Flying in the Heart of the Lafayette Escadrille

by James Van Pelt

“Yes.” Gregory didn’t know what to add to that. After he had put her on the bed, he lay beside her. The light from the window shone off her eyes, and he marveled at how lifelike, how utterly human, she appeared. He watched her breasts, perfectly formed, for a rise of breath that never came. The bedroom was utterly silent, and it made him remember Sara the last weeks before she left when she would lie beside him, awake but not speaking, aware that he was watching her, not asleep and barely breathing. Stiff, weighing down the mattress and mentally not in the room, the plant reminded him of her, so he reached across her belly and caressed her side. The plant/woman rolled into him and wrapped her arms around him, startling him so that he almost jumped from the bed, but he didn’t. She was warm and felt good, her skin soft and firm; her smell, again he noticed, like wet spring grass. She pulled him tighter. For a long time he did nothing but let himself be held.

  Jermaine rested his chin on the table, a posture Gregory had seen him in before but that had always unnerved him. A grown man shouldn’t look comfortable that way. When Jermaine spoke, his chin anchored to the table, the top of his head bobbed up and down like a talking clam in a comic. “Give her a week. In a week she’ll be at her best. Don’t plan on working then, either. Stay home. She won’t get any better than that.”

  At the bar, behind Jermaine, Gregory saw women sitting, glasses beside them. All were turned so they were looking into the tables, but shadows hid their faces. Jermaine glanced over his shoulder, then put his chin back on the table. “Beautiful, aren’t they?” he said.

  “Yes, they are.”

  “You’re lucky now. Got one of your own at home.”

  Surprised, Gregory said, “Don’t you too?”

  Jermaine sighed and closed his eyes. After a few moments, Gregory thought he had gone to sleep. Then Jermaine said, “They all go rotten, you know, Bucko. All rotten.” He rolled his head to the side and opened one eye. “Pick ‘em while they’re fresh and dump ’em before they go bad. I haven’t had one in the house for six months. Before that I went through dozens, one every two weeks.” He covered his face with his hands and kept talking, muffled. “I fell in love with everyone, too. I know that sounds stupid, but I did. They’re dead, you know, or dying. As soon as they’re plucked. It was like loving someone with a terminal illness.” His breath caught, and Gregory wondered if he was crying. He wondered what he should do. Jermaine continued, “Sometimes I come here just to look, but underneath the air I smell ’em going bad. It’s all bad, bad, bad.” He drank deeply again.

  Gregory saw a man walk down the row of girls at the bar, pause at one, look her over and then motion to the bartender who took the offered credit card and handed the man a key. He disappeared through a door at the end of the bar where Gregory supposed one of the girl’s “sisters” waited. Gregory had never “gotten lucky” at the fern bar.

  “If you feel that way, why don’t you go out with a real woman?” Gregory asked. “I mean, Sara and I had a lot of problems, but we were together.”

  “Doesn’t matter, Bucko. You hold them long enough, their love rots away.”

  “Jesus, that’s depressing. So what’s left if nothing lasts?”

  Jermaine said, “Lots of sex. Sex, sex, sex till it hurts. And even that’s a short haul, but maybe, you know, you could tie into something you can’t let go of. Something that’ll stick to you, and it’ll either kill you then because it’s so good, or you’ll remember it forever when nothing else will measure up.”

  Sickened, Gregory looked into his beer. Because of the darkness of the bar, the liquid seemed black.

  Abruptly Jermaine said, “Let me borrow your plant. I can’t buy here. They’re clean, but it’s the smell, you know, alcohol wipe and aftershave on their skin. Just for the evening.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Jermaine.”

  Jermaine fisted both hands as if he wanted to hit him, and Gregory pushed his chair away from the table. Gradually the fists relaxed until the finger lay flat on the table. He said, “I’m going home. Enjoy her while she’s still fresh.” He stood, all four-and-a-half feet of him and said, “You know what I wonder? I wonder if being plucked hurts. I wonder if it pisses them off. The beer’s paid for.” He left.

  When Gregory got home, the smell hit him as he opened the door, a whiff of wet, old vegetables. He took a step onto the carpet and sniffed carefully, turning his head side to side, testing the air. “I’m home,” he said and felt immediately stupid, and then, because he was alone in his own apartment and there was no one to hear him, he said it again, “I’m home, dear.” He sniffed once more and rushed to the back of the house.

  In the bedroom, the case leaned against the end of the bed where he’d put it in the morning. The room smelled fresh with a hint of his deodorant and shampoo. Nothing else. He put his hand on the case, snapped open the latches, but hesitated with his hand on the edge of the lid. No, he thought, it couldn’t be from here. Not yet.

  In the hallway he couldn’t smell anything. Pictures on the wall of Sara and him horseback riding stopped him for a moment. He straightened the close-up that showed them side by side holding reins to horses that were blurry brown shapes in the background.

  In the living room he caught it again, a deep, damp solid smell like packed leaves gone gray and slimy at the bottom of a barrel. He wondered how he could have missed it in the morning before leaving for work. The trash can under the coffee table was empty and dry. He moved into the kitchen where he checked the garbage can, the trash compactor, the garbage disposal and the refrigerator, all dry and odorless. Frustrated, he stood in the middle and clamped his hands on his hips to survey the room. He sniffed loudly.

  “Ahhh,” he said. The field of African Violets on the counter top looked suspicious. Their leaves drooped colorlessly over the edges of the pots, and when he leaned close, the source of the smell became obvious. He poked at the gummy soil at the base of several of the plants. He’d over watered, something Sara had warned him about before she left, and now the dirt was muddy and rotting the plants.

  He opened the kitchen window, turned on the stove’s exhaust fan and went back into the bedroom.

  Later, in bed with the plant/woman, the light on, Gregory examined her skin. He pressed his finger into her upper arm, one of the few places he had discovered he could touch without triggering some kind of motion. The skin compressed exactly as if it were real, a quarter of an inch of give and then a hard resistance as if he were digging into bone. Close up, he could see nothing plant-like about her. He stroked her arm, which felt real. Even the slight whisper of his fingers moving back and forth was convincing.

  He jerked his hand back and wiped it on his thigh.

  An hour later, after lying beside her but not touching her, waiting, bizarrely he realized, for her to do something, he rolled away and dialed the telephone.

  “Sara,” he said when she answered, “The violets are dying. I over watered.”

  She said nothing. He listened to the wisp of static, a thread of a ghost conversation from some crossing of the lines.

  “I can’t talk to you now,” she finally said and hung up.

  The dead phone in his hand, Gregory sat on the edge of the bed. He looked at the plant lying on her back, and he couldn’t detect even a thread of passion within himself. He hung the phone back up, but before he let go it rang, startling him into knocking it to the floor. He grabbed it and pressed it hard to his ear. “Sara?” he said.

  “Jermaine.”

  “Jermaine?”

  “Yes.”

  He squeezed the phone hard. “Jermaine?”

  “I shouldn’t have bothered you about borrowing your plant.”

  At first, Gregory couldn’t figure out what Jermaine was talking about. Then he remembered. “Oh. That’s okay.”

  “No. I mean it, Bucko. I apologize. I won’t do it again.”

  They talked for a few minutes, and when they hung up, Gregory realized he felt more sorrow than revulsion for the little man.

 
In the cafeteria the next day, Gregory saw a haggard and unkempt Jermaine walk through the door, his tray in hand, and when their eyes met Jermaine looked quickly away and sat at another table. Gregory ate alone.

  The African Violets weren’t any livelier that evening as Gregory contemplated them. If anything, despite the open window, the smell was worse. He put a thick layer of paper towels under all the pots, using up two rolls and part of a third, reasoning that if he could blot away as much of the water as possible, he might be able to reverse the rotting. After a half hour, he replaced the soaked towels with a new layer. He called a florist who said, “If they ain’t dead yet, don’t water again until the dirt’s like rock. Them violet’s hardier than they look. Try talking.”

  “To the plants?” he said weakly.

  “Sure. Plants got feelings too.”

  He turned up the heat in the apartment, figuring that the violets would dry out quicker, but he couldn’t bring himself to talk to them.

  Even though he had stored the plant/woman in her case, he slept that night on the couch.

  Late in the night, something woke him. His neck hurt. One arm of the couch held his head higher than his pillow; the other arm forced his knees to bend a little bit so that the back of his thighs ached. He rolled to his side. What woke him? He strained his eyes in the darkened room; the DVD clock glowed a steady green, 2:17 a.m. A sound, he decided, some small sound that didn’t belong. The refrigerator motor kicked on and he almost screeched. A click, maybe, a metallic sound like a briefcase unlatching. Carefully, slowly, he raised his head and listened. The refrigerator hummed. Something rumbled in the distance outside, a train, perhaps, or some industry that day noises muffled. Something thumped. He pushed himself onto one elbow. A neighbor, maybe, opening a door or dropping a book? At 2:17? But it sounded like it was in the apartment. What in his apartment could make such a noise? A latch opening and then a thud? He thought of the plant/woman’s case leaning against his bed, the dead shape within, waiting only to be used.

  His head raised in the dark, super aware, he listened for another minute, but heard nothing. Were these imagined sounds? Sometimes in a strange room he would hear things, creeping steps on a carpet, the tiny pop of lips separating, the crack of a knuckle or knee, and these could be like those. He began to believe he had imagined them. Then he smelled the rotting violets, but he’d been smelling them for hours and hardly noticed them now. Something else, though. He thought he smelled something else, something familiar. Cut grass. Wet, cut grass. Was she in the hallway now, hidden in the shadows, waiting for him to put his head back down? He thought, how patient is a vegetable? and he almost laughed, but he choked it back. Could her eyes really see? Jermaine didn’t say that she couldn’t see. Plants are light sensitive. He reached for the table lamp at the end of the couch, a lamp he couldn’t see but knew was there. His arm felt naked, hairs on end, and he almost expected something to grab his wrist, a warm firm inhuman grip to stop him from turning on the light.

  He turned on the light. The room was empty. The hallway was empty. He wrapped the blanket around himself, took a carving knife from the kitchen, and stalked down the hallway to the bedroom.

  The top latch on the case was open. Thoughtfully, Gregory pressed it closed. The mechanism barely held. He touched it from behind and it snapped open. The sound was the same he’d heard, the one that woke him. He tested it again to make sure. It had popped open on its own, he concluded. Taking a deep breath, he unlatched the bottom one, which was firmly shut, and opened the case. She stood the way he’d left her: her head turned to one side, one arm straight and the other slightly bent so the elbow pressed against the case.

  She was beautiful, but like a sculpture beautiful, like a well done photo in a men’s magazine, not real, not thinking, and in an elemental way, not satisfying. A representation of human beauty. Not human. He shut the case, and pulled it into the living room. He would call the plant store in the morning and have them take it back. Then he’d call Sara. Maybe she wouldn’t talk to him. Maybe she would. He thought he would tell her this: “You can talk to plants, but they won’t listen,” and then he wouldn’t explain what he meant. Maybe she could show him how to save the violets. He slept in his own bed, and when he woke in the morning, he couldn’t remember any dreams, good or bad.

  At lunch he wanted to tell Jermaine what he had decided, but Jermaine didn’t come in. Gregory pushed a lone corn kernel through the creme with his fork, waiting for him until the cafeteria began to clear. He stopped a man on the way out who was Jermaine’s coworker, asked about him, but he said he hadn’t come to work. “He didn’t call in sick, either, and I got a contract two inches thick to finish with him by tomorrow. So if you see him, tell him Roger’s pissed!” the man said.

  Gregory dropped his tray on the nearest table and ran to his office and the phone. The company directory had both Jermaine’s number and address. Jermaine’s answering machine said, in a subdued voice, not the one Gregory associated with Jermaine at all, “Thank you for calling, but I’m not at home. Please leave a message at the beep.”

  At Jermaine’s apartment, after knocking, Gregory pushed the front door open. The apartment looked much like his own, a small living room, a kitchen to the left and a hallway that led to a bedroom. Gregory felt that he should be scared, or feeling silly and out of place, but he didn’t. He knew what he’d find. And when he entered the bedroom, he wasn’t surprised to see a plant/woman case open on the floor; and he wasn’t surprised to see blood on the sheets that covered two bodies, a lot of blood; and he wasn’t surprised, not one bit, that through the sheets that covered one of the humps, protruded thorns, thousands of needle sharp, translucent at the end, thorns.

  THAT HE MIGHT YET FIND THE UNKNOWN

  And he set off running as if the devil possessed him, hoping that he might yet find the unknown, whose slow pace could not have carried him far.

  —Alexandre Dumas

  Spiridon Loues of Greece won the first marathon of the modern Olympics in 1896, completing the twenty-six and two-tenth miles course in two hours, fifty-eight minutes and fifty seconds. He averaged six minutes and forty-nine seconds per mile.

  Time is distance to a runner, thought Waldemar as he sat in the company shuttle, waiting for his escort into Genotech. I’ve been here for twenty minutes. For me, that’s more than four miles.

  Creighton, the company man, opened the shuttle’s door. “Sorry I’m late. We have to go through kind of a gauntlet here.”

  A line of protesters shouted as Waldemar walked through Genotech’s front gates. “Humanity for humans!” one screamed, his young face twisted in hate. Another yelled, “Give God’s genes a chance!” Waldemar glanced over his shoulder at the waving placards. He thought it ironic that a few of the protesters were clearly enhanced, their lengthened or shortened limbs, their thickened or attenuated torsos reflecting manipulated genes.

  But his eyes were drawn to softly rolling hills behind the crowd, velvet green with spring grass, lapsing one upon the other to the mountains beyond. He imagined himself training on their gentle slopes, the ground a cushion beneath his feet, each breath an infusion of sweetness and strength. The gate closed behind him.

  “Idiots,” murmured Creighton, palming an access reader next to the door. “Noboby’s thought to look for rabble rouser DNA yet, but I bet if we analyzed a few of those Humans First folks we’d find one.” He smiled at Waldemar, as if to assure him it was a joke, his bland face purely unreadable, and his gray eyes a closed book.

  “Aren’t they dangerous?”

  “After that nastiness in France and the bombing at DeoxyRibo Industries last year, we’ve beefed up security. They’re a nuisance, nothing else. The athletic department is this way.” Creighton set a brisk pace down the wide, white hall. Lighting was indirect and discreet. After the freshness of spring outdoors, the air inside smelled processed and waxy. Not bad, but institutional. They passed door after door, numbered but otherwise unlabeled, each with its own palm
panel.

  “You’ll find the latest in training facilities on the campus. We own over a thousand acres behind this facility, plus we have sole access to several hundred square miles of federal land beyond that. Our people tell me there are more than five hundred miles of Duratrack trails for long distance training, plus, of course, the indoor and outdoor tracks. You’ll find at Genotech we’re serious about our enhanced marathoners.” His voice fell into the sing-song of a tour guide. “When our athletes are not training, we provide the best in-house education possible. Euthlos 4, for example, is completing an advanced program in Information Systems Engineering just as if he were in a real college on the outside. Of course, when he wins the Olympics he’ll have no time to work. Like our last champion, Euthlos 3, he’ll be touring as our goodwill ambassador.”

  Creighton turned into a branching hallway, indistinguishable from the first. His beautifully polished dress shoes clicked rhythmically. Waldemar’s running flats made no noise at all. Creighton continued, “Most of this building is devoted to Business and Administration.” They walked up a short flight of stairs to a double wide door. Creighton palmed for access and they entered a room lined with vid-screens. A technician looked up from his display and nodded to them. “From here, we can monitor the trails to the edge of the training area, exactly fifty miles from here.”

  He touched a button and a large screen revealed a small, gray brick building. “That’s Research and Development just down the hill behind us. All our athletes start there. The glass pyramid to its left…” He panned the view to the side. “… is Housing and Training, where you’ll be working, and the last building there contains the Med Labs.”

  “When can I meet Euthlos 4?” asked Waldemar. Genotech had hidden the identity of their runner, like an industrial secret, as they did all of their athletes. They only competed once, at the Olympics, and they did very well.