Warm Bodies Page 0,34

'That isn't a bad job . . . but I wonder why you don't join your father in Construction. I'm sure he could use more young men working on that all-important corridor.'

'He's asked me to, but ah . . . I don't know, I just don't think Construction is the place for me right now. I like working with plants.'

'Plants,' he repeats.

'I just think in times like these there's something meaningful about growing things. The soil's so depleted it's hard to get much out of it, but it's pretty satisfying when you finally do see some green coming through that grey crust.'

Mr Grigio stops chewing, blank-faced. Julie looks uneasy. 'Remember that little shrub we had in our living room back east?' she says. 'The one that looked like a skinny little tree?'

'Yes . . .' her dad says. 'What about it?'

'You loved that thing. Don't act like you don't get gardening.'

'That was your mother's plant.'

'But you're the one who loved it.' She turns to me. 'So Dad used to be quite the interior designer, believe it or not; he had our old house decked out like an IKEA showroom, all this modern glass and metal stuff, which my mom couldn't stand - she wanted everything earthy and natural, all hemp fibre and sustainable hardwoods . . .'

Mr Grigio's face looks tight. Julie either doesn't notice or doesn't care.

'. . . so to fight back, she buys this lush, bright green shrub, puts it in a huge wicker pot, and sticks it right in the middle of Dad's perfect white-and-silver living room.'

'It wasn't my living room, Julie,' he interjects. 'As I recall we took a vote on every piece of furniture, and you always sided with me.'

'I was like eight, Dad, I probably liked pretending I lived in a spaceship. Anyway, Mom buys this plant and they argue about it for a week - Dad says it's "incongruous", Mom says either the plant stays or she goes - ' She hesitates momentarily. Her father's face gets tighter. 'That, um, that went on for a while,' she resumes, 'but then Mom being Mom, she got obsessed with something else and quit watering the plant. So when it started dying, guess who adopted the poor thing?'

'I wasn't going to have a dead shrub as our living room's centrepiece. Someone had to take care of it.'

'You watered it every day, Dad. You gave it plant food and pruned it.'

'Yes, Julie, that's how you keep a plant alive.'

'Why can't you admit you loved the stupid plant, Dad?' She regards him with a mixture of amazement and frustration. 'I don't get it, what is so wrong with that?'

'Because it's absurd,' he snaps, and the mood of the room suddenly shifts. 'You can water and prune a plant but you cannot "love" a plant.'

Julie opens her mouth to speak, then shuts it.

'It's a meaningless decoration. It sits there consuming time and resources, and then one day it decides to die, no matter how much you watered it. It's absurd to attach an emotion to something so pointless and brief.'

There are a few long seconds of silence. Julie breaks away from her father's stare and pokes at her rice. 'Anyway,' she mumbles, 'my point was, Perry . . . that Dad used to be a gardener. So you should share gardening stories.'

'I'm interested in a lot more than gardening,' I say, racing to change the subject.

'Oh?' Mr Grigio says.

'Yeah, ah . . . motorcycles? I salvaged a BMW R 1200 R a while ago and I've been working on bulletproofing it, getting it combat-ready just in case.'

'You have mechanical experience, then. That's good. We have a shortage of mechanics in the Armoury right now.'

Julie rolls her eyes and shovels beans into her mouth.

'I'm also spending a lot of time on my marksmanship. I've been requesting extra assignments from school and I've gotten pretty good with the M40.'

'Hey, Perry,' Julie says, 'why don't you tell Dad about your other plans? Like how you've always wanted to - '

I step on her foot. She glares at me.

'Always wanted to what?' her father asks.

'I don't - I'm not really . . .' I take a drink of water. 'I'm not really sure yet, sir, to be honest. I'm not sure what I want to do with my life. But I'm sure I'll have it figured out by the time I start high school.'

What were you going to say? R wonders aloud, interrupting the scene again, and