The flower is . . .an example of the eternal seductiveness of life
Jean Giraudoux

When I was a sophomore in college, Donny Okun sent me one dozen roses for Valentines Day. “You have the wrong house,” I told the florist when he rang the bell. “No one sends me flowers. I’m lucky if I get a package of life savers I didn’t buy for myself.”

He pointed to the card. “You’re Lynn Ruth Miller?” he said.

I nodded. “Right,” he said and left me holding the bouquet, my eyes as wide as saucers and my heart fluttering a tango against my ribs.

As soon as the delivery boy left, twenty college coeds with glittering green eyes gathered around me. I opened the box and ripped out the little card with a cupid in the corner. “To my enchanting valentine from her star struck sailor.”

Who could that be? The boy I was dating was a draft dodger who had never given me anything but a kiss. Then I remembered Donny Okun. I had gone out with him once when he was on furlough from the Navy. He assured me that real sailors never dated girls who couldn’t enter a bar or go to sophisticated night clubs. “That rules me out,” I said. I still have trouble keeping up a strapless dress.”

“What does that have to do with it?” said Donny.

“Well, if I got drunk, I’d forget to keep tabs on the dress and it would probably end up on the floor,” I said and I laughed a hearty laugh.

Donny looked quite sober. “Really?” he said.

Could it have been that remark that spurred him to send me flowers for Valentine’s Day? I dismissed the thought as uncharitable and began hunting for a vase when the telephone rang. “For you, Lynn Ruth!” shouted my roommate and rolled her eyes. “My God!” she gasped. “WHAT a voice!”

“Hello, you little siren,” breathed my caller.

“This is Lynn Ruth,” I said.

“This is your Donny, said the voice in an excellent imitation of Jose Ferrer with indigestion.

“I don’t have a Donny,” I said. “But I do have a case of jittery nerves. I have to learn forty lines of poetry for English tomorrow.”

“Donny OKUN,” said the voice. “Remember me?”

“Of course I remember you, ” I said. “You’re the one who likes to go to sleazy nightclubs with R rated entertainment.”

There was a long pause. “That’s a pretty crude way to put it,” said Donny. “Did you receive my roses?“

“I did,” I said

“Would you like to go out with me for dinner on Valentine’s Day.”

“I would,” I said.

“I’ve made reservations at the Elmwood Casino in Toronto,” said Donny. “Sarah Vaughan is going to be there.”

“I’m not 21 yet, “ I reminded him.

“You wear that strapless dress you were telling me about and no one will ask for your ID.” said Donny.

“You want me to wear a formal to a nightclub?” I asked. “Wouldn’t a black sheath be more appropriate?”

“Trust me,” said Donny and naïve as I was, I did.

Valentine evening, Donny rang the bell and I appeared dressed in my purple gown stiffened with whalebone and packed with bath powder mitts and wash cloths to keep it up. Donny stared at my bodice as he held my coat. “That dress looks pretty secure,” he remarked. “I never realized how well developed you are.”

I blushed the same color as the dress. “Oh I’m not . . .” and then I shut my mouth. Even I knew that you don’t tell your date you had to fill your bodice with a enough material to stuff a pillow to keep it from looking like a vertical ironing board. “Why, thank you,” I said.

The two of us got in Donny’s Cadillac and off we drove across the border. I leaned against the opposite door but Donny patted the seat next to him. “No thank you,” I said. “I’m very comfortable over here.”

“Would you like a cigarette?” asked Donny.

My life had been so filled with gorging Hershey Bars and sopping up Coca Cola that I hadn’t had much experience with cigarettes but I was certain I could handle the challenge. All you had to do was light the thing and then breathe in. ”Sure!” I said.

Donny handed me a Chesterfield and a package of matches. I had seen this procedure hundreds of times in the movies and I knew I could pull it off. I put the cigarette in my mouth and lit the match. I touched the flame to my cigarette, inhaled deeply and tossed the match out the window just the way Lauren Bacall did when she and Humphrey Bogart chased criminals.

Unfortunately, the window was closed, the match ricocheted off the glass and down my dress. It ignited the bath power puffs and filled the car with the foggy scent of smoke and Chanel #5. Donny slammed on the brakes and dived down my bodice. “I’ll get that!” he said.

“NO” I said scrambling to pry his hands out of my dress and douse the fire.

I waved the retrieved match in my hand. “Got it!” I said.

Donny restarted the car and it stalled. “I think the transmission is going,” said Donny. “I better call the AAA.”

“Where will we go for dinner?” I asked. “I hate to waste this dress.”

“They remodeled the Big Boy in Highway 24,” said Donny. “I hear they put in leather seats.”

My eyes filled with the disappointed tears that wisdom often brings. “I want to go home,” I said.

“As soon as I get the car started,” said Donny. “Will you still be my valentine?”

I thought of my smoke filled lungs and the third degree burns on my chest and shook my head. “Not this year,” I said. ”Ask me again when I have health insurance.”

Youth is easily deceived, because it is quick to hope.
Aristotle