"Jack!" Lena barked the name, as if she thought she'd get better results if she said it in Dog. "Don't you piss on that Japanese maple! Piss on that." She pointed to a scraggly wild white dogwood. "That one didn't cost anything." Jack compromised by honoring both.

The hound had wandered up one steamy summer morning, barely weaned, his head heavy with ticks. They clung to him like anxieties, growing large and clear as they filled with heart's blood. People did that: animals became inconvenient, and people dumped them. When Lena's husband, Lowell, had traded his marriage for a facelift and a Corvette, Jack had been dumped again, this time with Lena standing bewildered at his side.

Now Lena took shears to the garden and selected blooms: burgundy cosmos, purple phlox, yellow coreopsis, white baby's breath, zinnias of red and orange and coral. She discarded anything bug-bitten, malformed, past its prime.

When she pulled into the parking lot at Screen Savor, the cyber cafe‚ where she worked six-to-ten weekday evenings, the flowers nestled on the seat beside her. She turned the "closed" sign to "open," holding her bouquet in one hand as if it were an engraved trophy meriting display and admiration.

"'Lo, Lena." Paul, the owner, barely looked up from a program he was testing on one of the cafe's computers. Yvette, the night manager, bustled in from the kitchen, clean cups rattling on her trolley. An electric bean-grinder coughed to a halt; coconut mango dust sifted through the air.

Lena looked under the counter and chose the right size glass for tonight's bouquet. It had puzzled her, at first, that her flowers were always gone the afternoon after she brought them, then she had realized Paul or Yvette probably took them home after they closed at midnight. The idea touched her. She put the improvised vase next to the cash register, where everyone could enjoy them.

The door opened, and Lena ducked into the kitchen. She knew very little about computers, and what she saw of the customers was more than enough: outlandish-looking creatures, hunched over the keyboards, faces intent. At the sidewalk tables, where they could smoke, they draped themselves on the flimsy plastic chairs and blew rings at each other, laughing at jokes Lena didn't understand. She preferred working in the kitchen, where she knew them only by their orders: the veggie wrap with extra pickles, the chicken monterey on whole wheat, the chips, the pretzels, the sourdough toast.

As she took off her apron at ten, ready to go home, she got a good look at one of them; Yvette pushed the swinging door too far open and it didn't swing back. The opening framed a young woman standing at the counter: scuffed combat boots, red fish-net tights, cut-offs, halter top; gold belly-button ring, seven gold loops in her right ear, a stud in her right nostril; a tattoo of a dragon from her right shoulder to elbow, enough white foundation and black eye-liner to start her own mime troupe, deep burgundy nails and lips, hair an explosion of scarlet spikes. At her side hung a green felt purse shaped like a frog, discolored and worn with age.

Mirror contact lenses flashed as she lifted her face into the light and gazed, as if rapt, at something above Yvette's head.

"That's so beautiful!" Her voice was almost enraptured.

Lena tried to remember what was up there, but the only thing above the coffee bean dispenser was bare wall. Druggie trash, by the look of her, and this clinched it.

"You leaving?" Yvette asked the girl.

"If I can get a ride." The joy trickled out of the girl's voice. "I been ditched."

Yvette swung the door shut.

***

Lena was twelve again, crazy about one of the older girls in the choir at church. She and Abby had great times passing notes during the sermon and giggling. One Sunday, before church, Abby invited Lena to come home with her that afternoon. As soon as service was over, Lena ran to tell her mother, then back to the choir room. Abby was gone. Lena felt a little queasy.

When she said something about it to Abby a week later, the older girl laughed at her own forgetfulness and repeated the invitation. This time, Lena didn't run after the service. This time, she just watched Abby leave with her family, watched her not remembering her.

At the third invitation, Lena quit the choir. She couldn't bear looking into Abby's eyes and reading "You are nothing to me" behind her smile.

***

Lena slipped out of the kitchen and past the girl at the counter.

"Can anybody give Holly a lift?" Yvette asked the room in general. "Hey! Holly needs a lift! Anybody?"

"Not for a couple hours."

"That's okay." So much color in her decoration, so little in her voice. "I can wait. Thanks."

Lena was almost out when she heard that same bleak voice, with a little hope in it. "Save the flowers for me till I go? Please?"

She was outside with the door closed when the question registered. She stopped and looked through the plate glass window.

Her bouquet had been parked on the shelf above the bean cases. Yvette flapped a hand at it, then at the trash can, shrugged, and nodded.

Lena went back in.

"Never mind, Yvette, give her the flowers now. I'll take her home."

The night manager flushed bright pink, pressed her lips together, climbed onto a stool, and brought the flowers down.

Lena wrapped the stems in paper towels and handed the bouquet to Holly. She turned and led the way to her car.

"Where do you live?" She buckled her seatbelt with a sharp snap.

Holly clicked her belt, then gathered the bouquet into her hands again. She gave her address to the dashboard. Lena knew the neighborhood; the houses were little more than shacks.

"I appreciate this." Holly's burgundy nails plucked at the tongue of her frog purse. As they pulled out of the lighted parking lot, Lena saw the girl's nails were ragged--bitten--gnawed.

"What happened to your ride?"

Holly shrugged, head down, eyes nearly closed. "I come Thursdays with some people I know. They took off somewhere."

". . . And just left you?"

Another shrug. "Happens."

"Yes. Yes, it does."

They rode in silence through the darkness, smelling other people's stale smoke rising from their clothes.

"Do you grow these flowers?" The listless voice took on some life.

"Yes."

The girl stroked the petals of a zinnia, black in the dim light. Her hand went to her mouth. Lena thought she was going to play with the ring through her lip, but she nibbled at a nail.

"Stop that."

The girl jerked her hand away, as if she expected it to be slapped. "That's what everybody tells me. Mom--Gran--teachers--everybody." She attempted a light-hearted laugh that failed.

Thrown back to when Jenna, her youngest, had gone through nail-biting, Lena found herself speaking on auto-pilot. "You want your nails to be pretty, don't you? Isn't that why you paint them?"

Holly spread her fingers; she seemed to consider the question, as if she had never thought about it. "I guess so."

"Now, how pretty would a flower be, if I just pinched it off any old way? You have to take care of pretty things."

Holly flexed her hands and looked at her nails again. "I guess."

"Here we are." Lena pulled up near a street light and let the motor run.

"Thanks." A smile touched an edge of the burgundy lips. "Thank you."

"When you get those flowers in the house, cut a little off the end of each stem, on a slant. Dissolve an aspirin in some water, and put the flowers right into it."

"Okay."

"They'll last a week or more, if you do that."

"No sh-- No kidding?"

Lena smiled. "No kidding."

"Thanks again." Holly looked directly at her for the first time; Lena could see herself in the girl's reflective contacts. "For the lift and all."

"Not a problem."

Holly angled out of the car, slammed the door, and started up the cracked walk to her house.

Lena pressed the button that lowered the passenger-side window.

"Holly!"

The girl turned to face her.

"See you Thursday. And don't worry about a ride. I'll bring you another bouquet, too."

The painted face lit up. "No sh-- No kidding?"

"No kidding."

Holly raised one hand, nails toward Lena, wiggled the fingers, held them near her mouth, and shook her head. Gently, she waved the bouquet, turned again and picked her way up the crumbling walk.

Lena watched her safely in. Then she drove home to her beloved second-hand hound and her beautiful wild white dogwood.

Marian Allen has always been fascinated by the magic of creating stories. She has had three novels published electronically by Serendipity Systems and has sold stories to on-line and print publications, including Marion Zimmer Bradley's FANTASY Magazine, Bovine Free Wyoming, The-Phone-Book.com, PanGaia, and Peridotbooks.com. Her story "Prodigal" won second prize in E2K's Flash Fiction contest for 2002. Her web site is http://www.MarianAllen.com.