by Mindy Klasky
Ryan, far more accustomed to his mother’s green thumb ventures than I, had ducked behind the screen in the living room, emerging seconds later in torn jeans and a bleach-stained sweatshirt. He’d completed the transition from petitioning playwright to grubby greensman so quickly that I wondered if he was some sort of closet superhero.
Garden-Man to the rescue!
Yeah. Like Garden-Man could do anything to redeem the disaster of the meeting we’d just fled.
Dani seemed oblivious to the tension between Ryan and me. I couldn’t help but think how different Dani was from my own mother. Mom would have zeroed in on my frustration from a mile off. She would have initiated a spirited game of Twenty Questions until she’d dug out precisely what had gone wrong in my morning meeting. After half an hour, I would have known exactly how my mother would have resolved the situation, complete with simple, easy-to-quote statements that I should have used in the heat of our Union encounter.
It wasn’t that my mother didn’t trust me to come up with solutions on my own. It was just that hers were so much better. Or so it was easier for everyone to believe. I really did love her, but there was a reason I kept an entire continent between my mother and me most of the time. Especially when my problems were related to theater, to dramaturgy, something she knew nothing about.
Dani, on the other hand, pretended that there wasn’t anything massively wrong between Ryan and me. She talked about herself, babbling easily about the Gray Guerillas’ latest project. She apparently never noticed that Ryan and I weren’t speaking—not to her and not to each other. I shrugged. As long as I was a captive of the green army, I decided to take an interest in their work. It was better than apologizing to Ryan. Again.
Just as I reached that conclusion, my cell phone rang. I dragged it out of my pocket, frowning at the screen. The number was vaguely familiar. 212—That was it. Detective Ambrose. The policeman investigating Dean’s disappearance.
I mouthed an excuse to Dani and Ryan and answered the call. “Rebecca Morris.”
“Miss Morris.” A gusty sigh. “Detective Ambrose here.”
I wondered if the guy ever hyperventilated, sighing so deeply. He sounded so despondent, I felt my own shoulders sag in sympathy. “Yes, Detective?” I saw both Dani and Ryan perk up, paying closer attention to my call.
“Miss Morris, can you tell me the significance of the number one-nine-zero-eight?”
My voice hardened. “Nineteen-oh-eight. The last year the Chicago Cubs won the World Series. Dean was a big Cubs fan. We used 1908 as our PIN for our shared bank account.”
If I hadn’t heard the clicking on Ambrose’s computer keyboard, I would have thought that he hadn’t heard me. After an eternity, he said, “And, Miss Morris, the word Puffpuff?”
That question knocked the wind out of me. I actually staggered back a couple of steps, had to reach out to steady myself on the back of the living room couch. Dani looked concerned; she reached for my phone as if she were going to make the prying detective go away. I set my jaw, though, and shook my head. “Puffpuff is a stuffed animal, Detective.”
“Miss Morris?” I’d caught him by surprise there. The sound of clacking computer keys disappeared.
“It’s a stuffed dog I’ve had since I was a baby. Puffpuff. I kept her on our…” My throat closed over the next word, and I was suddenly furious with myself that I’d taken this call here, in front of Dani. In front of Ryan. “Bed,” I whispered.
Ambrose sighed, as if he’d already expected such a sordid detail. Or was that just his usual, everyday tragic sigh? I couldn’t be sure. “Miss Morris, did you use Puffpuff as a password on any of your computer accounts with Mr. Marcus?”
His formality, his constantly using my name in questions was grating on me. I wanted to tell him to call me Becca, to talk to me as if we were friends. But we weren’t friends, of course. We never would be.
“Puffpuff. No.”
“And, Miss Morris, did you ever use 1908 as a password?”
“No,” I said again. “Just that one PIN.”
“But, Miss Morris, it would not surprise you to learn that Mr. Marcus used those words, separately, or together, as a password on multiple bank accounts, both in the United States and abroad?”
“No,” I whispered. I cleared my throat. “No, I wouldn’t be surprised. Can you tell me exactly what sort of accounts? What is this about?”
“I’m not at liberty to say anything more, Miss Morris.” Another one of those gusty sighs, as if his heart were breaking. Or as if he were about to fall asleep. “I’ll be back in touch, Miss Morris, as we need more information.”
He hung up before I could ask anything else. Like how they’d figured out the passwords. Like whether I was implicated, because Dean had used my stuffed animal’s name. Like whether they were any closer to tracking Dean down in Russia.
I shuddered. Dean’s using Puffpuff’s name made me feel filthy, as if he’d purposely dragged me into his cruel, manipulative games. I supposed that I should feel lucky that Ambrose had been content with letting me go after such a quick telephonic questioning. I didn’t feel lucky, though. I felt as if the entire world was closing in around me. Was stacked against me. Was laughing cruelly as I failed yet again.
Shoving my phone back into my bag, I surprised myself by brushing a few angry tears off my cheeks. I could only hope that my eyes were clear by the time I looked up at Dani and Ryan.
“Well?” I said, more brusquely than I intended. “Are we going to get started with this?”
A plastic sheet covered the floor in front of the workbench, apparently Dani’s one concession to stodgy notions of traditional property value. Stepping onto the plastic carefully, Dani made sure that her Birkenstocks had a solid grip before she started to set out her gray cups in neat, expectant rows. They turned out to be made from pressed peat moss, as sturdy as paper, but clearly more friendly to green, growing things.
Dani dropped the cups into rows with the timing and precision of a competitive speed-stacker. Watching her practiced fingers, I was pretty sure that any Atlantic City casino would offer her a job as a blackjack dealer, if she ever decided to give up her life of ecological warfare and go legitimate.
“Ready?” she asked brightly, when the entire array was spread in front of us. “Now, Ry, I’m sure you remember how to do this.”
He grunted. Dani smiled as if he had started whistling a tune happy enough to rival one of Snow White’s dwarves.
She elaborated for my benefit. “We take that plastic tub, and we fill it with one small bag of potting soil and a bucket of compost.” Ryan tore open the former with a ferocity that made me truly fear for Teel’s safety if he ever saw her in her hooker garb again. Dani stared at him for a moment, but then she turned to me with a placid smile, offering a plastic pail, as if I were a child playing on a sandy beach. “The compost is in the kitchen.”
“How can you keep it there?” I asked, intrigued despite myself. “Doesn’t it stink?”
“Not if it’s kept balanced. I’ve had that system stable for…what has it been, Ry? Five years?”
He grunted again. Dani’s attempts at healing through conversation were failing. Miserably.
“Aren’t there worms?” I asked. Nevertheless, I took the bucket like I gardened inside a Manhattan apartment every day. Anything was better than staying around Ryan’s grim silence. “Will I hurt them?”
Dani laughed. “I sifted the whole thing earlier today. I set the worms aside, knowing that I’d be working this afternoon. I’ll add them back in when I’m done.” She glanced at both of us. “When we’re done. I wasn’t expecting so much help.”
Yet another grunt from Ryan. Maybe this return to a Peace Corps environment of working with his hands had made him forget how to speak English.
Or else Teel had. Teel and her stupid, bored-little-magic-girl tricks.
Reciting another tirade against my genie in my head, I went into the kitchen and filled the pail with compost. Dani was smi
ling gently when I returned. “There you go! Mix it up in the plastic bin.”
Ryan stepped aside to make room for me at the workbench. His action was exaggerated, as if he were afraid I’d give him girl cooties. “I’m sorry,” I said again, knowing that I wasn’t really talking about where we were standing.
After hesitating a moment, Ryan said, “That’s okay.” He cleared his throat. “I know that you didn’t mean to let things get out of hand back there.”
Progress!
I dumped the compost into the bin, and we started to mix the soils together. Despite Dani’s reassurance, I expected the stuff from the kitchen to stink, but it really didn’t. It just smelled like fresh earth, warm after a summer rain shower. I trailed my hands through the bin, watching the different shades of brown combine.
“We’ve got other chances,” I said, forcing my voice to sound natural. “I have ideas for other sponsors.”
Ryan swallowed hard. “It’s just that the International Women’s Union…”
“I know,” I said. “But other people are going to understand what we’re doing. Other people are going to get your play. I promise.”
He sighed. “The Mercer shouldn’t even be doing However Long.”
“What do you mean?” I was shocked. “I’m thrilled that we get to produce it.”
He shook his head, refusing to meet my eyes. “It just isn’t right. There have to be other authors, other plays that you’ve considered for so much longer….”
I started to understand why he was so upset. Success was scary—especially in a field as competitive as the one he’d chosen. I’d spoken to other playwrights before. I recognized the emotional struggle Ryan was going through. On the one hand, he had to make himself believe that his play was brilliant, that it was perfect, that it was going to succeed against all odds. On the other hand, though, he knew the pain and suffering that he’d poured into creating it. He knew the long hours spent agonizing over individual words, the endless emotion that he’d crafted into the scenes. He knew every single trouble spot, every rough patch that had cost him countless sleepless nights. He knew what flaws would be revealed to the public at large.
“Ryan,” I said. “We chose However Long because it’s what we need. What we want. What our audiences are going to love. Trust me. We are going to find a sponsor. It’ll just take a little more time than I hoped.”
I didn’t convince him. Rather than argue, though, he started to fill Dani’s peat cups with the dirt we’d just combined. I watched his hands move, smoothly, economically. All traces of the socially awkward playwright I’d first met in Ryan’s body had disappeared. Now, he moved with the confidence of a man who knew his job, who had excelled at his work in the past.
I picked up a cup and followed suit, sifting the rich earth between the fingers of my leather work gloves. When I’d finished, I reached across his forearm to deposit the container in the dark plastic bin that awaited all of our handiwork. Ryan eased the cup into its proper place as I worked on filling the next one, and it took us only a few moments to settle into a routine. He completed two cups for every one that I managed.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Halfway through the task, Ryan chuckled. The sound was surprisingly warm in the close space by the workbench. When I gave him a questioning look, he said, “Eleanor Samuelson probably would have made us join the union before she’d sponsor us.”
Despite our earlier tension, I grinned. “Dues could be a nightmare.”
“I’d have a hard time explaining what I was doing as a card-carrying member of the Women’s Union. They’d revoke all my Man Points.”
I pictured Ms. Samuelson’s stern demeanor. “I bet that woman knows where Jimmy Hoffa’s buried, though. All the best union leaders do—it’s part of their secret initiation.”
He actually laughed out loud.
“That sounds better!” We both looked up. I think that Ryan was as surprised as I was to see Dani emerging from her bedroom. Neither of us had noticed her departure. She brandished seed packets at us. “Here we are! Golden Acre!”
“What’s that?” I asked. It sounded like a retirement home.
“Cabbage!” Dani’s enthusiasm was the sort that most women reserve for chocolate. Dark chocolate. Imported. With truffle filling. As if to explain her joy, Dani said, “It’s an early variety, great for small spaces.”
I looked at Ryan, to see if he thought his mother had taken leave of her senses, but he only shrugged and pulled the peat pots to the center of the workbench.
“Excellent,” Dani said. She handed over the paper packets and said, “You two get started with these. I want to see if I can find the Self Blanche.”
I waited until she’d disappeared again into the magic cavern of her bedroom. “Self Blanche?” I asked Ryan.
“Cauliflower.” He made a face. “She always starts way too much of it.” Despite his criticism, he picked up a dull pencil and started poking shallow holes into the smooth tops of our dirt cups. It took him less than a minute to do the entire tray. “Ready?” he asked, handing me a trowel.
“I guess,” I said. I had never planted anything, anywhere.
He ripped open the seed envelope and gestured for me to hold the trowel horizontally. When I complied, he tipped the packet upside down, spilling several dozen tiny white seeds into the center of the miniature shovel. “There you go. Just tip five or six into each hole.”
I caught my tongue between my teeth. I thought I was being cautious, but I held the trowel at too steep an angle over the first one. A score of seeds flooded across the top of the dirt.
“Easy!” Ryan said. He tugged off his work gloves, needing finer motor control than they permitted to gather up everything I’d spilled.
“I’m sorry!” Even though I hadn’t meant it that way, it sounded like I was back to apologizing for Teel again.
Ryan looked at me quickly before bending back to the task at hand. “Why don’t we just set aside those two words, all right? You won’t say you’re sorry anymore, and I won’t hold anything against you.”
I knew a good deal when I heard it. I nodded and said, “Deal.”
He tipped the reclaimed seeds back into the trowel and said, “All right, now. Just five or six.”
I started to tilt my wrist, but quickly realized that the angle was still too steep. I stopped myself just before I dumped the entire lot into a new, unsuspecting pot. “I’m s—” I started to say, but I caught myself just in time.
Ryan nodded. “It gets easier the more you’ve done it. You’ll get the right feel eventually. Here. Let’s try this.” He set his fingers around my wrist.
His skin was warm against mine as he applied just enough pressure to bring my hand over the cups. He used his fingers to tap against my wrist, jiggling the trowel so that five tiny seeds rolled off the lip into the fresh earth that we’d prepared. His subtle guidance brought the trowel over the next cup, completing the task smoothly, calmly, without disaster.
Ryan Thompson might dress like a geek. He might grin like a bashful schoolboy. He might be unsure and uncertain in challenging social situations. But he knew a thing or two about teaching, about reaching out to people, showing them how to help themselves.
I shouldn’t have been surprised. I’d read However Long. I knew the passion and vehemence that he’d brought to his job in Africa, that he’d carried home from the Peace Corps.
As I looked at the cups we’d successfully completed, the tiny bones in my wrist seemed to heat up. Irrationally, my heart started pounding in my ears. I felt like I’d accomplished something heroic, something magnificent, something infinitely more significant than placing some cabbage seeds in dirt. My flesh thrummed beneath Ryan’s hand, as if he’d crushed lush velvet against me. I wondered if he felt my surprised start, and that wondering raised a blush on my cheeks, a hot wash of color that only an idiot could have missed.
Ryan Thompson was no idiot.
He stepped closer to me, and I forced myself to
relax my wrist. I ordered my hand to yield to his. I reminded my lungs to breathe; I willed my sudden flaming blush to fade.
And Ryan led me through filling the rest of the peat pots perfectly. Five seeds in each cup. No spills. No disasters.
When we were done, I said, “Thank you.”
He looked at me for a long time. I felt him shift toward me again, a subtle movement, barely perceptible in the purple glow of the grow-lights. I saw him measure the new intensity behind my gaze, calibrate the tension as I froze beside him.
And I saw him remember that we were working together. Professionally. At the Mercer.
Not to mention the fact that his mother—his mother!—was somewhere nearby. He stepped back and dusted potting soil from his hands. “You’re welcome,” he said.
Before I could say anything else, before I could rekindle the moment, the hope, the expectation that had sparked between us, there was a shuffle of footsteps, and Dani emerged from her bedroom. For the first time since I’d met her, she seemed depressed. Defeated. She displayed her empty hands as she crossed over to look at our work. “Lucky for you,” she said to Ryan, with a rueful smile. “I can’t find the cauliflower seeds anywhere.”
“Lucky for me,” Ryan repeated. But he kept his eyes on me as he said the words.
CHAPTER 9
I WAS STILL THINKING OF THAT MOMENT—THE SOUND of his voice, the piercing quality of his gaze—as I stood in front of my own door, fumbling once again with my key in the lower lock. As always, the top one and the middle one had slid back without a problem. It was just…this…last…one that refused to budge. I gasped in exasperation and threw my key onto the carpet, knowing that I was acting like a baby, but needing to indulge a momentary temper tantrum.
“If I could be of assistance?”
I whirled around, half expecting to find Ryan standing behind me. Even as I turned, though, I realized that the voice had not been his. The timbre was too low. It was the rumble of a giant cat, and the words were iced with the faintest hint of a British accent.
