A Love Song for Ricki Wilde

Ricki and Tuesday venture to the Flower District in Chelsea. Ricki’s favorite seller, Kelly Macchione, runs Macchione’s Tropical Flowers—a business started by her great-grandfather, “a 1920s nightclub manager who moved on to flowers during the Depression” (88)—but Ricki is unable to afford her wares.

After another slow day at Wilde Things, Ricki visits the Eden Lounge Community Garden, where she encounters the Mysterious Benefactor once again. He no longer lives in the city, but when he visits, he likes to come to the Community Garden to smell the fragrant night-blooming jasmine. When Ricki points out that the jasmine is blooming in winter against all possibility, he counters that in the February of a leap year “nothing makes sense till March” (93). Ricki recounts an Indian myth about the origins of the flowers: A princess fell in love with a sun god, but after he refused her affections because he worried he’d burn her, she set herself on fire; her ashes bloomed into a jasmine tree that only bloomed at night. Ricki believes the tale is romantic, while the Mysterious Benefactor regards it as tragic. Ricki learns the man is a musician and detects a Low Country accent mixed in with New York inflections.