Tuesday, Late: The Man Who Brought Tulips

Melbourne did its usual trick today: four seasons before lunch, then a long grey evening that smelt of wet plane leaves. I lit the fig candle at half past seven and checked the room the way I always do. Clean towels, fresh water in the jug, the lamp turned low, the playlist on its quiet setting. Routine is its own kind of calm.

He arrived four minutes early and apologised for it, which told me most of what I needed to know. He was holding a bunch of yellow tulips wrapped in brown paper, still damp from the rain, and he held them out as if he wasn't sure they were allowed.

The flowers

Nobody brings tulips. Roses, occasionally. Chocolates, sometimes. Tulips are a particular choice, a little shy, a little hopeful. I put them in the tall glass on the windowsill and watched him watch me do it. He said his late wife used to buy them every autumn because they were the only flower that kept growing after you cut them. I hadn't known that. I still don't know if it's true, but I like it.

We sat for a long while before anything else happened. He talked about his work in logistics, about a daughter in Queensland who rang on Sundays, about how the house had grown too quiet. I told him a little about me, the version I keep for evenings like this: that I love old cinemas, that I once got lost for a whole afternoon in the laneways and didn't mind.

What happened next

The rest of the evening belongs to the two of us. I will only write that it was gentle and unhurried, that he laughed properly once, surprised at himself, and that the rain kept up its soft percussion against the glass the whole time.

When he left he shook my hand at the door, which made me smile. He said thank you three times. I said he was welcome, and I meant it.

After

I sat on the edge of the bed with a cup of peppermint tea and looked at the tulips. They had already leaned towards the lamp, stretching, the way he said they would.

Some nights are just work, and that's fine. Some nights remind me why I chose to do this on my own terms: to make a room where people feel safe enough to be a little less alone. Tonight was one of those. I'll change the water in the morning.