James Van Pelt - Flying in the Heart of the Lafayette Escadrille

“Part of the service. You can keep it. Most people don’t. We’ll be by in two weeks with a fresh plant.”

“Two weeks?”

“Two weeks, three weeks, depends on the weather, they get soft. Like an old tomato. It’s in your contract. Didn’t you read it?”

Gregory had thrown the papers in his desk without looking at them. “Yes, I’m sorry. Slipped my mind.”

The delivery man shut the case, looked Gregory over sagely. “Your first one, right? Nothing to it. Read the instructions. Just like when you were a kid with a model airplane.”

The delivery man was in the truck and halfway down the street before Gregory realized what he meant.

During dinner, he felt the presence of the coffin-sized case in his bedroom where he had moved it, but he made himself eat slowly. Sara used to complain that he chewed his food twice as much as he needed to. She’d smiled and said, “Gregory, you’re like a cow.” But she stayed at the table until they were done, and on the nights they made love, they did it right after dinner.

After he cleaned the dishes and put the leftovers away, he stood in front of the case in his bedroom with the lights out a long time. When he finally opened it, the smell of grass wafted out, pasture grass after a rain.

She was, as Jermaine promised, fully reflexive.

Gregory met Jermaine the next night at a popular fern bar, The Block and Tackle. Under the dark oak sign that hung from rusted chains and illuminated by hidden lights was the Block and Tackle’s slogan, “Everyone Gets Lucky.”

Jermaine waited for him at a back table, far from the dim lights over the bar. Too obstinate to sit on a book or use a booster seat, his arms just cleared the edge of the table where he cradled a schooner of beer.

“So what did you think, Bucko?” asked Jermaine. Gregory flinched. He hated being called Bucko. “Was it everything I promised?” He pushed a beer toward Gregory as he sat down.

Gregory sipped from the mug for a while before answering. The beer, cool and smooth, felt good on his throat. “Different. Very different.”

“Good, though, right? What did I tell you? Never a better time.” Jermaine tipped his beer and swallowed a huge gulp.

“Yes.” Gregory didn’t know what to add to that. After he had put her on the bed, he lay beside her. The light from the window shone off her eyes, and he marveled at how lifelike, how utterly human, she appeared. He watched her breasts, perfectly formed, for a rise of breath that never came. The bedroom was utterly silent, and it made him remember Sara the last weeks before she left when she would lie beside him, awake but not speaking, aware that he was watching her, not asleep and barely breathing. Stiff, weighing down the mattress and mentally not in the room, the plant reminded him of her, so he reached across her belly and caressed her side. The plant/woman rolled into him and wrapped her arms around him, startling him so that he almost jumped from the bed, but he didn’t. She was warm and felt good, her skin soft and firm; her smell, again he noticed, like wet spring grass. She pulled him tighter. For a long time he did nothing but let himself be held.

Jermaine rested his chin on the table, a posture Gregory had seen him in before but that had always unnerved him. A grown man shouldn’t look comfortable that way. When Jermaine spoke, his chin anchored to the table, the top of his head bobbed up and down like a talking clam in a comic. “Give her a week. In a week she’ll be at her best. Don’t plan on working then, either. Stay home. She won’t get any better than that.”

At the bar, behind Jermaine, Gregory saw women sitting, glasses beside them. All were turned so they were looking into the tables, but shadows hid their faces. Jermaine glanced over his shoulder, then put his chin back on the table. “Beautiful, aren’t they?” he said.

“Yes, they are.”

“You’re lucky now. Got one of your own at home.”

Surprised, Gregory said, “Don’t you too?”

Jermaine sighed and closed his eyes. After a few moments, Gregory thought he had gone to sleep. Then Jermaine said, “They all go rotten, you know, Bucko. All rotten.” He rolled his head to the side and opened one eye. “Pick ‘em while they’re fresh and dump ’em before they go bad. I haven’t had one in the house for six months. Before that I went through dozens, one every two weeks.” He covered his face with his hands and kept talking, muffled. “I fell in love with everyone, too. I know that sounds stupid, but I did. They’re dead, you know, or dying. As soon as they’re plucked. It was like loving someone with a terminal illness.” His breath caught, and Gregory wondered if he was crying. He wondered what he should do. Jermaine continued, “Sometimes I come here just to look, but underneath the air I smell ’em going bad. It’s all bad, bad, bad.” He drank deeply again.

Gregory saw a man walk down the row of girls at the bar, pause at one, look her over and then motion to the bartender who took the offered credit card and handed the man a key. He disappeared through a door at the end of the bar where Gregory supposed one of the girl’s “sisters” waited. Gregory had never “gotten lucky” at the fern bar.

“If you feel that way, why don’t you go out with a real woman?” Gregory asked. “I mean, Sara and I had a lot of problems, but we were together.”

“Doesn’t matter, Bucko. You hold them long enough, their love rots away.”

“Jesus, that’s depressing. So what’s left if nothing lasts?”

Jermaine said, “Lots of sex. Sex, sex, sex till it hurts. And even that’s a short haul, but maybe, you know, you could tie into something you can’t let go of. Something that’ll stick to you, and it’ll either kill you then because it’s so good, or you’ll remember it forever when nothing else will measure up.”

Sickened, Gregory looked into his beer. Because of the darkness of the bar, the liquid seemed black.

Abruptly Jermaine said, “Let me borrow your plant. I can’t buy here. They’re clean, but it’s the smell, you know, alcohol wipe and aftershave on their skin. Just for the evening.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Jermaine.”

Jermaine fisted both hands as if he wanted to hit him, and Gregory pushed his chair away from the table. Gradually the fists relaxed until the finger lay flat on the table. He said, “I’m going home. Enjoy her while she’s still fresh.” He stood, all four-and-a-half feet of him and said, “You know what I wonder? I wonder if being plucked hurts. I wonder if it pisses them off. The beer’s paid for.” He left.

When Gregory got home, the smell hit him as he opened the door, a whiff of wet, old vegetables. He took a step onto the carpet and sniffed carefully, turning his head side to side, testing the air. “I’m home,” he said and felt immediately stupid, and then, because he was alone in his own apartment and there was no one to hear him, he said it again, “I’m home, dear.” He sniffed once more and rushed to the back of the house.

In the bedroom, the case leaned against the end of the bed where he’d put it in the morning. The room smelled fresh with a hint of his deodorant and shampoo. Nothing else. He put his hand on the case, snapped open the latches, but hesitated with his hand on the edge of the lid. No, he thought, it couldn’t be from here. Not yet.

In the hallway he couldn’t smell anything. Pictures on the wall of Sara and him horseback riding stopped him for a moment. He straightened the close-up that showed them side by side holding reins to horses that were blurry brown shapes in the background.

In the living room he caught it again, a deep, damp solid smell like packed leaves gone gray and slimy at the bottom of a barrel. He wondered how he could have missed it in the morning before leaving for work. The trash can under the coffee table was empty and dry. He moved into the kitchen where he checked the garbage can, the trash compactor, the garbage disposal and the refrigerator, all dry and odorless. Frustrated, he stood in the middle and clamped his hands on his hips to survey the room. He sniffed loudly.