Joe and Joey

In late winter to early spring is when you’ll see the most traffic at the flower shop. Everyone seems to want a little extra color in their homes at the end of a cold gray winter. If that sounds like you, Joe and Son Flowers has your back.

Some folks say, at Joe and Son, watch your back. More often than not the patrons leaving have no flowers, sporting dark sunglasses and stone-faced jawlines instead. Some say they are in the laundry business. Said one local resident:

“Lot of clean money in that establishment and I’m not talking about bibles and prayer books.”

Joe was born in 1957 in a small mill town in New England. He spent his youth helping his mother work the family homestead. It was a childhood of labor and little else. His father’s income was not large, so everyone had to help to make ends meet, that meant helping harvest the vegetables and feeding the chickens.

Joe’s father worked at the paper mill the next town over. His grandfather had also worked at that mill and it was expected that one day so would little Joe, but the mill closed down shortly after his seventeenth birthday. With his father hobbled as he was, Joe knew he needed to either find a way to provide for his family or remove himself from their burden.

Life in the hills was hard and Joe grew into a thick-skinned, do or die country boy who would not sit idle to watch the world spin. With no job prospects in town, he realized he would need to head into the city and try to eke out what he could from this life. Maybe it was poor moral upbringing or maybe a sweet apple gone sour, but he got mixed up with the wrong folks and found himself beholden to a man with power and wealth and a veritable army to enforce his will.

It is safe to say that city life hardened an already sturdy individual. Joe went deeper and deeper into the labyrinth of organized crime. Even though he proved sometimes to be clumsy in his endeavors, Joe gained a reputation over the years as a man who could be trusted. He was given money to open the flower shop and was given explicit direction and guidance in business acumen. Thus he began a new chapter of life.

Joe married Irma and bought a house in the suburbs. Throughout the years Irma never caught on to what Joe was really up to at the flower shop, he didn’t say and she didn’t ask. It helped their relationship to give each other space, gave them each some peace of mind. He fathered a son and raised him in his image. Life in the suburbs was happy.

Joey grew big and strong and boy oh boy did he grow a pair of oysters to match. Joey didn’t play any sports in high school, took up no extracurricular activities to be brief and found his pleasures in the torment of the lesser vessels in the flock. Often times coach Bradley would be called over to break up a fight Joey had instigated and on multiple occasions this resulted in Joey’s suspension from school.

It was clear early on that Joey was a lot like his father and was destined for greatness so when Joey came of age Joe sat him down and gave him the first of many talks. This is how the world works, boy. We’re in a big game with outcomes uncertain and here is how you win the game. These talks culminated in Joey joining the ranks and going to the shop every day with his pop, learning the ropes.

Business was slow. Business was always slow, but business was never slow. Joe and Joey, flower guys, called on to run errands and asked to dirty already soiled goods, made names for themselves. Some people were less than polite when throwing their names around. One learned to watch over one’s shoulder.

As the years went on Joe became restless. He often woke in the night startled at the sound of a branch scratching at the window or a dove, confused by the street lamp into thinking it was actually day, cooing on the line. He was getting old, 63 and counting, not old, but you know, re-evaluating priorities. All well and good for me to go out over a disgruntled peon who didn’t like how I treated his mother, he thought, but don’t let it come down on the kid.

He pulled into Joey’s driveway and gave two short honks. Joey had moved into a nice little house in the hills just outside of town and Joe was in the habit of picking him up each day for work. Joey emerged from the house a tattered and drawn individual, ill smelling and unkempt from a night of drinking.

“Ah, Joey, what the hell are ya doing? You gonna be okay to work, there, bud?”

“Pop, I’m fine. I just need to tuck my shirt in and monkey-brush my hair and I’ll be ready for the runway.”

“You gotta be sharp in this game, son. Some of these guys left their morals in the birthing pan and they’ve got a taste for blood. Just straighten up and I’ll stop at Sol’s for coffee.”

They left Sol’s Coffee and Pastry at five after eight and headed east on route 10 toward Howard’s Market.

“You look peckish.”

Joe flicked his cigarette out the window without looking and turned right onto Harris Parker Ridge Pkwy.

“Since when did you start caring how I look? Peckish, huh… you even know what that means?”

“It’s just that, Federico and Tommy keep coming around. I don’t like it. They’re no good and we need to be on our toes. We’re meeting with the Shepherds today and their baby daughter’s boyfriend works with Tommy’s sister’s best friend’s boyfriend’s brother and-”

“Pop, I’m good. You don’t gotta keep doing that, with the lecturing and all. I’ve been at this for a while now. I think I know how to keep my cool.”

“Just keep your nose clean with those two, you hear?”

“Yeah, I hear you.”

Joe pulled his ‘67 cherry red Mustang into the parking lot of 87 Harris Parker Ridge Pkwy, Joe and Son Flowers. He put the car in park.

“What’s in the box, Joey?” A brown paper box wrapped in brown paper was placed neatly at the threshold of the front door to the shop.

“How should I know what’s in the box? You tell me what’s in the box.”

“You mean you don’t know what’s in the box?”

“I don’t know what’s in the box.”

“Well, where the fuck did it come from?”

“How should I know where it came from? You tell me where It came from.”

“You mean you don’t know where it came from either?”

“I don’t know where it came from, pop.”

“This is great, just great. What are we gonna do now? We gotta do something.”

“How should I know-”

“Cut the crap, Joey! What the hell are we gonna do?”

Joey slowly approached the package and retrieved the small gift note attached there with a ribbon. It had a small waxen seal with a large S pressed in its center to hold the ribbon together.

“Says thanks for the flowers you sweet young man. Signed Phyllis.”

“It’s got an S on it. Could be from the Shepherds. You messing with that girl I told you not to mess with? This is bad, who knows what could be in that box.”

Just then Joey picked up the package and weighing it in his hands declared, “Not heavy, I don’t think it’s a bomb, but who knows.”

“Well we aren’t gonna open it to find out and quit being stupid. Give me that thing.”

Across the street Jarvis and Andy stepped off the loading dock of the bakery there and strolled over to the picnic table for their cigarette break. Andy lit his smoke and brushed the flour from his apron.

“What do you suppose those two jokers are up to?”

“No telling, but it ain’t flowers.”

Jarvis had a southern accent slightly rounded over from his years of living in New England. He lit his cigarette and looked back across the street to the break time entertainment.

Joey stood at the corner of the flower shop looking around nervously. He peeked back over his shoulder and motioned for Joe to ‘hurry up already.’ Just then Joe appeared in the doorway holding a small package wrapped in brown paper. He checked to his right then looked to his left and made a hunched over dash toward Joey who was waiting to usher him around the side of the building.

“I’m telling you,” Jarvis said as he contemplated the next couple drags of his cigarette, “something’s definitely up with those two. Just yesterday I seen two big dudes come walking out of that place, not the kind of guys you see taking flowers to mama. Big guys, you know? Dark sunglasses, I don’t know, looked like a scene out of Goodfellas.”

“Yeah, you don’t normally see many people buying flowers from those guys, that’s for sure. I did see a lady the other day, though, she came out of there all smiles with a big bunch of carnations. But, lets face it, almost no one comes out of there with flowers. I don’t see how they keep the doors open.”

Back on the other side of the street Joey paused from his efforts. After a frantic minute or so of digging he was covered in the mud from that morning’s rain.

“I think that’ll work.” He shook the mud from his hands and wiped them on his pants.

“It’s not deep enough, go deeper.”

“You go deeper, look at me, I’m covered.”

“Alright, alright, just bury the damn thing. If that’s somebody’s finger in there, I haven’t seen it, know what I’m saying. And the sooner I haven’t seen it the better.”

Jarvis and Andy finished their smokes and turned to head back to work just as Joey, covered in mud, came walking around the corner, sort of casual like, and slipped back into the flower shop. Joe followed him and stopped in front of the shop window to nervously lite a cigarette.

“Andy, look at ‘em. Smoking all nervous like he just buried a body or something.”

“Just keep going. We don’t need him to think we’re paying too much attention.”

Joey came back outside in a clean shirt and joined his father. They each kept a couple shirts in the back just in case the days work got heavy.

He lit up a smoke, “Well that was fun. Let’s hope that’s the end of that.”

“Tuck your shirt in, boy. We got a customer.”

An elderly woman in a blue corded sweater came walking across the parking lot to meet them. Joe recognized her right away.

“It’s Mrs. Stiller from the other day. I think we sold her some carnations.”

“Good morning Mrs. Stiller,” Joey put on his best, most charming smile. “How are the flowers, looking lovely on your dinning table I’m sure?”

Mrs. Stiller turned on Joey and smiled a wide and generous smile.

“They are lovely, so lovely. I put them in my favorite crystal vase and watered them as soon as I got home. I just came by to see how you boys are enjoying the donuts I left you here this morning, just a token of my gratitude for all your hard work and excellent customer service” she said turning to look at Joe and fluttering her eyelashes.

Joe and Joey looked at one another, communicating in an instant with their gazes the only words to come to mind.

Thank you for the flowers you sweet young man.

Phyllis