And even though the store feels like a museum, all the arrangements seem very much alive, each bud breathing in its place like a proud performer, which isn’t something I’ve ever felt about flower bouquets in the States—those manage to look both stiff and wilted. Granted, my experience with them is limited to grocery store bouquets and online snapshots. But there’s magic in these arrangements that wouldn’t translate into a photo. The branches reach out toward me like fairy fingers. If I focus, I can remember standing with Mama, running my hands over the nodes of the spindly, berried limbs of an arrangement resembling these.

Lílíum, she whispered, kissing my forehead and pointing to the prickly-looking red spider lily beside us, with its reaching tentacles.

Swípí, she said, circling delicate pink closed buds.

Sweet … pea? I asked, and she laughed.

Yes. Viloki name taken from the English. I promise I’m not inventing anything.

If she’s still alive somewhere, would she have walked by Katox’s store just once in the past decade, if only to peek through the glass and steal a glimpse of this sublime beauty?

If only to remember those days with me?

I’m staring at an alien-looking, sparse bundle of spiky flowers when someone whispers something in Vilosh behind me, tickling the back of my neck. I jump; it’s a squirrelly young man in a marled sweater and an apron, his brown hair tied into a bun on top of his head in a fashion suspiciously reminiscent of Tai.

“Manon Hammick?” he asks, though I know we both know he knows. His hands are wet with flecks of green. “I’m Malto.” He wipes his fingers on his apron as he sneaks a look at the curtain concealing the back of the store. “Are you ready?”

Before I can nod, a bell rings in the far room, and Malto spins away from me on his heel before hissing, over his shoulder: “Katox only has six minutes. Don’t make eye contact. Don’t mention what day it is, or, God forbid, what year: He doesn’t think linearly.” He sniffs the air. “He doesn’t like perfume, so it’s good you didn’t wear any. Oh, and he speaks in riddles. But don’t tell him that, because he might stop talking completely.” He hesitates by the curtain, as if he deals with that silence often, before more or less pushing me into its silken embrace.

I stumble through, and there he is: the wizened old man, shorter than I am, with a wispy white beard and a chunky pair of black glasses. Katox. I recognize him, and a warm smile spreads across my face. He’s wearing a pressed, moss-green smock and clogs, hunched over a sink exploding with barbed sprigs of luscious blossoms.

I stop and stare, waiting for him to acknowledge my presence in any small way.