Chapter 11: An Unexpected Customer

Oakley's Floral Delight was located on Riza's side of the river, in an old neighbourhood full of shabby but stately apartment buildings and skinny houses with two and three storeys. The little shop stood in the middle of a row of commercial buildings with apartments above, which the proprietors either resided in themselves, or let out for supplemental income. Orson parked the truck on the curb, and his passengers climbed out. Mrs. Oakley took a bunch of keys from her handbag and unlocked the front door of the shop.

"Orson, dear, please bring the crates inside," she said pointedly, fixing her son with a meaningful look. Orson had been watching Riza avidly. He nodded with vehemence and hurried back around the truck.

"Come with me," the lady said to Riza. She led the way into the shop. The front space was bright and cheerful, for the broad bay windows were polished almost to transparency, and they let the sun in beautifully. There was a long counter with rolls of ribbon and paper, shelves of empty vases and demure little baskets, and several little tables bearing the first blossoms of the season. Mrs. Oakley went to a little door behind the cash register, and entered a small room.

It was a cramped office, the desk, shelves and twin filing cabinets overflowing with paper. There were invoices and purchase orders, inventory lists and customer files and printed instructions for the care of plants, all jumbled together into an entropic mass.

"This will be your space," Mrs. Oakley said, a little ruefully. "It's quite a mess, I'm afraid. It's so much work running a proper shop. Sometimes I think I'd be better off selling posies from a handcart." She moved to the small window and forced it open with effort. A tiny cross-breeze alleviated the feeling of a tomb. "I think there's a slide rule somewhere," she said.

"I probably won't need it," Riza said. She didn't know much about accounting, but it seemed like it ought to be chiefly simple arithmetic and excellent organization.

"I see you have your dinner," Mrs. Oakley went on; "but from now on I want you to eat with Orson and me. I'm used to cooking for three, but with my daughter away at school I always have too much food. There's no point in arguing with me, for I've made up my mind. Understand?"

"Yes, ma'am," Riza said.

"Good. I'll let you get to work. I'm afraid I have no advice to give you: I'm useless with the books." Mrs. Oakley navigated around Riza and backed out of the room. She smiled encouragingly.

Left alone, Riza stood for a long while, at a loss as to where to begin. Finally, deciding that the first step was to restore some semblance of order to her environment, she bega to sort the papers into piles: invoices in one, purchase orders in another, inventory lists in a third, and so on.

Discidium

Mr. Mustang was delighted to learn that Riza had a new job. He had not, he told her frankly, ever liked the idea of her working in a factory. This kind of work was much better: more suited to Riza's temperament and more appropriate for one of her intelligence and education. Riza had flushed with pleasure at those words. Her intelligence? He found her intelligent. It was something she could not recall ever having heard from her father.

As a week passed, and then two, Riza decided that she liked the new job. It required less onerous standing, and it was anything but tedious. Sorting through months and months of jumbled business records was like trying to assemble a jigsaw puzzle without any idea of the picture printed upon it. It was challenging and at times frustrating, but it was not dull.

Mrs. Oakley was very pleasant. She could be exceedingly shrewd with difficult customers or the wholesalers peddling truckloads of flowers, and she was not afraid to press her price, but she was a kind employer. She was endlessly patient with Riza's questions, and she never criticized her work or scolded her. Dinners in the Oakley family flat above the store were a pleasant affair. Mrs. Oakley quickly realized that Riza had no interest in answering questions about her childhood, her home town, her family or her upbringing, and instead they talked about books or music or the Oakley family.

Mrs. Oakley had once been a working girl like Riza. In those days, there were no factory jobs in Central, at least not for women. Instead, Mrs. Oakley – who had then been Miss Carpenter – had taken a post in the home of one of the city's finest old families. She had many funny tales about her time in service, and both Riza and Orson (who had clearly heard them all before!) both laughed at stories of dinner parties gone awry and below-stairs drama. Mrs. Oakley had started as a chambermaid, and then become a parlourmaid. Then she had married the flower peddler, and as a wedding gift the family for which she had worked had given the young couple the money to start the florists' shop. The association had not ended there, however, for Mrs. Oakley's daughter was only a few weeks older than their firstborn. She had been asked to be the child's wetnurse, and with the birth of her second girl she had nursed their second child, too. She had been employed part-time in the nursery until Orson was five years old.

This story came to light after a curious experience on a rainy Wednesday afternoon. Mrs. Oakley had just stepped out to run something to the post office, and she had asked Riza to mind the shop in her absence. Not expecting much custom, Riza had brought the ledger she was trying to work on into the front of the store, and sat down at the stool behind the counter to work.

She had not been at it for very long when a shadow eclipsed the greyish light filtering through the windows. Riza looked up just as an enormously broad-shouldered man in a beautifully tailored tweed suit rippled his way into the shop. Her eyes widened slightly at the sheer size of the man.

"Well, well. What's this?" he rumbled in a deep, oddly melodious voice. "Where's Nanny Greta?"

Riza's mouth went dry. She recognized the man, with his all-but bald head and his square jaw and his titanic proportions. She had run away from him once, at an estate on the north border of the city where she had gone to seek work as a companion to a young heiress.

"T-there's nobody of that name here," she squeaked. His height was shocking, and his voice so strong and resonant – the effect was quite intimidating. She stood up, so as to make her slight frame as tall as possible, and she held her head high. She was on her turf now, or rather on Mrs. Oakley's. She would prove herself worthy of the trust placed in her. "We have some lovely yellow roses from West City, though, if you'd like to give Nanny Greta some flowers when you find her."

The big man laughed, and suddenly he looked a great deal younger. He was maybe two or three years older than Mr. Mustang, Riza realized. Suddenly he wasn't quite so frightening: he was just an overgrown boy.

"I'll take two dozen," he said, pulling out a pocketbook, which burgeoned just like the rest of him.

"Ninety sens, please," Riza said. "Shall I wrap them for you?"

"You'd best do that," he consented gravely. His sparkling blue eyes followed her as she rounded the counter and carefully picked out twenty-four plump rosebuds brimming with untapped potential. She took a few ferns from another vase, and then arranged the lot onto a square of waxed florist's paper. The young, muscular gentleman smiled. "Very nice," he said. "Though they might be more esthetically pleasing if you arranged a ribbon just so..."

His large hands brushed hers out of the way and deftly adorned the bouquet. "There, you see?" he said. "Eye-catching, artful and exquisite, isn't it?"

"Yes, sir," Riza said politely, though she did not really agree. The bow, which was a lurid shade of pink, seemed a little gaudy. She would have preferred the simple beauty of the flowers unadorned by such an ornament.

"I thought so!" the man said happily. "This technique of presenting floral arrangements has been passed down through the family line for generations. My great-aunt Dahlia Jean Armstrong had a particular talent for horticultural displays, and she—"

The door opened, and Mrs. Oakley came in from the rain, shaking out her umbrella. She took one look at the tall, imposing customer, and her whole face illuminated with a smile. "Why, Master Alex!" she cried.

He turned upon her so quickly that his broad shoulders created a breeze. "Nanny Greta!" he said. Suddenly his eyes were brimming with tears of happy nostalgia. "It's so good to see you!" he said.

Then, to Riza's amazement, he picked up Mrs. Oakley and hugged her energetically. "It's been a long time!" she laughed, apparently not frightened to be so handled by this giant.

"Too long! Much too long!" said "Master Alex". "I'm sorry that I've neglected you, but I've been busy with my studies."

"Your studies – do put me down, Master Alex! I'm much too old to be tossed around like a sack of flour. You're following in your father's footsteps, I hear?" Mrs. Oakley smoothed her dress.

"That's right!" he agreed. "It's kept me very busy. Mother would like me to take a course or two at the University, but I don't have the time: I'm working ten or twelve hours a day as it is."

Mr. Mustang worked from dawn until two in the morning, and he had time to take courses at the University, Riza thought a little scornfully. Then she caught herself. Of course, not every young man was as marvellous as Mr. Mustang, and this one seemed like a nice enough person in his own right. At least, Mrs. Oakley seemed to like him.

"What brings you out here?" she asked happily.

"I wanted to see you..." he began. Then he appeared to decide that this was too much of a fib. He shrugged sheepishly. "I need some flowers," he said. "We have a captain in the family now, and we're holding a ball for her: I'm supposed to get centrepieces and something for the great room."

"She's a captain now?" Mrs. Oakley cried. "Why, she's only twenty-three!"

"She did well on her tour in the west," Master Alex said. "Three commendations and the Scarlet Heart. We're all very proud."

Riza thought she heard just the tiniest hint of envy in his voice. Whoever "she" was it was obvious that this young man wished he could measure up to her standards. Mrs. Oakley picked up on it too, for she reached up to touch his muscular arm.

"Don't fret, love," she said. "You wait and see: once you've perfected your art you'll become a State Alchemist just like your father. You'll do your family proud."

He wouldn't have any trouble paying the examination fee, Riza thought a little bitterly, remembering the huge house with the fountain and the statues and the spreading lawns. Mr. Mustang was struggling so hard to save the money that he would need. It didn't seem fair that some people were so rich and others had to fight for everything. Riza didn't mind fighting herself, but she wished things were easier for Mr. Mustang...

"I hope so," the large youth said stoutly. "Mother has a few ideas, but I know she trusts you and I to come up with something delightful."

"I see you've already started," Mrs. Oakley said, nodding at the roses.

"Oh, no, those are for you!" Master Alex told her. "Just a little present..."

Mrs. Oakley laughed. "Oh, Alex, there's nobody quite like you!"

He chuckled in reply, and the single blonde curl in the centre of his forehead bobbed in agreement.

discidium

"Miss Livvy was such a beautiful baby!" Mrs. Oakley reminisced later that afternoon, when the blonde giant had taken his leave. "And wilful! I never saw such a determined child. I remember when she was eight months old she learned how to pull herself up onto her feet. That wasn't good enough for Livvy, though! She wanted to walk just like a grown-up. She would work for hours, bouncing and cruising like she knew it would build up the muscles in those little legs of hers. Then one day she just took off across the nursery at top speed! My little Lucy was five weeks older, and she was barely crawling – but she wasn't as determined as Miss Livvy!"

She clipped the stem of a bundle of lilac and nestled it into the cube of peat that she had in the little basket. "And now she's a captain. Captain Olivier Milla Armstrong, no less. It's a name that'll strike terror into the troops, I'll warrant! My Livvy wouldn't do anything but."

"A captain at twenty-three?" Riza said. "That's young, isn't it?" Maes Hughes was twenty-three, and he still had more than a year left at the Academy.

"Very," Mrs. Oakley said, and she looked as proud as she did when she spoke of her own daughter's accomplishments. "But then, she had an early start. She enrolled in the National Academy when she was only fourteen."

"She did?" Riza said. "But I thought you had to be sixteen. Mr. Musta—my friend couldn't enrol 'til then."

"You can't, unless you have parental permission. And of course you still have to meet their standards, which isn't easy. Livvy did it, though. She's always done everything that she set her mind to. She's a clever girl, and stubborn as an ox. Beautiful, too..."

While she went on to expound upon the virtues of her one-time nursling, Riza's mind was whirring furiously. Fourteen? You could enrol in the Academy at fourteen? And a girl had done it. If it was possible for one girl, it was possible for others.

Riza had always wondered if she might one day join the military. It would give her a chance to make something of her live. Attending an academy would tender the opportunity to attend university, which seemed otherwise impossible. And Mr. Mustang was in the military: he expected to serve for life. If Riza wanted to continue to help him, to support him and encourage him as he pursued his lofty goals, then the military was where she would have to be. She could start on that road at the age of fourteen! She was thirteen already: next year she might join! The thought was dizzying and delightful.

She would have to consider it carefully, of course, and she would have to consult with Mr. Mustang. It was a big decision, and it would take a great deal of luck and even more hard work. Riza knew that she was a hard worker. She could do it. She was strong and clever and dedicated. She could become a soldier... just like Captain Olivier Milla Armstrong. Riza fixed the name in her mind.

She would tell Mr. Mustang about it tonight. She needed to know what he thought about the idea, for she could scarcely proceed without his input and his blessing.