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From the stream of taxis and colectivos, a sleek silver-gray car veered to the curb as if it had not intended to stop at all but had been magnetically drawn from the flow. It was a lot of car and while it idled at the curb it looked out-of-place on that charmless street. It was a car for driving the open roads of Argentina, from estancia to estancia, fast. But idling at the corner of Sarmiento, near where the old flower market had been, it was ill-at-ease, like a muscular horse stamping at the hitching post. The old market, a hangar-like space full of flowers, had been moved to another neighborhood but a few wall-less shops open year-round to the weather still proffered flowers any time of day or night to those who had a craving for hot-house beauties.
After midnight, each stall was staffed by a single person. Huddled against the cold in down jackets or colorful shawls from the high Andes their faces peeked above the flowers as if they were sitting in an open field or were a decorative figurine in some misguided bouquet. Under the premise that the brighter the light the more attractive the flower, each stall was interrogated with unrelenting flourescent tubes. The vendors and their fragile merchandise glowed garishly in the chill night.
The door of the car at last swung open and a slender foot in a taupe pump found its footing in the gutter among flower cuttings and wilted petals. The foot was followed by a long, tan, stockingless leg. Everything moved slowly; the suspense unbearable. The boy in the corner stall looked up, suddenly finding real life more interesting than the screen of his mobile phone. An ancient shriveled woman in a poncho watched the foot, the leg and everything that slowly emerged from that open door.
As did I. From the doorway of the bar where I had stopped to get something to buck me up, I watched that foot touch the ground. In one hand, I held the scratched water glass into which the waiter had poured a generous dose of a stalwart local coñac, Reserva San Juan. The night was still young but I had had my fill. It doesn’t pay to be greedy.
I was winding down, savoring the solitude, contemplating the night and its comings and goings. I stood in the doorway because I loved the feeling of the cold air on my face, something I hadn’t experienced in many months. Fall is my favorite season. The leaves are falling; death is in the air but we still remember life bursting forth relentlessly. The changing of the seasons is worth paying attention to; I take pride in the noticing of it.
Maybe our greatest achievement is just to pay attention.
I confess: she had me at the taupe pump crunching the dead flower leftovers, releasing the rich perfume of still-green stalks subverted by the putrid scent of dying petals.
Who was she buying the flowers for? Herself? On a whim — or was it consolation? An impulsive act to cheer up a lonely house? A gift? Preparations to receive a lover?
Yes, this was what I had been waiting for all night, why I had stopped at this tumble-down bar with its rickety stools, why I had moved to the doorway. I raised my worn glass of coñac to them all: to the woman and her fanciful car, of course, but also to the shriveled old flower seller seated in her bed of flowers, the clueless adolescent looking up from his phone, the potentates of some cornered market that could keep those all-night flower stands open and staffed, to this city that always rose to meet me in my moment and compensated me many times over for my faith in her.
To them all, I raised my glass and took a long, glorious gulp.
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