Part 7 (1/2)
LEN'S GREENHOUSE WAS SO BIG IT HAD ROOMS: THE DECIDUOUS room, the desert room, the rain forest room, the heirloom plants from other centuries room, the plants that only grow on other plants room. Some of these were subsets or extensions of rooms, and some of the rooms overlapped before growing into new rooms-the plants growing on other plants room turned into the orchid room, which evolved into the spectacularly gorgeous and weird plants room, which turned a corner and became the poisonous plants room. So the whole greenhouse seemed to be growing. In some places it covered the roof and threatened to crawl down the side of the building. It was the only greenhouse I had ever seen that was big enough to get lost in.
I told Len that I was surprised he could get enough water up there for a greenhouse that big, especially one with a rain forest, and yet he couldn't get enough water for a little bit of moss.
He said, ”I know, it is surprising, isn't it?” By which I knew he really was full of s.h.i.+t, and there was no reason he had to stash the moss in my apartment, except that he had run out of room in his. That, and there really was quite a lot of sunlight up there. He got light on six sides. It was like living on Mount Olympus with a whole bunch of plants.
As much fun as it had been to talk to Len about his moss, it was nothing compared to hearing him go on about plants. He started by delivering information like a university lecturer, which he had been at some point. Everything was all about the genus and the species and the Latin name and the common name and the historical sources of the names. But he couldn't hold on to the formality. In no time he was talking to the plants, checking out the texture of the leaves, telling the pretty ones how lovely they were, telling the ones that were all spiky and weird-looking that looks don't matter, the pink coleus is just a s.l.u.t for showing off like that, beauty comes and goes so quickly, and she's only an annual anyway. He thought the cactuses were sly and devious, the ”tricksters of the desert,” which I didn't quite follow, because all those spikes didn't look sly to me; they seemed pretty direct. When I pointed that out, Len just laughed, like there was so much about cactuses that I didn't know. And how could you argue with that? I don't know anything about cactuses; I was just making an observation. Then he took me into the orchid room, and I got an earful about the orchids. He had more than a hundred different kinds, each one stranger than the last. Some had spots all over them, which I had never seen on any flower. They were pink and purple and yellow and white and dark red with black centers, and one was black all over, which was strangely frightening. Some looked like stars and some looked like b.u.t.terflies, some looked like tarantulas, and some like hornets or some other kind of stinging animal, and then of course there were dozens that looked like s.e.x organs. Seriously, all of those flowers looked like they wanted to have s.e.x with humans. It was a bit creepy, honestly. I was somewhat afraid to touch them.
This turned out to be a good impulse on my part, as Len casually informed me once we were done with the orchid room.
”Some of them are poisonous,” he admitted. ”The pollen, the ovules, the nectar, this little darling here-don't touch-not that it would hurt you permanently, but you very well might lose all feeling in your arm, at least for a day.”
”Come on, Len,” I said.
”Do you want to try it?” he asked, raising those eyebrows at me.
I didn't. ”But if orchids are poisonous, how come everybody has them in their houses?”
”Only certain species, Tina. Use your head,” he said, pulling out a very small pair of clippers and snipping some extraneous vines away from a line of bright yellow star-shaped flowers that wound down the side of a tree. ”Please don't touch that.”
”You can't touch any of them?” I asked.
”Until you know which ones are poisonous and which aren't, no, in fact, you can't touch any of them.”
”How did you find out which ones are poisonous?”
”The hard way,” he said. ”I studied.”
The place smelled like growing things and sounded like water. He had little fountains in corners, and strange pools behind tree trunks or alongside a hillside of ferns. That greenhouse was so big it had hills-small hills, but definite undulations. And everything was green, a thousand different greens, each one more subtle than the last. In spite of the pink coleus and the startling s.e.xuality of the many-colored and poisonous orchids, green was what you saw everywhere.
And then all of a sudden you turned a corner and were back in his apartment. The apartment was quite small in comparison to the greenhouse; it was one little room right at the center of the roof. There was a kitchenette with a linoleum counter, completely cluttered with pots and pans and a blender, and lots of mismatched dishes on open shelves. And across from the counter was a wall with a lot of books about plants, and a chair and a little table. To one side was a big, overstuffed blue couch with magazines and books piled all over it, and behind that, in a corner, an unmade bed. Next to the bed was what seemed to be a closet, and then a very small bathroom with a skylight and lots of plants in the tub. On the other side of the bathtub was one of those clear acrylic doors they sell in fancy bath stores, and just beyond was the room with all the ferns. Seriously, you could step out of that bathtub and into the greenhouse. I mean, the apartment did have some walls, just not as many as most people have. The greenhouse seemed to have grown out of that tiny apartment and then just kept on growing.
”Would you like a cappuccino?” Len asked me. He gestured toward a large silver contraption that took up all of the counter s.p.a.ce between the very small stovetop and the equally small refrigerator. The only thing that wasn't utterly minuscule in the kitchen was the enormous cappuccino machine. Len considered it with an air of bemused resignation, like it was an old but hapless and worrisome friend. ”I have this wonderful machine someone gave me, but I can never get it to work,” he admitted.
”If you can't get it to work, why are you offering me cappuccino?”
”Well, I was thinking that if you wanted a cappuccino, you could try to make it yourself, and then, if you were successful, you could show me how to do it,” he said, offering up that dazzling smile.
”Fair enough,” I said. ”Where's the coffee?”
”Oh, coffee ... oh,” he mused, looking around the tiny kitchen.
”Never mind, I'll find it,” I said, and started poking around. There weren't that many places to look. I landed on the stuff my first try: in the freezer.
”You know you're not really supposed to freeze your beans, it dries them out,” I informed Len, looking for an expiration date. ”How long has this been in here?”
”Oh, not long. A week? My daughter brought it by, she brought me one of those baskets of food they give to invalids in hospitals. I think there are chocolate biscuits somewhere.” He started poking around the bookshelves, as if he might have hidden the biscuits in with the books.
”You have a daughter?” This was real news. I mean, it was hard to imagine this strange person having any human relations. I thought he was half plant himself by this point.
”Oh yes, she's, well, you know, she's my daughter, you know what that's like,” he replied, as if all girls with parents somehow must share the same frontal lobe. ”I can't find the biscuits.”
”Here they are,” I said, pulling them out from behind the cappuccino machine. Len looked at them with a sort of stern surprise, like the biscuits had done something offensive, locating themselves in such an unusual spot.
”What are they doing there?” he asked.
”Maybe your daughter put them there,” I suggested. ”Maybe she was trying to clean up your kitchen and she thought it was a good spot to stash the cookies. You know, by the cappuccino machine. What's her name?”
”Oh, who remembers,” he sighed, suddenly bored to the point of apathy. ”Her mother always called her Charlie. I dislike it when girls have boys' names, it's confusing enough as it is without things like that.”
”Is that the name on her birth certificate?”
”What? No. Do you think I'm crazy?”
”Well, yes, a bit,” I said, looking around.
”Her given name is Charlotte. We named her Charlotte,” he stated, with some heat.
”Well, why don't you just call her that?” I asked, pouring a bunch of coffee beans into what seemed to be the grinding part of the machine; at least, the clever little chute that opened up off one side implied that beans might go there.
”I rarely see her, so I don't call her anything.” Len sounded increasingly annoyed with my questioning.
”Why don't you see her?” I said, looking for the switch.
”Well, let's see, Tina, why would a parent and child become estranged? Let's speculate on that, shall we?” He ducked his head into the refrigerator. ”You'll need milk, I think.”
”This is a very nice machine, Len,” I told him, flipping the switch. Nothing happened. He set a red-and-white carton of whole milk on the cluttered counter between us and watched as I flipped the switch again.
”Stop it-it makes no sense to keep flipping that switch. One try is plenty. It doesn't work, I told you; I've had that machine for years, and it doesn't ever work.”
”So why don't you get another one?”
”Oh, I don't really like cappuccino anyway,” he sighed, opening the tin of cookies.
”Then why am I making it?”
”Well, you're not, as far as I can see, you haven't gotten that thing to work any more than I did. And now you have to figure out how to get the beans out of there; you're going to have to turn the whole thing upside down, and doubtless the beans will simply go everywhere. It's a complete waste of time.”
”Wait,” I said, plugging the machine in. ”Hang on.” I flipped the switch. The machine started to hum and rumble as the beans swirled in the chute.
”Oh,” said Len, arrested for a second. Then ground coffee began to spit all over the counter. ”Well, that is-interesting.”
It took twenty minutes to figure out how to get the ground coffee into the other part of the machine, make the espresso, and then steam the milk, but the whole project was pretty entertaining and relaxing, compared to the other stuff that had been happening to me for the past few days. Len had a lot to say about everything except his own personal history. As long as we stayed off the subject of his daughter Charlie and her mother, he was a complete motormouth. He left out a lot of things, but if I didn't push too hard and just let him keep yakking he produced plenty of information, which I was happy to have.
”So what's the story on the lady who lives on the same floor as me?” I said, serving up a perfect cappuccino-which, as it turned out, Len liked a lot.
”You've met Delia Westmoreland!” he noted, admiring the foam on his coffee cup. ”How was that for you?”
”How was it?”
”Yes, did you find her charming? She can be, if she likes.”