Chapter 60

The trip to the mall had been a disaster. He had not found anything that would serve as a appropriate present to apologize to Suzie. She wasn’t exactly the type of woman who would appreciate an axe, a hammer, a chainsaw, or a lawnmower as a present. After seeing the power go out at the mall, he had come to the brilliant conclusion that only flowers and a poem could save his relationship with Suzie.

Sean stopped by the convenience store on the way home. On entering the store, he was presented with a vision of a woman’s butt. She was bent over to straighten the magazines on the bottom shelf.

“Flower Lady! I thought you would be here. I’d recognize that ass from a mile away.”

She looked at him over her shoulder. Her mouth was turned down in an irritated frown. She said, “I know that I have the most famous derriere in the county, but you don’t have to talk about it.”

“It is indeed a famous derriere,” Sean said.

“What do you want?” the woman asked while straightening up.

“I need flowers.”

The flower lady said, “What did you do?”

“I tried to talk my girlfriend into letting me have a harem,” Sean answered.

“That was stupid.”

“I guess it was,” Sean said.

The flower lady said, “You’re going to have to get roses at a minimum. You might even need two dozen roses.”

“I’m going to include a poem,” Sean said. “Women love poetry.”

“Which poem?” the flower lady asked.

“I’m writing it as soon as I get home,” Sean said.

The flower lady said, “You might need three dozen roses.”

“I’m great poet,” Sean said.

“Let me guess ... it is going to start with ... Roses are red.”

“How did you know?” Sean asked looking at her in amazement.

“It was a lucky guess. You might need four dozen roses.”

“I’ll just take a bunch of those yellow flowers,” Sean said pointing at a bouquet with daisies. He asked, “Do they come in blue?”

“No, they’re daisies. While daisies come in many different colors, blue is not one of them. The only daisies I grow are yellow,” the flower woman said shaking her head.

“So that’s a daisy.”

“Yes.”

Sean pointed to a bucket of roses and said, “Roses are red, but you’ve got white and yellow ones there. Why can’t yellow flowers be blue?”

“It’s complicated,” the flower woman said.

“I’ll take a bunch of those daisies,” Sean said while pointing at the bucket.

An hour later, Sean was at his computer starting on his current project — an apology poem. He grinned at the screen while he said, “Watch what happens when the apologetic power of flowers combines with the seductive powers of poetry.”

Lily walked past the door just in time to hear Sean laugh manically. She looked in to see him hunched over his keyboard rubbing his hands together excitedly.

She shook her head and said, “He’s going to do something stupid. I better warn Suzie.”

Sean typed for a minute and then read the line aloud, “Roses are red.”

He stared at the screen for five minutes and then said, “Roses aren’t always red. Sometimes they are white, yellow, pink, or carmine. I’m going for honesty here so I better not start the poem with a lie.”

He stared at the screen for another minute. Finally, he said, “Maybe I should use a footnote to explain that I’m taking poetic license rather than going for absolute fact.”

After typing two pages of text to explain the various colors in which roses were found, he said, “That won’t work. I’ve never seen a poem with footnotes. This is harder than I thought.”

An hour later he read what he had on the screen, “Roses are rose colored, violets are white, blue, purple and even yellow, the harem idea was stupid, these flowers were bought for you by a very sorry fellow.”

“That is a masterpiece worthy of Willy Shakespeare,” he said with a smile. “She’s going to love it despite the fact that it doesn’t exactly rhyme.”

Sean got out of his chair and started doing his little victory dance. It was reminiscent of drunken man attempting to perform the chicken dance.

His mother stuck her head in the room. She said, “Chief Fastman is here to see you.”

“I wonder what he wants,” Sean said stopping his victory dance.

“I don’t know. Maybe you should ask him,” his mother answered.

“Do you think he’ll tell me?” Sean asked.

His mother answered, “I’m sure that he will. He came all this way just to talk to you.”

“If you’re so sure then maybe I should talk to him,” Sean said

“That would be a good idea,” his mother said.

Lily bounded into his room and asked, “Are we going to jail?”

“I hope not,” Sean said.

His mother said, “You might end up in jail. I’m sure that there are laws against dancing like that.”

“Can I go with you?” Lily asked.

“My victory dance is not against the law,” Sean said.

“It should be,” him mother said, “Watching that nearly made me sick to my stomach.”