following you, Bliss. Why would I be following you?”
“I don’t know, Chesley, but you pulled out behind me from the wooded area and nearly blinded me with your headlights.”
“Ah, I was just re-setting my GPS. As I said, we’re trying to familiarize ourselves with Lockport and I was cruising that section of town to see if any properties are for sale.”
I know a liar when I hear one. But, I still had to drop off pictures at Dougal’s, so I let Chesley off the hook for the moment.
“Give your mother my best regards, and tell her I hope we’ll meet again before you leave town,” I told him.
Chesley made a dash for the stairs. The rubber soles of his white Nikes squeaked on the wooden steps, and my leather boots clattered close on his heels. At the bottom, he didn’t wait for further pleasantries, just ran for the Beetle parked in front of the building. I noticed every window was opened wide on the convertible.
Performing an expert U-turn in front of the police station, Chesley headed north in the direction of the Super 8 Motel.
“Well, good night, Bliss. See you on Thursday,” Garnet called to me as she locked the street-level door to her studio. She sped down the sidewalk, her short blond curls glowing under the streetlights like the head of a marigold on a slender stalk.
It was another mild night and I left my face shield up to allow the silky air to enfold my face as I made the short drive through peaceful streets.
The peace only lasted until I walked through Dougal’s front door.
“Where the hell have you been? I’ve been calling you for hours and you didn’t pick up. This is a critical stage and we need to be in constant communication. Well?”
“I left my phone in the bike, I guess. Here you go.” I pushed the camera into his hands and ran to the kitchen. “I’m starving. I don’t know when I last ate, so get out of my way. Oh, and I got fired today.”
“If you’d get a phone with a camera feature, you could email me the pictures.” Dougal fiddled with the camera as he followed me.
“If I had a pig with wings, I’d be rich. Then I could buy myself a brand new Smartphone. And I got fired today.”
Dougal was panning through the latest pictures. “Didn’t you take any of the interior of the spathe? Oh, here they are. Did you smell anything when you had your head in there?”
“I didn’t stick my head in. You said not to touch the plant, so I just aimed the camera inside and hoped for the best. I got fired today.”
I had been pulling out various covered bowls and plastic containers. One looked like mashed potatoes with gravy, so I nuked that first after spooning it into a glass bowl from the cupboard. No sense ingesting all those toxins from the plastic. Figuring I had to be dehydrated too, I poured myself a glass of water from the reverse osmosis tap.
“Everything looks like it’s coming along on schedule. Did you see any signs of collapse, either at the top of the spadix or at the spathe level?”
“What you see in the pictures is the status at about six o’clock this evening.” My stomach must have shrunk. After swirling the gravy into the potatoes and eating it with a tablespoon, and downing a second glass of water, I wasn’t sure I could manage the chicken breast revolving inside the microwave.
Dougal jumped up as the timer went off. Sticking a fork into the chicken, he handed it to me, and said, “Come with me. I need to see through your eyes.”
He hauled me to the sun room while I nibbled on the chicken.
“Now, look at Thor. Look hard. How does he compare with Sif? Take your time, but, for instance, is he as tall? Does Thor’s spathe grow up the spadix as tightly, or does Sif’s spathe look a little looser and can you see the red colour inside?”
“Okay. As near as I can tell, they look about the same height, although Sif’s spathe looks a little frillier at the top and is starting to curl outward. And, yes, as you can see by the pictures, the inside is a rich burgundy colour. By the way, I got fired from the library today.”
Simon was sitting on the top perch outside his cage and had been mercifully silent. Now he decided to join in the conversation, if you call clucking like a broody hen conversation.
Dougal looked over at Simon and said, fondly, “That’s enough, buddy. Maybe if you ask nicely, Bliss will share her chicken with you.”
“Bliss bloody well won’t,” I replied and moved a few feet farther away from the perch.
“Aw, come on, darlin’, take one for the team,” begged the bird in Dougal’s wheedling tones.
Dougal reached over and broke off a piece of chicken and handed the morsel to Simon.
“Does Simon know he’s eating poultry, effectively committing cannibalism?” I asked.
“Simon isn’t poultry. Now, can you pay attention here?”
“I never knew it could be like this,” Simon said in a female voice. It sounded familiar, probably Melanie again. I glared at Dougal, but since he was such a self-absorbed snot, he didn’t notice. At least the parrot wasn’t yelling about pot.
I took a closer look at Dougal. “Hey, what happened to you? You look, uh, not bad today.”
Actually, he looked better than I had seen him in over a year. His hair was expertly buzzed, without the dips and rises I left when I used the manual clippers on him. And he had doffed his usual baggy shorts and stretched tee-shirt for pressed trousers and a short-sleeved red shirt. He still wore sandals, but his feet were …
“Did you get a pedicure? Dougal, you’ve been out!”
“Calm down, will you. I finally found a hairdresser in town who would send someone in to cut my hair. She also gave me a pedicure and manicure.” He stretched out his hands and I could see that someone had filed and buffed the nails.
“That’s wonderful. You’re really coming along.”
“Yeah, I’m doing great,” he said modestly. “Pretty soon, you won’t need to run my errands or pick up my food for me. Although, I’ll still need someone to weed my gardens and cut the grass. And take the trash to the curb.”
“You honour me.” It looked like the pittance I earned from Dougal would soon be a half-pittance. Well, things were changing fast and I had better be ready to make the most of the emerging opportunities. I made a mental note to find a nice park and stake out my bench for the winter.
Dougal assumed his lecturing stance, or, as I liked to put it, went into snore mode. “From these latest pictures, I now believe that Thor and Sif will flower within an hour or two of each other, with Sif perhaps slightly ahead. This couldn’t be better. The female flowers mature first and about twenty-four hours later the male flowers produce pollen. I’ll gather Thor’s pollen and Glory will do the same for Sif’s.” Dougal put out his hand as though to touch his palm to Thor, but stopped short of making actual contact. “I’m going to be videotaping it all on a time sequence. Are you getting this, Bliss?”
I nodded, although it was beginning
