I was walking home to my apartment on 17th Street, thinking of how odd Vicky has been behaving lately, when a splash of color in an adjacent alleyway caught my eye.

There, sitting on the top of The Happy Clam restaurant’s trash bin, was a bouquet of flowers that someone had discarded. They couldn’t have been more than a couple of days old, and fewer than half the petals were ripped or discolored. What luck! I skittered to a nearby newspaper box, grabbed a copy of the free local weekly, and peeled off the front page to wrap the flowers in. I returned to my find, grabbed the discarded bouquet in my hand and felt a sharp prick. A thorn, perhaps? No, just a tiny fish bone from a patron’s completed dinner. No matter; I wiped off any flakes of cod I could see, rearranged the flowers, and continued on my way. They did have a slight maritime scent, but at no charge, I wasn’t about to complain.

Vicky’s going to love them.