Heather Cochran - The Return Of Jonah Gray

The pages had been printed off a Web site called “Gray’s Garden,” a site about horticulture—plants and flowers and such.

“Oh, I get it—my last name is Gardner, so you were thinking gardening. Actually, I’m not really into plants. All that dirt.” I slid the papers back in his direction. “My mother is. I don’t know—maybe it skips a generation. Thanks for the thought though.” I wanted to head off any gardening pitch he might have been approaching with. I knew my mother could get pretty obsessed with her seedlings. What would this guy be like?

Jeff frowned. “This section isn’t about gardening. Read what the guy says, right there.” He pointed.

I leaned in. Indeed, the pages Jeff had printed out weren’t about gardening at all; they were about being audited. Probably someone’s sob story, I figured. I’d seen a few of those in my time. First-person angst-filled narratives about the hellish experience of meeting someone just like me.

But as I continued reading, I realized that this one was different. This was a first-person narrative by a man who was about to be audited, not by someone like me—but by me.

Most of you know about my past year, he wrote. It’s been one thing after another. I’ve been waiting for a cyclone to touch down in my yard, or maybe a swarm of locusts. Well, the wait is finally over. Turns out that I’m getting audited. In yesterday’s mail, a letter arrived from our friends at the IRS. Imagine my excitement when they informed me of my upcoming appointment with “S. Gardner, Senior Auditor.”

He included, word for word, the letter he’d received—the one coldly notifying him of the upcoming audit—then went on to describe the dread he felt at the prospect of meeting me.

Does S. Gardner know the upheaval he or she has just dumped upon me? Does this person—and I must assume that S. Gardner is indeed a living, breathing human, and push aside the ghoulish images in my mind—have any idea of the wake he or she creates? I wonder how many people have met S. and emerged smiling, he wrote.

“So S is for Sasha,” I heard myself saying, just as Gordon, the first of my angry callers had, upon hearing my name.

“It’s from a Web site out of Stockton,” Jeff explained. “Someone must have told the guy your name. In the following section—I didn’t print it out, so you’ll just have to believe me—he’s figured it out.”

“Stockton?” I repeated.

“The man’s name is Jonah Gray. Do you know him?”

“Jonah Gray?” I shook my head. “Where did you find this?”

Jeff Hill sat up straight and started to fiddle with the salt and pepper shakers, arranging and rearranging them. He cleared his throat. “Online,” he finally said.

“Do you garden? You said you lived in an apartment.” I didn’t know which was stranger, the Web site or the fact that Jeff Hill, a man I had met not four hours before, was the one showing it to me.

“I used to garden a little. Back when I had a lawn. Too much dirt. And I really don’t like earthworms.” He shuddered.

“I thought you said you liked insects,” I said.

He looked very serious. “Yes, insects. Not worms. Segmented worms are a hermaphroditic mess.”

“But how did you find this?” I pressed, holding up the pages.

Jeff Hill took a deep breath and looked straight at me. “I looked you up,” he said. “And when I found that site, I thought you’d be interested.”

“You looked me up? Like a search? Like a police search?”

“I didn’t go to the police,” he said.

“I thought you said you’d worked for them.”

“Sure, I could have gone to them. But I prefer to do my own research.”

“On me?”

“On anyone.”

“What I mean is, you were doing research on me? Why? Why would you do that?”

“Because I liked your looks and Ricardo said that you weren’t dating anyone.”

I sat back in my seat, not sure where to go next. Was it the truth? It was certainly flattering. And I didn’t doubt that Ricardo would volunteer information about my dating status to anyone. It was the proactive research that had my head spinning. What sort of person did that? A stalker sort of person or just someone who was careful and detail-oriented? Was I just behind the times? Maybe everyone did that sort of research these days. I wondered what else he’d found. Hell, I wondered what else there was to find.

“So you did some quick research and then asked me to lunch? Or was it the other way around?”

“Does it matter?”

That wasn’t what I was expecting to hear. “I hardly know you,” I said.

“I realize that.”

“This Jonah Gray person, I don’t know him at all.”

“So I’m ahead on that score,” Jeff said. He smiled for the first time since I’d met him. It was a nice smile, actually. It lit up his face and helped to balance out those solemn eyes.

I held up the printout. “Can I keep this?” I asked.

“Be my guest.”

“About the other stuff,” I said. “I’m flattered. I am.”

“You don’t have to say anything. I’m not asking you out.”

“You’re not?” I found myself vaguely disappointed. I wasn’t sure whether it was because I found Jeff Hill oddly appealing or because I had expected him to ask for something more. I mean, you don’t usually tell someone that you like them and then just go about your business, la-di-dah.

“You want me to?” he asked. “I don’t know,” I said. “I’ll take that as a maybe,” he said, smiling again.

GRAY’S GARDEN—THE WEB SITE—FOCUSED ON PLANT cultivation in California’s various flora zones. There were fertilizer reviews, discussions about the weather and complaints about garden pests, both common and unusual. People wrote in for advice, something the owner of the site, Jonah Gray, dispensed generously, when he wasn’t musing about various garden topics. In a cursory review of the site, I gathered that Jonah Gray resented nonnative species that required heavy watering, lamented the loss of indigenous oaks throughout California, and felt that Stockton’s insistence on pruning trees between April and October was actually helping the dreaded “eucalyptusborer” decimate entire groves. Otherwise, he tended to keep things upbeat.

As I had admitted to Jeff, I wasn’t much of a gardener, so I wasn’t particularly interested in the plight of oaks or eucalypti. I was bent on finding the references to the IRS, the audit and, in particular, me. I found what I was looking for in the discussion area. That’s where Jonah Gray had pasted the audit notification letter that had been generated by an IRS database around the same time I’d been assigned to his case. Had I been more focused that August—or rather, focused on my job instead of cubicle cleaning and legal-pad history—I would already have begun my initial analysis of Jonah Gray’s return, and his name would have rung familiar when Jeff had mentioned it.

A number of people had replied to his first post about the audit, adding details from their own experiences with the IRS and whipping up the man’s anxiety with (mostly) unfounded rumors.

JasperDad wrote: I have heard tales. You be strong, Mr. Gray, sir. Don’t let them take an extra red cent.

Skua87 wrote: This is exactly why I hide my money in my mattress.

MaxiMoss wrote: I never understood how good people could become auditors.

JasperDad replied: Good people don’t.

Two days into the discussion, Hydrangeas01 had informed everybody that S stood for Sasha and that I was female. I wondered whether Hydrangeas01 was Gordon, my first caller.

I felt as if I were eavesdropping. Here they were, talking about me, wondering about me, with no idea that I was watching. I felt like a celebrity might, albeit one of those celebrities that people find a perverse pleasure in hating.