The Buds Are Calling

by Coyne Davies, B.

  Chapter 56

  Petra and Sanjay were staring at the ceiling.

  “So are you going to grant Percy his deepest darkest wish before you lock yourself into matrimonial bliss and take off for your new academic career?” Petra yawned, stretched her arms above her head and pointed her toes. She sighed.

  “No.” Sanjay closed his eyes.

  “You could spend a steamy night in some seedy little lodge in the Catskills. It could be poetic.”

  “No.”

  “He adores you. He pines for you.”

  “Why take the risk?”

  “You take risks all the time. You’re the ultimate opportunist.”

  “I’m not an opportunist.”

  “Then you’re confused.”

  “Hardly as confused as you are. At least I know when I’m confused. And I’m careful.”

  “What’s so careful about screwing anything on two legs?”

  Sanjay opened his eyes, turned his head and glared at her. “Do I screw someone else when I’m having an affair with you?”

  “I don’t know. Do you?”

  “No. I don’t need to do that!”

  “So you’re just serially confused.”

  “I want a family! That’s all. I know this about myself. Is that a crime?”

  “No,” said Petra, sounding bored.

  “You want everything cut and dried. Easily labeled.”

  “Not at all.”

  “What then?” He looked back up at the ceiling.

  “I guess it’s an inconsistency.”

  “There is nothing inconsistent about this.”

  “A denial then.”

  “I am denying nothing. I’m saying some relationships at some times are not worth the risk.”

  “I can be pretty risky,” Petra said.

  “You don’t have that look of desperation, where you know the person has lost all judgment.”

  “Percy has that?” Petra rolled on her side to face him.

  “In spades. He’s worried about getting old.” Sanjay turned again to face her.

  “And I’m not?”

  “If you are, it is not reflected in your personal hygiene.”

  “What the fuck? I take showers.” She sat up and backhanded his thigh.

  “No, no, you misunderstand.” Sanjay laughed. “You don’t worry about your appearance. You barely look in the mirror. You don’t care that every hair is in place. You don’t pluck your eyebrows. You don’t wear expensive aftershave—”

  “I hope not!”

  “You don’t get manicures and pedicures and facials. You don’t spend hours in a sauna at a sports club getting steam-cleaned. You don’t press your T-shirts and wear them tight under your scrubs. Percy does. He even violates his own requirements regarding scent in the workplace. That takes a worried man.”

  Petra pondered this burst of information about a man she’d considered merely bureaucratic, often inflexible and occasionally annoying. Though she did admire his talent for taking on Caldwell. “Then all the more reason to be charitable. You could take pity on him.”

  “I don’t make love out of pity. It’s an insult.”

  “I doubt he’d complain. Or be insulted.”

  “I thought you were the grown-up here.”

  “What’s being grown up got to do with this? It’s about being alive. Having no regrets. Remember? Your words not mine!”

  “Why do you keep carping on about this?” Sanjay asked. “About my sexuality! And about my marriage!” He sat up turned his head away and focused on some imaginary point that excluded her.

  Petra watched him for a few seconds. “I know,” she said, her voice resigned and weary, “I’m being a pest.” She took a long, quiet breath.

  Sanjay said nothing.

  “I’m being a bitch then.”

  His silence was not comforting.

  “I’m going to miss you and it hurts,” she said finally and she lay back on the bed.

  Sanjay looked down at her. Now Petra was looking away and he could see her eyes watering up. He hoped she wouldn’t cry but he leaned down anyway. “You see what I mean by risky,” he said quietly. “It’s not always just my own skin I worry about.”

  Petra pushed him away and sat up again. “I don’t think I can come to your wedding.” She didn’t look at him. “I thought I could. But I can’t.” She was trying very hard not to cry.

  “It’s okay. Don’t worry.” He put his arms around her and felt the warm tears fall on his shoulder. “I’ll miss you too.” And he heard his own voice waver. They sat holding each other for several minutes, Petra weeping audibly and Sanjay mute with sadness.

  Finally Sanjay’s cat wandered in and jumped onto the bed. He rubbed up against Petra, looked Sanjay in the eye and howled. Sanjay got up and padded into the kitchen with Marvin racing ahead to the refrigerator. Petra heard the clatter of a dish, the buzz of a can opener and Marvin meowing every second or so.

  When the all the noise stopped Petra called out, “Maybe Percy would be honored by an invitation.”

  “That’s not a bad idea,” Sanjay called back. “I’ll think about it. I’m going to invite the quiet guy from security, Ray. We talked a lot when I stayed late.”

  “Yeah, he’s a nice guy. Anybody else? How about Damian or some of the execs! Wouldn’t that be a treat?”

  “Well, definitely none of the execs. And certainly not Caldwell. I think they’re all getting nuttier by the day.” Sanjay came back into the bedroom and sat on the bed.

  “I hear Lydia is whispering to the plants now,” Petra said. “Cassie told me she came into the one of the grow rooms talking about weed for horses and then started cooing at the plants. Then again Damian, talks to them like they’re his harem.”

  “I don’t think that’s crazy at all.”

  “Really.”

  “No.”

  “Oh. You think it’s one more piece of reality we just haven’t figured out how to measure yet.”

  “Or maybe it’s something we never get to measure,” Sanjay said.

  Petra was smiling. She enjoyed how unapologetic Sanjay was about his unscientific views.

  “When I was a little boy, before we came to America, my grandmother knew an old woman who talked to plants. She harvested them for medicine and they told her what ailments they were good for. I used to play with her great-granddaughter and she talked to plants too. She wasn’t worried about medicine though. She just talked to them.”

  “What about?”

  Sanjay paused, trying to remember. “The weather, I think.”

  Petra guffawed and then they both started laughing uncontrollably.

  “No, it’s very important for plants,” Sanjay gasped. “And she was always right with forecasts too. She told me the plants were the best forecasters.”

  “So when the dickwad in the White House finally cuts all the funding to NOAA, and the national weather service gets lobotomized, we know who to turn to.”

  “It’s not as crazy as you think.”

  Chapter 57

  Caldwell’s flight from Denver arrived late. Sixty-five minutes late. If he was going to make the dinner party at Guido’s new place, he’d have to hurry. His luggage was minimal; a carry-on leather knapsack from Florence, a gift from Guido himself. Caldwell walked quickly past the baggage claim to the exit. As the automatic doors closed behind him, the coolness of the late afternoon breeze was like heaven. Colorado had been in the grips of an unseasonable heat wave.

  He grabbed the shuttle to the parking lot but the walk to his car was still long and rather uphill. Rebecca or Rachel — he still couldn’t get his new assistant’s name straight — should have arranged for valet parking. He’d have to speak to her. When he reached his SUV, he was out of breath. Sweaty. Maybe he should ask to try out Guido’s marble shower. The old guy boasted about it enough. But the thought made him cringe a little. There was a truck stop just off the interstate, one exit before Hullbrooke. He could shower and buy a new ten-dollar
T-shirt to wear under his $4000 jacket. How au courant!

  Caldwell reached for the car door handle and it opened immediately. He loved biometric technology. So convenient. He needed only his voice and fingerprints, though it was disturbing news about the thieves who chopped some guy’s finger off so they could steal his Mercedes.

  Caldwell got in and told the car to start. It didn’t. Maybe sitting for a week wasn’t good for it. He pressed the start button. The car hesitated but eventually the motor began to purr. He put it in gear, drove out of the airport lot, pulled onto the south ramp and was on the interstate in no time.

  Maybe he could phone Guido and tell him he’d be a little late. Then again, he’d easily shave a good half hour off the trip even with the truck stop. His vehicle was sleek and smooth and there was only one section on the interstate he’d have to watch for troopers. He sped by the traffic. He could even take the old Lusteadt Side Road. He hadn’t been on that in a while, years really, but what was the point of four-wheel drive if you couldn’t take it on a little rough terrain?

  Guido had purchased an old farm about twenty-five minutes east of Hullbrooke. “These perennially privileged and their remote retreats!” Caldwell muttered. The old man was pouring a small fortune into the restoration. Must have been inspired by Lydia’s colonial spread. And he had a condo in the city just like her too. And God knows how many other residences dotted around the globe. Caldwell turned on the sound system. A little easy jazz to take the edge off. When he made his fortune, he wouldn’t spend money on restorations. He’d build new. Clean. Modern. And nowhere remotely bucolic.

  The highway flattened to monotony. Caldwell needed caffeine. He kept his eyes peeled for the turnoff with the trendy café. He couldn’t remember the town’s name and hoped he hadn’t missed it. After about ten minutes the café came into view. Caldwell moved into the slow lane at ninety miles an hour and barely made the exit. He heard a car honk but didn’t bother to look back.

  He parked and headed into the café, where the young blonde barista eyed him with disdain. Caldwell hovered, fanning himself with his credit card while the gray-haired woman ahead of him discussed what kind of milk alternatives might be best for her latte. She settled on half lactose-free, half almond milk. Caldwell rolled his eyes. When got to the head of the queue he said quickly and in a rather loud voice, “I’ll have a triple shot cappuccino and just the foam. I’m not crazy about milk.”

  When Caldwell went back to his SUV, cappuccino in hand, the vocal “start” command still didn’t work. He pushed the button and the engine began, albeit with the same hesitation he’d noted at the airport.

  Back on the highway, Caldwell wondered why Guido moved into the area at all. It wasn’t as if CannRose was his biggest investment. All that blather about an old widower needing distractions. Was he really just a lonely old man? Something about Guido’s involvement was becoming disturbing. Maybe it was his just going ahead and purchasing the seventy-five-acre lot next door to the facility that bugged Caldwell. Or maybe it was Guido’s plan to build a new CannRose marijuana facility on it — ten times the size and without any license — and temporarily purpose it for herbal supplements and teas. They could run it at less than a quarter capacity, enough to pay the bills but be ready and way ahead of the other producers when the state let them expand. Or when recreational marijuana got the okay. Either way it could be churning out cannabis products within the time it took to grow and process a single crop. Maybe, and Caldwell tapped on the steering wheel as he had this rare moment of self-reflection, maybe what he really didn’t like was that he hadn’t thought of this first. Guido made him feel like he was losing his edge. Losing it to an old man. Hmm. Caldwell would be an old man himself someday. Perhaps he should be inspired.

  Caldwell drove for another hour until he got to the truck stop. He showered and even found a T-shirt that was better than just plain black. It had Almost There, Never Where written on it in blocky white type. It sounded obscure and possibly philosophical. Perfect. If he’d had time he might have borrowed someone’s cigarette at the truck stop and burned a couple of holes in it. He’d have laundered it too. As it was he simply put it on, and it looked good enough under the gray linen jacket. He rolled the shirt he’d picked up in Colorado into a ball and stuffed it into the bottom of his knapsack. When he got back in the SUV, he didn’t bother with the voice commands.

  Just outside Hullbrooke, Caldwell noticed the SUV was sluggish. And the radio took a few seconds to come on. The turn signal on the dash didn’t go off immediately either once he’d rounded a corner. The car needed servicing. He’d have to borrow one of Lydia’s SUVs. Why she kept a five-bay garage full in the middle of the countryside was beyond him. “They were Jordan’s,” she’d said, as if that explained everything.

  It was dark when he turned onto the Lusteadt Side Road. Branches overhanging and growing into the roadway touched the vehicle on both sides. This would be fun. He could regale them at dinner about his little adventure. About four miles along, as the rough road cut through the hills with granite outcroppings, the dashboard on the SUV suddenly went into digital meltdown. The speedometer swung wildly to 180 mph. Caldwell couldn’t have been doing more than twenty-five. The other lights and icons started flashing too and the car shuddered. Caldwell slammed on the brakes. They worked begrudgingly. The power steering was gone as well. Caldwell put all his strength into the wheel and the brakes and brought the car to a halt on the side of the road. He barely avoided driving it into a huge ditch.

  “Shit!”

  The dash lights were still flashing wildly. He turned the car off. Maybe it just needed a reset. He waited a minute in total darkness then pressed the start button. The dash lights came on spastically. The engine did nothing. He waited several minutes in the darkness, occasionally trying to start the car, but still nothing happened.

  “Shit! Shit! Shit!” he screamed as he rapidly punched the start button three more times.

  Now he would have to call Guido. And a tow truck. Who could he get to pick him up? Lydia probably. But she might not know the side road. Maybe Greg or Lazlo or the security guy at CannRose. Yeah. The facility was only twenty minutes away. He pulled out his phone. There was no reception.

  “Goddamn it!” He pounded his fist into the passenger seat. It could be hours, possibly days before anyone would come along this road. He sat fuming, then decided he might as well start walking. At least it wasn’t freezing outside. He made a note to himself never to take the side road in winter. He opened the glove compartment and felt around for a flashlight. Maybe Lydia had put one there in one of her taking-care-of-him moments. Nothing. Then he remembered there was one on his phone. As he got out of the car he stopped suddenly. What if the car wouldn’t lock? Or if it did, what if he couldn’t get back in? This was ridiculous. He felt a twinge in his chest. Too much coffee. He should stop eating red meat too. He should be a vegetarian. Better yet, a vegan. He reached into the back seat for his knapsack. It wasn’t ever meant for hiking, but like his phone flashlight, it would do. He put his arm through one strap and closed the car door. It didn’t lock. Good. He set out along the road.

  He hadn’t gone very far, not more than a hundred yards or so, when he heard the faint noise of a motor behind him, growing louder. Sounded like a truck. Caldwell was overjoyed. He could flag it down and maybe the driver could take him to Guido’s. He was going in the right direction. He should run back to the car. The driver would see right away his car had broken down and he’d stop for sure. He might even know how to fix it, though that was unlikely.

  As Caldwell ran he could see the glow from the vehicle’s headlights starting to appear above the hilltop. He ran a little faster and then suddenly he tripped. His foot had landed in a pothole. He scrambled to regain his balance. The knapsack fell off his right arm, he tripped again and the phone flew out of his hand to the center of the road. It shone, reflecting the truck’s headlights. Caldwell took a step and reached down for it.

  It was
while he was picking the phone up that he realized the truck wasn’t slowing down. In fact it was speeding up coming down the hill. Gravity, thought Caldwell. “Oh my God! Gravity.” It was his last utterance. He felt the full brunt of the truck’s momentum. It was breathtaking. Caldwell heard smashing and cracking in some vague, distant dimension, and he heard thunder too. Then he was airborne in the dazzling lights and out of the sky he saw a fork of lightning coming his way. He felt his chest explode into a thousand pieces. They flew at some marvelous warp speed, sparkling with visions and voices. This was bigger than anything he’d ever experienced. Extraordinary! He had no other thoughts for it. And then it was very, very silent. And dark.

  Chapter 58

  Teddy Voik and his parents lived on a farm near the Lusteadt Side Road. Teddy’s dad told him at breakfast to go check the fields before he went to school. He wanted to know how much got washed out from the rain the night before.

  “All spring we had no goddamn rain! This month everything’s washin’ out. I don’t know why I stay here. Not makin’ any money this year that’s for sure.”

  Teddy’s mom stamped her cigarette out with a little more force than usual. “You could say that about the last five years.”

  “A lesson to ya, Teddy,” his father said. “Stay in school. Don’t end up like your old man.”

  “I wanna farm, though.”

  “Family farm’s a dead end, Teddy,” his mother sniffed.

  Teddy shrugged and got up from the table. “I just don’t wanna be stuck workin’ in a building or sittin’ at some desk all day.”

  “Maybe you should go work at that marijuana place. Make us all rich!”

  “Jesus! Don’t tell him stuff like that.” Teddy’s mother took out another cigarette and tapped it on the table. “You know Mort?”

  “Yeah. Does janitorial work or somethin’ there?”

  “Somethin’ like that. So he got stopped in Branxton County and ’cause the asshole cop smelled pot in his car, they strip search him right on the side of the road. Didn’t matter what he told ’em.”