Truly

The guests were all dressed one degree more formal than normally they would have, had they eaten at home. They tucked their shirts in; the undertaker’s mother wore stockings and curled her gray hair with an iron. “Truly, my dearest, this dinner is excellent,” he said to his wife, reaching for her hand. “You’ve made yourself a true gourmet.” Victoria blushed modestly into her plate as he continued to address the guests. “I give her everything, she lives like a queen in a palace, and still she always insists on rewarding me with such thoughtfully prepared gastronomic delights. Tell me, how long did it take you to concoct this particular dish, and what is it called? Did you invent it?” “No--it is just called honey pork, with orange juice and lemon…” She glanced at the starburst clock in the kitchen, which showed that it was 7:15. “It is very fast.” “ Well you have definitely mastered this recipe and astounded us all, I’m sure.” he said. “It’s very good,” offered the undertaker’s stepfather, pointing his fork at her after chewing a bite. “Thank you.” Harold Archibald Maurice sat at the head of a dinner table accompanied by his mother Martha and stepfather Eugene, his wife, and his younger brother, Trent. They ate from large, square-shaped ceramic plates, on which orange sauce was drizzled over tender cuts of pale seared meat. Sheer burgundy drapes were drawn over the large window in the dining room, veiling the wooden landscape behind them. Although he was pale, Harold’s skin bore a powdery quality that made it seem deceptively paler; and his lips and the corners of his eyes, despite that they weren’t painted, looked enhanced by theatrical make-up. His dark hair was clipped short and pointed upwards upon his prominent skull. Around his neck at dinner each day was the tie he wore to the funeral parlor, which he hid behind a starch-white lab-coat while embalming, and accompanied with a suit-jacket when discussing preparations with his customers. Today his tie was copper colored. Harold’s brother, next to him, was a handsome young man, far too handsome, his skin too sun kissed, his eyes too sea-colored, to be taken for a doctor, which he was preparing to become. Next to his brother, Trent slouched a little. His body nervously defied the natural length that made him half a foot taller than Harold. Only Victoria sat upright as she ate supper. She closed her eyes to taste each bite of food, and ate slowly. She gazed absently at the kitchen while she sipped white Chilean wine, Casa Astonia, a label from two years ago that today she had selected on the fly. Cutting a piece of pork, she nodded to herself, deciding now that her intuition was the right one.

Sounds of silverware scratching on ceramic amplified the silence in the room, as Harold’s eyes surveyed his quiet guests methodically, desiring to strike a conversation. His mother unconsciously looked up while he watched her eating, and she responded with a brief smile, before looking elsewhere. Seeing Trent’s brows wrinkled in concentration, Harold leaned in his direction. “What’s the matter Trent, my brother, do you think it could escape me that you haven’t said a word tonight?” “Well…” Trent began, softly, “I’ve just been thinking…” “Trent, are you sure you want to do this, right now?” his mother asked, gesturing with her tired eyes towards Harold. “No, it’s OK mom, I want to say it.” Victoria crossed her arms over her chest, and raised her head to watch them. “Well? What is it?” asked Harold, challengingly. “Well, um, you know I appreciate you paying my tuition. I thought I wouldn’t be able to go to school this year. And, um, you saved my ass.” He placed his hands flat on the wooden table as he struggled for words, “but, well, um, I was thinking I’d like to apply for financial aid and take a loan out this semester, on my own, if they’ll give me one.” “But, why would you do that? You know your tuition is a gift, and I would never ask you to repay me…” “I know that.” “Well? What is the issue, then?” “Well, I know you want me to be a doctor…and I’d like to be one too…and I know you’re giving me the money because you want to make sure that I‘ll do it…. You want me to be successful…” “Of course I do.” “ But I was thinking there are other things I’d like to study too, besides medicine.” He paused. “Like, um, theater. And philosophy.” “So you no longer want to be a doctor, then.” “No, I’m not saying that. I still want to be a doctor. But…I just don’t know what the future holds for me…. I just…I want to try things out, now, before it’s too late, and I’m stuck forever in some career that won’t make me as happy as I could be.” Trent looked around to his parents for support, but they avoided eye contact with him. Victoria, on the other hand, shined at him in high esteem, though in nervousness, he didn’t notice.

“All these things you’re talking about, Trent, you could study on your own if you wanted to. But the ability to practice medicine is not something that most people are simply born with….do you think I wanted to be an undertaker when I was your age? Don’t you think I’d rather have done something else with my life?” “So why didn’t you?” “It was a calling that I couldn’t avoid,” he said, nodding to himself. “I realized that I owed something to my fellow man…” “So maybe you found what you were meant to be….” Trent replied, “but I’m just not there yet, and… I don’t want to expect you to finance my adventures…” “You can’t look at it that way, Trent…” “I’d always feel like I owed you, like I’d have to be a doctor if you paid for my school,” he said, cutting Harold off, “And I just don’t want to feel like I owe anything to anybody… If I become a doctor, I want to know I’m doing it because it’s what I want to do.” As he spoke, his words flushed color into his cheeks, and his voice grew louder and more steadied. “So…what…you think you may want to be an actor… or a professor, then? Don’t you realize how misguided that would be?” “Yes… but I guess you wouldn’t have to worry about it.” Door opens before dawn step up one two three from cold to sweltered perfume air, almond honeydew vanilla almost drips onto the skin, he digestingly inhales it then exhausts sour perspiration from within, violating the moist mirage of sweetness that tongue would fail to catch, were his mouth open. Cream and sugar do not mask the bitter flavor of his coffee nor the plastic taste of the 7-Eleven thermos that contains it. Lights switch on. Clack. Seven thousand open flowers. Clack. Like buzzing shining eyeballs. Clack. Pink and purple waterfalls of mountainclouds of orchids, demanding him as swarming bees. Seven years from propagation to bloom, continents and centuries of conquest, of inquest and chase, plunder and murder, rivalries, currencies, careers, had spanned to create their father, splendida panthernium, whose grandfather’s furling leaves sprayed delirious flames of wine onto the spotted fleshy petals of the giant cat-like mate who bore the heavy seed pod that Kent so long ago had cautiously extracted

with a razor, wearing powder latex gloves, eyebrows furrowed in the middle of the night, threatening his hands to hold still and his breaths to even, that he might spawn a freak loud enough to color the mute supplications of the snow-white nightmare, aphrodite, who haunted him, who he received but never asked for, who invaded and appropriated his life on the eve, eighteen years ago, of his mother’s death. One hundred and twelve twilight colored buds now swell on the stalks of thirteen progenic survivors of that crash encounter orchestrated by the splintered kiss of a paintbrush and its blind extemporized rejoinder to the narcotic query that forced its way. Clotted thick with blood arteries pulse restless in waxy shells. His peering eyes crawl as ants over citrus mosaic threads. Glowing veins clasp at buds shut fist-tight, jealously holding him away from knowledge of the fruit he produced in his bondage. Days, or weeks more may pass, before the flowers hatch. Words from the mouth of a pen scratching on a traveling page that rides on a Greyhound bus cramped full of passengers and their passaging smells bound for Tulsa, Oklahoma, as dawn emblazons grass with purple. Keep going. I must not sleep. At the next stop I will smoke a cigarette. Act III, scene 1 After eight days of incarceration, Carmen is dirty with her own grime. Her nakedness through a thin hospital gown betrays the starvation of her bones, but the growing fortitude of a spirit nearing death paints a condescending smirk on her face, which she wears like a uniform into the torture chamber. Because their ideology purports to repress the rights of individuals to govern themselves, she is unable to look into the captors’ eyes uniquely; instead, her glance is glazed as a lamp that burns over all of them at once, as though it were they, and not she, who are being faced with inquisition. A sarcophagus-like case stands open at center stage, bulging with electronic sensors that coil as snakes. A long steel desk cuts alongside horizontally before it, right of center, where Dr. Flemming sits in an office-chair of steel, pressing buttons on a remote, which make the sensors slither out in a way that is almost comical. On the desk there is a tall cylindrical glass, and a pitcher of water. Flemming

wears a starch white lab coat and appears very confident, almost giddy with inexplicable pride. As the stage is lit, Lieutenants Moore and Stowe buckle Carmen into a space-age looking barber chair, left of center, and quickly proceed to shave all her hair off. Dr. Fleming: calling out Ms. Dominguez, surely you do not believe that you can last much longer under these conditions. Sooner or later you will have to tell me where your sister is. Carmen: I will hold out until the time comes. Dr. Fleming: What did she say? Lieutenant Stowe: She said that she’ll hold out until the time comes. Dr. Fleming: rising Perhaps you do not know how serious your situation is. Right now, we are preparing to unveil a clone of you, to give the public what it wants. Your reputation will be damaged; all your countrymen will be ashamed of you, when she admits that you’re a traitor and a terrorist. She will confess to the crime of having killed Angelica, Ms. Dominguez, out of envy, and you will watch as the whole world turns from thinking you a hero to crying for your blood. All of your accomplishments will fall away in the face of this scandal, and history will reduce your name to a shameful asterisk, a blot, which caused the Third World War. But I can stop it, and save you from a far worse fate, if you tell me where your sister is. Carmen: (As they shove her towards the sarcophagus machine, looking blankly, her words carefully measured. While she speaks with Dr. Fleming, the Lieutenants pinch her skin with wire devices that clamp on her body as though it were a car battery. She visibly struggles not to show discomfort.) You didn’t really think that would work on me, Fleming. Did you really think I care, one way or another, about public opinion? That I would turn my sister in, in exchange for your worthless fame? Dr. Fleming: (smiling sheepishly as he shrugs) No, Ms. Gonzalez. Honestly I recognize your archaic sense of valor. I cannot admire it, for it doesn’t serve my purpose to, but I was counting on your fight until the end. I was merely offering you an out, as a courtesy. It’s part of the script, isn’t it? The one last chance? Of course I’d rather it were Angelica instead of you, but I am a patient man. I am certain we will meet again one day, sooner, rather than later. Carmen:

You will never find her. Dr. Fleming: Perhaps not. But perhaps she will find us, when she sees what we’ve done to you. She was always such a vengeful woman, no? Carmen: Yes. Only Carmen’s face can be seen in the contraption when it closes. Her hands are crossed over her shoulders, as if in burial. Dr. Fleming: Now, Ms. Dominguez, I want you to tell us what frightens you the most. Gardens spray on long mesh skirts of women gathered, three, between the ages of 23 and 40 before her, taking notes, one on a silver Macbook, in her living room where everything is white. White linen curtains hang like clouds on white rods and filter daylight into white smoke. White carpet stretches over the ground beneath her feet, shag polar bear skin like, a pool deep white enough to fall in. Leather couches blanch in semi-circle around a crescent-moon coffee table, on which vanilla candles burn her eyes with their smell of white. Christianity Today, and Lighthouse, and Praise God! fan out as in a doctor’s office. “The only thing that’s going to change this country is if it goes back to the bible and repents…” “What we need to do is run for every public office in Tulsa County…” “Carlton could run for Mayor…” “We have so many supporters and people in the press that we’re bound to win by a landslide…” (other statements) The women’s voices rise upwards at the end of each third syllable, as if in military cadence. One two three one two three. All of their voices have the same inflection. “What ab out Lisa Chal mers from Chan nel seven- she’s part of the career wo men’s ministry. We could ask her to do a story about it…that would get the ball roll ing.” “Do you think we should ask him about it this aft ernoon?” “What, he’s com ing here? To day?” “That’s what he told me.” “When did he tell you that?” “Becky…Carl ton is com ing here this afternoon, isn’t he?”

She hears them speaking, takes notes into a steno book- Tulsa County, Channel 7, this afternoon. But Becky can only think about the two women who are pregnant, who sit next to each other on the couch. The younger two. Both who have their hair tied back in ribbons. Their perfumes do not contradict. And they expect to give birth in November. “Becky,” calls the youngest to her. Blonde, waifish, but for the pregnant bubble in her stomach. It pokes through a sheer white ruffled shirt. You can see her bra through that shirt. “Becky, is Carlton coming here this afternoon?” she asks again as she leans forward, exchanging a consternating glance backwards with the others. “What? Yes…any minute.” The phone rings twice in the kitchen, but Rebecca doesn’t move.

“Becky…” the blonde one says, “Your phone is ringing.” “Excuse me,” she says, rising. Whispers. “What’s the matter with her?” They are at the downtown bus terminal. “What did he say?” Brooks asks. Mira is sitting on the ground, sweating underneath a payphone. Her face is tomato-red from the Oklahoma summer, oven-hot. Brooks hands her a Sierra Mist. “Sorry kid, they don’t have Sprite here,” Brooks says, kneeling down, as she pulls her shoulders out of the straps of a heavy backpack. She unzips the front pocket and extracts a turquoise soft-pack of American Spirit Lights. A glance at the logo. An American Indian silhouette wearing a crown of feathers. She pats her jean pockets looking for a light. It is in the pocket of her vest. The silver Zippo has a golden dollar sign on it, and it snaps when she opens it. “I didn’t call him,” Mira says, after a pause. “Who were you calling, then?” “My mom,” Mira says, popping open the tab. Tuck. Ssss. is what it sounds like. “Why the hell for? I thought you ran away from her.” “It wasn’t just her.”

“Fuck that, dude. She made her choice.” Holding the can against her cheek, Brooks feels its coolness melt quickly away. “Nobody’s perfect,” Mira says, leaning her head against a cement wall, “I’m not like you, I can’t turn my back on people forever.” There are freckles on Mira’s shoulders. Her straw blond hair is tied back with a rubberband. “I don’t see why you would even want to talk to that woman again,” Brooks says, dismissively, “You were sixteen. And she let that cult leader guy kick you out of his house? Because you’re gay? And then, guess what, he’s your father?” “She’s desperately in love with him,” Mira says, turning towards her. “As messed up as it is, I can understand where she’s coming from.” She traces the sharp angle of Brooks’ jawline with her finger. Her sea-foam eyes are watery with feeling. “Check this,” Brooks says, flashing her a look of reprobation. “If I said, “cut your arm off, for no reason except I want to see,” you wouldn’t do it because of love.” Mira nods with vehemence that she would and then shivers in her black tank-top.

The blue of the driver’s uniform has faded from years of use; the sun has bleached its fabric thin, and it fits him snugly. They watch as he inspects the passenger’s tickets before they place their baggage in the belly of the bus, as his large hands flap through papers like a fishmonger quickly folding fish into newspaper. His lips are set in a cracked and automatic smile. He frequently checks his watch in a hurry to get on the road again. The riders barely notice him. Many of them also check their watches often; some wear impatient expressions, others sigh, tap their feet. The only truly happy looking person in the line is a teenage boy wearing dj headphones. Busses drive into garages, their paint grimed black with coats of tar. Diesel fumes out of engines that groan powerful as animals. The terminal is at the east entrance of the city, only highway before it. The office buildings begin across the street. Tulsa’s relative youth is marked between the spaces of the edifices, none of which are older than seventy years. “You think I’m disgusting, don’t you,” Mira sniffles. “No, kid. I think you’re crazy. But I like you.” She cups Mira’s neck in her hand, and presses her lips soft as a petal over hers. They hear a consternating hiss from a woman walking past, who shields her daughter’s eyes from the sight of them. White granite. White marble tiles. White windows. White light that mixes with the

sunshine coming through the window outside. The phone in the kitchen is white. Carlton Jr. dashes across the hall, yellow haired, with lightning speed, wearing muddy sneakers and jean shorts. He answers the phone before she can reach it. “Hellaugh?... Hellaauugh? Bye,” he says. He slams the phone down and runs away to his room down the hall when he sees her, avoiding her eyes. His door shuts in a thud behind him, shaking the rainbow letters of his name on a Texas Rangers license plate. CARLTONJR He hides under his bed. The room, tidied this morning, is littered now with action figures and various types of building blocks. The curtains have been pulled over the window, and sticker stars are glowing on the walls. She steps on a Transformers helmet when she walks in, and it bites her ankle with pain. She picks it up and places it on his writing desk, the desk lamp shining dimly over crayons and pages of unfinished drawings haphazardly remnant from the tornado gusts of his frenzied, unfocused creations. She sees herself in one of them. Curly haired to the waist, a smile on her face, peering from behind his father’s back. As a shadow. His father in a white suit with golden flaming hair. Microphone in his hand and a cross hanging from his neck. “Why are you hiding from me?” She kneels at the side of his bed and peers under. His eyes are like an animal’s, and they flare with wildness. He is looking at her hair hang to the floor. “Carl, I don’t have time for this…there are people out there…why did you pick up the phone?” “Why aren’t you saying anything?!” She says in exasperation, nearly whining at him. Footsteps approach from down the hall. Heavy heels strike like flint against the tiles. “Please, come out of there,” she whispers to him. Carl doesn’t move. She rises when she sees her husband, almost tall as the doorframe, clad as always head to toe in white. He walks up to her face and looks down, but he doesn’t seem to see her. He smells like cedar as he grabs her under the elbow. “You can deal with him later,” he says sternly, directing her towards the door. “Now, we have guests.” “Okay,” she says.

“It is so wonderful what you did,” Victoria said to Trent, as together they stood outside, on the terrace. The summer sun was setting low, and it burnished the acres of hilly land behind the mansion, and it made the chirping birds chirp more wildly, move swift as darts through the sky, in search of their nests for the evening. She smoked a cigarette and leaned over the balcony, her small shoulders cupping forward. Trent stood back against the railing, looking through a burgundy-draped window into the parlor, where Harold played ragtime on piano for his parents. “Will he be very angry?” he asked her. “He will no understand.” “I know…” he said solemnly, turning around towards Victoria. “Why does he invite us to dinner every night?” he began, suddenly, “it’s like ever since everything happened and he started helping my parents out, he doesn’t let them be alone, he gives them money now and expects us all to be right there, like some kind of audience of his or something. And it’s like, I can’t even tell…was he always like that?” Victoria shrugged. She leaned further out and looked down at the earth, at the fields swaying in the breeze, below. “I’m sorry,” he said, running his hand through his hair. He began to pace across the balcony now. “I guess I’m just frustrated about a lot of things right now.” “No, I do no mind.” “What about you--are you doing okay?” “Yes. I am okay right now.” Her words blew out evenly as the smoke in her lungs. A flock of geese shot a sharp black horizon line across the firing sky. “Trent,” she said, watching them, “if I am no here next summer, I want you feel you can call me any time.” He stopped pacing and looked at her with confusion. “What are you talking about? Where are you going?” “If I still am here, I want you never speak to me.” “Why? What’s wrong, Victoria?”

A day later, Harold walked through the greenhouse, hands clasped behind his back, thinking. He was still wearing the shiny dress shoes and suit which are the uniform of his

profession, as he stepped slowly on the paved cobblestone walkway of a magnificent indoor garden, spacious, precision groomed, making mental observations about arrangements for its debut as the Lamshire Orchid Society’s new meeting place. There was much work still left to do—the fittings for the new habitat had slowly begun to arrive in the mail, and they now sat stacked in cardboard boxes against a wall, unopened, because none of the pieces could be supported without all of the rest. The garden spanned a quarter mile, and was encased in framed glass with mechanically regulated temperatures that spanned from breezy to smoldering. Spanish moss trees and willows draped habitats where hundreds of orchid types bloomed simultaneously, from the rarest Potinara Egyptian Queens-- blue-purple hybrids with the yellow-spotted fat bottom lips of irises, to the pale clown orchids who laughed wickedly as lipsticked Jokers. There were orchids with open pelican throats. Orchids that looked like hummingbirds. Like Salvador Dali hats. Ballerina slippers, complete with laces that dangled. Some, yawningly stretched their roots through open baskets hanging from the ceiling, and fed on air, while others hung their roots down while holding onto trees, or grew in tall stalks from the ground. The walkway wound around ponds that sat still in brick basins. There was a small brick bridge that crossed a little stream where coy fish swam. The various orchid perfumes combined to make a husky fruity scent, like a cocktail sweetened by many colorful flavorings, though still unable to completely mask its bitter tastes of liquor. Harold inherited about a third of the orchids, as well as the garden, from Ms. Rolanda Ampersand, spinster daughter of James Ampersand, a rich tobacco grower who once farmed on the lands where Harold now lived. As a teenager, Harold earned extra money by working as the aging woman’s secretary. During that time, she imbued him with her knowledge about orchids, knowledge she obtained from her father, their original collector. James Ampersand’s vast collection was highly valued and well famed because of his eagerness to preserve as many endangered orchid species as he could, although his zealousness was met with great contention in the local orchid society, for the ways by which endangered orchids species find succession is oftentimes a guarantee of their complete natural exhaustion by hunters and harvesting enthusiasts. The disease, as it is often called, of human obsession with possessing wild orchids, is often called a fever, but its most vicious symptoms manifest in the form of competition, over which men have murdered, and have made infernos out of forests to genocide entire orchid species, just to be the sole guardians of particular flower types. As populous and comparably diverse as people in the world, if it is simply the spectacular genetic traits among the members of the different orchid groups that make them so desirable, once scarce, they are made even more precious. The British are considered to have been the most ruthless practitioners of this hobby. (Give an example of someone?)

Ampersand died before he lived to see the day when governmental regulations legislated against private excavations through the natural lands of sovereign nations. He himself had gone on numerous globe-trotting treks through Singapore and Belize, Brazil and Thailand, with other groups of similar like-minded men, to collect as many of the rare jewel blossoms as he could. Almost 400 of the flowers in Harold’s garden, which James Ampersand built with his own hands, were plucked straight from some of the earth’s most strange and secret forests. And thus, when Harold inherited Ampersand’s small fortune and his extravagant orchid collection, it was his fate to inherit also the mantle of James’ strange legacy in the orchid community. Though James Ampersand defended himself against his critics by claiming his mission was mainly to protect the plants from the threat of extinction, it was difficult for many others in the Orchid Society to accept his altruistic postures. It was especially so when they beheld such wonders as the Asian Slipper orchid-- its strange and fanning, lined, white green and fuchsia sepal crest, with petals spotted, hanging, like a catfish mouth slashed open. This is to say nothing of its swollen, bulb-like purple lip. Two years after marrying Harold, Victoria had not yet changed any of the decorations in the house. In their bedroom, three seventeenth-century American portraits of anonymous women peered through aging paint, held in place next to each other by matching golden frames, embellished like ornate signatures. One woman sat reading a book by a window in a library, her dark hair clasped tightly in a bun. Another woman posed with a white daisy in her hand, peeling its petals away in a verdant garden rouged golden with light. A third woman sat at the edge of a bed, wearing an evening dress that revealed a pale neck, bare, but for a black ribbon choked around her neck. “Did he speak to you any further about his decision when you drove him back today?” The bathroom door was open, and Harold called from it as Victoria tied her nightgown’s ribbon in a bow above her neck. “No—we only talk about his work,” she said, pulling a white pillowy blanket over her body. She switched on her nightstand lamp. It looked like a tall, thin mushroom, with yellow and pink glass flowers curving through it, as if underwater. “I justth don’t understandth…” he said, lisping as he flossed his teeth, “how could he be thso ungrathseful?” “He want be independent.” He came out of the bathroom wearing red silk pajamas painted with golden dragons, as she reached for a romance novel, entitled Flights of Fancy, and turned to the page held in place by an emory board.

“But surely he knows I have only his best interests at heart?” He tilted his head to note the strong-chinned pilot on the cover of the book. “He want make his own mistakes.” “But in this world, you cannot afford to make mistakes, to wander, aimlessly.” He fluffed his pillow thoroughly. “Life is short... wealth is scarce… status is precious… if you look away, even for a minute, there will be a thousand other people waiting to take your place,” he said, snapping his fingers. Victoria put the book down and listened carefully to him. He lay on his back, and his hands began to punctuate his ideas in the air. “I only want to keep my family safe and comfortable. I know he wants to be a doctor. But if he wants to study other things, of course I would let him.” “That is the point,” she said, “he does no want you “let him” do. He wants fail or succeed on his own. Perhaps he wants become a mime.” “That would be a waste.” “No. If he is happy is no waste.” “Life is not just about being happy.” “Tell me,” she said, “one reason other for why we do anything.” “For each other. Out of duty.” “For pride. For it is make us to feel good to make other people to feel good. And so what about your plants? What do you have in keep them if they do no make you happy?” “In order to be sane, naturally, I need something to balance the morbidity I face in my profession. Why are you asking me all of this?” “You say you no like your profession, yes? So why you keep it? Why you no hire someone different to work?” “Why, it’s my duty, you know that… It’s something I was born to do.” “I no believe this. And so what about me? Why you keep me?” “Why dearest—that is preposterous. Don’t get yourself so worked up… you know I love you.” “OK, but is not because is your duty to love me.” “This is true, but as your husband, my duty is to make you happy.” “Happy? OK. Happy. You know what make me very happy?” She closed her eyes, and lowered her voice. “What’s that?” “I always wanted… start a business.” “But why would you want to do that? You have everything you need, right here,” he rolled over on his side, and smoothed the bed sheets with his hand. “No, no…I want something is mine, to work for, to have responsibility.” She opened her eyes widely now. “But I don’t understand…well, of course I wouldn’t stop you.” “Really?” she turned towards him as if in eager surprise, “and it could be my business?” “Yes, of course…” “The papers, all of them mine? You will no tell me how to run the business?” “But why would I want to do that? Of course it would be all your own.”

“How long did you say you’ve been growing orchids?” Forest Ludlow asked Harold. He was the head of the local chamber of commerce and new director of the Society of Orchid Enthusiasts. A tall man, he wore his straight dark hair cut sideways at an angle across his face, and his chin receded into a long neck. “Almost sixteen years, now,” Harold replied. “Yes, of course…I remember...” “And you? Did you say you started out by first acquiring a Phalaenopsis?” “Yes. And it died two weeks later,” Ludlow said, sipping from a glass of brandy. He sucked his teeth and shook his head in remorse. “But you know, it is often said that most of us choose to cultivate orchids in order to pacify the ghosts of those we killed in our learning years.” It was a customary habit of the members of the orchid society to wear orchids from their own gardens, as accessories, to all of their meetings. Most of the women wore the orchids in their hair, blooms cut from their own collections, in rainbow colors, ranging in size from a half dollar to a chicken egg, and in shapes that would be found in art gallery sculptures. The men wore orchids in their lapels. Ludlow’s beige silk tie was embossed with mauve stitches inside moth orchid outlines. They were a festive bunch, floating in their vibrant colors and spruce apparel through the bright, white and green garden, like a salad on parade. Although the suits they wore were mostly dark, the men opted for ties and dress shirts of threads dipped in iridescent dyes-metal yellow, avocado green, clementine, magenta, paisley. Harold’s shirt was pinstriped white cobalt, and he wore a bubblegum pink bow tie. The ladies’ fashions allowed them to be more expressive, and the voices of their colors were fulminating counterpoints to the mens’, only their fabrics folded, rippled, swayed in freer measure as they walked, high collared, in breezy scarves, wearing high arched shoes with clasps and pointed toes, as they stepped upon the cobblestones in trickling cadences. They pronounced their shining tresses of hair either in long trails, or angled styles, short, or in bouncing spring ringlets, or, pulled back, or fluffed out, with myriad variants of shade in compliment to their own unique color schemes of dress, and everyone else’s. They made up their lashy eyes in shadows, or lined them, as they fluttered while they chattered like birds, expressing wonder at the garden. The skin on their faces was plump and polished as apples. Cassandra Wilmington, the club secretary, walked up towards Ludlow and Harold. She wore a fashionable navy skirt-suit with a small jacket that was cut high to reveal the bareness of her back. “Harold,” she said, pressing her hand on his bicep, “I must tell you there is really no contest. Your garden trumps all…oh it is simply breath-taking… I cannot believe I’ve never been here before… but oh…my goodness…I had no idea you had a tiger orchid!” “Look everyone, his grammatophylum is blooming!” she cried.

The members of the orchid society stopped in unison to admire a three-foot plant dangling from exposed metal rafters, all of them knowing of the rare occurrence for the particular orchid type to ever bloom in captivity. Its flowers spanned three inches and bore the stripes of tigers, hence the orchid’s common name. For all of its long, thick green leaves and its many flowers, it was a corpulent plant, weighing several hundred pounds. “But, why didn’t you tell us? This would make headlines!” someone said. “I do not like to draw so much attention to myself,” Harold replied, turning around to the group, and adjusting his tie. “In any event, this is a hybrid, not a natural genus. I bought him from a breeder in Thailand, who crossed the gram with an oncidium. The flowers are surprisingly large, nevertheless.” “They certainly are,” said Wilmington, straitening her cat-like glasses on the bridge of her nose. “Well I believe there really is no question,” Ludlow said, clasping his hands as the group encircled them. “Shall we all vote now?” He looked to unanimous nodding eyes. “All in favor of making Harold’s garden the site of our new meeting place, say aye.” “Harold, you are truly a lover of orchids. Did you say you have no gardener?” “That would take the pleasure out of it, no?” “Harold, is it true that you have never registered a single orchid hybrid of your own?” As Harold smiled before answering, Christina Carmichael, one of the younger members exclaimed, “oh, what a charming little tree frog!” “A frog?” Harold pushed his way through guests who gathered around a bunch of orange cattleyas growing at the root of a miniature elm tree. “Yes—that one there…the red one.” “But Harold, you’re not afraid of ruining your garden with those pests?” a man asked. “Pests?” asked Carmichael. “Why yes… frogs carry infection and germs that could easily do harm to our delicate flowers, and when they multiply, pff…” he fluttered his lips, “they become terrible nuisances by croaking at all hours of the day,” Ludlow explained. “You must exterminate it, Harold,” he said in Harold’s ear with a confidential air. “Of course,” Harold said. “I had no idea it was here.” “Wonderful,” Ludlow, said, grabbing Harold at the shoulder in joviality. “We will have the induction ceremony here, next month, then.” In half an hour, the guests were gone, and Harold carried a butterfly-net into the garden. It was dusk when he came out again, after a hunt that took two hours. He brought the net outside into the yard, and smashed the creature in it under his heel, against concrete. When it exploded, it made a popping sound, the sound of a champagne bottle opening.

Harold stepped so hard on the frog that by the time he was finished, it looked more like a bloody spider than an animal that once was the size of a bird. Nevertheless, three times a day for the month afterwards, he assiduously scoured his garden for more frogs, but never found any. James Ampersand eventually excommunicated himself from the Lamshire Orchid Society’s murmuring whispers, although after his death, his daughter worked to restore his reputation, donating hundreds of thousands to the preservation of rainforests and other natural orchid habitats. She joined forces with the orchid society on various philanthropic projects, but despite this, Rolanda herself never became a member. In the years following Rolanda Ampersand’s death, Harold endeavored to establish himself among the innermost ranks of the prestigious society, though he did not apply for membership right away. Instead, he began to appear regularly at important orchid shows across the state and through the nation, winning prizes for growing other people’s hybrids. His flowers were regularly featured in glossy spreads and on the covers of all the major orchid magazines. Harold Fennick’s name in the American orchid world soon became synonymous with Midas’ touch, as his care for flower hybrids resulted in blossoms exceedingly lovelier than those produced by their originators, though curiously, he never crossed any grexes of his own. And, although it was said aloud that Harold kept the rare plants of James Ampersand’s greedy collection out of duty to his benefactress, it was often also wondered quietly why he did not donate them to garden museums, where they could be appreciated by others who loved orchids. It was also wondered why he chose, of all professions open to him, to become an undertaker. Three weeks later one evening, spirits among the dinner guests were much more lifted than usual. Martha helped Victoria carry in the bowls of lentil soup, and both women smiled the same smile, as though they shared some sort of secret between them. That afternoon, Martha had gone to the beauty parlor and cropped her gray hair short and dyed it auburn, shaving years off of her appearance. Energy sprinted in her steps and the look of confidence in her eyes reflected not only a sense of vigor, but also how long the feeling had been missing from her. Noting something, Harold opened his mouth to ask what was different about tonight, but it was at that moment when Victoria started to speak. “It is going so wonderful in the store,” Victoria began, as she looked at her soup, and smelled its steam rising. Looking at Harold, she said, smiling, “will be so beautiful inside when is finished, oh!, and today,” she smiled, “Martha is my assistant now.” Harold was about to lift a spoonful of soup to his mouth, when, processing what Victoria had said, he lowered it back, untasted, into the bowl. He shifted in his chair, and scanned his eyes slowly over the two women.

“Mother…what about your spine problems?” he said at last. “Oh, I’m fine,” she said cheerfully, looking at Victoria. “I tell you, we had the greatest time today. How do you like my hair?” Noticing, Harold said he liked it. “Really Harold, it was such a great idea to let Victoria open up a flower shop,” his stepfather interjected, “I went to the storefront today and it’s really something. There are a whole bunch of new little businesses out there…I’ll bet you in five years it’ll be as popular as Eastern.” Eugene, sitting across from the women, next to Trent, spoke with excited rhythm, and beamed back at his beaming wife. His gestures were animated (he lifted his palm to underscore the promise of five) and he otherwise forgot himself, by talking with food in his mouth. It was if while he spoke, he consciously tasted the food, and the taste of his food and the substance of his words, combined, surged through him with felicity. Nevertheless, Harold shot Eugene a piercing glance, which silenced him and made him shrug meekly to himself. “And you should really see what Victoria’s done with the place, Harold,” Martha interjected, her voice squeaking, as she attempted in her own way to intoxicate her son with their gaiety. “When Eugene stopped by this morning to drop me off, we all started talking about picking out an awning, and we all talked about it, and Eugene offered to help us make one…so Victoria took me to the beauty shop, and when we got back and went to the shop this afternoon, can you imagine, Trent was there, helping Eugene finish installing it already!” Trent sat silently through dinner, and he watched Victoria curiously, who maintained a calm and self-assured composure, despite the obvious storm she had created. Unlike his mother, Victoria was unconcerned with Harold’s tepidness, and made no attempt to appease him, enjoying her food, as always. Though he ate at a loitering pace, Trent rose twice during the meal to the kitchen to fill his plate. Harold, seeing Trent watching Victoria, glared at her, who responded with a sweet, innocuous smile. Later, Victoria stood over the sink wearing flip-flops and yellow latex gloves. She was scrubbing a pot under hot water and soap, and humming Lara’s theme from Dr. Zhivago. “Listen to me, what do you intend, hiring my mother as your assistant? They don’t need money, they don’t need anything…I take excellent care of them.” As soon as she heard his voice, she wiped her hands on a dishrag, and, as though prepared for the question, she lowered her head, shut the water off, exhaled, and turned around to face him.

“I thought you say you will no tell me how to run my business,” she responded, calmly. “But she’s my mother.” “She is Martha. She is no only your mother.” “She’s sixty-one years old and has terrible back problems. She shouldn’t be standing up all day, picking things up...” Despite his tone of authority, the accelerated pace of his delivery cut a sense of supplication into Harold’s words. “She no stand all day,” she corrected him, enunciating her words slowly, as if to contrast him on purpose. “We have chair and stools. She make orders and cut flowers. You no see her how happy, only from one day? Why you want take that away?” A moment of silence lapsed between them, as Harold scrutinized Victoria’s face with pinching eyes, while considering her questions. “I understand that you want to help her, it is admirable, but it simply isn’t practical,” he responded. “You wanted to have a flower shop, and I indulged you. But my mother will not be working there.” He flattened an invisible line through the air. “How you will stop it?” Victoria demanded. “Tell me. How?” She repeated, louder, sharply burning her eyes into his. His mouth opened slightly and he flushed with fury as immediately he stepped towards her, up to her face. Despite a reflex to shrink from him, she straightened herself. Harold’s hand trembled at his side as though about to strike her, before he balled it into a fist and abruptly turned away. Harold patted his brow with a handkerchief as he walked into the glass-enclosed nursery at the far end of the garden, where all recent acquisitions were kept. The combination of scents made Harold clear his throat, for some smelled spicy as cayenne, while others smelled foxy as vinegar, or sweet as cotton candy. The room was large enough to accommodate the specific habitat needs of orchids that thrived under such diverse climates as snowy mountains, sunny fields, and steamy forests. Misters, fans, shademakers, and hot lamps surrounded plants that grew over mossy rocks, in shallow pots of deep black soil, and in hanging baskets of fertilizer stones that looked like beans. Lining three sides of the square shaped room were planks of steel, on which were five plants each, with metal frames that labeled them according to their proper Latin names: Macodes Sanderiana, Polyrhiza lindenii, Ophrys fusca, Gymnadenia conopsea, Anacamptis pyramidalis var. tanayensis, Rossioglossum grande, Holcoglossum kimballianum, Catasetum fimbriatum, Cypripedium, Habenaria radiata, Paphiopedilum delenatii Guillaumin, Miltonia spectabilis 'Schunk', Angraecum mauritianum, Masdevallia ignea, Dendrobium stratiotes…. Several of the flowers were already blooming and lush, and geometrically brilliant as fireworks are explosive. Their twirling antler petals shot straight into the air, with flowers growing from stalks in acutely symmetric rows of lines that alchemically accented as

curves, one flower’s long lip skirted like a flattened paper cocktail umbrella, there were perfect white egrets in mid flight on stems, extending their petal wings in dancing interpretations of flying, some blooms seemed heavy as parrots, had fur like bugs, were unreal as drawings of time-elapsed light. Although several of the orchids in the workroom would still not yet be open in time for Harold’s ceremony, he little could complain, as July is incidentally a popular blooming month for orchids, especially for these, which he each selected specially, as they were the favorite natural plants of the various members of the society. It wasn’t that he did not possess already several of the almost supernatural species, but six months ago, after the unfortunate fire that destroyed Winston Sidell’s extensive garden and burned down his house, Harold slowly began to acquire new plants from various synthetic farms, in order to build a habitat at the center of his garden, which, like the workroom, would simultaneously be suited to display the members’ favorite natural orchid wonders, but in a more dramatic staging. So certain was he that the demise of the senior member’s garden would translate into his own garden’s selection as the society’s new meeting place, that Harold decided to commemorate its induction by honoring its members with a kind of permanent miniexhibit. On walking out of the nursery, Harold grabbed the small butterfly net that leaned against the door, and wound it about his wrist, proceeding towards the center of the garden where the new display was nearly complete. Although he hadn’t seen another tree frog since smashing the one two weeks ago, he still had not forgotten its threat to his garden.

SO it’s like the kind of thing where its either she leaves him soon or she stays forever. Part of the reason why she would be staying forever is because of the money, and because of fear. So I guess that’s a question I have to answer, since if she came here independently and everything, why would she be afraid of leaving him, especially if she is sure of herself and sure of her value. I get it—fear that he would kill her makes sense more than anything. She ran away from her father because he was too possessive, perhaps he almost killed her, perhaps it was the

kind of thing that she narrowly escaped from. It was the kind of thing she narrowly escaped from. She came here with the clothes on her back because she wanted to marry someone who her father did not approve of, but had no good reason not to, and she told him that they already consummated their love. He flew into a hysterics and with his shotgun ran after her when she ran out of the house. He even fired shots into the air. She got onto a bus and called her friend who helped her get an emergency visa and fly out of the country. She arrived in the united states and her friend’s family let her stay with them for some time, but her friend’s uncle who was married started falling in love with her, and so she fled them, not because she didn’t like him, but because she didn’t want to ruin a family with children, or destroy her friend’s family. She started working as a maid but didn’t tell anyone what her background was or anything. They assigned her to Harold’s house, and Harold was considered creepy by a lot of women, or he was just never able to be confident enough to express himself with a real woman. He wasn’t confident enough largely because of the class thing—not only was he always attracted to women of a higher class than him, but he felt distinctly that he was not the same class as they were. It could also be the case that someone rejected him or that he felt rejected by his mother when she had her other son. So he’s 33 now which makes him younger and that fits. He could also be prematurely graying or something. At any rate he was an extreme mother’s son for many years, but when his mother had his brother, it was like a rejection for him. The brother was also born unexpectedly because she was in her 40s then. He loved his mother very much, his mother was of a higher class perhaps? No, they were both high school sweethearts in the same town? His father was always busy as a carpenter, but his mother didn’t work for a long time in the beginning, and they spent a lot of time together in those days, those early days when he was happy. So it was a latent thing. He was always strange, and yes he always did say that he wanted to become a doctor? What did he say he wanted to become? Perhaps the guy she’s married to is not his father, and so his father betrayed him somehow by dying? So his mother had a job at dillards and it was just the two of them until she met him? I think that could start piecing things together. So his mother married her highschool sweetheart. His father was a gasoline engineer or something like that, and while they were together she didn’t have to work, but after he died, she did? The issue that question raises is His father was a petroleum engineer but he died in a fire when Harold was 2 years old, and so there was a lapse of time when it was just he and his mother, until he was 9 or so, that she didn’t have to work because she lived off his inheritance, and they had nice things from before, but she also gave him a lot of nice things, they went places, etc. When he turned 13 she started dating the carpenter, did she still not work? Did she never have a job? Perhaps she really did never have a job, and luckily the carpenter could support her that way for a long time. But it was not as in the heyday of before, I suppose there was a golden age that Harold missed, not only from when he was little, but in general I guess. They were not top tier it could be said, the carpenter was no engineer too, and Harold romanticized his father in a way if you can think of it. The carpenter made ends meet, and

had his own business, and when things got tough and corners started needing to be cut, he hired Harold’s mother to be his clerk, where she stayed, until two years ago when he was forced to retire, and not only that, he was forced to sell the buisiness to others--- couldn’t Harold take it over? Harold had already bailed them out one time before, and this time he didn’t ask but sold it and they lived that way for a long time, three years, it should have been enough to retire on, but Harold’s father got sick, there was a cancer scare afterwards, but luckily it is in remission now, even though it wiped out their bank account nearly completely. They even lost the house, but Harold bought it back for them. His mother had broken down and told him they couldn’t make the mortgage payments. I wonder if instead of buying them their house, he made them move in with him, even his brother, under the same roof. No, he was rich enough to buy them their house, and his mother also broke down and asked him flat out, which he couldn’t refuse. He did try to offer to make them stay with him. This has all happened in the last 3 years or so. But anyway when he was growing up he was very close to his mother, and thought she deserved everything great, and thought he deserved a higher standard of living than he said. And for a long time he said he wanted to be a doctor, or an important man, but when his mom started dating Eugene, and then when she gave birth to his brother, he was betrayed by these actions, and found comfort in a doting old woman, who was impressed by his refinement, for he played piano very well, and also sang arias. He was a tenor. Plus his mother was increasingly busier, lets say that he supported her for like the first two years of marriage but then his business wasn’t as strong, and she started working for him, but she liked it, and even when it picked up again she stayed working as his secretary but Harold couldn’t understand that, the only thing that Harold understood was that his mother was always busy, and that she doted on the new son. He treated his brother somewhat coolly, they weren’t lovy, but he looked after him, he was jealous, but not insecure of himself. It was almost a bitterness more than anything. His brother was popular and had a lot of friends, though he was a serious kid, he liked ot read. He was sensitive about women, and had never had a serious girl friend before. He was close to his mom, but it was not the same kind of closeness as Harold and his mom. He was always active, doing various things, but he was not an overachiever, was he? Should he have gotten a scholarship? Well he did a lot of things, and he was very intelligent, but how do you decide that you want to be a doctor unless you are perfect at school. I suppose I will have to change something, but what? This all just happened three years ago, his dad was forced to sell, they had money for college and inheritance, but then last year, it all happened in one year? He was a survivor in one year? Maybe it just was a better school he wanted to go to. He was accepted at Columbia or something, but they didn’t give him a full scholarship because he was good but not crème of the crop or anything. He was good enough to get in, but not outstanding enough to get a full scholarship to go there. So he wants to transfer to the state school now, he wants to transfer, and he doesn’t even know what he wants to study. It was Harold who pressured him anyway into applying to the better school. Why does Harold care so much? Because he has a slight guilt that he did not go to a good school like that himself. And also he wanted him to be gone subconsciously, his brother I guess is not someone he wants to control, because he’s competition. And also, if he pays for his brother to go to Columbia, then it makes him partly responsible for his success, and he can control him a little bit.

But his brother is not someone he wants to control all the way. Trent was a good scholar, wrote good papers, got straight As, was on the basketball team but not a star player, overall a rounded guy. He didn’t hold any student government positions, or volunteer. But his test scores and his grades were impeccable. He hung out with his friends, mostly. He did drama and liked to read philosophy. I guess Jack London is hugely influential to him. He worked as a carpenter in the summers. So if Harold is 34 and his brother is 19, that could make Victoria (she moved here when she was 21 out of college. Six months with her friend’s family. Six months as a maid before she met Harold. 22. Six months when she worked for him, six months when she got married, 23. Plus three years of being married, 26. In that time she perfected her English and had carefully considered her past with her father and her friend’s uncle. When she got married to Harold, she started going to yoga classes, and cooking was the thing she worked on for her creative outlet. Maybe I can get her to study a gourmet thing. When she went to college, she studied to be a schoolteacher, and she also studied philosophy. She had taken fencing. She knitted sweaters. She had friends who were maids, but Harold was always in a grumpy mood when she brought them over. Except for the orchid society, and the social club, Harold was not an extreme mingler, although he did like to be seen and known about by other people. His wife was the maid of the house. If I introduce another source, persay a childhood friend with whom Harold can show himself freely and around whom his brother feels comfortable. An old friend coming to visit, who Trent doesn’t have to impress. Maybe he’s been staying there for a few days. No save that story for another time. So Harold’s brother can speak Spanish but Harold cannot, and never learned. Harold never really paid much attention to his wife’s life story except that he was impressed by her back ground, and she was exceedingly lovely. Perhaps the marriage proposal started out as something where he offered simply to give her her citizenship, and told her she could leave at any time, but that he wanted to help her in this way. So it started out that way but people started saying how beautiful she was, she was someone to take to the country club, she improved his status, and made him the envy of other men. It started out romantically at first, she was working and he began to obsess about her. Of course, necrophilia doesn’t exclude having sex with living people, and beauty has its charm that can’t always be found in death. It wasn’t so much an ongoing obsession—in hierarchy his obsessions were: necrophilia, orchids, she. But it was an obsession the more she worked there. So one day he served drinks and came on to her and she assented, because she, unlike he completely, understood his power over her in terms of position, she was poor, and he could fire her, which would make it difficult to get another job—it took her a time to find this one anyway. So she assented, and since he had never not been rejected before, he interpreted this as love and relationship, though in her mind there was always a subconscious forcing mechanism involved.

She was his first live woman, but he simultaneously admired her beauty and resented her independence, although she was barely even independent, he wanted to control everything about her. He made her not work anymore, told her not to have her friends around when he had other guests, so she either visited them herself, or did not visit them. So she didn’t really have friends anymore. His control of her increased, and the fact that she was really illprepared to have another job, or the fear of being in another independent situation was what drove her to ask for the flower shop. It is not that she did not enjoy her life, but she wanted ultimately to be more free. He did not please her in bed, and she was a romantic, or she had an ideal that she would trade nothing else in the world for. Of course there was her lover in Colombia, I forgot about that. She stopped talking to him at first, until he found her address from her friend, and they told him that she left, and left no address. But he did not stop searching until he found her. The problem is, that he was part of an important family in Colombia, who was close to her father’s family—they were neighbors. It would be impossible not to keep the secret of her return and their marriage from her father. But he continued and went on to be a doctor also, he was currently in medical school. He wanted to forget her but he could not, and he wanted to come out there and start a new life there, perhaps he could get a student visa—his family had money and they could support him while he went to school there, somehow he found her and these were his plans. It would have been perfect except that she did not want to make herself dependent on anyone again. She loved him also, but it was a more sober love, and in truth it wrought a lot of confusion for her. She was madly in love with him once before, but as time passed, she started to find herself, and the most important thing became to be independent. She just wanted to be alone, not to have anyone making demands on her, and he also reminded her of her former life. But I guess the important thing to think about in this situation is the fact that she had already been planning the flower thing for some time. The question to ask myself is why, then, did he suddenly assent? Well, it so happened that he became even more obssesesed with the flowers six months ago since the guy died and it was his chance, for some reason notoriety in the orchid community was something valuable and important to him, and it could partly be because of the fact that he had known Ampersand and admired his life and the people looked up to him. No ampersand was not a doctor, however, but his daughter always told Harold he should be a doctor—in fact it was she who planted the idea in his mind. And so, since he looked upon her as a standard of value, as a standard of what to look to, as a standard of what to look forward to, he loved her, she was refined, she was a beautiful woman, even in her old age, but she adored her father absolutely, and this too was a sore point for Harold. She played the harp, had gone to school in France, etc., and he sought to emulate him. It could be that even though Ampersand had a tobacco farm--- he did go to college, for business. The tobacco farm was in the family for many generations, her family was originally French Canadian then, they came as explorers and discoverers, they had money but it was the adventure. Her mother was a local daughter of a government official. So they all went to college, and his degree was in biology then and chemistry. Harold, however, was very eager to be an undertaker, and went to the state school for mortuary science. It was a

great shock, but he called it a calling, and it was moreso because of the fact that it was frowned upon and strange, and he called himself a martyr for the situation. It was exceedingly strange, however, that he would choose it, but it was the fact of Rolanda’s death and the fact that the undertaker there allowed him to be there and participate in her ritual, for she died of a heart attack and no autopsy was performed, so the undertaker came right away to pick her up, but he was short on staff on that day, when Harold called him, he told him he was short, and would need his help, which he assented to, and stayed, and then started working with him and there. So it was a dual life. He kept the Ampersad Mansion, this happened when he was 18, 1993, and so he moved in there, and immediately assumed the other life, creating a new family romance as it were, because he did feel very strongly shunned by his mother, and this new mother was gone, but he found a taste, and suddenly it changed him in to something else. Rolanda always mounred her father, who died in 1980, so it was why, although she doted on the boy, she never fully submitted to him, and here too was a situation in which Harold had to compete for someone’s full attention. So the funeral directing gave him an outlet for his demons, and the orchids gave him a way to be recognized, even though it was by appropriation. But he did win the public over. So he has increasingly been working on the orchids. How do I establish that? In preparation? Do they have a dinner before walking out there? He stays behind to talk with Victoria, and Harold looks at them strangely and retreats in frustration to the garden. After the fight with his brother, he goes into the garden. His parents drive home, but Trent stays behind to talk to Victoria. No she drives him back. She drives him back and on the way back, does the idea suddenly occur to her? No, she had already planned it, or something like it. So when she talks to him does she know what she is going to do? Perhaps she says something like, recently I have begun to think the same things and you’ve emboldened me. Listen. She goes out for a long drive and when she returns she gets in trouble for being gone so long. He doesn’t talk about the orchids? No, yes, he talks about them, perhaps he talks about them and the explanation about what the strange ones are doing comes earlier. How will it go--- she comes home he gets mad at her, remember more has to be done to establish the idea that he is scary somehow. Perhaps he startles her and shows her fear, which explains the don’t talk to me thing. He can be like where were you and asking her questions, they were talking, he doesn’t understand, she explains it, then she calls him out for being controlling of his life. He claims that he is not, because he’s never been conscious about it. She says, oh yes? Well prove it. I want to start a business. What kind. She perhaps sees a flower in the bedroom, or a flower on the wall, and then asks him. He asks her why, isn’t she happy? She has the life of a dream. She says that she has learned how to cook, she wants to do something else now, she wants to run a business. She compares it to his own flower hobby. He brings to her attention where she was when she got there, and she retorts angrily at him somehow. Like how could you. I’m not your charity. Does she look at him in disbelief, or is it more a judgmental stance. She starts making accusations. She starts saying that he wants to control everyone in his life. That he likes the flowers because they don’t move, they stay

put. All they do is bloom. No she doesn’t say that about the flowers, but I have to build this part up more. So then at the next dinner what is Trent doing in the meantime? What is he up to? Well currently he is working on an internship at a free clinic, where he helps people, where he helps people get their medication or to rehabilitate them in various ways. He wheels them around, perhaps it is a halfway home? I think a rehabiliation place where people come in and they are addicted to things, and he spends time on the grounds being someone to talk to, sitting in on group meetings, hearing their stories about their lives and dreams. When they throw tantrums, he talks them down. He sits in on therapy sessions (he may want to be a psychotherapist, or a psychiatrist, which is what Victoria’s father was, and perhaps it is her influence that helped him pick the specific field). Maybe it is a rehabilitation program that is part of the veteran’s hospital. He spends time talking to them, he will get school credit because he will write a sociological/psychological report on them as a group, a report that will give him behavioral psychology credit, where he talks about what their common denominators are, etc. He is very helpful there. There is a man there who was in Vietnam, and was very intelligent, etc. who has had a real impression on him. He wants to help them, but this guy has come in and out, and he knows that he might not stay in. He talks deeply to Victoria to say that it’s not that he doesn’t want to help them, it’s just that he wants to know for sure he’s doing what makes him happy in his life. It’s a torn between kind of thing. So what does the contrast show with him and Harold. Harold wants to help people to control them, Trent wants to do his own thing and be happy. He realizes that there is a point where it is just personal responsibility, that people can’t be forced into change. Maybe she drives him home, and we don’t know what happened. What other things could be happening? Harold is so busy with his own things that he stops paying such close attention to Victoria, but when the frog comes….should the frog come after or before what happens with his mother? The mother thing could be the straw, right? So then it’s three weeks later, they have their fight, tomorrow is the big day, move the orchid scene before the scene with the people in it, they have their fight about his mother, and he retreats into the garden again and picks up the net. Here we can have the flowers blooming, he loses himself in the blooms, and his work, and looks again for the frog but doesn’t find it. When they come in again, they see the frog, and he has to get an exterminator. There are murmurs and the whole thing is kind of a disaster in his mind? No, it’s kind of a stay on execution, because no one thinks it’s a bad thing, that it’s something that can be treated. This time there are two of them. Describe that scene past past happening. But when the exterminator comes, he tells him that bladiblah, and his heart sinks even lower. And then the next day his mom comes to his job and tells him off.

How do I establish his jealousy of his brother? Well first he accuses her, then he notes the way he looks at her at dinner, her defense of him, they had lunch together. So he starts to think that she is using the flower shop as a way to get away from him. I have to say that his life does not end after the flowers are gone, or when the greenhouse becomes a sanctuary. Because, truth be told that he keeps trying to get rid of them after the guy comes in and tells them he can’t kill them. He has to release them into captivity. At the next meeting there are even more croakings and things like that and so they have to decide that it’s not suitable, because they’ve multiplied. He asks for a respite but they don’t give it to him. Or perhaps it’s three months later, six months later, and the frogs gradually increase and increase until they say in the meantime they’ll have to switch to someone else’s. Trent is back from school and he wants to be a doctor, after all, and Harold keeps going and trying to capture the frogs, while Victoria’s business is booming. She starts staying out later and later there, and Harold has to eat his own meals and things like that, which is fine, but the dinners have been cut. It is the holiday season and she is impossibly busy and he finds Trent there before he even shows to Harold’s house. Trent is there to tell her his decision. That’s when Harold flips out. So I have to put the going to the garden earlier, explanation of the flowers sooner. A little more dialogue between Trent and V. The fight happens three weeks later. The frog shows up again. Describe that he was a little frazzled anyway, let’s say his mother goes to his job and then he has to go to the debut right after. No vice versa. The debut, everything arranged, describe the flowers here, describe their casing, describe the people they’re supposed to represent and make it so that they are reflective and we know the importance. The people really didn’t know how to respond to it. Then they see a frog. No his mother goes into his job first and then it’s the debut. He drives there. Then they see a frog. What the exterminator says. Harold continued to go with his net out there. Until six months later the sounds got impossible to bear. (He had to sit at another person’s garden, and every time it was a blow to his ego.) He comes out with a net, there is blood on it. And they have a fight about why are you still going out there, why does he insist on staying there, Why are you staying out so late etc. why doesn’t he just build a new one.

Trent is back. They’re talking in the shop. He freaks out then and they have a fight there. He goes home. What you would see if you’re in the room with him, but what he doesn’t see. Describe things, see what things need to be explained and why you are explaining them and how you explain them. So the narrator follows him, describes things objectively, certain past things can be explained, and think about when and what they could be, the purpose would to inform the audience as much as you can, let them be there, know what it’s like to be around him, but not presume to be in their own heads, things anyone would notice. So it is very film type, and is based on Harold’s presence. Things he could see if he could see. It is an omniscient/objective narrator who does not describe thoughts, but who has in mind a story to tell, so that’s why the details are presented the way they are, he would know them, if he paid attention. But it is not an omniscient narrator who goes in everywhere with him, just shows certain things. The perspectives of those around him are only given to us by virtue of the fact that they are around him. But it doesn’t necessarily have to be like you are in the place of them or have to be a sentient being in order to be in the scene, it is just them, so an argument is that even bodies are individuals, they belong to the individuals.

but they weren’t nearly rich enough to support him He simultaneously

She was also the maid of the house. thought the gardens were lovely.

Her own parents and his too, they came from a small community and so her mother was a baby sitter and sold beauty products

-

-

“I completely understand if you’re mad I didn’t call you first…we basically had to split from one minute to the next…” Kent shakes his head as she speaks to him, to indicate that the details are unimportant, and he isn’t bothered. He wears a deep blue blazer and a blue tie. Mira has recently been crying, for there are red spots at the corners of her eyes. Her friend, her girlfriend, is marking the scant furniture in the office and admiring its complete lack of adornment. She is intrigued by the idea of death. Her dark hair is newly cut off and she smells heavily of cigarettes, which are toxic to orchids. He will say something later. Light beams in long strands through the cracks and wooden corners of shut window blinds, making stripes across his large desk, where there are no folders or loose papers, but a black, flat-screen computer monitor, which swivels. He has pale blue eyes. Their arms are sunburned from travel. His pale hands are folded listening. The wooden bookcase behind him has doors that are shut. She finds no calendars or clocks. She has deep button dimples and heavy eyes.

A dead man’s naked body stretches heavy as a board upon a reflecting metal stand. The bones and sinews stretch the skin, the toes, the petrified fingers make the flesh stretch tight as solid plastic. He must flex the rigor mortis out of him, must bend, must relax the old man’s wrists, the hands, from their bone-freezing clasp of nihility. Thin blue veins are scribbled as by pen on stone hard feet; plumb toes thick like hardened ice cubes. Kent’s white gloves are almost no less colorless than the dead man’s helpless body as he works

to rub it loose, while Brooks tries to draw death with a pencil in her notebook, her fingers trembling for what she sees. Black red blood drains like water into a metal sink, forced through a clear tube injected in the neck by a whirring machine pumping pink embalming liquids into every vein through another neck incision, circulating inside all the capillaries. The embalming machine ticks like a clock or a heartbeat, as gradually the body’s numb pallor begins to blush, and the blue marble streaks are vanished. They are wearing clear nose plugs and white facemasks and gloves. Shower caps. He loosened his tie and hung it on the coat rack in his office before putting on his scrubs again. Mira stands next to Kent, looking over his shoulder; sometimes she looks at his eyes, at the grey in his temples, noting that he is getting older. “I forgot where I was…” she says, watching as Kent scrapes tough cuticles out from beneath the dead man’s fingernails, “oh yeah…and so finally when we show up there, there are like three playwrights there that Brooks already knows and we’re both like, oh fuck, because they’re really good… but a year ago we started doing these positive visualization things, where we only try to think about the best possible outcome for any situation, and we never say anything negative, because, you know how words are infinite and everything…” Mira’s nonchalant demeanor reflects that she is accustomed to being near the dead, for as she speaks she gazes at what Kent is doing, but is not stirred by it. She passes a razor to him the way a child passes a screwdriver to a parent working on a car. Kent’s eyes remain transfixed in a terrible, profound and pitying stare, cataracts shaking like a steady monologue, verging on apology for his intrusion, while assuring at the same time that his hands are deft enough to suture the secrets of his client’s frailties, to camouflage the last bruises of a battle lost, and to be a mediating agent of conciliation for the surviving family.

Fat splits of languidly ripening velvet drip violet now through yolky opening bud petal seams smeared with pigments of aberrant purple and red, unlikened to those of her precursors, ancestors, as though the hues were not static colors, but effervescent filters of electrified lace, held one degree from burning before the laughing tongues of a devilish flame. Not yet born, they have already exceeded him. They taunts his futile efforts to probe her with a wooden ruler’s end, already, they mock him as he moves the muscular sprouts towards his nose for hints of scent, closer to his unforseeing eyes, unable, to guess her future shape.

He can determine only that the flowers will bloom simultaneously, and within hours or days. Placing the ruler down, he wipes his brow on his rolled up shirt-sleeve, and writes with blue-inked ballpoint in a wire-bound notebook, that today at 7:22 he saw the buds beginning to bloom, and they are two inches in diameter. “Be careful with this last step…” The hothouse door gapes open and sucks in a stream of air conditioning, which blows cool and upon him standing at his workstation at the far end of the room, tucked between sharp green plants wildly overgrown with orchids. He turns around to see Mira walk in through the framed metal threshold, carrying a bottle of Smirnoff Ice in each hand. “Hey Kent... want a drink?” Her yellow summer dress is in the style of ancient Athens. He places the notebook away in a drawer and walks toward them. Brooks freezes still as she enters. Her eyes widen to notice the space engulfed by hundreds of startling petals, alien lips, kite wings, swallow tails, gift ribbons, helix ripples, polka dots, ink blots, cane stripes, zebra stripes, racing stripes, fangs, which scream out with beautiful strangeness, their breaths like oils, some hanging from rafters like devious orangutan children, sticking their tongues out at her. The greenhouse could almost seem farm-like, were it not that its incredible fruit looked so alive, and uneatable. “This is…amazing,” she says, moving slowly towards Mira and Kent, still visibly rapt in surprise. “I know,” Mira says, “Kent’s been…” “Oh no,” says Brooks, stopping. Her turquoise shawl has caught on the long vine of a small yellow-green flower. Kent takes a fast step forward, just as Brooks carefully releases the stalk from her garment without harming the plant. “Whew,” Brooks says, shaking her wrist. “That was close.” Kent’s lips draw in a straight-line smile, and his hands go in his pockets. “That’s vanilla, right?” Mira asks him. “Yes…” “Just regular vanilla?” Brooks asks. “Yes… it’s commercial vanilla…as for flavoring….” he plucks a flower from the plant and hands it to her. “Is this familiar?” Closing her eyes, she says it smells like vanilla. Five minutes after Mira asked Kent to tell them about orchids, they are sitting down on the concrete ground at the middle of the sweltering greenhouse, to listen as he explains to their laughing reactions how, although the orchid plant so unambiguously calls to mind the image of a woman’s sexual organs, in reality most of the flowers are hermaphrodites, capable of impregnating themselves with their own progeny.

“But even this distinctive feature,” he explains, looking over his shoulder again obsessively towards the new blooms, “requires an external stimuli; wind, insects, rain, to guarantee that the flower’s caudicles do not dry out without reproducing.” “Tell her about why they look like birds and bugs,” Mira said, smiling at Brooks, who shakes her head incredulously at her. “The appearance of orchids makes them not only a visually alluring plant species, but it serves a necessary function for the progress of other organisms…” In his preoccupation with the blooming flowers on the workstation, Kent’s words came out hastily at first. But the more he begins to speak, the more he is able to distract himself momentarily in conversation. “Take an example… the bee orchids,” he rises and raises an index finger, disappearing for a moment among the verdant stalks. He returns within seconds and sits down, as Brooks and Mira exchange glances of amazement once again. In his open palm he carries an orchid that looks like a fuzzy blue bee, which glitters as tinsel, and even has petals that mimic antennae. “These orchids,” he says, winded a little, “are absolutely irresistible to male orchid bees because they look like female insects….see…” he hands the flower to Brooks, who holds it up for all of them to admire. “So bees will brush against the flowers attempting to mate with them…and here,” he says, beginning to speak in a nodding, parenthetical tone, not only do the bees’ pheromonal attractants achieve a chemical synthesis that is necessary for them to be able to mate with actual female bees, but,” his voice slows down and lowers its pitch to articulate importance, “it also results to accomplish a real conception…” “The orchid’s own…” Brooks says, thoughtfully. “Yes…exactly. Isn’t that incredible?”

Mira walks through the greenhouse door first Three people made the greenhouse seem smaller than it was, but it also made it seem to the people that the greenhouse was more full of plants. The flowers looked like alien species and Brooks because of what she had seen in the funeral parlor seems to be at a loss for words, so there is conversation going on around her, and the conversation is explaining things, like saying how he got into it, and how close he was to his mom? So is it really like the kind of thing where what you are saying is just talking about his dad?

She is talking about his past and talking about how he started growing orchids, so the orchids are just about as old as she is… he was always in there. Mira as an actress is a talker and she is talking all the time and she is beautiful and she feels beautiful, but she seems to notice that both of them are kind of serious and not attentive, they are just kind of thinking about things, both of them are somber, Kent is thinking about the flowers, he keeps looking over his shoulder at the buds in expectation, and so it’s like Mira asked him and here is a moment where he is talking about it, he’s talking about it although he doesn’t really want to, almost like there is some kind of secret. So how would you describe that? How would you describe someone being afraid of being heard, or uncertain that he is saying the wrong thing? He looks around, and speaks with a lowered voice, but strangely he doesn’t seem to look at Aphrodite, Aphrodite is the mother, and Mira refers to her as such. Mira makes the conversation go on because both of them are kind of quiet about things. Mira is the type that flips her hair, and is she entirely gay? Perhaps it is more the case that she was bisexual and enjoyed being with other women in the manner that it made her sexual but the fact that her parents were so strict it was like she was pushed into it, so there is some kind of but not complete natural tendency towards being admired by both. But you could think of Brooks as asexual, more contemplative like Kent. How do you establish that? She does look at Mira, when she looks at Mira she starts to see her somewhat strangely, they have known each other for about a year, and in truth Brooks is not completely attached to anything for a very long time…but Mira fell entirely in love with Brooks because Brooks is so talented and important. I must just for an hour keep typing. So Mira fell in love with Brooks because she is so talented and deep in a way she has never seen before, and Mira for a long time was Brooks’ muse, but is this the beginning of the moment where she now ceases to be, and Brooks’ attention begins to draw closer onto Kent, although she doesn’t realize it, she is staring at him, at the way he has kind of an itch. How do I simultaneously show all of what they all see? Well Kent will be seeing Brooks and Mira standing in the greenhouse which makes the greenhouse seem cramped around them. To Brooks, she feels cramped by the flowers. Should I have simultaneous paragraph sentences, or have I already spliced it up so now it is Kent’s turn since it seems like the whole thing that was going on in the funeral home was being told through Mira’s eyes. SO at the beginning Kent will be feeling cramped, and his eyes will move to note that Brooks’ sleeve, something about her shirt, something about what she is wearing, maybe she is wearing a jacket, maybe it’s a sweatshirt, maybe it gets caught on a vine or a branch of something, maybe it brushes against something, and he will move quickly to release it, a scarf, or a thing like what Alanis Morisette was wearing. So will he be noticing stuff like what she is wearing in the sense of is it is expensive? Yeah well if it is something pretty, or the colors will go together in a nice way he will notice it. Mira’s yellow hair hanging low. Something about when she was little, maybe. Unless it is only the greenhouse that has memories in this story? That seems like an interesting concept, that of the greenhouse having its own memories in the story. So what kind of memories could the greenhouse have? About people? No only about the plants. So it will be Mira, who is the thin strand that ties everything together, and I guess explains how everything works but I will save for later another experiment where there are no explanations and no thoughts, only descriptions that capture the innermost truths of situations. Ok so they are standing in the greenhouse and Mira is giving the history of the plants, does it begin with things she is saying again? No he is afraid when they come

and nearly bolts forward to try to preserve the plants somehow, when for Brooks, she steps back somewhat afraid, so it could be an almost comical scene with his thing, and he might look abashed. How do you describe abashedness? Well there are various ways, for instance, when Aaron is abashed he purses his lips together in a tight straight line all the way across. When K. is abashed, he has a difficult time speaking, it’s like the words have to be drawn out of him until something relieves him again and he can talk freely. Who else have I known to be abashed? My mom will turn red as a beet. I don’t know anyone else who gets abashed? Me, when I get abashed I turn really over polite in this strange way. So anyway, something happens to show Kent’s abashedness and Brooks notices it, but Mira keeps talking. But her talking is not bothersome because she is beautiful and you can tell she is happy to be around Kent. How can you tell she is happy to be around Kent, and why is she happy to be around Kent? Because Kent always listened to her when she was growing up, he was a safe thing. He never really praised her but he had this interesting way, he brought her up, well she was very tight with him anyway when she was a kid the church guy was kind of an asshole to her and always on her case about everything, but Kent never really asked her questions, but he also didn’t stop her when she started talking. He always would listen to what she said, and then offer some kind of book of changes explanation about what she said which showed he listened. So he is kind of an oddball guy, since he is genius level and lives his life purely in this Zen like mode where life and death are strangely the same thing, but the plants are his only passion, although they are a big passion, so on some level the inflicted chastity imposed on him by his mom who made him not really like sex in this unliberated hometown kind of way makes him feel deep inside like he’s guilty about his attachment to the flowers. And Brooks watches him because its really this strange kind of thing. So what does this do to establish the thing that is going on with the message of the story which focuses on the importance of individuality and the alienation of selfhood I don’t care if that girl is writing about communism, although one of the things that Brooks is dealing with is this idea about alienation from the rest of the world because it seems like the rest of the world expects her to owe her anything, and this position does and it kind of doesn’t because its understood that what they are working on is a play that is going to be sent in to some kind of California playwrighting contest and what is going on in the story is that it is some kind of feminist perspective on politics, an individual batmanish level, but maybe I should keeep them college age so that it will be the kind of thing that could forgive her for not being entirely choate with it. But the point is that she sees all kinds of unhappiness in systems, the whole thing with her mom and her dad, her stepdad didn’t like her either, her dad was a total dick too, and her mom was a total pussy too, so she kind of disowned them and never went to college, so it is the kind of thing where she is trying to make it as a big league playwright but she is really just in college but maybe she is actually getting somewhere with it. Her family is liberal, so she is purposefully libertarian as a way of rebelling against what is happening around her. Some of those missing men probably could be found in jail. So her family is liberal and she rebelled against themwell what was it about her dad her stepdad that she didn’t like? The fact that he cheated on her mom and made her feel ok with it, so it was a swingers kind of thing that she didn’t like about him or about their lifestyle but it was the way her mom was forced into it or felt forced into it that she didn’t like. So it wasn’t just him that she didn’t like but she also didn’t like the way he made her feel and the injustice of it. So anyway Brooks became a libertarian

from reading The Fountain head like me. and so she also happens to be really good but she never lasts very long with people.e The other problem with brooks is the fact that she is livertarian at heart but she doesn’t really make money last, she always blows it as we have seen, maybe she’s a little older, 24, but not by much, because that would make her almost too old. So anyway she is there they are there and this is the beginning of her falling out of infatuation with Mira, but it’s not like she is going to flee her immediately, and perhaps in her mind she never will, perhaps after seeing the death (well before she wasn’t all worshippy of Mira, but Mira worshipped her, and it was Mira’s worship of her that made her like her, mostly because the way that Mira thought about her was the way she thoughta bout herself, but when she found something else to admire, when she admired him for not needing to be admired, it’s like she learned something about himself,, so how do I establish that he is very unconscious about the way he goes about with his satisfaction, it is because he devotes himself completely not nature and admires and yet he is not completely satisfied, but in every moment he feels something, although he could not be called overly emotional, or being emotional, just aware of the strange essentiality of things, or things are strangely essential to him. Death is real, and people are real and they are supreme, the needs of thigns to continue are important to him, and Brooks notices his role as a caregiver. So how do I establish stuff? Well while Mira is talking she is talking but she also notices Brooks looking at kent. How do I establish that. She says something directly to Brooks, but Brooks doesn’t hear though Kent responds. It is not that Kent is not aware of Brooks’ attention or vibe towards him, but it too is not essential because not only is she a passer by, she is also her daughter’s friend. And he also views his role very moralistically. But are there any repressed things? Well he would like to take care of her, obviously there is the situation where she has a sexual energy? But it is not really, they are both strangely asexual. So it is a spiritual thing. Don’t’ stop writing. SO it is a spiritual thing and they are both asexual strangely. So the important thing to establish in the next scene is that Mira is trying to talk, but Brooks becomes very moved by Kent, and Kent is very aware and paying attention to the flowers, because obviously they are very important, and Mira really senses it and understands. In the following scene, or in the boiling point scene, Mira says something like well here, she says something like you have a crush and Brooks really doesn’t it is a spriritual thing. But as time passes since the next thing that is going to happen is going to be in the curch, the time that passes means that Brooks has worked on the play some more, and what is happening at that point in the play, or what has happened in her life, they have been hanging around the house, eating, Brooks and Mira have gone to the funeral parlor quite a bit and have seen death, have spent time in the cemetery, Brooks has gotten to the plint where she could do things herself, and she is not thinking about death but about life, and still it has only been a few days but she is thinking about thigns and maybe it was only a waeek and she is thinking about things and they have gone to the price tower but there is on the whole not a w hole lot going on in Bartlesville anyway and so the next scene after the church scene is when brooks is working on something, in this something there are flashes from a past that Carmen never had, she is being made to think that the life in front of her was hers, but she is struggling not to feel in anyway ashamed, there are pictures or images of her having affaris with like her sister’s husband or something, or there are pictures or images of her doing things like stealing from her sister or stealing from her family, or images of her on the toilet, all of these things that will show, but she is not

feeling guilt, she is killing people, and she is not believing it, she is saying that’s not me I didnd’t do that I didn’t do it. And all kinds of strange accusations. B ut why is all of this happening in the play does it correspond, ok it corresponds, so here there is a moment where she turns her back on her sister, where in truth brooks really turned on her sister or maybe she doesn’t have a sister but she is about to turn her back on her sister who is mira and things like is there a god, things like there is no god, in this machine the doctor is trying to hypnotize her that an order has been found to everything and it can be duplicated there is no miraculousness, so Carmen may have been a kind of philosopher who had access? No Carmen was not a philosopher. She was not a catholic, but she had some kind of strange experience when she was young? Some kind of strange experience that shw rote about when sthat she had an afterlife experience when sh ewas young and that she was able to have telekenesis or something like that and it was the basis of the novel that was going and it was the way she got a lot of reader ship because all of it was in there, but this guy is going out of his way to disprove all of it. And so she may be working on this part of the play when Mira who is smoking pot, the whole time smoking pot, she doesn’t really do anything but smoke pot… perhaps she reads Shakespeare but she doesn’t do it entirely in truth she is pretty much in stagnation, and Brooks doesn’t realize it until she is out of the city and there are no distractions anywhere, she sees what Mira does, and Mira in her guilt accuses Brooks of no longer being in love with her. Brooks may say something to her. Do the flowers unfurl right at the moment when the car accident happens and she tries to go to her mom? And because she is dead the whole story is pretty much finished, huh? I think that’s a pretty good way to end it because she is the tie. So I have to get through this scene in the garden, give a scene with her mom, then go back and give a scene with them talking like that and she gets mad and then a scene where it is that very night when he is out in the garden should I give more of Mira’s experience, since it seems to be very onesided and also it would be impossible to give the car ride? Or maybe they are driving together when it happens, Mira goes out of control and she tries to kill them both and brooks survives instead. But will there be something else that talks about things like debt. How do I establish a change? Well at least a defatigation in terms of the way she feels about Mira. She starts to look a things differently. The journal could give elements of what she is thinking about. Nature is the key. Kinds of thing. What does nature teach us. Maybe that night Brooks goes into the garden with her journal but we don’t find out what she writes about in her thing. But in the play what is going on is that she will not be ashamed. But will that be ashamed unless she sees Mira more? What is going on how do I give this. Mira starts to smoke pot but Brooks says no thanks? She starts to be introspective kind of thing. But Mira is kind of unstable, how do I establish the unstable thing? Well she was just joking when she was fooling around with the car so it was truly an accident, but it was an accident that actually happened. More signals before. But she could also tell him more about how they got together right away and she was the reason why she quit school and everything, or that could be something that comes out in the car ride. And she’s expecting everything, and Brooks is not saying anything one way or the other, she’s just incredibly confused, but there is something happy, but there is something changing. In the scene it’s like Brooks is probing herself to see if there are any sore parts, and the sore part would be to find that everything could be duplicated and understood. And that makes her restless, but it is kent that makes her think about it. So it will go to the church and then back to the play and the

play is being written on the road since they are going to a concert in Oklahoma city or coming back from a concert better, she is writing with a pen light, what’s wrong you never how could you I’m writing… I’m writing… what…..she could be a little buzzed. But what about the next part of the story? Maybe it comes after the next church scene , no it gets interrupted. So they could be just coming back from a trip to a museum at okc or something like that bc brooks wanted to see but Mira feels like she’s not getting enough attention> but I think the club thing too would also be convicing. How do iestablish that Mira is that because she leans over. After the whole day, brooks may hold mira but in her mind she is thinking about things, the lights, the stars, how there are no sounds out here, breathing. Describing music is a good way of capturing emotion.

The problem I am having is figuring out where everything fits in the larger scheme—does she do something to make him angry at last, or what? Is there something going on between she and her brother in law? Is there something more? Maybe by developing character I can develop plot, so let’s think about it more deeply. She grew up in Colombia in a large family with many children, though she was the only daughter. There were 8 brothers in the large family, maybe they had a ranch there, but likely her father was a professional who worked his way up to where he got. When her mother died, she was the only daughter left, I guess he was a doctor, perhaps a psychotherapist, but she herself was not the kind of person to make inquiries about things.

themselves. a species of plant which likely co-existed with the dinosaurs, though even then it was quite highly evolved, considering that the flower is re Orchids frequently recall in peoples’ minds the image of a woman’s labia.

the elusive prehistory

the soft flavors of although in truth his nose had been desensitized busied himself by walking through it, making observations about arrangements before the debut society meeting in two weeks. Harold’s garden

While brushing against the flowers while attempting to mate with them, not only do the bees’ pheromonal attractants achieve a chemical synthesis that is necessary for mating with actual female bees, but their artificial gestures of reproduction result to accomplish a real conception: that of the orchid’s own self. Darwin, when witnessing the occurrence of this phenomenon in the Catasetum species, whose flowers range from hermaphroditic to intersexed, described the “explosive force” by which the viscid pollen launches from a seta when touched by an insect. Of course, the passing of time and the growth of technology helped to temper such fits of savagery, for as a result of both, orchid collecting became a more affordable hobby, and growers soon discovered that they produce thousands of versions of the same plant, from just a single cutting.

as though recognizing that she will now and forever be unable to which seems to overpower her, even as their presence seems to over power it.