Seymour hadn't thought about the reaction Mr. Mushnik would have to him walking with Audrey to the car… he had had too many other things to think about… but his shocked expression was certainly not unexpected, if not a little incredibly embarrassing and not helpful at all for the extremely little positive self image he had. "...Audrey? What are you doing here? …Do you need a ride home?" Audrey shook her head slightly, moving closer to Seymour. "Seymour was just gonna show me those strange and interesting plants of his, if that's okay with you." Seymour nodded, adding on to this after a moment. "And I can drive her home after, sir." Mr. Mushnik looked back and forth between them for a long moment, incredulous, before slowly nodding and motioning for Seymour to sit in the back before getting in the car himself. After they had all gotten settled in the car and Mr. Mushnik had started maneuvering it out of the parking lot, he continued. "So… Audrey… I didn't know you liked… plants." His voice still sounded incredulous in a way that suggested he wasn't really astonished by her fondness for plants. She nodded, and Seymour hoped that she was answering both his asked and unasked question by doing so.
"They're so fascinating, especially with how they can breed together even with lots of phylogenetic distance." That was what… he thought was fascinating about plants… Mr. Mushnik nodded thoughtfully. "Did you learn that in that Botany class of yours?" Audrey briefly looked back at Seymour warmly, causing his heart to skip a beat. "Yes, but I didn't really get how far they could take it until I saw Audrey 2!" She clarified after a pause, realizing that Mr. Mushnik didn't know it by that name yet. "...Seymour's cross between a butterwort and Venus flytrap." Mr. Mushnik directed his gaze away from the road and at Seymour for a little bit too long for his comfort, looking at him strangely, before turning back towards what he was doing. "If he focused on the plants we sell as much as that thing I wouldn't be stuck driving this dump." As Seymour shrank further into himself at this, Audrey looked at Mr. Mushnik confusedly. "You sell plants? …Do you have a plant shop?" Mr. Mushnik accentuated his response with a sarcastic one-handed grand sweeping gesture.
"Mushnik's Skid Row Florists, the place everyone wanted to be 20 years ago. Before Chang's came along…" Audrey nodded slowly, thinking. "...My mom works at a plant shop when she's not waitressing… she never told me the name, though. Do you have an Alex Greene working for you?" Mr. Mushnik looked over at her, surprised, and nodded. "I do, she helps to run the store and make the few orders for floral arrangements we get while I'm teaching at the school. …Why does she have a different last name than you, if I may ask?" He parked the car on the street outside of the shop but didn't make any moves to get out of it, waiting for Audrey's response while Seymour and probably he reeled from this revelation. Audrey looked over at the shop, taking the sight of it in thoughtfully, before answering. "...She changed her name back after Daddy left, and she said I can decide if I'm changing mine to hers or not when I'm 18." Her father had abandoned her?! Who would do such a thing?! Besides… his biological parents… but that was different, he wasn't her. He heard himself quietly let out something that hopefully resembled an "I'm sorry that happened to you," and she turned around to face him, smiling sadly but gratefully. "Thanks, Seymour."
Mr. Mushnik mumbled something that resembled Seymour's remark before getting out of the car, and Seymour and Audrey followed him into the shop. Ms. Greene quickly looked up from her Better Homes and Gardens magazine at the sound of the bell above the door, the surprise on her face from its ring only increasing as she saw who had come to the door. "Audrey? What are you doing here?" Audrey smiled brightly before moving closer to where she was sitting behind the shop's counter. "Hi, mom! Seymour wanted to show me those strange and interesting plants of his, so I came back here with him! He named his butterwort/Venus flytrap hybrid after me, can you believe it? Her name is Audrey 2!" Ms. Greene shifted her gaze from Audrey to Seymour, looking at him with suspicion that made him want to sink into the floor. "...How nice. Audrey, are you sure you don't want to go back to the diner with me instead? We have a family discount there, remember." Solemn understanding flashed across Audrey's eyes, and she dipped her head to her, lowering her voice slightly. "That's okay, mom. I really wanna see his plants, and he can take me back home after. Plus…" She lowered her voice even more, and Seymour strained to be able to hear her say something that he thought might have been "he's not like him."
Ms. Greene looked back at her for a long moment before her expression softened slightly, and she nodded, standing up and sharing a brisk hug with her before making her way to the front door, shooting him a glance with less suspicion than before but that still contained some. As she and Mr. Mushnik exchanged a few words, Seymour tore himself away from them, trying to appear to be as respectable and respectful as possible as he rejoined Audrey. "I keep them in the basement…" He opened the door to it, hopefully not too awkwardly, and she smiled warmly at him before starting to head down there. Seymour quickly followed her, feeling extremely rare pride shooting through him as she looked around the room… not just the plants it contained… with fascination. Eventually, her gaze settled upon Audrey 2, and she gasped, quickly moving to the table it sat upon. Audrey sat down in front of it, observing it carefully for a long moment, before gently moving a hand to touch it… wait, that wasn't good! "Uh… don't…" She looked back at him with her hand nearly at its pod, and Seymour struggled to come up with a better explanation as to why she shouldn't touch it than 'Uh… don't…' "The pollen takes forever to get off your hands." That was true. It was far from the most important reason why she shouldn't touch Audrey 2, but it was true. Audrey nodded, her enthusiasm undeterred by this, and he moved closer to her and the plant, eventually moving to sit across from her on his bed. "She's so cool, Seymour."
She pondered something for a moment before continuing. "...Have you ever thought of bringing her up to the storefront, where the customers could see her? Maybe she could attract business for you!" Seymour thought about her idea for a moment. It was a great idea, something he, with his resignation to the depressing status quo of his life, would've never thought of, it was just that the thought of suggesting to Mr. Mushnik that there might possibly be something he could be doing differently with his shop to make it more successful, especially when that thing involved something Seymour had created, made him want to never leave the basement again. But he couldn't be cowardly about this with her, not when she was dating someone so… not cowardly… "...Uh… yeah, we should do that! That's a great idea, Audrey." She beamed at him for a long moment, making the prospect of facing Mr. Mushnik seem just a little bit less scary. "Thanks, Seymour." With that, she got up and lifted Audrey 2 by its pot, being careful to not touch it in any way and holding it out at a distance from her. Once Seymour had realized that it hadn't bitten her and finished having a heart attack, he was able to admire her strength in being able to carry it like that with such ease.
He followed her up to the storefront, forcing himself to stand at her side as an equal partner in this plan instead of continuing to trail behind her as Mr. Mushnik looked over at them from the counter and his Bloomberg Businessweek magazine. "Why did you bring that thing up here?" Seymour swallowed nervously before taking it upon himself to answer that question. "...Mr. Mushnik, f-forgive me for saying so, sir, but has it ever occurred to you that maybe what the firm needs is to… move in a new direction?" After a far too long moment of Mr. Mushnik staring at him exasperatedly and not answering his question that had admittedly sounded pretty rhetorical, Audrey continued where he had left off. "...We were thinking, with Audrey 2 being so strange and interesting, maybe if you prominently displayed and advertised her, she could attract business!" With that, Audrey started moving towards the display window of the shop, and Mr. Mushnik and Seymour quickly trailed behind her, with Mr. Mushnik addressing her. "...Audrey, I appreciate the suggestion, but…"
He trailed off as the extremely rarely heard bell above the shop's front door rang the second Audrey 2's pot touched the window display, and they all turned around to face the man who had just entered the shop. He looked way more put together than most of the residents of Skid Row… "Excuse me! I couldn't help noticing that strange and interesting plant. What is it?" Audrey perked up at this, answering after a pause while Mr. Mushnik and Seymour were still shocked into silence. "It's an Audrey 2!" The man looked at it and then back at them in amazement. "I've never seen anything like it before." Seymour gathered the courage necessary to respond, emboldened by having carried off a plan that was successful so far with Audrey. "No one has." The man looked over at him curiously. "Where did you get it?" Seymour gathered his thoughts before responding. "Well… remember that total eclipse of the sun about a week ago? I came up with the idea to try crossing a butterwort and a Venus flytrap that day, and it worked! That's Audrey 2." He gestured towards the aforementioned plant, even managing to get a little grandiosity into it, and the man nodded thoughtfully before responding. "Well, that's an unusual story, and a fascinating plant... Oh, while I'm here, l might as well take fifty dollars worth of roses." Mr. Mushnik abruptly moved closer to him, whatever the positive version of aghast was.
"Fifty dollars?!" The man looked through his wallet, undeterred by this, before looking back up at him. "Can you break a hundred?" Mr. Mushnik seemed to deflate at this. "...Ah… no…" The man shrugged, pulling what was apparently a one hundred dollar bill out of his wallet… Seymour had never seen one before; he hadn't even really known for sure that they existed… "Then I guess I'll just have to take twice as many, won't I?" Seymour's shock only increased at this. "Twice as many?!" He felt a flood of affection as he heard Audrey excitedly repeat "Twice as many!," more as an exclamation than as a question. Mr. Mushnik's utterance of that phrase soon after, however, was delivered as an incredulous question, even more so than when Seymour had asked it. He and Seymour scrambled to get him his roses. The second Seymour had gotten them into his hand, the bell above the shop rang again, and he stared in astonishment at the additional clearly well-off customers that were now entering the store. He had known that any plan of Audrey's would go well, he just hadn't realized the full extent of how well it would go… Seymour watched her in an awed daze as she discussed flowers with the new customers until a warning recitation of his name by Mr. Mushnik snapped him back into action.