Ernie, who was standing right there, just shrugged and smiled. He’d never heard anything about a sanitation plan either. “I just do the cleaning, empty the garbage, you know. Sounds mighty impressive though.”
Ms. Ligner did not hide her disgust. “You still have bugs here. Are you expecting to sell product with bugs?” She stared at Cassie. “Sell it to sick people?”
Damian showed up at this point and Cassie was impressed that he showed no signs of attraction to her. “This is an organic operation. Organic’s a lot safer than the crap that isn’t. So the ecology of the flower rooms includes pests. Also includes their predators. And they don’t get harvested.” He paused. “So they don’t end up in product.”
Ms. Ligner almost snorted and then wanted to know what they were planning to do with the moldy crop that appeared to have landed in the bottling room. “There were bugs there too. Is that part of the organic approach?”
The bottling room wasn’t Damian’s territory, he confessed, but he assumed they’d be tossing the crop. He personally would never allow its sale. Then she wanted to know whose territory it was. Damian told her Caldwell oversaw most things but since he wasn’t there she should talk to Terry, the quality assurance officer. She stalked off.
The organic approach was news to Cassie but she didn’t let on. Later she heard Damian saying to one of the cultivation assistants, “Fuckin’ bureaucracy. Uptight ho. Man, this state sucks.”
After that, Cassie couldn’t decide whether the inspector thought they were all morons or criminals. Likely both. What Cassie observed was that most men in the facility were eager like puppy dogs when Ms. Ligner appeared in the morning, but by the afternoon they all looked as if they’d been publicly flogged or humiliated in some other equally unpleasant fashion.
Then Cassie heard that Ms. Ligner would be recommending the DOH withdraw CannRose-Medi’s registration.
The worst had happened.
The next morning, Caldwell, having heard the news from Lazlo, came raging into the facility and Cassie was the first person he saw. “You!” he yelled at her, “why did you tell that moronic teenager from the DOH we were organically certified when we’re not.”
“I-I never . . . I never mentioned organic anything. I never said that.”
“Well somebody did. And because it’s not true yet, she’s going to use it to crucify—” But before he could finish his thought, he caught sight of the quality assurance officer, Terry, coming through the back entrance, sporting his trademark tight jeans and Jimmy Dean–style leather jacket. Early on, Lazlo had hired his daughter’s boyfriend because he’d briefly had a job in auto-parts quality assurance and Lazlo thought it was a great fit. But Ms. Ligner had pretty much destroyed any confidence Terry might have developed about his job. She’d talked about things he’d never heard of and couldn’t even pronounce in some cases.
Caldwell reddened at the sorry sight of him and started slowly shaking his head. He took a few quick steps toward Terry and told him he needed to pack up his things and get the hell out that very moment, for the good of company. “Please, do not show your face here again. Ever!” Then Caldwell saw Greg and pulled him aside none too politely, and in a voice loud enough that Cassie could hear all the way down by the mother pods told him he needed to hire some people who were “actually qualified for their fucking jobs.”
Chapter 24
“You can’t quit that grow-op place, I want you to get me some weed.” Petra’s mom was sitting up in the hospital bed. A hospital attendant had just given her a can of juice and a straw. Petra was fiddling with her phone and looked up to see her mother struggling. She was trying to hold the can steady between her chest and the bed tray and open it with the hand that still worked. Petra jumped up, annoyed with the attendant who hadn’t bothered to open the can and with herself for not paying attention.
“Mom, getting weed doesn’t work like that. I can’t just bring it home. And I’m quitting.”
“That’s ridiculous. Why won’t you stay there? It can’t be that bad.”
“It’s a fiasco. They just wanted a token scientist with some letters after their name to raise the place’s legitimacy for the DOH. They haven’t paid any attention to what I need for the lab. They can’t even get the countertops right. They don’t have a clue. Besides, someone has to look after you now.”
“I’m perfectly fine. Just a little setback. And I don’t need you moping around the house to make me feel worse.” Doreen smiled at her own mischievous remark, but the left side of her face went nowhere. Petra still couldn’t get used to it. It was like one half of her mother was carved stone. How does a person deal with that? Petra managed a little chuckle but it was difficult.
“I want you to get me some pot. It’s supposed to help. And besides it’s about time I tried some. I wanna get wasted! Damn fifties. We never got to try anything.”
The doctor walked in, the same beautiful doctor with the black hair and blue, blue eyes that Petra had wanted to ask out the year before. Her mother smiled at him, her face even more lopsided.
“So you never got to try anything?” he asked shaking his head in forlorn sympathy.
“Not a damn thing. Especially if you were a girl. Had to be goodie-goodie. God forbid you had sex. You’d get pregnant because nobody knew what the hell they were doing. Now I see all those programs on sex and the things you can do.”
“What programs on sex?” Petra was squinting at her mother. “Have you been watching pornography?”
“No! Educational programs. PBS, BBC. Discovery maybe. I don’t know. But I’d have never believed you could do all those things with somebody else. Some of those programs were thirty years old. Where the hell was I? Your father was never very inventive. And now it’s too late. I’ll never get to try any of it. So I want to get some pot.”
“It’s never too late, Doreen.” The doctor sat down in the chair beside her bed, picked up her right hand and held it gently. Her mother’s crooked smile now looked like a crazed and obscene leer. Petra had to wonder where all this was going. “So do we need to have the talk about safe sex?” the doctor said with perhaps exaggerated gravitas.
“Oh for crying out loud!” Her mother threw up her hand.
“Doreen, some of the retirement homes are riddled with STDs. I’m not kidding.”
“I wouldn’t even want to think about that. Ugh! Some toothless old goat, lousy digestion and bad breath, snuffling around all over me and having a heart attack.”
“I’d say you’ve already done some thinking about it.”
“I was just trying to make a point. All I wanna do is try some pot. And it won’t give me STDs.”
“No. But it has an aphrodisiac effect I hear. It could be a slippery slope,” he said, smiling.
“Would you be okay with weed for her?” Petra asked.
“Well as you know, reports are mixed. It’s supposed to help with the healing process.” He turned back to Petra’s mother. “And your stroke was a mild one. But there’s also evidence that smoking weed, just like tobacco, increases the stroke risk.”
“So I’ll have it in brownies. And fudge!”
“It affects the vascular system no matter how you take it. And you should watch the sugar intake. You can have it in a tea, you know.”
“So you’ll give me a prescription?”
“I won’t deny you the registration but I want you to think very carefully about it.”
“I’ve already thought about it. I want to get absolutely wasted at least once in my life. If I die, I die. If I live, I want to try ayahuasca next.”
“I can’t help you out with that. You’re on your own.”
“I like being on my own.”
Turning to Petra again, the doctor said, “Your mother is out of control. She may need supervision.”
“I do not!”
“Good night, Doreen. I’ll bring the forms for you tomorrow so you can get wasted. Properly.” The doctor got up and headed out the door smiling.
“Yes I can quit. And we can get a little greenhouse and grow weed in the backyard. Always could if you’d really wanted to try it. You just had to get registered.”
“Didn’t see the point until now. But you have to stick with that job. I don’t want you underfoot.”
Chapter 25
Lily, the lovely and charming CannRose receptionist, was quietly ordering shot after shot until she was bleary-eyed and slurring. The rest of the CannRose crew, a dozen or so, sitting around four tables pushed together at Chelsea’s, didn’t seem to notice. But Ernie did and if he recalled correctly, she’d given birth to her second child only a few months ago. He wondered if he was witnessing a total disintegration, a boost for workplace gossip for sure, especially if she lurched out of Chelsea’s with one of the guys who was eyeing her from across the way.
Lily was the good girl of CannRose. Being a weed company, the execs and everybody working there milked all the respectability available. And Lily was the blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl next door, the congenial wife, the good mother, pure in practically every way, uncorrupted and surely incorruptible. But there’s nothing a small town relishes like seeing some respectable paragon stumble, the more celestial and highly regarded in their original unsullied state the better.
Ernie finished the dregs of his beer, got up and dragged his chair over to her. He sat down, blocking the view of the interested onlookers. “So how you doin’ tonight, Lily?”
“Well, Ernie, I’m pretty much fucked. How are you?”
“I’m good.”
“Will you take me home?”
“Funny you should ask. I was just going to offer.”
“You’re always so kind. Happy too. How do you do that?”
“I’m resourceful.”
“Not just high all the time? I tried that. It doesn’t work you know. Not for me. I just forget things. And then there’s trouble because I’ve forgotten something. Like picking the kids up. But I don’t worry about that anymore.”
When Ernie got Lily safely into his car and started driving in the direction of her house, she started to cry. She wanted to go to his place. She couldn’t go home.
Ernie stopped the car. “Have you eaten anything today?”
No, she had not. She didn’t think she could. Everything was done, including her appetite. So Ernie asked if she had a friend he could call and she did. It came out she was staying with her best friend from high school. Where were the kids? Oh, the kids were with him — her husband — and his mother.
Ernie heaved a sigh. That last thing he needed was Lily’s husband pounding his door down or bringing his rifle over for target practice. The guy belonged to the group of hunters and fishermen who kept Ernie’s freezer full of wild game and fish in return for the prepared goodies.
So Ernie called her friend, Bonnie, and it turned out she hadn’t had much to eat either. The result was dinner at his place for three.
Shortly after she arrived, Bonnie pulled Ernie aside. “I’d hazard it’s postpartum depression but she was fine with the first one. She’s getting help but I don’t think it works very well.”
“The husband?”
“He’s a peach. Really. Never heard an unkind word between them. I didn’t expect she’d get so hammered. I thought she was going to Chelsea’s for a beer. One beer.”
“Maybe the food will help.” So Ernie prepared a light, high-protein feast. To start with there was osuimono, a clear soup with clams, followed by baked lemon-pepper and wild garlic flounder served with lightly steamed bok choy. Some left over quinoa with fresh tomatoes and basil tossed with Dijon dressing made a cheerful addition to the dinner.
Lily began to talk. Nothing was as it was supposed to be. Not least was the fiasco that was CannRose. Her job weighed heavily on her. She was most people’s first contact with the grow facility. Perfection was required. Everybody depended on her to be pleasant. All the time. It should have been impossible because nothing there was working. There was nothing for sale yet. People in town kept asking her when they could buy product. And she had nothing to say. And now the DOH might be pulling their registration. And everyone was supposed to be so up! So positive. And she was supposed to be up, even with Caldwell yelling at people. It wasn’t possible. It wasn’t possible for her to keep this up.
There was the other matter too. Life. All the things that were supposed to be good — were they? The news and the world. How could anyone be happy? The world was a horrible place to bring children into. It had been a mistake. Everything was failing. The climate. Fires everywhere. All the refugees. Eternal wars. Humans were the cruelest living beings. There was no point to any of it. Life was random and mean and meaningless. God was dead. Definitely dead. Without a requiem. Without anybody even noticing really.
Ernie cleared his throat. There wasn’t much he could say. Existential and spiritual crises were not his area of expertise. His life had been focused on succeeding, and then immediate survival, and now he was simply enjoying resisting all societal expectations.
“Love!” Bonnie piped up. “Don’t you love your kids?”
“Oh, I love them,” Lily said stonily. “I’ve fobbed this existence onto them. By rights they should hate me. Maybe they will.”
“Maybe they won’t see it that way,” Bonnie said.
There was silence for a few moments.
“I love this food,” Lily said suddenly. “And it doesn’t come with sorrow attached, does it? Maybe for the clams and fish. But not for me, at least not for me on this one.” She looked at Ernie, smiling. “It’s just food. We eat it and that’s it.”
Lily’s drunkenness, or possible over-medication or under-medication, did not really abate during the evening, but Ernie was glad he’d cooked. It seemed to cheer her up a little at least. As she and Bonnie were leaving, Lily took his hands and looked at them closely. “These are great hands,” she said. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
Ernie tidied up the kitchen, finished up the cider he’d been drinking with dinner and then went to check on his roof garden. The tomatoes were in very good shape, the Asian eggplant was looking spectacular. He also had three marijuana plants just starting to flower and two little ones he’d cloned from one of them. He brought the little ones inside and put them under a set of lights he’d arranged for the purpose. Ernie had found he quite liked smoothies made with a couple of fresh marijuana leaves in them so he wanted to keep plants going well into the winter. He had no idea if there were health benefits from consuming fresh product. He just felt better for some reason. It could even have been the ritual.
One might assume, given where he worked, it would be easy to obtain fresh leaves every week or so. But no. He’d have to be registered specifically for fresh product to buy it commercially and that would require him to have MS or some other vile ailment. It had to be complicated. Then again it didn’t take a wizard to see that his five plants looked a whole lot healthier than most of the plants at the facility. Ernie was fast turning into a food snob. He worked with only the best raw materials.
Sometimes Ernie missed his days of just living out of his station wagon. It was so simple and uncluttered. At these times he cautioned himself he was romanticizing and tried to remember how crappy it had been waking up if he’d had to spend the night inside the car; it took an hour just to get all the kinks and cramps out. But if it was a clear night, nothing could compare to staring up into the sky as he drifted off. So on the occasions when he was nostalgic, like he was that night, he moved his foam onto the Rent-All roof and parked it right between the zucchini and the pole beans.
Ernie liked to think he was immune to people’s moods and he imagined that Lenore had helped make him that way. But as he lay there staring up at Lyra, the starry harp, the sadness of Lily preyed upon him. She was probably the polar opposite of Lenore and maybe that’s why she was contagio
us. Her bleak observations about CannRose had settled right into his solar plexus. He’d always seen his job as a bit of a joke, stickin’ it to the man in a way, but now he realized he’d grown fond of it. Sure the people were fractious, the place was chaotic and there was pervasive ineptitude, but that was the beauty of it. The sad part was it just might not make it. Lily was right. Nothing seemed to work there. And what if it failed altogether and they shut it down? Ernie didn’t want to see it go. CannRose was his new dysfunctional family and family comes first.
#
About three weeks after Ernie made the supper for three, Lily leaned over her desk and told him in a whisper she’d moved back in with her husband and kids. Then she winked at him. She chitchatted with everybody as if nothing had ever been awry, and she seemed happy. You never could tell, but he liked to think everything was good now. Of course there was plenty to talk about that day. There was an element of merriment in the air, Caldwell’s mood notwithstanding. The Guardians of Jude and Ezekiel had struck again.
Ernie had to hand it to the Guardians. They’d opted for inventiveness over shock and awe this time. But it disappointed him somewhat. It had a ring of the cliché, a sort of morbid adolescent kitsch about it. Perhaps their apocalyptic visual sense had finally stalled in the margin of diminishing returns. Ezekiel and Jude needed a break. Or in some rejuvenating move, perhaps a new inexperienced crew was in charge of public action. It could easily have been mistaken for an enthusiastic Halloween display. Regardless, people did slow down to look at the creation. Perhaps it was the pneumatic Santa modified into a crooked horned devil that repeatedly rose up to its full height and girth only to collapse approximately every two minutes, or the makeshift artificial marijuana plant between its teeth giving it a nineteenth-century artistic air that made the rubberneckers drive off laughing. Or perhaps it was the poor paint job on the six skinned goat heads churned out by a 3D printer and impaled on ten-foot spikes, which occasionally interfered with the devil’s crotch, that broke everybody up.
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