Below is an excerpt from Burning Embers, which is available for purchase on Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, or directly from Charlie.
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Audio version, read by Charlie
If anyone asks me, “What is the smartest thing you have ever done?” I will have an answer.
The surprising thing is that it has nothing to do with my job or any of my hobbies. I’ve done a few smart things, it’s true, but nothing like this. The smartest thing I ever did is a story of true love and snatching victory from the jaws of defeat.
A few years ago, Kathy, my wife-to-be, was still living in Flint, Michigan and I was living in Seattle, Washington. We had already met, courted, fallen in love and decided we were going to be with each other. Kathy was trying to sell her house so she could move to Seattle.
Kathy had no interest in Seattle itself. She had lived her whole life in Michigan and would not have thought to move west if it weren’t for me.
But not so for Kathy’s little sister Marti. For some reason Seattle fascinated her and she wanted to live there. Maybe it was the hot music and culture scene, or maybe it was just because Seattle was not Flint. Marti had loved Seattle, or the idea of Seattle, for a long time.
She convinced her best friend Crystal to move there with her. They packed their things and boarded an Amtrak train. I met them at the station when they arrived and helped them get started in their new home. Kathy expected to join us all as soon as the house was sold, which could take weeks or even months.
Those are the facts, but the truth goes deeper. Kathy and Marti’s parents both died within ten days of each other when Kathy was twenty-two and Marti was fifteen. Kathy raised Marti for the next ten years. They lived together, took care of each other, and are as close as two people can be. When Marti moved away Kathy wasn’t just losing a roommate or a sister – she was sending her daughter out into the world for the first time.
The day Marti left, Kathy was still in the middle of packing as much of her house as she could, surrounded by shoulder-high piles of boxes.
Moving is always hard. It makes you look at the old possessions of your life and ask what they mean now. Moving is lonely work.
I knew all this was happening even though I was thousands of miles away, and I knew Kathy would feel sad and alone in her house that day.
I realized I could not do much, but I could send her some flowers to tell her I knew what she was going through and that I was thinking about her.
I was pleased with myself for having the idea. That, I thought, ought to register about a 9.8 on her you’re-so-sweet-o-meter. And in hindsight I really was thoughtful, especially for a self-absorbed, never-knows-what-to-do, women-are-from-Venus dork like I was in those days.
I was so thoughtful that for days I didn’t actually get around to ordering the flowers. Just knowing that I would send Kathy flowers to cheer her up was enough for me.
Well, time slipped away and I did not try to place an order until the day before they needed to arrive. I walked home from work a little faster that evening, and I could feel that I had not left much time.
I walked up to Johnny’s Flowers. Even before I got there I could see it was closed. The time was 6:20 PM.
Uh-oh, I thought. No panic, no panic. There were two more shops up the street. I walk-galloped, gripping the straps of my book bag to keep it from bouncing on my back. I went to the first store, and to the second – both closed.
The walk back down to my apartment was long and slow, and my thoughts were dark and stormy. If I came up to a stone in my path, I kicked it.
But then, just as I passed the post office a block away from home, I had an idea and I started to gallop again.
I ran into the apartment, threw down my bag, and picked up the phone. I dialed Information.
“What city, please?”
“Honolulu!” I said.
“Go ahead,” said the operator.
“Give me the names of three flower shops. I don’t care which ones.”
She took a moment and told me the names. I wrote them down. “Would you like me to connect you, sir?”
“Sure,” I said. “To the first one. Thank-you.”
“You’re welcome, sir.”
The phone began to ring with a tone that sounded a million miles away. A woman answered it. “Island Flowers. How may I help you?”
“Are you still open?” I demanded.
“Yes, sir, we are.”
“Oh, that’s great, because I’m calling from Seattle and we’re two time zones ahead of you. Everything’s already closed here.”
“Well, we’re open, sir. How can I help you?”
“I need you to send flowers to Flint, Michigan tomorrow. Can you do that?”
“Of course. What would you like?”
I placed the order, hung up the phone and threw both hands into the air. “Yes!”
I felt like I had just scored the winning goal at the Soccer World Cup. (Call me Rafael Pantanagua. ) The announcer cried “Goooooooooooooooal!”, and I ripped off my shirt and whirled it over my head as I took a victory lap around Estadio Nacional in front of 80,000 screaming fans. They could all see my small but very athletic torso. Some of them pulled off their shirts too.
I went to work the next day and I told everybody. And when I say everybody, I mean everybody. I told the story so many times that I honed it into a speech I could deliver from memory.
I said, “Did you know that Hawaii is two hours behind us in Seattle?” I told them about Marti coming here and how my girlfriend Kathy was sad and alone, and how I tried to send her flowers and screwed up, but that it turned out okay because of Hawaii.
Most of my coworkers listened politely. Some of them laughed, and some of them asked why I didn’t just call FTD’s toll free ordering number.
“Oh,” I said. “Well, because I didn’t know about that.” To me it made the achievement even greater because I had had less to work with. Who is cleverer, the person who builds a house with a belt full of tools, or the one who builds it with his bare hands?
That’s right. I thought so.
This, too, was before you could buy flowers on the Internet. Things were primitive in those days. All we had was the telephone.
But the best part of the day, better than telling the story to all my coworkers, was when the phone rang at my desk and it was Kathy.
“Hey, you,” she said.
“Heeey,” I said.
“Somebody just sent me some flowers. Some hunky guy. You know anything about that, Mister Charlie Close?”
“Well, maybe I do. Hunky guy, huh? What’s he look like?”
“He’s tall and handsome and he’s got cute hair that looks all messed up in the morning, and he’s very considerate…”
“He does sound hunky,” I said.
“Yeah,” said Kathy, trailing off…
Ladies and gentlemen, a call like this is what makes it all worth while. I was so happy.
Now the next thing I wanted to say was, “Did you know that Hawaii is two hours behind Seattle?…” Kathy would listen to anything I said now and think it was great. I came this close to telling her about the trick I had to pull off to get her flowers.
But I didn’t, not that day. I told her instead that I knew she would be feeling sad and that I was thinking about her.
I used to think that calling Hawaii was the smartest thing I ever did. But now, if anyone ever asks me, I will tell them this -
I was smart enough, that one time, to shut up.
