“Hmm. Huh. I see, I see,” the interviewer in front of me mumbled while going over my resume. His eyebrows danced to some unheard beat. Up, up, up, down, up, up, up, down, down, up, down, down, down, down.

We were two more paperweights in his too crowded basement-turned-office. The only sound, besides Mr. Liotta’s grunts, was a small fan perched on top of a filing cabinet. It rattled every time it hit the end of its arc and doubled back. I was thankful for the interruptions – it would’ve been too quiet otherwise – but it would’ve been nice if it was turned towards me at all.

“Well Miss Wei. It is Miss right? I’ll just call you Danielle. Your application looks good. 33 years old, good education, no prior boss' skeletons in your closet. So far so good, so far so good.” His voice trailed off as his eyes gave me the up, up, up, down, up, up, up, down, down, up, down, down, down, down.

“I’m glad you think so,” I offered, as politely as I could bear.

"From where I’m sitting I think you’d be a great asset,” he continued, “and I’d like to hand you the job offer right now and get you working A.S.A.P. but, if it’s all right with you, we’d like to run a Cap check first. Totally normal. Just place your pretty little finger here."

I must've made a face.

"No, I'm not asking you to marry me. It's just giving your consent to look at your chart. Back in the day we used to do credit score checks but we found this better opens the kimono, really lets us see *everything*. Come on hun, the scanner don't bite.”

“Oh, yeah, of course,” I responded, placing my pretty little finger on the glass bed.

C'mon Danielle, you prepared for this. After wiping out the last two times. I got this. This is what we practiced in front of the mirror for an hour. Big companies, they're a no-go. They just run your Cap chart through some formula that spit out a pass or a fail. No humans involved. Guys like Liotta though, I can talk to them. I had an explanation for every little and not so little dip in my Cap. I can wow him with my moxie or something.

Who am I kidding, I don't have any moxie.

“Okay, I will go ahead and pull that up.” He poked and prodded at his computer for a while.

The place was cluttered with office-y set dressing; filing cabinets, envelopes, tacky inspirational quotes around a basement-y core; two bikes with rusty chains, a small TV, a massage chair. The centerpiece was his comically over-sized desk and veritable throne. His domain consisted of a few papers and some baubles for fidgeting with. I couldn't tell if its sparseness was a sign of Liotta being there too much or too little. But it definitely contrasted with the lawn chair I was sitting on. He could’ve at least given me the massage chair, but there was a pile of dirty laundry there.

The effect was claustrophobic, overbearing, uninviting. Not exactly the kind of first impression I would want to give off. But I don’t think Mr. Liotta and I would agree on a lot of things.

“Huh. Ok, ok, I see, I see,” he said. “Does this look right to you?” He turned his monitor towards me.

Yup. That was my chart. The bouncer that followed me around, always keeping me behind the rope. I've had dates ghost me after seeing mine.

It went up. Then down. Then up, up, up, down, down, up, down, down, down. Not a, uh, promising trajectory.

“Um, yeah, that’s me.”

“Great.”

“Yeah, uh, I know it doesn’t look great, but I hope I can explain away or assuage any concerns you may have.”

“Of course, of course. I know more than most how that little chart can hide a whole lot.” He looked past me for a sec like he was trying to do some Clint Eastwood thousand yard stare shit. “Anyway,” he continued “the day a computer is a better judge of character than me sitting across from a person and talking to them is the day I’m running to the hills."

"I've daydreamed about that before."

He laughed. That was a good sign I think.

“Now, with that being said," he continued, joviality-free, "I deal with a buncha deadbeats, and they’ll try to come in here and give me sob stories about how why their Cap is low. Can you believe it? Like I haven't been going around the block since before they were born."

I could believe that.

"So I pay for this service, its called OpenBook, and basically what they do is they, uh, lemme pull up their site. Okay here it is, they ‘scrape social media accounts, public domain records, and a mix of other sources to help put a narrative to a chart. Never miss a great opportunity or let yourself get duped again!'. It’s like having a private investigator in my back pocket heh-heh. I know you wouldn't try to pull a fast one on me, you seem trustable. But I already pay for it so might as well use it. So with your consent..." He nodded his head towards the fingerprint scanner.

“Of course,” I forced out through a smile.

“Great.”

My fingers drummed my skirt as a loading bar slooooooowly filled. I made eye contact with Liotta once while scanning the room; he smiled. I tried to.

Mr. Liotta was what I pictured the platonic ideal of a pawn shop owner to be. It was wasted on logistics. He smelled like an ashtray, and if you squinted, looked a little like one too. His eyes were constantly roaming, bulging at the ends of their sockets, dragging bloodshot veins all over his sweaty, yet dry face. But they betrayed a quick mind, sharpened by years of what he'd call "wheeling and dealing" with the kinds of folks desperate enough to find themselves in the lawn chair I was now uncomfortably occupying. They were constantly scanning across the screen, the room, the me, looking for any kind of edge. I caught him looking at me three times. But instead of feeling gawked at or objectified I felt defensive, riposting via composure. The effect was claustrophobic, overbearing, uninviting.

“Looks like it’s done,” he said.

Each move up and down my chart now had a little icon over it. He hovered over one and a little text box appeared, explaining Openbook’s best guess at what was going on in my life at that time.

“Shall we go over these?”

Last chance to run away, tail meet legs.

“I’d be glad to.”

“Great.”

His eyes darted over the screen. He sure read a lot faster than I expected him to. They reminded me of a typewriter, racing to the end of their track, *clicking*, and resetting to do it over again.

"Says here you only IHO'd two years ago. What were you doing before that?"

"Oh, I was working as an accountant at a Big 2 firm."

"Big 2? What's that?"

"Its, uh, the nickname for the two biggest accounting firms. Also, more or less, the only two accounting firms. They all merged together years ago."

"You know this isn't an accounting job right?"

No shit.

"Mhm."

"But it never hurts to have someone good with numbers aboard. I thought you might be."

Get me out of here.

"I figured they'd automated all those jobs away by now?"

"Yeah, they tried to. But there's too many edge cases, small business owners doing god-knows-what with their books that any AI they threw at it would get sentient just to quit."

That got a laugh.

“Looks like after you initially IHOd some algo liked what you were selling. Your cap shot up right out of the gate. Says were going to use the money to start a business. A flower shop, is that right?”

“Uh-huh”

"Why?"

"Oh, well, I've always loved gardening, and I had enough experience working with small businesses that I thought I could translate that into running my own business. I knew how to balance the books at least. And beauty never runs out of demand."

"No, I meant why did the algos scoop *you* up?”

“Ah, it’s because under my IHO agreement they were entitled to a portion of the companies profits too. Basically an IHO and IPO all in one. Algos love that.”

“Sounds like a shitty agreement.”

“It is. Was. But it was the only I could raise money at the time.”

“Didn't know flower shops made a lot of money. Am I in the wrong line of work?"

"Turns out they don't." You might be?

“Too much easy money going around these days. Every moron with a business plan they scribbled on the back of some toilet paper can get money nowadays. Shame to waste good toilet paper on bad shit. Not talking about you specifically,” he quickly added, “just in general. I had to work hard for my money. Still do. Keeping this ship running ain't easy.”

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Yeah, I’m sure it would just fall apart without you.

“I’m sure its not,” I said, putting as much cloying into my sweet as I could.

“But I’ll always respect a fellow entrepreneur. Looks like the markets didn’t though, your Cap went down shortly after. Poor first quarter results it says, sound right?”

“Yeah, uh, we burned through a lot of money to get the space, decorate it, handle inventory, et cetera.”

“Who’s we?”

“My, uh, business partner, Justin. We learned a lot about everything that, uh, goes into running a business those first few months though. Made a bunch of mistakes I won't make again.”

We really had put a lot of effort into our launch.

“If you two are willing to stretch your budget a little I think this place would be so great for the two of you,” the Realtor said. “Lots of foot traffic, and with us being so close to Downtown this neighborhood is really on the upswing. And *come* *on*, these gorgeous floor to ceiling windows? You’re selling flowers right? They’ll just drink up all that sunlight, and you’ll definitely have the most beautiful storefront on this street. Think of all the attention you’ll get.”

“I really do love it. But I don’t know. I don’t want to mess up our budget. Justin and I spent hours making it and I don’t want to have to redo it all over.”

“Hey hun, what do you rate it out of 11?,” Justin asked. I smiled. Inside joke. Old movie.

“It’s definitely an 11. I can already picture how I want the window displays look. And it’s big enough that we can have separate areas for everything. The ‘apology flowers’ section, the ‘congratulations’ section, the ‘plant mom’ section. They won’t have to be on top of each other like the last place we saw.” I trailed off. I must’ve pouted a little cause Justin came up and hugged me.

“We’ll take it,” he told the Realtor. “No, shh, we’ll make it work. Plus think of all the money you’ll save on lights! It’ll pay for itself with these windows!”

“You sure?,” the Realtor asked me.

“For now. You better get that lease in front of me before I come to my senses though,” I replied to her, looking at Justin’s face light up. He always had enough excitement for both of us.

The next few weeks were a whirlwind. Back to back calls with suppliers, contractors, investors. I took the train down to the store twice a day to make sure everything was on track. When I got home I would work on the decorations myself, threading the vines and flowers through the trellises. Our centerpiece was this beautiful flower arch that would frame the entrance just right. Justin helped me with the machining; together we built something strong, flexible, and beautiful.

I almost cried the first time I walked into the finished store. I passed under the gorgeous flower arch, flanked by hydrangeas and hibiscus and hyacinths into our space. There were no aisles, just ecologies. Gaps in the arrangements let the light saunter through, framing the next diorama, rays highlighting the reds and oranges and yellows. You could see everything in the store the moment you walked in, almost as if they were right next to each other. But they weren’t, there was so much room to walk around and browse and take in all the sights and scents. It smelled SO good. And the sun, THE SUN. It enveloped everything in this perpetual summertime haze. The effect was welcoming, warm, inviting.

I snapped a picture for our socials and walked up to the counter.

“Hey beautiful, you just window shopping or are you actually gonna buy something?,” Justin asked.

“Hi, yes, I’d like to buy a flower,” I replied, looking over the display before cutting the top off a lily and putting it behind his ear. “Should that be part of the uniform?”

“I think it should. I know it makes me feel like selling the heck out of some flowers.” He pulled me in for a kiss.

“Consider it done. Oh by the way there’s one more thing I’d like your input on. Its in the back room.” I winked at him and led him by the hand. His face was adorably dumbstruck.

Our opening day was a big success. We managed to drum up enough interest online and attract enough attention on the street to keep both of our hands full. Justin didn’t officially work there but he took the day off at his job to help out. That night we fell asleep on the couch with our takeout in our laps. He hadn’t even changed out of his uniform.

But what started as a flood soon slowed to a trickle. Turns out people don’t really need flowers that often, and Valentine’s Day was months out. We cut costs where we could but we were already on a shoestring budget as it was. Finally the day came where I had to upload our first quarter’s financial statements to the Cap markets. And they did not like what they saw.

“Guess you learned that running a business ain’t all sunshine and flowers huh?,” Mr. Liotta said, impressed with himself.

“Yeah, it, uh, definitely came with some curveballs. But I was able to adapt. I'd consider that one of my strongest traits.”

“Looks like it. Your chart shot up after that dip. Let’s see what happened.” He brought his face in close to read the little popups on the chart.

“Looks like you were able to get really popular after changing a couple of things around. And I guess Justin wasn’t just a business partner huh?” he winked.

“Yeah. I, uh, wanted to keep things professional.”

“I understand. We keep things strictly professional here too. Especially when dealing with a lady. Last thing I need is some accusation. That’s why I have a policy of ‘look but don’t touch’.”

Maybe if I stop eating maybe I can keep the job hunt going a little longer?

After our first quarter Justin and I took a step back to regroup. The first thing we did was pivot from focusing mostly on flowers and houseplants to include more gardening. It took a little bit of reorganizing, mostly with an eye towards keeping things pretty, but we were able to pull it off. We had our own little farm on 6th Street. Justin tried his hand at being one of those sign spinning people to drum up some interest but kept dropping the sign. But I guess enough people stopped to laugh at him, myself included, that some of them noticed the beautiful store behind him and came in.

We also started a community garden. There were a lot of green thumbs in that neighborhood that couldn’t find a place to put down roots in their railroad apartments. We had some open space in the back that came with the lease. We put up a greenhouse and put down soil and put up fliers all over letting people know. Soon there were tomatoes and potatoes and herbs of every flavor growing. We started growing a little community. I would show people how to take care of their plants, Justin showed them how he built the greenhouse and how they could do the same.

Before we knew it word of mouth had brought the crowds back. Our first disciple, Maria, would bring in new people every week. She always took every opportunity to chat with me, and Justin on the weekends when he would help out, about how her new garden was coming along. It was really uplifting to see her take to it so strongly, to see how much she put into it and how much she got out. She was such a godsend; she gave us a warm fuzzy feeling, hope, and enough foot traffic that we could cut back on advertising. Eventually we were doing so well that Justin quit his job to work with me full time. We were doing so well that we weren’t just profitable, we actually had enough to put some away for savings and other such luxuries. The algos noticed and my Cap grew like a weed.

One day Maria came in, chipper as always. She paced the sections until she saw a gap in customers which she promptly filled, sidling up to the register in her nonchalant way. She propped her head on her arms, propped in turn on the counter and smiled.

“Hey y’all, hows it going?”

“Not too bad,” Justin responded while potting some plants behind the counter.

“I was wondering if you two would like to come over to my apartment. See what you two have wrought upon the world.”

“Oh yeah?,” I smirked.

“Yeah, believe it or not I’ve actually learned a thing or two coming in here every week.”

“That sounds great,” we said together.

“Yay!,” Maria clapped. “See you then!” She excused herself to help a customer. “You’ll want the nitrogen rich fertilizers for those!”

Later that night Justin and I got dressed. I put a flower in my hair, not sure why, seemed thematically appropriate I guess.

“She probably has more plants than us at the rate she’s been going,” Justin said.

“I really doubt that. You look our Monstera in its leaves and say that with a straight face.

Justin turned to face it. Or a part of it. It was sprawled all over that corner of the apartment.

“Her Monsteras probably bigger than you,” he forced through lips which couldn’t hold back a smile.

I grabbed a leaf and slapped him with it “How dare you!”

“You’re right, I don’t know what I was thinking.”

We made the short walk to her apartment and climbed all six flights of stairs to her door. Huffing and/or puffing we rang her doorbell. Maria opened the door almost before the bell stopped ringing.

“Hey guys, I’m so happy you could make it.”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” I said while hugging her.

“Wow,” Justin said, looking past us into the apartment.

“Wow,” I repeated.

She *definitely* had more plants than us. Her apartment was more of a rainforest than an apartment. I almost wanted to use the bottle of wine we brought as a machete to cut through some of the undergrowth. Maria gave us the tour, showing us the different climates nee rooms.

"This is Spike," she pointed out.

"That's one hell of a cactus," Justin said.

"It's a euphorbia ammak succulent," I corrected him, "how tall?"

"9 feet."

"Damn!," Justin exclaimed.

We were led into the living room we were suddenly surrounded by petals of all colors. Greens, blues, reds, they were all there, subservient to royal purples. Her bedroom continued the theme; vines, money trees, and pink princess philodendrons. God, it must have been gorgeous in the morning sun. I wanted to just lay down and read a book! I made a mental note to convince Justin that we needed more plants in our bedroom. Imagine waking up to that everyday! Her kitchen was full of herbs which I could just picture her plucking right off the branch and tossing into whatever she was making that day. Even her bathroom had some sweet smelling shrubs suspended by the little rope holders I taught her how to tie.

We sat down, flanked by a wreath made of pothos. Maria brought us all tea.

“You like it?”

“I’m honestly stunned,” I stunned at her.

“You mean it?”

“Yeah. Justin back me up here. This is incredible.”

“Yeah, you know on the way here I was joking with Danielle about what if you had more plants than us. Didn’t think it was true. Or possible.”

"No, you guys are too kind," she smiled.

We spent the night talking, laughing, drinking. I gave Maria a few tips on her yuccas; she gave me a few in turn. We made pizzas in her oven. I gave Maria a few tips on her dough; she gave me a few in turn. Justin brought out his poker stuff. I gave Maria a few chips; she gave me a few in turn. I was a little nervous Justin would get bored but he and Maria got along great. I came back from the bathroom and they were giggling at some dumb inside joke. I poured some more wine.

"Not half bad," Liotta murmured.

"Yeah, uh, those were the good times."

"They never last do they."

"No they do not."

"Pretty much straight down from there."

"Things have been, um, tough. But I view it as a character building experience, and think I'm stronger for it."

"You don't have to do all that," he gestured wildly "corp-speak. There's a reason we aren't having this interview in some the corner office of some glass eyesore."

"Oh, um, ok. Well yeah, it's been hard."

"It's been hard for a lot of people lately. Buncha charts cross these eyes."

He rotated his throne away from the monitor and towards me.

"We don't have to go into the details if you don't want to."

"I'd rather not."

"I can already tell you've got moxie. Just tell me this, whatever sank your cap, it wasn't anything you'll bring to this job right?"

"It won't. It's behind me now. All of it."

He leaned in close, scanned my face. After a moment he pulled back.

"I trust you."

"Thanks."

"My chart isn't a repeat of yours, but it rhymes; that's how that saying goes right?"

"Haha, yeah, something like that."

"Between you and me, anyone whose chart is just straight up creeps me out a little. It's robotic." He mimed "Hey hun, think I can pencil in drinking pina coladas and making love at midnight in between amortizing my schedules and returning on my investments?" His mimicry was unsettling somehow. "Do they bill for time spent smelling the roses? Deduct every walk on the beach as a business expense? Nonsense. It's obscene. There's a dignity in chaos, inasmuch as they try to deny it, and a solidarity between floaters."

What the hell?

"Oh, uh, well from one floater to another, that was very well said."

"Thanks." He mimed throwing out a life raft. I know that because he followed up with "This is me throwing a life raft." Could've fooled me cause it looked like him reaching into his desk drawer and pulling out a job offer. I let myself breath.

He slid it across the desk. "Look it over, I just need your signature and initials on the last page."

I picked it up and skimmed over the first page.

"Oh wait, one second." He pulled it out of my hands and scribbled something.

The compensation was crossed out. Below it was a much smaller number.

We made eye contact. "That's business," his eyes said. They were claustrophobic, overbearing, uninviting.