CHAPTER 2

NIGHT-BLOOMING JASMINE

September 2023–February 2024

In early September, Ricki moved in. It was one of those golden New York afternoons when summer overstayed its welcome. Sunshine trickled through the tree-lined streets, dappling sidewalks and illuminating the city in warmth. The day felt enchanted, and Ricki was home.

225½ West 137th Street. Harlem.

Even the address sounds enchanted, she thought, peering up at Ms. Della’s brownstone for the first time in person.

She’d done her research, and she knew that Ms. Della’s house was near Strivers’ Row, the swanky historic district where Black aristocrats had lived during the Harlem Renaissance. But nothing had prepared her for this breathtaking block of impossibly grand nineteenth-century Italianate brownstones. Just as Ms. Della’s photo suggested, number 225½ was a beautifully restored antique, framed by leafy vines and vibrant wildflowers. To Ricki, a lifelong lover of bygone eras, the entire building felt like a gift delivered through time. Magical.

Ms. Della lived on the top three floors. But on the ground level, to the left of a majestic stoop, was the unoccupied, boarded-up garden apartment. Inside, the large front room with a massive street-facing bay window would house Ricki’s shop. And the small studio apartment in the back would be her home. She hadn’t intentionally manifested this faraway place to hold her new life, but damned if this wasn’t that.

Before Ms. Della and Dr. Bennett bought the house a few years ago, no one had lived there since 1928. Immediately, they’d had it structurally updated to modern standards, and because Ms. Della loathed clutter, she’d tossed most of the 1920s relics belonging to the last tenants. (“Nostalgia and melancholia are fraternal twins,” Ms. Della had announced to a horrified Ricki.) Thankfully, in the empty garden apartment, Ms. Della had left a few pieces of original furniture covered in muslin, thinking that the person who finally rented the space might like some historic flair.

Holding her breath in anticipation, Ricki opened the creaky front door to the spacious front room. The parquet floors were sagging, the plaster was chipped, and the air was fragrant with sawdust, Lysol, and Febreze, but oh, it was charming. Ricki pulled a dusty piece of muslin off the wall, revealing a rusted pier mirror reflecting sunlight into the space.

She wandered around the room, designing the space in her head. When she got to the windowsill, she peered outside onto 137th Street, imagining what it must’ve been like back when Harlem was the epicenter of Jazz Age glamour. Flappers shimmying in satin, men in spats and hats. The fast, frenzied craze of the Roaring ’20s. The Black mecca!

Not so much today. So far, Ricki had spotted only chic upper-middle-class white families hanging out outside, with UPPAbaby strollers and toddlers. It was the kind of block where Black Lives Matter flags waved from every stoop, but only a few Black lives resided.

Because Ricki was wired to go superhard for anything she cared about, she’d spent the past three months educating herself on Harlem culture. She reread Nella Larsen, Ralph Ellison, and Amiri Baraka. She streamed Moon over Harlem (1939), Hell up in Harlem (1973), and A Rage in Harlem (1991). She read Pat Cleveland’s memoir and bought Van Der Zee prints. She already knew Mase’s Harlem World album by heart, but nevertheless, she streamed it forty-seven times as she packed up her apartment.

Just then, Ricki noticed a note card on the windowsill. DELLA BENNETT was embossed on top in gold, and the note was written in spidery handwriting.

Dear Ricki,

This place was waiting for you. Work your magic. Two conditions upon living here. 1) Pay rent in a timely fashion. 2) Visit your elderly landlady upstairs once a week, for tea and The Great British Bake Off. I hear she’s recently widowed and would enjoy company.

xx DB

Hugging the note to her chest, Ricki spun around, eager to see the rest. In the back of the soon-to-be shop was a door leading to a narrow hallway with a closet-sized bathroom replete with a 1910s-era claw-foot tub. The hall ended with a compact studio apartment featuring a sliver of an oven, a few cabinets, and a sink tucked in a far corner.

The aging floors groaned as she raced around, swiping muslin off furniture, dust catching in the sunbeams streaming through the window. Gasping with delight, she discovered a throne-like dulled-green wingback armchair.

Most spectacularly, she uncovered an antique oak piano and bench.

She’d never seen a square piano before. It was so quaint and old-fashioned looking, like a set piece from Lady Sings the Blues. She slid onto the bench, running her fingers down the well-worn, nicked planes of the oak and then across the ivory keys. With flourish, Ricki did a dramatic roll down the entire keyboard.

There’s such faded glamour in this piano, she mused. Who played it? Whose lives were lived here?

No time to wonder. Ricki had work to do.

After selling her car and three engagement rings—and emptying the savings she’d earned from her brand partnerships—Ricki could afford to cover living and business expenses for six months. Only. Refusing to spend a dime on renovation help, she stripped the floors till her fingers bled. She borrowed a neighbor’s ladder to paint dreamy designs on the ceiling and then toppled from the third step, spraining her ankle. With bandaged fingers, she refurbished that ancient emerald throne into an Instagrammable set piece and, with a pronounced limp, dragged it from her studio to the shop. She awoke at 5:00 a.m. daily, taking the A to the Chelsea Flower District, filling crates with stock she’d use to practice her whimsical designs, ones she’d reproduce in a few months, for actual clients.

The work was fucking grueling. But she’d never had more fun in her life.

Ricki’s grand opening was set for December 1. She had a little over two months to transform the space into an experience, a maximalist fantasy blooming with unexpected treasures. And a fantastic name was key! Sadly, Ricki couldn’t trademark Botany Flowers Lately (apparently one couldn’t “own” a question). Her alternate name was even better: Wilde Things.

Drowning in HGTV-level renovations, Ricki realized she hadn’t had a moment to be a proper flaneuse, which was one of her favorite words. It was such a romantic idea, meandering through the city, taking in new sights and sounds while people-watching, solo-dining, and bookstore-browsing with abandon. (Ricki decided that a flaneuse should project adventurous glamour, which translated into a luxe oversized marigold shawl belted over 1950s men’s trousers—all sourced at neighborhood stoop sales.)

One windy afternoon, after visiting all the touristy spots—Red Rooster, Sylvia’s, the Schomburg, the Apollo—Ricki was perched on a barstool at Lenox Coffee. She was delighted with her solo adventure; she felt warm and satisfied, an independent and self-sufficient business owner. While she was sipping a cortado and studying her receipts from the past week, a peal of laughter erupted from a nearby table. Bright-eyed and cool, the group of twenty-somethings was huddled over a phone, giggling. The sound was infectious, and she smiled, too. Then she stopped.

Wait, why am I smiling? she thought, feeling the beginning, panicked pangs of loneliness. I’m not in on their joke. And those aren’t my friends. Besides Ms. Della, I don’t know anyone here! I’m all alone in the most expensive city in the world, where I’ve decided to open a flower shop on a sleepy residential block where the nearest commercial establishment is a restaurant. Did I think about the fact that I’d be sharing foot traffic with a joint called Sexy Taco? No. Will the same person ordering mezcal and burritos want to buy my frou-frou floral arrangements? PROBABLY NOT. I’ve already failed at one career, and if I fail at this, I’ll be a confirmed loser. No home, no money, no family, no pride. And yeah. No friends, either.

Had her family been right about her all along? They always expected her to flail, to fail. But despite them, Ricki had never felt like a loser. She simply felt misplaced. Like a duck raised by squirrels. She’d always suspected that given the chance to do what she did best, she’d succeed.

But right now, Ricki was sure of only one thing. She was lonely. Her Wilde Things woes might be easier to swallow if she had friends. In theory, she’d kill to be a part of that coffee shop friend group. But in actuality, the idea of chitchatting her way into a meaningful friendship felt… impossible. Making friends was difficult for Ricki. Her old introverted instincts told her to fold in on herself and, in lieu of actually speaking to other humans, dream up scenarios in the shower where she and some chick would accidentally grab each other’s orders at a cute smoothie spot, and POOF: instant best friend origin story. It was easier than attempting conversation and then watching someone’s polite dismay as they realized her packaging didn’t match her personality.

Ricki’s prettiness was mainstream, unchallenging. She had a sweetly approachable smile and sparkly doe eyes. People expected her to be palatable. Not a woman with paralyzing social anxiety around anyone she hadn’t known for twenty years. A woman who told weird dad jokes when nervous. A woman who, while grasping for appropriate cocktail party chatter, might stress-babble about the latest nightmare fish discovered in the Mariana Trench. Or the Great Molasses Flood of 1919. Or the top five reasons Mark Zuckerberg should be tried for crimes against humanity.

Out of fear of being rejected or embarrassed, she’d always kept people at arm’s length. And it only hurt Ricki in the end. Did people really think she was a goofy disaster, or were her sisters’ voices in her head psyching her out? Either way, it was clearly time to Get Out There.

When she read on Twitter about a networking event for local Black creatives, Ricki jumped on it. So on the evening of November 3, she strode into the Edge, a rustic Jamaican British restaurant on Edgecombe, ready to be social. The vibe was sexy. Afro beats and codfish fritters. A quick study of HELLO MY NAME IS stickers revealed senior directors of this and directors of that. At almost thirty, Ricki was just starting her dream career, but these partygoers had been corporate players for years!

Ricki was wilting. Why did everyone seem to know how to schmooze, be social, be normal, be cool, except for her? Was no one else paralyzed at the thought of unleashing the car crash of their personality on an innocent stranger? Her self-consciousness was a prison.

So she downed two Moscow mules in rapid succession. She shut her eyes and chanted her anxiety app affirmation (I am not in danger, I’m uncomfortable, this will pass, and I am confident). Then she practically threw herself at a friendly-looking woman wearing palazzo pants. Her tag said, LYONNE: SOCIAL MEDIA DIRECTOR, DANCE THEATRE OF HARLEM.

“Not to be awkward,” Ricki shouted awkwardly over the thumping bass, “but what’s your perfume? It’s… so pretty.”

“Sorry, can’t hear! What’d you say?”

Stomach sinking, Ricki repeated herself.

“It’s actually an essential-oil-infused cocoa butter,” said Lyonne. “My boyfriend makes it. I can get you some.”

“Really? Thank you.” And then Ricki self-immolated. “I love cocoa butter. My skin’s so dry I identify as an Eczema American.”

Lyonne gasped. “You’re Mexican American?”

“What? No, I…”

“I just saw a TikTok about this community of Black Mexicans descended from escaped enslaved people. You have a fascinating culture. Come on, diaspora!”

In too deep, Ricki just nodded, cheeks aflame.

“Gr-gracias?” she croaked, her soul leaving her body. “Ummm… I think I’m tipsy. I should go. Great meeting you.”

She raced out of the party, aghast.

But then three miracles happened in rapid succession.

The first miracle was Ali. After her fourth injury (a hammer-bruised thumb), Ricki decided she needed a handyman. Enter Ali, a TaskRabbit hire who built shelves and installed an in-store workspace in forty-five minutes. On the app, he was highly rated for his workmanship.

The reviews failed to mention that he was hung like a horse.

One night, he climbed off the ladder, and Ricki passed him a beer. As he stood there, downing a Heineken while resembling a low-res Jesse Williams, Ricki perked up.

Seducing some guy was infinitely easier than making friends. There was no guesswork, especially because it was always a version of the same man. She was attracted to hot guys who, in lieu of having an established career, purported to be “collectors of experiences.” Great kissers with shady living situations. Men who never tried to dig deep into who she was, but instead just happily ate up the easy, sexually agreeable version she showed them.

Ali, in a nutshell. After the beer, they christened the IKEA bed he’d just assembled.

The sex wasn’t earth shattering, and Ali’s conversation topics were limited to (a) crystals and (b) conspiracy theories (like the one suggesting that Ted Cruz was, in fact, Rob Kardashian). But he was kind. And an artist! He’d painted a few portraits of Ricki, and they were lovely.

She didn’t know much else about him, which was what she thought she wanted.

But deep down, Ms. Della’s words reverberated through her. He was music I could listen to forever. She wondered how it would feel to intensely connect with someone. A man who was custom-made to be yours. But then she caught herself. It sounded too rare, the kind of thing that happened to a lucky few. And so she buried the thought and snoozed through another “Moon Landing—World’s Greatest Hoax!!!” video with Ali.

The second miracle came in the form of a disgraced former child star. One afternoon, Ricki was rolling out wallpaper when her shop door flew open.

“Hide me!” yelped a lightly freckled woman with a sleek, low bun. Intentionally anonymous looking in clean makeup, a yoga set, and a puffer, she could’ve been any Harlem Hot Girl. Except that she wasn’t.

“Holy shit, you’re…”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Help me!”

“Bathroom!” Ricki blurted out, pointing toward the hallway.

Tuesday Rowe raced past her, down the hall. The Tuesday Rowe. The TV star who would’ve been a movie star—if her career hadn’t been cut short when she was twenty and she accused her Hollywood agent of sexual harassment. Instead, the biracial beauty was fired from the TGIF sitcom she’d starred in since she was seven. Ready Freddy was about a hunky white widower who grief-adopts five multicultural kids, all of whom possess tremendous vocal range and form a pop group. When the show began, Tuesday’s character was the Feisty Black Girl with the One-Liners. But as she grew into a gorgeous teen, it morphed into the Flirty Black Girl with the Pregnancy Scares. Today, the twenty-nine-year-old was living anonymously and comfortably off syndication residuals while struggling to write her memoir, See You Next Tuesday.

Ricki rushed to the window and spotted three middle-aged men ambling down 137th Street, waving their phones.

“They’re gone,” Ricki called out, her heart thundering with adrenaline. In a flash, Tuesday joined her at the window to see for herself.

“You saved me.” Tuesday was out of breath, but she sounded exactly like the sitcom version of herself that Ricki had grown up hearing. “Whew! Good looking out, sis.”

“Of course. Anytime.”

Tuesday flashed Ricki her megawatt smile. Ricki smiled back, and the two gave each other a pound. A conspiratorial energy sparked between them.

“I’m Ricki. Um, Ricki Wilde.”

“Fuck yeah, you are. Iconic name.” Tuesday smoothed her hair and sighed grandly. “Ugh. Those mouth-breathing dorks chased me all the way from Sexy Taco.”

Ricki’s eyebrows rose. Sexy Taco might bring her foot traffic, after all.

“Such an invasion of privacy,” she said. “And creepy. Does that happen a lot?”

“With guys, yeah. I gave them their first hard-on, so they think I belong to them. But who really knows why? The male psyche is too twisted to be any of my business.”

Ricki remembered when nineteen-year-old Tuesday famously told reporters that she didn’t “really believe in men, as a concept or genre.” That was after her brief marriage to an allegedly closeted NBA star, a union that gossip bloggers swore was orchestrated by her crooked manager.

Tuesday took a cursory glance around the space, spotted the emerald throne, and gasped. She walked to the center of the room and did a slow spin. “This place is dope.” She looked Ricki up and down. “You’re dope. Cute jumpsuit.”

“You like it?” Ricki beamed. The encounter had happened so fast, her signature social anxiety hadn’t had a chance to show itself. “I made it from a secondhand muumuu. Thrifting and sewing are my self-care.”

“Mmm. A sustainable queen.” She squinted at her. “Where’d you come from?”

Tuesday asked this question imperiously, even though she’d been the one to burst into Ricki’s shop. Ricki gave her the abridged version of her life story while Tuesday explored the shop’s jungly decor. Finally, she stopped at a bowl of tiny crystals.

“Pretty, right? Take one,” offered Ricki. “My boyfriend, well, my not-boyfriend… my handyman gave them to me. Supposedly, they restore calm.”

“We’ve all had a handyman, girl.” Tuesday plucked one out of the bowl, popped it into her mouth, and gulped. Ricki screamed.

“They’re crystals, not pills! You’re supposed to put them in your bra or whatever!”

Tuesday, who’d thought it was an oddly shaped Xanax, said, “I don’t wear bras.”

Stunned, Ricki burst into laughter. Tuesday giggled even harder. And from that moment on, they were partners in crime. The absurdity of Tuesday’s crystal snafu made Ricki feel safe enough to be herself. And for Tuesday, the fact that Ricki never sold the crystal story to gossip blogs meant she was a “real one” (badly burned by former friends, the actress had a low bar for relationships). Nothing seals tighter than best friends who’ve never had one.

The third miracle was the month of December. When Wilde Things held its grand opening on the first, it was an instant hit. Sure, some of it was due to the festive season. But at a time when flower trends were minimalist, Ricki’s shop was an over-the-top winter wonderland! Think Christmas cactus and candy-cane-striped amaryllis; Kwanzaa bouquets with tropical red, black, and green blooms; and Hanukkah wreaths mixing blue poppies with white orchids.

By New Year’s Day, she’d earned double her projection.

And by the end of January, she’d lost every cent.

People just… stopped coming. Ricki couldn’t figure it out. In December, she could barely keep blooms in stock, the orders were so fast and furious. What did she do wrong?

“I know what you did wrong,” offered Tuesday one evening after closing. Foot traffic had been brutally slow that day. Now she and Ricki were stirring bowls of recycled, plantable paper infused with wildflower seeds. Ricki wanted to package the homemade paper into chic note card sets, offering them as a last-minute purchase at the register. If she ever had any more sales.

“Those weekly January promotions,” continued Tuesday. “They were too esoteric to resonate with consumers.”

Ali, who was crouched in a corner, repairing an exposed nail, stopped working long enough to look up “esoteric” and “resonate” on his phone. No one was more surprised than Ricki that they were still dating. It was a thrice-weekly hookup thing, but his sweet, uncomplicated presence was calming.

“But the themes were so punny!” exclaimed Ricki, fighting back tears. “Seize the Daisy? Hibiscus and Gravy? No one even tried my homemade gift-with-purchase biscuits.”

“I love your biscuits.” Ali made grabby hands at Ricki, grinning at his euphemism. And then he added, “But in keeping with my radical honesty practice, I should say your actual biscuits were mad dry. Did you use Crisco?”

Ricki stopped stirring the paper, her shoulders slumped in misery.

“I offended you!” Ali hopped up and slipped an arm around Ricki’s waist. “I can’t believe I said something so dumb.”

“No?” Tuesday cocked a brow. “Ten minutes ago, you asked me if I paid Illuminati fees in blood.”

“And you didn’t answer.”

“Please stop watching hoax YouTube, Ali. I beg of you. Read a book.”

“Only sheep value books. A book is just a collection of some random individual’s thoughts…”

“But you are some random individual.”

“And I vibe off my own thoughts. My own interior work. My own journey towards living with energetic intention.”

Tuesday groaned. “Ricki, your man’s Jada Pinkett Smith-ing again.”

Ricki was too lost in rising worry over Wilde Things to even register this exchange. She needed to get outside, touch some grass. Back at home, when life got too hectic, escaping to the forest behind her parents’ house gave her instant serenity. That was what she needed.

“Hey, is there a garden nearby? Something small, maybe? I need some nature.”

Born in Harlem, Tuesday knew its contours by heart. “There’s a cute community garden over on 145th.”

“But it’s dark out,” protested Ali. “I’ll go with you for protection.”

Ricki smiled. “In this ’hood? Protection from who, ad execs and finance bros?”

Handing her spoon to Ricki, Tuesday said, “They’re the scariest thugs of all.”

It was chilly, but in a fresh, invigorating way. And Ricki was weatherproofed in her earmuffs and teddy coat. She walked ten blocks. At the entrance was an ornate wooden sign painted in childlike rainbow-colored letters: 145TH STREET COMMUNITY GARDEN.

Beyond the ornamental gate, there were perennial flowers, herbs, berries, fruit trees, and a small goldfish pond. Ricki followed a brick walking path through the foliage, to the center of the garden. She knelt down, taking a few deep, restorative breaths. Closing her eyes, she dug her fingers into the earth, the heart of everything. And it worked the way it always did.

You got this, she thought, feeling calmer. Get gritty. Get scrappy. But don’t give up.

As she perched on the ground, something on a small teak platform glinted and caught her eye. Brushing the dirt off her hands, she walked over to investigate. It was a plaque.

THE SITE OF EDEN LOUNGE CABARET

1927–1929

STAR-STUDDED NIGHTS, WORLD-CLASS MUSIC, ERA-DEFINING STYLE.

THE PARTY ENDED TOO SOON WHEN AN ELECTRICAL FIRE DESTROYED THE NIGHTCLUB, INFORMALLY MARKING AN END TO THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE ERA—WHEN BLACK BRILLIANCE CAPTIVATED THE WORLD.

Ricki read the last line out loud. She thought about being Black in the ’20s, facing unfathomable obstacles and still flexing on the world. If Josephine Baker could go from being a thirteen-year-old divorcée eating out of Saint Louis garbage cans to a Broadway superstar in five years, why was Ricki crying? Her biggest problems were that she bruised easily and lacked closet space.

And that was when she noticed the undeniable fragrance: the sweet, heady vanilla almond of night-blooming jasmine. It wafted over her, carried on a chilly breeze. Sigh. It was her favorite scent. She’d recognize it anywhere. Ricki followed the walkway to a lush bed of jasmine where the delicate white and yellow flowers were crawling up a garden wall.

Transfixed by the nocturnal blooms, she almost didn’t register the feeling of being watched. But then it hit her. She spun around and gasped, clapping a palm to her mouth.

A figure stood in the shadows.

He was tall and powerfully built. Chunky shearling coat, charcoal jeans. His features were cut from granite, with an impossible jawline and a stern, commanding brow, but then there was the sensual surprise of his mouth. It gave his chiseled masculinity a vulnerable, lush softness. The effect was mesmerizing.

Jesus Christ, he’s beautiful, she thought, unabashedly staring. He’d be beautiful in any era, anytime, anywhere.

Then Ricki caught the blazing intensity in his expression. She froze. It was something beyond surprise, beyond shock.

The man looked terrified.

Ricki felt a punch of emotion in her chest almost knocking her off her feet. This moment was important. She didn’t know why, but it was. She didn’t know him, but she did. The hairs on her arms prickled, and every cell in her body jolted to attention. Her brain went haywire with images too vague to grasp. She was reeling. All the secret places she hid herself felt exposed. She stood before this man, this glorious stranger, and felt utterly naked. Laid fucking bare.

A thrilling, throbbing sense of inevitability surged through her, and then she realized she felt as terrified as he looked.

He must’ve felt it, too.

But before she could ask, he was gone. As swiftly as if he’d never been there at all.

And Ricki was left standing alone in the garden, clutching her pounding heart.

Thoroughly thunderstruck, she realized only later that the mystery man wasn’t the only reason she’d left the garden feeling so unsettled. The scent of night-blooming jasmine made no sense. The plant flowered only from July to October. And it was winter.

February 1.