Page 23 of The Incredible Kindness of Paper

Chloe

Thelma’s business was thriving but she herself couldn’t take the pups out for walks, so Chloe had offered to help. Since she didn’t have a job right now, she’d take any opportunity to make some money.

“Oh, lovely! Come in, I was just making coffee.”

Walking the dogs had become an unexpected delight. Of course, Chloe had anticipated the joy that their unfettered enthusiasm would bring. Dogs loved you unconditionally; if you simply scratched behind their ears, you became their best friend for life.

But what Chloe hadn’t anticipated was how friendly New Yorkers could be.

Usually, they averted their eyes as they walked past on the sidewalk, pretending you didn’t exist. But when Chloe was dog walking, she was shocked by how chatty these normally aloof strangers became.

Suddenly, they paused to bend down and say hello to the dogs, and then they’d turn their attention to Chloe and strike up a conversation—about the dog breeds, about the lovely weather, about anything, really—and when they were finished, they would smile and cheerily say, “Have a great day!” or “I hope we run into each other again!”

It was a facet of New York she hadn’t experienced before, and she was beginning to feel a little more like maybe she did belong here.

Maybe people did want to connect but they didn’t know how to free themselves from the fortresses of solitude they’d built around themselves.

The pups gave them an excuse to peek over the ramparts, even if just a little.

Heck, maybe dogs ought to be part of all major human interactions.

Chloe grinned at the thought of global leaders at the G20 Summit or international treaty negotiations, surrounded by happy, slobbery, furry friends.

Imagine what could be accomplished if diplomats could remember that, at the end of the day, they weren’t opponents, but rather, all in this together.

As Chloe unclipped the dogs from their leashes, Thelma pulled out a blue tin of Danish butter cookies. Chloe smiled at the familiar round tin; her nana had about a dozen of them at home, used as storage for everything from needles and thread to office supplies to makeup counter samples.

“Now, come sit with me for a minute,” Thelma said, pouring two cups of coffee and nodding to a purple vinyl kitchenette chair. “Tell me what’s going on in your life. How are the paper roses going?”

“Really well,” Chloe said, sitting and opening the blue tin and reaching inside for a cookie.

“Oh, not that, dear!” Thelma said. “Those are dog biscuits I just baked. Rufus! Barney, Freddy, Rocky, Mary Puppins, and Priscilla, come get your treats!”

The dogs came running into the kitchen to eat straight from Thelma’s hands, and she cackled with glee.

Chloe couldn’t remember the Thelma of the past ever saying more than a handful of stern words, but now she laughed all the time.

And no one called her the Threadbare Countess anymore. It was wonderful.

After the dogs had demolished the biscuits and left nothing but crumbs, Chloe updated Thelma on her origami project.

Although the crew at the Central Park location was growing—a young, aspiring pharmacist named Ricky had shown up today—Chloe still preferred not to hand out her paper roses there.

She wanted to spread them out farther around the city, to reach people who couldn’t come to the park or who didn’t even know the flowers existed.

But something interesting was happening.

Her volunteers would pass on stories they heard about the paper roses—conversations they overheard or people coming to the tables in Central Park to tell them—and there was always one consistent detail: the origami flowers marked with the heart-shaped rosebuds (the ones Chloe made), always seemed to find their way to the exact right person who needed it.

The paper roses that everyone else made were terrific, too, but they didn’t have the same accuracy.

There was no explanation for it.

“Perhaps it’s the extra love you put into them,” Thelma said.

Chloe shook her head. “Maybe. It’s weird, though, right?”

Thelma shrugged. “Weird, but nice.”

Chloe laughed. “Yeah.”

Did it matter, how it happened? Whether it was the exact message someone needed to hear or simply a moment of uplift or joy, the paper roses were bringing people together.

A connection.

A spark of sameness.

A pause to remember we were all human.

And that, Chloe thought, was what really mattered.