The Plant Read online

  “She's got something called the Rainy Night Friend,” he said, still laughing. “It's silver-plated, and almost the size of a mortar shell. Fucking thing fills her whole purse. There's a flashlight set into the blunt end. The tapered end emits a cloud of tear-gas when you press a button-only Sandra says that she spent an extra ten bucks to have the tear-gas canister replaced with Hi-Pro-Gas, which is a hopped-up version of Mace. In the middle of this device, Johnny boy, is a pull-ring that sets off a high-decibel siren. I did not ask for a demonstration. They would have evacuated the building.”

  “The way you describe it, it sounds as if she could use it as a dildo when there were no muggers around,” I said. He went off into gales of half-hysterical laughter. I joined him-it would have been impossible not to-but I was concerned for him, as well. He's very tired and very close to the edge of his endurance, I think-the parent corporation's steadily eroding support for the house has really started to get to him.

  I asked him if something like the Rainy Night Friend was legal.

  “I'm not a lawyer so I couldn't tell you for sure,” Roger said. “My impression is that a woman who uses a tear-gas pen on a potential mugger or rapist is in a gray area. But Sandra's toy, loaded up with a Mace hybrid... no, I don't think something like that can be kosher.”

  “But she's got it, and she's carrying it,” I said.

  “Not only that, but she seems fairly calm about it all,” Roger agreed. “Funny-she was the one who was so scared when the General was sending his poison pen letters, and Herb hardly seemed aware any of it was going on... at least until the bus driver got stabbed. I think what freaked Sandra out before was that she'd never seen him.”

  “Yes,” I said. “She even told me that once.”

  He paid the tab, waving away my offer to pay my half. “It's the revenge of the flower-people,” he said. “First Detweiller, the mad gardener from Central Falls, and then Hecksler, the mad gardener from Oak Cove.”

  That gave me what the British mystery writers like to call a nasty start-talk about not making obvious connections! Roger, who is far from being anyone's fool, saw my expression and smiled.

  “Didn't think of that, did you?” he asked. “It's just a coincidence, of course, but I guess it was enough to set off a little paranoid chime in Herb Porter's head-I can't imagine him getting so fashed otherwise. We could have the basis of a good Robert Ludlum novel here. The Horticultural Somethingor-Other. Come on, let's get out of here.”

  “Convergence,” I said as we hit the street.

  “Huh?” Roger looked like someone coming back from a million miles away.

  “The Horticultural Convergence,” I said. “The perfect Ludlum title. Even the perfect Ludlum plot. It turns out, see, that Detweiller and Hecksler are actually brothers-no, considering the ages, I guess father and son would be better-in the pay of the NKVD. And—”

  “I've got to catch my bus, John,” he said, not unkindly. Well, I have my problems, dear Ruth (who knows better than you?), but realizing when I'm being a bore has never been one of them (except when I'm drunk). I saw him down to the bus stop and headed home.

  The last thing he said was that the next we heard of General Hecksler would probably be a report of his capture... or his suicide. And Herb Porter would be disappointed as well as relieved.

  “It isn't General Hecksler Herb and the rest of us have to be worried about,” he said-his little burst of good humor had left him and he looked slumped and small, standing there at the bus stop with his hands jammed into the pockets of his trenchcoat. “It's Harlow Enders and the rest of the accountants who are going to get us. They'll stab us with their red pencils. When I think about Enders, I almost wish I had Sandra Jackson's Rainy Night Friend.”

  No progress on my novel this week-looking back over this epistle I see why-all this narrative that should have gone into Maymonth tonight went ended up here instead. But if I went on too long and in too much novelistic detail, don't chalk it all up to prolixity, my dear-over the last six months or so I have become a genuine Lonely Guy. Writing to you isn't as good as talking to you, and talking to you isn't as good as seeing you, and seeing you isn't as good as touching you and being with you (steam-steam! pant-pant!), but a person has to make do with what he has. I know you're busy, studying hard, but going so long without talking to you has got me sorta crazy (and on top of Detweiller and Hecksler, more crazy I do not need to be). I love you, my dear.

  Missing you, needing you,

  John

  March 9, 1981 Mr. Herbert Porter Designated Jew Zenith House 490 Park Avenue New York, NY 10017

  Dear Designated Jew,

  Did you think I had forgotten you? I bet you did. Well, I didn't. A man doesn't forget the thief who rejected his book after stealing all of the good parts. And how you tried to discredit me. I wonder how you will look with your penis in your ear. Ha-ha. (But not a joke)

  I am coming for you, “big boy.”

  Major General Anthony R. Hecksler (Ret.)

  P. S. Roses are red.

  Violets are blue.

  I am coming to castrate.

  A Designated Jew.

  M. G. A. R. H. (Ret.)

  MAILGRAM FROM MR. JOHN KENTON TO RUTH TANAKA

  MS. RUTH TANAKA 10411 CRESCENT BOULEVARD LOS ANGELES, CA 90024

  MARCH 10, 1981

  DEAR RUTH

  THIS IS PROBABLY PRIMO STUPIDO BUT PARANOIA BEGETS PARANOIA AND I STILL CAN'T RAISE YOU. FINALLY GOT PAST THAT BLANK-BLANK ANSWERING MACHINE THIS MORNING TO YOUR ROOMMATE WHO SAID SHE HADN'T SEEN YOU LAST TWO DAYS. SHE SOUNDED FUNNY. I HOPE ONLY STONED. CALL ME SOONEST OR I'LL BE KNOCKING ON YOUR DOOR THIS WEEKEND. LOVE YOU.

  JOHN

  March 10, 1981

  Dear John,

  I imagine-no, I know-you must be wondering why you haven't heard from me much over the last three weeks. The reason is simple enough; I've been feeling guilty. And the reason I am writing now instead of calling is that I am a coward. Also I think, although you may not believe me when you read the rest of this, which is the hardest letter I've ever had to write, because I love you very much and want so much not to hurt you. All the same I suppose this will hurt and knowing I can't help it makes me cry.

  John, I've met a man named Toby Anderson and have fallen head over heels in love with him. If it matters to youand it probably won't-I met him in one of the two English Restoration drama courses I'm taking. I held him off as best as I could for a long time-I very much want and need you to believe that-but by mid-February I just couldn't hold him off any longer. My arms got tired.

  The last three weeks or so have been a nightmare for me. I don't really expect you to sympathize with my position, but I hope you'll believe I am telling the truth. Although you're on the east coast and I'm three thousand miles away on the west, I felt as if I were sneaking around on you. And I was. I was! Oh, I don't mean in the sense that you might come home early from work one night and find me with Toby, but I felt terrible all the same. I couldn't sleep, couldn't eat, couldn't do my yoga positions or the Jane Fonda Workout. My grades were slipping, but to hell with the grades-my heart was slipping.

  I've been ducking your calls because I couldn't bear to hear your voice-it seemed to bring it all home to me-how I was lying and cheating and leading you on.

  It all came to a head two nights ago when Toby showed me the lovely diamond engagement ring he had bought for me. He said he wanted me to have it and he hoped I wanted to take it, but he said he couldn't give it to me even if I did until I talked or wrote to you. He's such an honorable man, John, and the irony is that under different circumstances I am sure you would like him very much.

  I broke down and cried in his arms and before long his tears were mingled with mine. The upshot of it all was me saying I would be ready for him to slip that gorgeous love-ring on my finger by the end of the week. I think we are going to be married in June.

  You see that in the end I took the coward's way out, writing instead of phoning, and it's still tak
en me the last two days to get this much down-I've cut every class and have practically put down roots in the library karel where I should be studying for a Transformational Grammar prelim. But to hell with Noam Chomsky and deep structure! And although you may not believe this either, each word of the letter you're reading has been like a lash across my heart.

  If you want to talk to me, John-I'd understand if you didn't but you may-you could call me in a week... after you've had a chance to think all this over and get it into some kind of perspective. I am so used to your sweetness and charm and kindness, and so afraid you'll be angry and accusatory-but that is up to you and I'll just have to “take you as you are,” I suppose. But you need that time to cool off and settle down, and I need some time, too. You should receive this on the eleventh. I'll be in my apartment from seven to nine-thirty on the nights of the eighteenth through the twenty-second, both expecting your call and dreading it. I won't want to speak to you before then, and I hope you understand-and I think maybe you will, you who were always the most understanding of men in spite of your constant self-deprecation.

  One other thing-both Toby and I are in agreement about this: don't take it in your head to just suddenly jump on a plane and “wing your way into the golden west”-I wouldn't see you if you did. I'm not ready to see you face to face, John-my feelings are still too much in flux and my self-image too much in a state of transition. We will meet again, yes. And dare I say that I even hope you will come to our wedding? I must dare, as I see I have written it down!

  Oh, John, I do love you, and I hope this letter has not caused you too much pain-I even hope God has been good and you may have found your own “somebody” in the last couple of weeks-in the meantime, please know that you will always (always!) be somebody to me.

  My love,

  Ruth

  PS-And although it is trite, it is also true: I hope we can always be friends.

  interoffice memo TO: Roger Wade FROM: John Kenton RE: Resignation

  I've been a trifle formal here because this really is a letter of resignation, Roger, memo form or no. I'll be leaving at the end of the day-will, in fact, begin cleaning out my desk as soon as I've finished this. I'd rather not go into my reasonsthey are personal. I realize, of course, that leaving with no prior notice is very bad form. Should you choose to take the matter up with the Apex Corporation, I would be happy to pay a reasonable assessment. I'm sorry about this, Roger. I like and respect you a great deal, but this simply has to be.

  From John Kenton's diary March 16, 1981

  I haven't tried to keep a diary since I was eleven years old, when my Aunt Susan-dead lo these many years-gave me a small pocket diary for my birthday. It was just a cheap little thing; like Aunt Susan herself, now that I think about it. I kept that diary, off and on (mostly off) for almost three weeks. I might not get even that far this time, but it doesn't really matter. This was Roger's idea, and Roger's ideas are sometimes good.

  I've junked the novel-oh, don't think I did anything melodramatic like casting it into the fire to commemorate the spontaneous combustion of My First Serious Love; I'm actually writing this first (and maybe last) entry in my diary on the backs of the manuscript pages. But junking a novel doesn't have anything to do with the actual pages, anyway; what's on the pages is just so much dead skin. The novel actually falls apart inside your head, it seems, like the parson's wonderful one-hoss shay. Maybe the only good thing about Ruth's cataclysmic letter is that it's put paid to my grandiose literary aspirations. Maymonth, by John Edward Kenton, sucked that fabled hairy bird.

  Does one need to begin a diary with background information? This was not a question which crossed my mind when I was eleven-at least not that I recall. And in spite of the great shitload of English courses I've taken in my time, I don't recall ever attending one which covered the Protocol of Journals. Footnotes, synopses, outlines, the proper placement of modifiers, the correct form of the business letter-these were all things in which I took instruction. But on how to start a diary I am as blank as I am, say, on how to continue your life after its light just went out.

  Here is my decision, after a full thirty seconds of weighty consideration: a little background information wouldn't hurt. My name, as mentioned above, is John Edward Kenton; I am twenty-six years of age; I attended Brown University, where I majored in English, served as President of the Milton Society, and was exceedingly full of myself; I believed that everything in my life would eventually turn out just fine; I have since learned better. My father is dead, my mother alive and well and living in Sanford, Maine. I have three sisters. Two are married; the third is living at home and will finish her senior year at Sanford High this June.

  I live in a two-room Soho apartment which I thought quite pleasant until the last few days; now it seems drab. I work for a seedy book company which publishes paperback originals, most of them about giant bugs and Viet Nam veterans out to reform the world with automatic weapons. Three days ago I found out my girl has left me for another man. Some response to this seemed to be required, so I tried to quit my job. No sense trying to go into my mental state either then or now. It was none too calm to begin with, due to an outbreak of what I can only call Crazy Fever at work. I may elaborate on that business at some later date, but for the time being the importance of Detweiller and Hecksler seems to have receded far into the background.

  If you have ever been abruptly left by someone you did and do love deeply, you'll know the sort of fugue I have been experiencing. If you haven't, you can't. Simple as that. I keep wanting to say I feel the way I did when my father died, but I don't. Part of me (the part that, writer or not, constantly wants to make metaphors) would like to make it into a bereavement, and I believe Roger was partly right when he made that comparison at the mostly liquid dinner we had the night of my resignation, but there are other elements, too. It is a separation-as if someone told you that you could no longer have your favorite food, or use a drug to which you had become addicted. And there's something worse. However you define the thing, I find that my own sense of self-esteem and selfworth have somehow gotten mixed up in it, and it hurts. It hurts a lot. And it seems to hurt all the time. I always used to be able to escape mental pain and psychic distress in my sleep, but that's no good this time. It hurts there, too.

  Ruth's letter (question: how many Dear John letters have actually been sent to Johns? Should we form a club, like the Jim Smith Society?) came on the eleventh-it was waiting in my mailbox like a time-bomb when I got home. I scribbled my resignation on a memo form the next morning and sent it down to Roger Wade's office via Riddley, who is our janitor cum mail-clerk at Zenith House. Roger came down to my office as if he had rockets on his heels. In spite of the pain I'm feeling and the daze I seem to be living in I was absurdly touched. After a short, intense conversation (to my shame I broke down and wept, and although I managed to refrain from telling him specifically what the problem was/is, I think he guessed) I agreed to defer my resignation, at least until that evening, when Roger suggested we get together and talk the situation over. “A couple of drinks and a medium-rare steak may help to put the situation in perspective,” was the way he put it, but I think it actually turned out to be more like a dozen drinks... each, maybe. I lost count. And it was to be Four Fathers again, naturally. At least a place for which I have no associations with Ruth.

  After agreeing to Roger's dinner suggestion, I went home, slept for the rest of the day, and woke up feeling thick and dazed and headachey-that feeling of mild hangover I am left with whenever I get too much sleep I don't really need. It was 5:30, almost dark, and in the unlovely light of a late winter dusk I couldn't imagine why in God's name I had allowed Roger to talk me into the compromise measure of making my resignation provisional for even twelve hours. I felt like an ear of corn on which someone has performed a fabulous magic trick. Taken the corn and the cob and left the green shield of leaves and the fine yellow-white poll of tassel intact.

  I am aware-God knows I have read enough to
be-of how Byronic-Keatsian-Sorrows-of-Young-Werther that sounds, but one of the diary joys I discovered at eleven and may be rediscovering now is that you write with no audience-real or imagined-in mind. You can say whatever you fucking well want.

  I took a very long shower, mostly just standing dazedly under the spray with a bar of soap in one hand, and then I dried off and dressed and sat in front of the TV until quarter of seven or so, when it was time to go off and meet Roger. I took Ruth's letter off my desk and stuffed it into my pocket just before I left, deciding that Roger ought to know just what had derailed me. Was I looking for sympathy? A tender ear, as the poet says? I don't know. But mostly I think I wanted him to be sure-really, really sure-that I wasn't just a rat deserting a sinking ship. Because I really like Roger, and I'm sorry for the jam he's in.

  I could describe him-and if he were a character in one of my fictions I suppose I would do so lovingly, in too much detail-but since this diary is for me alone and I know perfectly well what Roger looks like, having trod the metaphoric grapes just down the hall from him for the last seventeen months, there is really no need to. I find that fact unaccountably liberating. The only salient points about Roger are that he is forty-five, looks eight to ten years older, smokes too much, is three-times divorced... and that I like him very much.

  When we were settled at a table in the back of Fathers with drinks in front of us, he asked me what was wrong besides the obvious unfortunacies of this evil year. I took Ruth's letter out of my pocket and tossed it wordlessly across the table to him. While he read it I finished my drink and ordered another. When the waiter came with it Roger finished his own drink at a gulp, ordered another, and laid Ruth's letter beside his plate. His eyes were still going over it.