A Love Song for Ricki Wilde (9)
Ricki’s eyebrows rose. Sexy Taco might bring her foot traffic, after all.
“Such an invasion of privacy,” she said. “And creepy. Does that happen a lot?”
“With guys, yeah. I gave them their first hard-on, so they think I belong to them. But who really knows why? The male psyche is too twisted to be any of my business.”
Ricki remembered when nineteen-year-old Tuesday famously told reporters that she didn’t “really believe in men, as a concept or genre.” That was after her brief marriage to an allegedly closeted NBA star, a union that gossip bloggers swore was orchestrated by her crooked manager.
Tuesday took a cursory glance around the space, spotted the emerald throne, and gasped. She walked to the center of the room and did a slow spin. “This place is dope.” She looked Ricki up and down. “You’re dope. Cute jumpsuit.”
“You like it?” Ricki beamed. The encounter had happened so fast, her signature social anxiety hadn’t had a chance to show itself. “I made it from a secondhand muumuu. Thrifting and sewing are my self-care.”
“Mmm. A sustainable queen.” She squinted at her. “Where’d you come from?”
Tuesday asked this question imperiously, even though she’d been the one to burst into Ricki’s shop. Ricki gave her the abridged version of her life story while Tuesday explored the shop’s jungly decor. Finally, she stopped at a bowl of tiny crystals.
“Pretty, right? Take one,” offered Ricki. “My boyfriend, well, my not-boyfriend… my handyman gave them to me. Supposedly, they restore calm.”
“We’ve all had a handyman, girl.” Tuesday plucked one out of the bowl, popped it into her mouth, and gulped. Ricki screamed.
“They’re crystals, not pills! You’re supposed to put them in your bra or whatever!”
Tuesday, who’d thought it was an oddly shaped Xanax, said, “I don’t wear bras.”
Stunned, Ricki burst into laughter. Tuesday giggled even harder. And from that moment on, they were partners in crime. The absurdity of Tuesday’s crystal snafu made Ricki feel safe enough to be herself. And for Tuesday, the fact that Ricki never sold the crystal story to gossip blogs meant she was a “real one” (badly burned by former friends, the actress had a low bar for relationships). Nothing seals tighter than best friends who’ve never had one.
The third miracle was the month of December. When Wilde Things held its grand opening on the first, it was an instant hit. Sure, some of it was due to the festive season. But at a time when flower trends were minimalist, Ricki’s shop was an over-the-top winter wonderland! Think Christmas cactus and candy-cane-striped amaryllis; Kwanzaa bouquets with tropical red, black, and green blooms; and Hanukkah wreaths mixing blue poppies with white orchids.
By New Year’s Day, she’d earned double her projection.
And by the end of January, she’d lost every cent.
People just… stopped coming. Ricki couldn’t figure it out. In December, she could barely keep blooms in stock, the orders were so fast and furious. What did she do wrong?
“I know what you did wrong,” offered Tuesday one evening after closing. Foot traffic had been brutally slow that day. Now she and Ricki were stirring bowls of recycled, plantable paper infused with wildflower seeds. Ricki wanted to package the homemade paper into chic note card sets, offering them as a last-minute purchase at the register. If she ever had any more sales.
“Those weekly January promotions,” continued Tuesday. “They were too esoteric to resonate with consumers.”
Ali, who was crouched in a corner, repairing an exposed nail, stopped working long enough to look up “esoteric” and “resonate” on his phone. No one was more surprised than Ricki that they were still dating. It was a thrice-weekly hookup thing, but his sweet, uncomplicated presence was calming.
“But the themes were so punny!” exclaimed Ricki, fighting back tears. “Seize the Daisy? Hibiscus and Gravy? No one even tried my homemade gift-with-purchase biscuits.”
“I love your biscuits.” Ali made grabby hands at Ricki, grinning at his euphemism. And then he added, “But in keeping with my radical honesty practice, I should say your actual biscuits were mad dry. Did you use Crisco?”
Ricki stopped stirring the paper, her shoulders slumped in misery.
“I offended you!” Ali hopped up and slipped an arm around Ricki’s waist. “I can’t believe I said something so dumb.”
“No?” Tuesday cocked a brow. “Ten minutes ago, you asked me if I paid Illuminati fees in blood.”
“And you didn’t answer.”
“Please stop watching hoax YouTube, Ali. I beg of you. Read a book.”
“Only sheep value books. A book is just a collection of some random individual’s thoughts…”
“But you are some random individual.”
“And I vibe off my own thoughts. My own interior work. My own journey towards living with energetic intention.”
Tuesday groaned. “Ricki, your man’s Jada Pinkett Smith-ing again.”
Ricki was too lost in rising worry over Wilde Things to even register this exchange. She needed to get outside, touch some grass. Back at home, when life got too hectic, escaping to the forest behind her parents’ house gave her instant serenity. That was what she needed.