sympathy.
“A universe of cosmic emptiness is not a meritocracy,” I informed her sadly as Melanie kicked at Nigel again and made contact this time.
Grace beamed at Melanie. “I think this warrants a high five. Girl power!”
Melanie regarded Grace’s hand like it was coated in biochemical waste. “No thanks,” she said. “I don’t subscribe to social conventions that involve touching other people.”
“Guys,” Zach said in a nasal, placating tone. He said he had a cold, but nobody believed him. “What are we doing?”
Nigel had led us to the door of the greenhouse.
“So get this, okay, and hold on to your mofo-ing socks, because shit, groundskeeper-bro has a key to pretty much all the toys around here, including—” He nodded at the construction shed. “We just gotta steal that shit, am I right?”
“Let’s think about this for a moment,” Zach said, his voice cracking.
“No thinking necessary. Step aside, my brosefs from other mosefs.” Nigel brushed past Marty and me. “I got this.”
Before we could say a word, he’d already knocked.
Seconds later, the door opened, revealing an old man in a puffy blue jacket, with a tuft of nose hair peeking out of his right nostril. The old man squinted at Nigel in confusion. “And who might you be?” he asked, full of patience.
Nigel looked affronted. “Yo, could ask you the same question.” To us, Nigel whispered, “He’s not wearing his glasses.”
“I misplaced them,” the old man said, in a tone of utter despondence. He scratched at his nose hair.
“Gerry,” Nigel said, putting a hand on the old man’s shoulder. “It’s me. Nigel. Your, like, favorite worker. Confidante. Mentee. Fellow Christ lover.”
Gerry’s eyes widened in recognition. “You drowned the basil,” he said in reproach. “And the radishes. And the gardenias.”
Grace snorted in disbelief. “Don’t complain. You gave him the job. You got what you were asking for.”
The old man blinked mournfully. “The radishes were to be a gift for the director.”
“I would’ve done better with the gardenias,” Grace said.
“Sir,” Zach interceded, stepping forward. “I know it’s awfully rude of us to drop by unannounced, but—God—it’s really very cold out here.”
The old man frowned at Zach’s feverish complexion, chewed at the inside of his lip for a few long seconds. “Well. Well, all right then, son, why didn’t you say so?”
He invited us into his closet-sized office, packed with books on gardening and forestry, in addition to a copy of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, which I naturally gravitated toward. There was only one chair, so we had to stand while he fiddled around with a coffeemaker on a cluttered tray-top table in the corner. Nigel pointed at the wall to our backs, where a dozen different keys hung.
One of those keys would open the shed. We could grab the construction workers’ ladders and scale the walls. We could be free.
That was Zach’s plan.
Nigel nodded at the keys, meaning he needed a distraction, so the rest of us huddled around the groundskeeper while he stood at the coffeemaker.
“This old thing,” he mumbled under his breath, and tapped the coffeemaker on the side a few times. “Should’ve gotten a Cuisinart, but Lizzie buys me a Mr. Coffee. What are you to do?”
“Sir, would you like help locating your glasses?” Zach asked, and my stomach initiated circus acrobatics mode. I pretended to bury myself in Leaves of Grass, in a collection of poems called Calamus, until for once I was no longer pretending, until the stanzas and poems all ran together. . .
I proceed for all who are or have been young men . . . You are often more bitter than I can bear, you burn and sting me . . . Yet you are beautiful to me . . . you make me . . . think of death, Death is beautiful from you, (what indeed is finally beautiful except death and love?) I think it is not for life I am chanting here my chant of lovers, I think it must be for death . . . Sometimes with one I love I fill myself with rage for fear I effuse unreturn’d love, But now I think there is no unreturn’d love, the pay is certain one way or another, (I loved a certain person ardently and my love was not return’d, Yet out of that I have written these songs.)
“Sir,” Zach repeated, and I was back in the groundskeeper’s office. Marty threw me a look of concern but I shrugged him off, slipped the book back onto a nearby shelf. I was hot.