“Amigo! Quiero una rosa por favor.”
I didn’t really want a rose, but he looked like he really wanted to sell someone a rose, and that rose looked like it needed to be sold and enjoyed… it was on its last legs bound for Compost Town. So I said “I want a rose please”.
“For you?”
“Yeah, for me.”
“Who will buy the rose for you?”
“I will.”
“No amor, I will buy the rose for you, it is my pleasure. Please enjoy.”
<hands me the rose>
“NO AMOR, I buy my own stuff all the time, and this is no different, I want to buy the rose from you. This is your business, don’t give me free things!”
<hands him money>
“I insist.”
“No, I insist!”
We go back and forth, it quickly degrades into a dance of “no me”, and “nooooo, meeeee”.
We agree jokingly that I will give him the money and he will “buy” me the rose. We both win. It is settled. The purchase is made, and I am suddenly and without warning 25 pesos poorer.
I take my wilted rose and walk about 20 feet before I see the true recipient, and hand it to her. She gives me the most bizarre look. I say in my shitty Spanish: “Para ti amiga, no se por que, pero esta rosa, es para ti”, and she looked at me long and hard like I don’t even know what she was thinking. And then came tears, and a broken English “I love it, thank you”.
I didn’t ask what’s up, because I don’t have enough Spanish to have that conversation, but I did give her a hug, one of the long ones with the back pats, and it is not lost on me at all today… that when something is meant for you, nothing will stop it being yours.
That rose was trying all day to get to her, and it finally made it.
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