'What do you mean? They couldn't have just turned up on your doorstep.'
'That's exactly what they did.'
'And you opened the door and there they were?'
'Just about. I had a visitor, and when I let him in he handed them to me. For a split second I thought they were from him, which didn't make any sense, and then he explained they'd been sitting on my welcome mat when he arrived. At which point I immediately assumed they were from you.'
'You figured I just dropped them on your doorstep and left?'
'I thought you probably had them delivered. And then I was in the shower and didn't hear the bell, so the delivery boy left them. Or he left them with the doorman, and the doorman left them there when I didn't respond to the bell.' She laid a hand on my arm. 'To tell the truth,' she said, 'I didn't give the matter that much thought. I was just, well, moved, you know? Impressed.'
'And touched that I had sent you flowers.'
'Yes, that's right.'
'It certainly makes me wish they were mine.'
'Oh, Matt, I don't—'
'It does. And they're beautiful flowers, you can't get around it. I should have kept my mouth shut and taken credit for them.'
'Think so, huh?'
'Why not? They're a hell of a good romantic gesture. I can see where a guy could get laid on the strength of something like that.'
Her face softened, and her arm moved to circle my waist. 'Ah, baby,' she said. 'What makes you think you need flowers?'
Afterward we lay quietly together for a long while, not asleep but not entirely awake. At one point I thought of something and laughed softly to myself. Not softly enough, because she asked me what was so funny.
I said, 'Some vegetarian.'
'Some what? Oh.' She rolled onto her side and opened her big eyes at me. 'A person who abstains entirely from animal matter,' she said, 'runs the risk over a long period of time of developing a vitamin B-12 deficiency.'
'Is that serious?'
'It can lead to pernicious anemia.'
'That doesn't sound good.'
'It shouldn't. It's fatal.'
'Really?'
'So they tell me.'
'Well, you wouldn't want to chance that,' I said. 'And you can get that on a strict vegetarian diet?'
'According to what I've read.'
'Can't you get B-12 from dairy products?'
'I think you can, yes.'
'And don't you eat dairy? There's milk in the fridge, and yogurt, as I recall.'
She nodded. 'I eat dairy,' she said, 'and you're supposed to be able to get B-12 from dairy products, but I figure you can't be too careful, you know what I mean?'
'I think you're right.'
'Because why leave something like that to chance? Pernicious anemia just doesn't sound like something a person would want to have.'
'And an ounce of prevention—'
'I don't think it was an ounce,' she said. 'I think it was more like a spoonful.'
I must have drifted off because the next thing I knew I was alone in the bed and the shower was running in the bathroom. She emerged from it a few minutes later wrapped in a towel. I took a shower myself, dried off, and got dressed, and when I went into the living room there was coffee poured for me and a plate on the table with cut-up raw vegetables and bite-size chunks of cheese. We sat at the dinette table and nibbled at the food. Across the room, the floral arrangement was as dazzling as ever in the soft light of late afternoon.
I said, 'The guy who handed you the flowers.'
'What about him?'
'Who was he?'
'Just a guy.'
'Because if Motley deliberately used him to get the flowers to you, he might be a lead back to him.'
'He didn't.'
'How can you be sure?'
