Tone 1:2

Saturday morning.  I read the Wheaties box, every last bit of it, and thought back on the last two days while I ate my cereal.

Flack hadn't even introduced us, but he wasn’t exactly one with the social graces of a debutante. He had called me at home on Thursday night to tell me a "new guy" would be coming around the next day. “New guy?”

“Yeah. He’ll be with us for the summer.”

“The new guy have a name?”

“Tony.” Flack was a regular spewing fountain of information. It was like talking to a captured spy.

“The new guy have a last name, or is that top secret?”

“Doesn’t matter. He’ll be around late Friday.” Flack hung up.

Doesn’t matter? What kind of answer was that. A Flack answer. It was pathetic. Was the guy engaged to his daughter or something? Maybe he was a spy too. Whole grain wheat, sugar, salt.

So Tone just appeared at the passenger side of the van when I came in for the final evening delivery on Friday - it was an after-supper hospital stop. I guess Flack spotted me when I drove in and just pushed the kid out the back door of the shop, like a divorced parent delivering a kid for the weekend, not wanting to see the estranged other half. It was sort of disarming.

But there he was, beaming at the passenger window, a book bag – or a parachute, who knew - over one shoulder. He looked like a black 007. No kidding. He was a good-looking kid.

“I'm Tony. Flack told me a lot about you,” he said simply as he climbed in. Well, he didn’t tell me anything about you, I thought to myself.

“That your real name? Or is it Antonio, Anthony, Aunty M?” I admit it. It wasn’t the greatest start to a new relationship – but I was in level 3 paranoid mode. But, amazingly, it really didn’t faze the kid. And things were pretty much okay until I implied that he lived in a shack later that night. But you already know about that.

“Well, it’s actually Antony.” And he said that without stumbling. His annunciation… that’s not how you spell it is it? His enunciation was perfect.

“As in Cleopatra?”

“Yeah.”

“No kidding.”

“Yeah. My mom loved Julius Caesar.”

“The play?”

“Yeah, she read it in the 10th grade.” He sure said “yeah” a lot.

“You ever say ‘yes’?”

“Yessir.” He flashed a smile.

“So why not Julius?”

“She loved the funeral speech. “

I don’t think he was kidding. I had to mull on that for awhile.  So we drove on silently to the hospital.  I finally thought of something to say. Something with wit and authority. I had it.“I think I’ll call you Tone.” You’re right. It was patronizing. And that’s when I heard the first of his many “no problems.”

“No problem.”

We had a handful of deliveries for the oncology floor, a couple to folks recovering from minor surgery, and an expectant mom on the baby unit. When we got out I said, “Just stay in the lobby and look after the pushcart. I’ll come back and get each arrangement when I need it.”

“Can’t we just take it from floor to floor?”

“No we can’t. Everybody gets the only-for-them treatment. You laying on your back, maybe dying, you don’t want to feel part of an assembly line delivery.”  So I parked Tone and the pushcart in an alcove right off the lobby.

I knew what I was talking about, but the kid thought I was crazy. But it’s true. You take them in one at a time, a little after supper when the family’s there, and it’s good for business. It’s good for Flack and the Flackette, but they don’t get it.  It’s great for the patient, too.  The loved one exclaims, “Look, you’re the only person in the whole hospital who’s getting such pretty flowers!” Then you hang out for a little while, without a whole load of other flowers on the cart lurking out in the hall. Folks remember that.

“Just wait here.” I tore the card off the mom-to-be arrangement and opened it up.

Tone looked like I had desecrated a tombstone or something.

“Ten to one, the daddy-to-be said something stupid.” And sure enough he had. He had probably been forced to read this poem in high school, and the only poem he had ever come across about pregnancy, so there it was copied out in his gorilla handwriting. I read to Tone, “I’m a riddle in nine syllables.”

“Plath? You’re kidding.”

I held out the card for him to see. “If he’d’ve stopped there, he might have been okay. But he kept plowing straight on through. Elephant, melon, cow in calf, the whole bit. I’m saving this guy’s marriage.”

So I took a blank card from my pocket and rewrote a simple note: “Dear Sherry, You are the love of my life. I love you, David.” And then I consulted my cheat notebook (looks like a “little black book” I keep in my hip pocket) and copied out two lines from Dorothy Parker: “Let her have laughter with her little one/Teach her the endless, tuneless songs to sing.”

I put the card into an envelope and handed it to Tone. “I’ll be back after the first cancer stop.”

---

So that had been how the first day with Tone had begun and it had ended with him disappearing into his dilapidated house. I drove into work wondering if he would show. Hope he’s the forgiving type. He seemed like a tough kid – he was certainly brilliant. And, he probably needed the money if was willing to work for Flack in the first place. Like me.

I got to the shop around 8:30 to start loading the van for the Grayston funeral. Nobody was there yet and I dreaded Flack showing up and giving me the lip about the scratched up van. I picked up the LOAD LIST from the back and started organizing the stuff that was already pre-staged there by the Flackette. They were quite a pair, Flack and the Flackette. She came from a family of big, or pretty big anyway, money.  He definitely married up economically, but sideways otherwise (looks, personality, smarts). A match made in Atlantic City.

It was quite a haul - the van was almost full of all the sentimental and noxious stuff (and the LOAD LIST was all checked off) when I heard Flack open up the front.

Part of my problem was that I held Flack personally responsible for the degradation of ceremony and gravitas in the modern world (a fairly heavy accusation I'll admit) - but how could you sell teddy bears with “We'll miss you grandpa” signs hanging around their plush little necks? Sweaters were extra. These were at least special orders and they weren't on display in the shop. I had nightmares about a whole shelf of bears missing various members of the family – that is, the major members: Papa Bear, Momma Bear,  Granny Bear, Grandpa Bear. You know, based on the actuarial stuff on the most likely to die. You can’t stock everything. You could go hog wild with the generic ones though: “Miss You.” Of course I didn't venture out front any more as it was - the silk and plastic flower displays and the chaulky porcelain figurines tied my stomach in knots.

I was about to drive off around 9:30 when Tone showed up at the passenger door. Seemed like this was his M.O.

"Mr. Flack told me to get here at 9:30. He said you could load the van on your own, but to be here to get to the church with you."

Flack was such a cheapskate and a mind-gamer too. But it was hard to figure out which he was up to- probably both. So that's how he was gonna play the Tone game - tell me I was his direct supervisor (Tone was my "assistant"), but Flack would give all the directions.

"Just get in. The body'll be there by 10:30. We have to get there before the mortuary delivers the body and remove all of these tacky Flack’s Flowers ribbons and business cards stuck in all the arrangements."

"What's Mr. Flack think about that?"

"He doesn't know - and we wouldn't have the business that we do if we had done the arrangements like he and the Flackette had planned for the last five years." I was still defending my methods to anybody within earshot.

“We?” What did I tell you. Tone was a smart guy.

“Okay, Perry Mason, let’s get out of here.”

We climbed into the van and it started to rain. Rainy funerals are the worst. Especially umbrellas held over widows and daughters by total strangers who’d never ever share an umbrella with anybody in any other circumstance - it gives me the willies. My mother died in the rain. That whole week it rained. She was buried in the rain. There was no dry dirt anywhere to toss in at the end of the burial ceremony. The mortician had a little bag of sand there. That’s a Boy Scout for you. I grabbed up a fist-full and let out a little over her casket and it drizzled down like sugar. Like sands through the hour glass, my little pea brain remembered at the time. So are the days of our lives, my older pea brain remembered now. She liked that soap. Anyway, I released the rest of the sand into my pocket. That was, what, 25 years ago. I still have a little stashed in a jar somewhere. O, that’s from a beach trip I took, I used to answer when people would ask. What a sentimentalist.

Tone breaks in. “You take this seriously don’t you.”

“Yeah. You know a civilization is crumbling when people start delivering balloons as analogues for flowers. They gradually lose their air or their helium – you see them in cars half-deflated, blubbering ghosts.”

“Yeah, but what about flowers? They dry up and die.” We both had the “yeah” thing down pat.

“Death freaks us out so much we can’t give anybody cut flowers any more – got to be potted. The ephemeral, and therefore romantic, cut flower is all the more alluring these days, because of its rarity –even moreso than its beauty.” Not sure if that really came out that way live and in person. But, it was something about that pretentious sounding.

“You writing a book or something?”

“May be. You wanna be in it? ”

“Depends on who gets killed off at the end.” As soon as the line was out of his mouth, we pulled into the church parking lot - perfect timing. Tone flashed that bouquet of pearly white pear blossoms at me– he was a regular toothpaste commercial. “Can’t help it Mercury Man. Rhythm’s in the blood.”

The hearse was already there. The weird frosty letters of the funeral home on the back glass.

“That’s got to be a weird way to make a living,” I said.

“Yeah, delivering cut flowers,” Tone returned.

I parked in a secluded part of the lot so we could do the deed. I flung open the back door of the van and the whole floral tribute to our latest dead guy awaited us. I couldn't even crawl in and hand down like I usually did the van was so full.

"This guy must be well-known. Must have been..."

"No, still is. Just make sure you remove anything that has Flack’s Flowers on it. Make a neat note on the back of each envelope saying what arrangement it came off of. You know, medium bouquet of daisies, two dozen red roses, whatever." I handed him a pencil just in case he had terrible handwriting. We’d give all these envelopes to the funeral director after we helped at the graveside and he’d return them to the family. They appreciated the notes so they could write “Thank you” cards without the hassle of trying to match names with flowers.

We worked silently - pulling out the business cards and their little plastic holders that were stabbed into the flower arrangements.

"Get rid of the stupid teddy bears too. Throw them in a trash bag – there’s a box behind the front seat."

"If those are missing, won’t that be even more noticeable?”

"It's our job to return decorum to western civilization."

Tone dropped a blue, can you believe it, denim teddy bear into the Hefty. I followed with a large velvet heart pillow with gold embroidery - reminded me of one of those posh Chivas Regal bags. Before we finished we had a tidy collection of various knickknacks and other sentimental rubbish.

"If you can't toss it on top of a lowering casket - if it ain't organic - forget it."

“Is that a rule?”

“It’s my rule.”

We were silent for awhile. We finished the sad task and parked closer to the church. We took all the arrangements into the sanctuary and spread them around the casket – making sure the colours were well balanced. Whole lotta “we” in that paragraph. Anyway, we then headed to Burger Chef before going to the graveside to set up the flowers there. Most, probably all, other flower shops left this to the mortician.  They were happy to receive the help.

---

We went through the drive-thru at the Chef and then parked in a shady spot. Just your typical Saturday morning: load flowers, throw away adverts, deliver flowers, eat at Burger Chef. It was a grand and adventurous life.

I started the saga of telling Tone about not changing the pre-selects on the radio and all the other things that I knew drove Flack crazy. “This will take awhile,” I told him. “And the rules will keep changing anyway.”

Tone held out the tiny sack of French fries - a tiny little greasy pack of cigarettes that he had fished out of the Burger Chef sack. "Want some?" Wasn’t quite sure if he was mocking my Friday night behaviour. Couldn’t blame him if he was.

"No, I've been trying to quit."

He then opened up his hamburger on the waxy paper on his lap, placing a fencerow of fries, hiding the pickle and the catsup. He meticulously snapped off the fries to match the size needed - creating a shield of fries, longer in the middle and shorter as he moved to the edges of the patty circle.

"That's quite a production."

"Well, you know, we primitive types have our little folk arts and strange culinary idiosyncrasies." He did say exactly that.

"You read the dictionary in your spare time too?"

Tone took a bite out of the sandwich, neatly placed the surplus French fries back in their bag as if he was counting them, and sipped a drink. "You were laying the law down about something?"

"Yeah. Don't touch the radio."

I handed Tone my drink for him to hold while I got out of the van and stuffed the funeral leftovers into the Burger Chef trashcan - I had to stop at two different trashcans to get rid of all the stuff. Normally I would just return all these things to the funeral director, who would return them to the family. They never really noticed they weren’t there at the services. But I threw them away today since I was showing off for Tone.

---

Getting paid is always an ordeal. Tone was about to experience it for the first time. We usually get paid on Friday. If Flack isn't in a foul mood that is. It would be Saturday this week with Tone starting on Friday and all. That's not really a reason, but that was the world of working for Flack. Keep us on our toes and all.

I pulled the van in beside the trailer - Flack's travel trailer. He and the Flackette would hitch it to their truck and go fishing or camping or whatever they did when they disappeared in August. The rest of the year it sat in the back with the tires gradually going flat. It was also the place where Flack hid his porn stash. “The French vacation in August,” he would say every year. And I would say, "So what?" or "C'est la vie!" depending on the mood I was in.

The shop wasn't quite closed yet when we got back after an afternoon of random deliveries spread out all over the place. And I knew Flack would make us wait around. So I waited in the van. I'd get mine Monday. Maybe.

Tone went on in and waited for his check inside. "You sure?" I asked him when he said he would get a check after two days. "The usual is two weeks before the first check."

"But I'm unusual" he answered.

So Tone waited and fooled around with the displays up front while Flack locked up the back door. Flack had of course been too busy thumbing through catalogs all day to write out our checks. Flackette had been there all day to cover the floor with Daughter of Flack helping on the register. Flora (you can't make this stuff up) was home from college for the summer and begrudgingly helped in the flower shop, when she wasn’t out getting stoned with her old friends from high school.

Tone breathed on the glass - it was cold from the air conditioning going full blast - and drew smiley faces in the wet smoke for my benefit, I guess.

Flack finally called him back to his office and Tone rubs out the smiley faces and disappears past the cutting table. I can't see any deeper into the store from where I'm sitting. Flack was probably putting on his put-out face - like some long-lost third cousin who drove in rainy weather in an unreliable Rambler for three days to give a blood transfusion to save the local third cousin's son from some dread disease.

"You really work this many hours?"

Even though he was cutting Tone a major break (paying him after 2 days), Flack couldn't quite go all the way and be thoroughly gracious. The thing is, he was paying Tone after only 2 days to get at me. And since I was sitting in the van, and Flack couldn't rub that sauce on me, he reverted to form: Weasel.

"You really work this many hours?" holding the timesheet out to Tone.

Tone was answering, "Yes sir."

Flack would rummage around in his desk drawer for the checkbook and then underneath the mess on his desk for the carbon paper, pushing aside the usual wads of green aluminum foil and some dried carnations, "Need some flowers for your girl?"

"No sir. The carbons are probably in the back of the checkbook."

Flack would then calculate the taxes and fill out the check (painstakingly he called it) viciously slow. "You wouldn't want me to make a mistake, would you?"

Flack would then hold the check out to him and Flack's eyebrows would helium-up, prompting his employee to offer an offering of effusive gratitude for Flack's self-sacrifice - staying late and all on a Saturday.

Tone was saying thank you right about now. "Thank you."

Flack let Tone out and locked the door behind him. He didn’t even bother to ask me about my check. The weasel. Tone crawled into the van, his baby-chick-yellow check folded once and peeking from his shirt pocket.

He reached in with two scissor-fingers and pulled it back out.  He held it out toward me like it was a cigarette. “Here’s yours.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope. He went ahead and filled out yours. He said he had it ready at lunch time.”

That was pure Flack for you. He almost pulled off not being a weasel for a change, but he just weaseled that up, too.

“Did he offer you dried-up flowers for your girl?”

“Yeah.” And Tone flashed the Tone-smile. I drove him home and let him out at the BEWARE sign. Neither one of us said anything the whole way. We just listened to Flack’s county music station, and watched out for the lightning bugs winking yellow alongside the highway.