Another round of errands, this time picking things up for a friend in quarantine. I plan it just right so that everything is bought as I make my way up the hill in Sai Ying Pun without having to double back. I forget nothing, not even the Habanero Tabasco. Not a small feat in 33C degree heat. The last thing I buy are the flowers.
The flower shop is deep and narrow. Years ago, it was probably an auto-body shop, now gentrification has retrofitted it for cacti and orchids. A gweilo ahead of me buys 8 orchids. My friend had asked for four stems of lilies. “A typhoon is coming,” says the lady as she cuts them. She says this as if it is a fact of life that good weather always means bad weather is on the way. She is sweating and doesn’t look at me when she says this. Maybe she is right. Maybe she doesn’t want to believe it.
Two stems of white while the other two must be pink because, as the surly voice over the phone tells me, “This ain’t a funeral.” And it’s too nice a day for one.
Driving through the city just past noon on a weekday in the summer is a special thing. The road is dappled with shade and people are out and about on their lunch-breaks. Builders smoke on plastic stools. School girls huddle in shady patches outside school gates. Office workers, bent over phones, line up outside cheap canteens. It is boiling but nobody seems to care. Or, at least, everyone looks just as stoic. For a moment, I hold my friend’s bouquet and allow myself an ounce of glamor from this errand.