Bells Above Greens by David Xavier Page A

kids out there with one thing on their mind.  Used to buy a rose and set it right there on the counter while I made the gorgeous in him come out.”
    “A rose, Sam,” Emery said.  “We should get us some.  I didn’t think of that.”
    “Would you shut up,” Red said.  “Won’t be doing much kissing at all if you get your lips cut off.  This kid, he used to wine and dine the girls as best he could on a student’s budget and write the most Godawful poetry for the ones he liked.  Spent all his money on roses and haircuts.”
    “Roses, Sam.  Is there a rose garden near here?”
    Red paused and looked at him.  He could not help but to laugh.  “Not from someone’s rose garden, you dimwit.  He paid for them like a gentleman.  Top notch roses with a long stem and big, blooming petals.”  He looked at me and shook his head, smiling.  “Rose garden in the dead of winter?  Great God, this boy.  Where’d you find him?”
    I put my hands up.
    “Anyway, he must have seen them all.  From freshmen to senior, he left no stone unturned.  Good looking boy, too.  Must have had all the girls in a sweat.  I used to tell him the girls were taking a number and waiting their turns.  ‘Give me the Red Dandy’, he would tell me.  Because of my name, you see?”
    I nodded.
    “He would sit here in the chair and tell me their names.  I think I heard a name repeated only a handful of times.”
    “And each one was the one?” I asked.
    Red wiped his hands on his apron and put a cold cloth over Emery’s face.  “Nope.”
    I sat up with my elbow on the armrest.  “He spent all that money and time and didn’t find the one?”
    “No sir.”
    “What was wrong?” Emery asked.  “He didn’t – he didn’t like women after all?  I mean, he found out he liked…you know, the other way?”
    Red looked at him.  “You have got a pea brain in there, don’t you?”
    “Well what, then?  You said he’d seen them all.  I haven’t seen them all but I know the one when I see the one.”
    “And you think you found the one, do you?”
    Emery shrugged.  “I don’t know.  Maybe.  We’ll see.”
    “Boyo, when I say ‘the one’, what I mean is someone who makes you better.  I’m not talking about the one that makes you feel warm all over and looks pretty and that’s it.  I’m talking about all that and she makes you a better man.”
    “You mean she drags you to church on Sunday,” I said.  “That’s what Emery’s dad says about girls too.”
    “No,” Red said.  “That’s not what I mean.  There are plenty of good girls out there that will drag you to church, but that won’t necessarily make you better.  You just got to find the one.”  He waved his scissors in the air.  “You’ll know it when you see it.”
    “I’m confused,” Emery said, laying back down and covering his face with the cloth.
    “The one he was looking for wasn’t going to be found in any woman from here to France,” Red said.  “Not even if he went looking until he was a nine hundred year old man.”
    “So what’d he do?” Emery said through the cloth.
    “You go to church on Sunday?”
    “Sure.”
    “Well, when you do go, you’ll see him up there on the altar.”
    “Father Donnelly?” I said.
    “Yep.”
     
    When we arrived at the lake, long stem roses bending in our arms, the stadium workers were still taking down the flags from the dorm walls. 
    Emery checked his watch.  “Why are girls always late?”
    “They do it to build our anticipation.  Nothing is more exciting to them than to watch our reactions after we’ve waited for an hour.”
    “An hour?  I’ll be frozen stiff by then.  They’ll have to chip us out of ice.”
    “Isn’t that part of the fun for them?”
    “What?  Thawing us out for conversation?”
    “Exactly.  Chip away at us until they find what we’re about.”
    He looked at me.  “You’ve been reading too many books.”
    “Maybe.”  I tilted my head back and