How to Spell "I Love You"

I don't ask for much when I go to work.

A little peace and quiet, perhaps. Bands of sun filtering through wired window panes. Tolerable women on the end of telephone lines.

It isn't much, really.

One crisp fall day, when the wind smartly swept my hair every which way, I found myself excited to leave my office for the afternoon. This clear air will take my breath away.

Surely, something captured my breath on the way to the elevator.

Another non-profit shares my office suite. Cheap office space. Sharing. This is Manhattan, after all. No big deal, right? We share a front door. Women rap on this exterior - sharp rattles, a wide wooden board in its frame - they seek someone to speak with about their work, about classes they should take. I answer the door frequently and they push their way in, they ask me about their work, what classes they should take. I send them away without answers. I return to my work, distracted.

One particular day a woman seeking work, who takes classes stood beside the elevator bank. I recognized her from around our shared suite. A forty-something, tall, slightly heavy-set woman. Bernadette.

We exchanged smiles.

"I already pushed the button. I think it's coming," she reassured me.

"Ah. Okay." I swung my bag over my shoulder and stepped back toward the wall beside Bernadette.

She took out her red Palm phone-computer-video device and it rang out some dance-trans music tune. After thirty seconds or thirty endless hours of "LaLaLaLaLa Epilepsy Hoedown," waves of laughter blurted from her, forcing her into a doubled over position.

"Oh my god, Oh my god. This is too funny. Too funny." Continuation of "Epilepsy Hoedown." Hands slapped knees.

I smiled. Where is this elevator?

"Girl, you have got to see this. You have GOT to see this. Do you want to see this?" Bernadette posed many questions and, before I could respond, showed me her phone.

"Look at that, girl!"

She thrust it into my face. I looked. I had to. I couldn't look away.

"It's a penis bouquet!"

All shapes and colors (brown, pink, white, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet), bulbous heads and crude un-circumcisions. Shafts arranged as flower stems in an elegant vase. An FTD special.

"Ha .... ha."

She expected a larger reaction.

"Isn't that amazing, girl?" The elevator arrived on our floor, the tenth, from down the block, another city.

Thank god. "Yes, that's something." Worried, conscious to accept her share.

We entered the elevator, where three twenty-something females stood blank-faced. Bernadette stood close to the door.

"I'm going to have to thank my friend. She just made my day."

I laughed, smiled, disappeared into the perforated grey wall of the mobile cube. The other women had no idea how my day had been made by this experience.

At floor eight, a balding man of forty-or-so joined us in this ever shrinking space. We plunged downward to the lobby. But Bernadette hadn't yet forgotten about her bouquet.

"Oh, girl, I'm going to have to tell my husband that this is the only kind of bouquet I want from now on." Bern shook her head, proud.

"Good idea," I chimed.

The balding man turned slightly - had he received this message too? - while the catatonic trio bored holes into the elevator door.

It opened, we filed out. Suddenly I heard "Epilepsy Hoedown" all over again, beginnings of a conversation.

"Girl, you are never going to believe what Shelly sent me. Damn..." And then she was gone.

Through the lobby, out the double doors, into the calm cool breeze, I shoved my hands in my pocket, strode down 43rd street, and smiled again, breath completely taken.

(PS - Click here for the special arrangement. Not safe for work. Or children. Or most adults.)