decoration, like our lives at this point. A life in the wake of becoming something eternal or something that arrives already dead. We don’t still know what each other likes in terms of decoration styles. I put the tiny box in the bed, and take out a piece of paper and write. I can’t over think it, but I’m confident I’m expressing myself well. I put the note inside the box.
I take a bunch of roses and start to tear the roses apart. The red petals falling contrasts against the light beige rug, like blood drops of a wounded animal in a snow field. The petals start forming a path that now stretches from the bed to the front door. I take a last look at it, keys in hand. I take a deep breath, close and lock the door, and head out to the heat. My boss is going to be really mad.
She will open the door and look at the carpet with a slight frown on her face. She’ll smile, and her eyes will tear up. She will know what’s happening. She will take her sandals off, and walk barefoot on the petals, while her heart races to the bedroom before her. She will look at the small black box. She will sit next to it on the bed, and take a look at this empty bedroom with a TV and a side table. She’ll pick it up and close her eyes.
