A Whore Tries to Smell the Roses

If you use your imagination, a stroll through the plant district (28th St. between 6th and 7th Aves.) on a summer afternoon can be a little like taking a walk through a strange and unexpected botanical garden.

Well, okay, a scraggly and creepy botanical garden, for sure?and yes, you'll have to use a lot of imagination, but there are points, especially on the north side of the street, where all you can see are plants in every direction.

If it weren't for the torrent of screamed obscenities, it would all be quite bucolic.

The screamed obscenities weren't the first thing that caught my attention, actually. No, I was more curious about the hundreds of rose petals that blanketed the sidewalk beneath my feet. Petals of red and pale yellow, slowly being ground into pulp. There are always a few rose petals sprinkled across the pavement along that block, knocked off by passersby or jostled loose by clumsy plant store employees, but this was something else. This was almost unearthly.

"I didn't fuckin' do nothin'!"

I looked up to see, a few yards in front of me, a tall, skinny woman, hair cropped short, the hardened stringy look and twitchy moves of a crack whore, clutching tight to a cellophane-wrapped bunch of headless roses, shrieking at the man who was holding her arm.

"Fuckin' let me go!"

"You take roses!"

"Motherfucker get your hands off me!" She tore the arm loose, but made no move to get away, screaming, "Didn't do nothin'!"

I stepped around the two of them and continued down the petal-strewn street toward the four other men who stood in front of the plant store, their thick arms folded. They were screaming, too, some of them.

"Get your stinky ass out of here!" one of them yelled at the woman.

"And never come back!" added another.

I saw the cause of all the trouble. Lined up in front of the plant store were five white 10-gallon buckets, each containing several bunches of cellophane-wrapped red and yellow roses.

"Get the hell out of here!"

"And never come back again! Not around here!"

"Fuck you! I didn't do nothin'!"

Some of the men seemed amused by the scene they found themselves in, some had fear in their eyes, as if they were afraid this woman might come back and attack them.

What had happened here was obvious enough. The woman, while walking past the plant store, had simply reached down, snatched up a bouquet and started running. One of the store employees chased her the 10 yards to where they now stood and grabbed her free arm. She then began beating the man with the bouquet of roses, sending an explosion of petals flying every which way, before they wafted gently to the sidewalk to be ground underfoot by the likes of me.

The screaming carried on, nobody saying much of anything new, until, much to everyone's surprise (including mine), the woman began walking back toward the store, holding the dead bouquet?now little more than a collection of bare stems?out in front of her.

"Okay, motherfucker!" she yelled, "You can take 'em back, I don't care!"

The man who was clearly in charge?a large, swarthy fellow in a loose white shirt and pants?considered her offer for a second, then said, "No...No that's okay. You can keep the flowers... But don't ever come back here again!"

It was an agreement that seemed to satisfy everyone.

As I continued down 28th St., I thought about the scene I'd just strolled through, unnoticed, thinking there was something incredibly sad about it all. Just something sad about a crack whore who wanted nothing more than a bunch of roses.