N ights like this remind me of my neighbor, these winter nights when I freeze in my summer nightgown because I'm too stubborn to lose silk for flannel. Through the dollhouse walls I can hear the residents to my left engaging in some less-than-sober revelry and down the right-hand hallway I hear some dumb broad screeching about the last beer in the fridge, no doubt finding it in her roommate's hand or the belly of some john who swilled it down while she washed up.

I think about this man and late nights when I used to watch him through the blinds and the snowflakes. He wasn't handsome, there was no physical beauty prompting me to be a peeping Jane, rather, he was hulking and brutish, with a war-torn face, and a voice honed on a grindstone of whiskey and cigarettes. He resisted the chill in a sweat-stained undershirt as if to museum the massive muscles of face-breaking arms, but for all the harshness of his figure, he moved like a Russian ballerina, lifting the square bottle to his lips and draining the last drops of amber. Any noise after that last drink would prompt a snarl to the source and the bottle to crystalline below my window. Even with the window closed, I always ducked and snapped the blinds shut, but I was too late one night and he caught me. Instead of growling, he gave me a chopping-block grin and cupped a chapped hand to light a bent cigarette. In that quick flash I saw his eyes were green.

No bottles smashed below my window after that, but I didn’t assume I was the beauty who tamed his beast. I didn't see him for a few days and when I finally did, he gave me the same thug grin he'd given me the first night and tossed a rose towards the window I'd opened to cleanse the room of the dripping steam heat. I almost tumbled out trying to catch it and his sandpaper laugh echoed across the cavernous alley. My cheeks flamed, was he getting off watching me nearly die for a sprig of color to liven up my grimy flat? Had I become so desperate for that sprig that I risked death to get it? I slammed my window shut and his light shined through my blinds. The creaky jazz from his crackling radio became my lullaby.

The next night he was at his post, a half-emptied bottle resting in the long-dead window box and a cigarette between his peeling lips. If the wind bit his scarred shoulders, he gave no indication it bothered him. I tried to hide from his eyes but before I could close the blinds, I heard his voice.

"Hey doll face," he said with a pickpocket’s wink. “Catch the bouquet.”

I opened my window. "I beg your pardon?"

"Catch the bouquet." He reached inside and heaved a paper-wrapped parcel towards my window. The paper crinkled in my hands and I drew the flowers to my chest. Immediately the garbage stench of the alley vanished into a dream of dyed-pink perfume. I looked up at him with the cow eyes of a girl who thinks she might be dreaming and he gave another broken grin, crushed the cigarette in his hand and closed the window.

"Valentine Roses" Digital Photograph by Michelle Williams

I cradled the flowers as though they were a newborn and nursed them in a soda bottle on the dilapidated nightstand. There was no card to indicate the name or intentions of my benefactor.

Every few days as the flowers would wilt, he tossed me a new bouquet, always the same phrase, it was all that was uttered between us because he never gave me time to thank him. More colored daisies, white carnations like a movie star's bed sheets, and one occasion, roses the shade of ten-cent lipstick. I never questioned the motives of my benefactor; instead I indulged in the silent mystery of his affections.

This ritual went on through February until one night I realized there was something unmistakably sad in his alley-cat eyes, but before I could say anything, he turned and closed the blinds. It wasn’t as though I was lying in wait for his gift; his very presence still intrigued me enough to watch even when he didn’t have a parcel. I saw blue through the broken blinds and lifted my window to hear the cast-iron shouts belonging only to cops.

I didn’t check the papers for the story the next morning; it would have done me no good because I didn’t know his name. Maybe his mug was on the front page, I didn’t want to know. He could have killed someone;
he could have torn up a parking ticket. Either way, he never came back, and the last bouquet of flowers finally withered.