Para Kay Lola

Ana's stall was third from the corner, between the man who sold knives that never needed sharpening and the woman who sold herbs for conditions you had to whisper. Flowers, in that company, felt almost frivolous — until you watched who bought them, and learned that nobody buys flowers for no reason. The reason walks up to the stall holding money and looking like it isn't there.

She could read the reasons by now. Anniversary, apology, anniversary-of-an-apology. New love, all cellophane and overcommitment. Hospital flowers, chosen quiet. Funeral flowers, chosen fast, because grief cannot stand in a market long. Eleven years at a stall and you learn the whole dictionary.

The sunflower man did not fit the dictionary. He arrived at seven-forty, every Saturday, in a jacket too warm for the weather, and bought one sunflower — para kay Lola — and then stood there for exactly as long as it took her to wrap it, asking questions with the pacing of a man who had rationed them all week. What time does the market open. Do the flowers mind the rain. Is it hard, getting up in the dark. Normal questions, thrown badly on purpose, the way you throw a game of tumbang preso for a child.

She answered every one. Four. The market opens at four. The flowers don't mind the rain, the sellers mind the rain. And no, getting up in the dark is not hard — the dark is the good part; the flowers are more honest before they've been looked at all day. She heard herself say that last one and thought: huy. That is not a thing you tell a customer. That is a thing you tell a person.

On the twelfth Saturday it rained the way it only rains on market days, sideways and personally offended. The knife man packed up. The whisper-herb woman packed up. Ana stayed, under the tarp, on principle and one stubborn feeling she declined to name, and at seven-forty exactly the sunflower man arrived, drowned to the collar, jacket finally correct for the weather, holding — she took a moment to understand it — a thermos.

"Kape," he said, unnecessary and soaked. "In case you were open." The market was a river. Nothing was open. Everything about him said he had known that since the fifth week, and had come anyway, and the sunflower he bought that morning was, for the first time, visibly, provably, for no lola at all: he stood under her dripping tarp and gave it back to her, stem first, wet newspaper and all. "Sabado ulit?" he said. "Saturday," said Ana. Neither of them said maybe. That was the whole news of the day: nobody said maybe.