The Emerald Light in the Air by Donald Antrim Page A

would snow. But when did it ever snow anymore? Hat or no hat, she wouldn’t have minded a few snowflakes swirling down through the city light to settle on her head. When she’d been a girl, snow had lain on the ground all winter. That was what she remembered. Of course, she was thinking of the farm, of New England, not New York. So what was her point? These days, it rarely snowed the way it had back in the years before her parents died. The snowfalls she remembered from her childhood seemed lost to time and, she supposed, the changing climate.
    She hurried along as quickly as she could in her high heels. At Broadway, she turned uptown and passed the florist’s, where the pretty shop assistant had just come out from the back with the flowers—flowers for her , for Kate—in their vase.
    â€œHere we are,” the girl announced to Jim. She extended her arms and held the flowers out in front of her, presenting them. Before he could move to take them from her, however—it was the medication, warping his mind and delaying his reaction—she heaved the arrangement onto the counter and explained that she’d had to search high and low for an extra-heavy vase, one that was not only broad enough but also deep enough to properly anchor the bouquet.
    Jim and the girl admired her creation. With its stalks vertical and free to fan out or droop down, the bouquet’s real immensity became apparent. Roses with their thorns stuck out everywhere, and the lilies, whose columnar stalks the girl had bunched at the center, shot up through the top of the bouquet like, like, like—like insane trees towering above some insane world, he thought. He was light-headed when he spoke. “I love the way you’ve used ribbons and bows to tie the blossoms into clusters. It looks like a bouquet made of little bouquets! There’s so much to see. I can smell the lilies. Don’t you want to inhale that scent? Do you know the painter Fragonard? Do you know Boucher? Look at Boucher’s flowers. They’re practically obscene. There might be a Boucher hanging at the Frick.”
    He went for it. “Do you like museums?”
    â€œWhen I have time.”
    â€œI could show you the Frick.” He grinned widely and shrugged his shoulders and tipped his head, and she mirrored him, shrugging her own shoulders and making a funny face.
    â€œYou’re very good at what you do,” he added, and she said, “Thank you,” then asked him, “How would you like to pay?”
    He tried to imagine what he’d be forced to spend. Whatever the amount, it would be too great. The bills from his recent hospitalizations were mainly covered by Kate’s insurance—the policy was hers; they’d gone ahead and got married in order for him to take advantage of it during this protracted (Kate’s word, sometimes used sarcastically) time of crisis in his life—but there were nevertheless many outstanding fees, brand-new bills arriving every other week, plus the only partly reimbursable expense of the aftercare program he attended across town, on the Upper East Side.
    â€œLet’s charge it.” He handed the girl his debit card.
    She swiped the card. “It’s not going through,” she said. After passing the card through the machine a second time, she apologized. “This doesn’t automatically mean that there’s a problem with the account,” she said. “You’ll have to contact your bank. Would you like to try another account?”
    â€œI don’t have another. Tell me the total?”
    â€œThree hundred and forty-one dollars and sixty cents.”
    His anxiety spiked and he took a breath. How could a bouquet of flowers be that much?
    He put his hand in his pocket and felt around for cash, but what was the point?
    â€œHold on a minute,” he said.
    What to do, what to do? He was going to have to call his wife. Was he going to have to call her? He