She glances at the lotuses, and her expression goes tight and pained. “Whatever those flowers are giving off, it’s going to drift. It’s going to settle on the pastries in that case. It’s going to get into the milk I’m steaming for someone’s latte. And then a stranger goes home with hives or a swollen throat, and I’m the reason.”
She wipes her hands on the cloth tucked at her hip and meets my eyes without flinching.
“So, as beautiful as those flowers are, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to remove them.”
The room behind me has gone still. The customers are pretending not to listen, and they’re not doing a particularly good job. I am Rakan al-Rashid, and I’m being scolded by a barista in front of an audience.
To my utter shame, she’s completely right. Blue lotuses are perhaps the most beautiful flowers in the world, but that is of no comfort to someone who is allergic.
I raise my hand and dismiss the flowers. It only takes a simple thought to send them to the island of the nymph who created them. In an instant, there is no trace of the lotuses anywhere in the room.
Iris lets out a slow breath and smiles. “Thank you, Rakan.”
“It was thoughtless of me. I apologize.”
“It wasn’t thoughtless. It was just… a lot. Too much, for this place.” She turns toward the airpots before I can say anything else, already reaching for a clean cup from the stack. The marker comes out of her apron pocket. She writes my name on the side without looking at me.Rakan.“Do you want your coffee?”
“Yes, please. If you’d be so kind.”
She doesn’t ask what I want. She pours me the same dark roast, snaps the lid on tight, and slides the cup across the counter to me. “Four-fifty.”
I have a twenty already in my hand. I set it on the mahogany.
“Keep the change.”
She takes the bill, drops it in the till, and pulls fifteen fifty from the drawer. She doesn’t try to give it to me this time. Instead, she slips it into the tip jar without comment. The change I don’t want joins the rest of the morning’s tips.
“Thanks, Rakan. Have a good one.”
The dismissal is mild and warm, the same way she would dismiss any regular. I pick up my coffee, wrap my hand around the cardboard sleeve, and turn toward the door.
As I leave the shop, Sigurd’s words echo in my head, almost mocking.“Make it a cashmere scarf, then. A nice one, but still sensible.”
I hadn’t understood what he meant bysensible. I do now. Iris isn’t the woman I imagined when I asked Vasili for the lotuses. Or rather, she is… but I don’t know her well enough to give her a gift she might actually accept.
Through the open door, a customer’s voice carries out to the sidewalk. “Iris, sweetheart, can I get a refill on this when you have a minute?”
“Be right with you, Marcus. Give me thirty seconds.”
I take another sip of the coffee. Marcus is presumably a regular, and Iris has thirty seconds for him. She’s given me far more. If nothing else, she did smile.
So perhaps she doesn’t need a bouquet of magical flowers. Something smaller, then, something that fits inside the actual life she’s living. I don’t know yet what it is. But I have, as Sigurd would no doubt remind me, all the time in the world.
3
Priceless
Iris
“I’m going to commit arson, and you are going to provide my alibi.”
Camille blows through the door of The Daily Grind a little before ten. She slams three oversized tote bags onto the nearest stool. Her tablet clatters onto the counter beside them.
“Tell me you have something to eat that isn’t full of refined sugar,” she pleads. “I haven’t had anything since last night. I could eat a centaur.”
I’ve known Camille since we were both seven years old. We’ve been friends for as long as I can remember. There’s alwayssomething that isn’t full of refined sugar in The Daily Grind, just for her.
I lift a savory muffin out of the pastry case with the tongs and slide it onto a napkin. “Spinach and feta. Came in this morning. Eat it before it gets cold.”
