by Andi Loveall
“Will you stop whining like a spoiled little shit? You have fuck all to worry about. You’re handsome, you’re funny, you’re talented, and you’re only going to get better with age. Make a decent career for yourself, and you’ll be sought after.”
“You’re far too kind,” he said. “And I’ll do my best.”
“Why don’t you just talk to her? Try and get it sorted.”
“What do you think I’ve been trying to do? I have talked to her, and she says things can’t move backward.”
“You don’t want to go backward. You want to go forward.”
He shrugged, chewing on his lip.
She got up, gathering the rest of her stuff. When she was on her way out the door, she turned around and looked at him.
“You don’t need her, Devin. But if you want her, don’t give up.”
He looked out the window, watching as she walked away. Was he supposed to let go or not give up?
The following Monday afternoon, the visas arrived in the mail, which prompted him and Lucius to have a mini-celebration and spend two hours on the Internet reading about Goa. Devin decided that the trip was going to be all about trekking and being in nature. He already found a number of places that he wanted to see, such as Dudhsagar, a waterfall on the Mandovi River, or the village of Netravali, which was supposed to have a sacred pond that bubbled at the center. He wanted to trek to these places and so many more, sweating out anything that was holding him back.
“I can’t believe you don’t want me to bring the guidebook,” he said, looking over at Lucius, who was spinning around in the computer chair.
“Guidebook, shmeidbook,” Lucius said, bringing himself to a halt. “It’s just another random thing to carry.”
“But it’s not a random thing. It’s the guidebook.”
“It gives us the illusion that we’re in control. It’s better, in my opinion, to be without illusions.”
“We can be in control. That’s what tools, like the guidebook, are for.”
“Prepare yourself, brother,” Lucius said. “When you ask the universe for an adventure, it will provide you with one. So forget about the guidebook. Hand over your power, strap yourself in and enjoy the ride.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Devin said. “I get all that. I’m still bringing it. If I end up not wanting it, we can set it on fire.”
Lucius cracked up at that, and before he was done laughing, the study door swung open, and Walter appeared in the hall.
“Devin my boy,” he whispered, chortling like he had a secret joke. “I’d like to have a chat with you.”
Devin avoided eye contact with Lucius as he exited.
“You don’t have to purposefully make him suspicious,” Devin said to Walter when they were out of earshot. “It’s hard enough to lie to him as it is, you know?”
“Soon you won’t have to,” Walter said as they headed down the passage. “I have a bit of a project in the works.”
The basement was a mess. Two of the labs had already been taken down and packed neatly into the corner. At least half the plants had already been harvested, and the rest were grouped together in the center of the concrete floor.
“What, are you closing up shop?”
“For now,” Walter said. “The wife thinks it’s a good idea. You’re to blame for it.”
“What? Why?”
“Coming up with that name. It really blew her mind. She took it as a sign that now is the time to make some of the changes we’ve been talking about.”
“Wow.” Devin made a tsk tsk sound, studying a plant in the light. “A pity, my friend. A pity. These are so incredibly delicious.”
“Don’t take too much credit,” Walter said, chuckling. “We’ve been working on this plan for years now, we just needed a little nudge to begin. Right now, we’re ahead. We have savings, we’ve paid off our medical debt, and we have enough to invest in our new ventures. It’s always better to quit while you’re ahead.”
“What’ll you do with the basement?”
“There are two things missing around this place: a survival shelter and a disco club. We figured, why not have both in one?”
Devin laughed. “Disco club?”
“Aye,” Walter said, nodding. “Makes sense when you think about it. What do people really need, at the core of it? To eat, drink, and be merry. I don’t know about you, but if society were to collapse, I’d want to have solar power, music, and plenty of food.”
“I didn’t realize you guys were so apocalyptic.”
“It can never hurt to be prepared,” Walter said.
Walter went on to show him each step of the harvesting process. First, he demonstrated how to cut down the plants, trimming the buds with the quickness and precision of a champion Bonsai artist. He gave Devin a plant of his own to work on, and once it was fully trimmed, he showed him how to hang the buds in the closet so they could dry next to the dehumidifier. They processed one plant at a time, labeling the different strains by the hanger they were attached to.
Devin worked with diligence and respect. How often does a person get the opportunity to help out a badass ganja farmer? Who knew when any of this would happen again, if ever. He was milking it for every drop of THC-filled goodness it had.
“I want to say something to you, son.”
“Okay.”
“I appreciate what you did for my wife. I don’t just mean coming up with the name for her business—I realize that was coincidental. I’m talking about you being who you are. My wife projects expectations on others without really knowing them, and she’s also easily hurt by people. Two of her only faults, really. But you didn’t let her down. You exceeded her expectations.”
“I don’t see how. But thanks.”
Walter appeared to be pondering something, and then he leaned forward, motioning for him to come closer.
“I’m going to tell you something because I know you’ll get a kick out of it. I’m probably opening up a can of worms, but—”
“I like worms.”
“What the hay … ” Walter said. “Back when I was in Ireland, I ran with a rough crowd and was quite successful because of it. The technical name for my job was personal assistant to Sir Donaldson Faust, a genius chemist and total madman. Most of my duties involved moving and distributing his creations.”
“Which were?”
“LSD, mostly. He was a force to be reckoned with a few decades ago—even went international for a while there. I once flew from Dublin to New York with one hundred thousand dollars’ worth of ‘fun’ in my carry on.”
“Holy shit.”
“We lived a wild and dangerous life, but we had fun like you can’t even imagine. We partied in the world’s most tantalizing cities. We were draped in beautiful women. But then things went downhill, and it all ended with Faust going mad and shooting people in a public park.”
“Holy shit!”
“People were afraid of him, and no one would say anything about his descending path of self-abuse. He was addicted to methamphetamine and always hanging around with shifty characters, and he started having all these fantasies about his role in humanity, how he was a dark angel meant to show people the world’s most painful truths—nonsense like that. The day it happened was just a breaking point. A simple conversation gone wrong. He shot the man in question, and then he started shooting innocent bystanders. I tried to stop it, but he aimed the gun at me. The look in his eyes … I’ll never forget.”
“What happened then?”
“He aimed the gun at a nearby woman instead. He blew her head off. I ran for my life. When the authorities arrived, they found him sitting on the grass, out of bullets. He didn’t bother to run.”
“Jeez. What happened to him?”
“He killed three people and injured four more. He was sentenced to life in prison, but after two weeks, he hung himself.”
“Oh … Sorry.”
“Broke my heart, it did.” Walter sighed at the ceiling. “It takes a long time to ac
cept something like that.”
“What happened to you?”
“I escaped in the chaos. Before Faust met his demon lover, methamphetamine, we did things slow and cautious. I didn’t have a criminal record, and we always kept side jobs and a modest lifestyle. He taught me that it was important to keep appearances, and it was important to have a secret stash. He had dozens of them all around the country and probably the world. Some of them took hours to hike to. He inspired me, and, therefore, on the day of the shooting, I was able to go to my cousin’s land, dig up my treasure, and make a fresh start. I bought a suit, a haircut, and flew to Spain, and the rest is history.”
“I hope you don’t mind me using your life in my writing.”
“Only if you use my real name. About time I get some credit for all this. No one knows that story. Not even your lass.”
“ … She’s not my lass.”
“She’s not my kin,” Walter said, smiling. “Yet she is.”
Devin wasn’t sure what to say to that, so he just shrugged and continued to work. By the time Walter sent him back up, the workday was almost over.
“Fixing another chair?” Lucius said. “Must have been a big one this time. A throne.”
Devin laughed. “No, no. Walter and I were talking. Swapping stories from the days of yore and stuff like that.”
“For hours?”
“Yeah. I guess it was kind of a deep talk.”
“He never calls me in there to talk.”
“You weren’t recently boning his goddaughter. Maybe he feels the need to guide me or something.”
“I see,” Lucius said, nodding. He didn’t look satisfied, but he didn’t say anything else.
The rest of the afternoon was spent making kimchee. Devin stacked the jars of freshly packed kimchee on the shelf beneath the counter, leaving them to start their process. He cleaned up, washing the leftover bits of carrots and green onions down into the compost colander.
Kimchee: something that became better by stewing in its own juices. Maybe that was happening to him. He felt good today. It was weird, realizing that.
He could tell Raven and Lucius were both glad to see him happier, but he was thankful they didn’t make mention of it. If there was one thing he hated, it was being told that he “seemed to be doing better.” For some reason, it always made him revert back to feeling like shit. As if “doing better” was a delicately balanced house of cards that the slightest acknowledgment would knock over. He didn’t want anyone to notice that he was “doing better.” He wanted them to forget that he was ever anything but.
“Fermentation, indentation.” Devin broke into a groove. “Left in my skull from the low vibration, sticks and stones don’t affect manipulation, where do you think I got my reputation? Plantation, growing vegetation, so much food that we don’t need no ration …” His good mood stuck around all day, and after dinner, he settled down to write for the evening. Once they got to India, he would be too distracted by his newfound environment to work on any of his current stories.
Fantasy was the way to go. He was sure of it now. No one wanted to read about regular people. They wanted to read about healers, creatures of the underworld, and those who were more beautiful and extraordinary than they would ever be.
Something formed in his mind as he lay in bed with his notebook: A parade, celebratory but warlike. A beautiful girl standing across the street. It was him and Cora in another life, falling in love and losing each other all over again. It was past and future, colliding in a world built on a wobbling pier. It was something he had dreamed about.
He turned to a blank page and wrote, letting it pour out of him like a yellow light.
Leaving. Arriving.
Loving. Fighting.
Seeing. Giving. Being.
Once there was a little man who walked across my ceiling.
Yellow light and wet brown dirt bring songs of birds and healing.
And gardens grow in footsteps past,
Left humbled and revealing.
He wasn’t sure what it meant, but it somehow said everything he felt. He folded it up and addressed the outside to Cora before putting it under his pillow. Maybe he would give it to her before he left. Maybe he would just leave it there, and if it was her fate to find it, she would. Or, maybe he would bury it in the woods so no one would ever know but him.
***
Wednesday morning, Walter woke him up early to help him and three other guys move the grow-lab equipment from the basement before everyone else came down. He had never seen the guys before. They showed up in three separate vans, and Walter introduced them as Mike, Alex, and Joe.
All of the weed was gone. Walter didn’t say where it went, and Devin didn’t ask. There was something off about the look in Walter’s eye, but he was still acting like his jovial self, so Devin shrugged it off.
They worked quickly, dividing the stuff into three loads. Then the guys left, and the basement was left empty aside from the leftover flowerpots. Devin and Walter carried the pots out to the side of the house, dumped the soil into the compost, and stacked them up for later use.
“Who were those guys?” Devin asked him as they worked.
“Associates, I suppose,” Walter said.
“Your life is so cool,” Devin said. “I wish I had associates.”
“Things aren’t always what they seem. I’m looking forward to a simpler existence.”
“Yeah? Is everything okay?”
“Sure is. Why do you ask?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s a beautiful day out,” Walter said, looking around. “Blessed to be alive, I say.”
Devin didn’t question him further. They spent the next hour sweeping and scrubbing basement floor, and the next few hours after that were spent painting the wall a bright shade of yellow and assembling the disco ball over the area they designated the dance floor. Walter didn’t kid around. When he said disco club, he meant disco club.
“Tomorrow, I’ll work on the sound system,” he said, before sending Devin up to join the others.
He wandered out into the sunlight and found Lucius in the vegetable gardens.
“Picking veggies!” Lucius sang, pointing at Devin. “And there’s my friend Devin. I wonder where he was. Not fixing a chair this time, I bet. Was it a couch?”
“Not today,” Devin said. “I was helping paint something.”
“What?”
“Uh … He told me not to tell you yet. It’s a personal project that he’ll reveal when he feels it’s the right time.”
“Really?” Lucius’s face brightened. “Is it quality?”
“ … Yes?”
“Nice!” Lucius said, handing him a basket. “Here, help me pick tomatoes.”
Devin did as asked, getting lost in the task. He imagined he was judging a beauty pageant as he examined the fruit one by one. Little tomato women, standing on a stage with their tomato boobs perked up high. He snickered as he judged them, thinking of the hopeful smiles. The winners would cry and hug their friends, and the losers would slink back, dejected. It was arousing. So many tomatoes, ripe, beautiful, and full of hope. Just like Cora. Just like his sun-soaked mind.
“Is it a pot garden?”
Devin blinked. Lucius was peering at him through a gap in the vines.
“ … Is what a pot garden?”
“The project.”
Devin forced a laugh, immediately regretting it. He cleared his throat.
“How exactly would one paint a pot garden?”
“Does he smoke you out? You reeked of it when you came out of there the other day.”
“As opposed to the pot I always reek of?” He scoffed as if Lucius was nuts, because that was all he could do. This was killing him. He had already decided that all bets were off when they got to India. He was a pretty good secret keeper, but anything could happen over there. He and Lucius could get stuck on a mountain trail for days or get thrown in prison in side-by-side cells where they would have n
othing to do but swap stories for the rest of their lives. He might need material.
The next day, which was supposed to be a day off, turned into him and Lucius helping Raven in the kitchen. Panky was working on setting up the catering website, and Raven wanted a menu finalized as soon as possible. The late nights spent working on her business plan had resulted in both puffy eyes and vibrant happiness. They spent half of the morning at the organic supermarket, stocking up on things like walnuts, pecans, cashews, dates, raw cacao, carrots, coconut, and spices for all her new recipes. The rest of the day and the day after that were both spent grinding and creaming, mixing things into batters and putting them into the fridge to harden.
All the while, Walter was working in the basement. There were a lot of far-off drilling and hammering noises, which of course attracted Lucius’s interest. When he asked Walter what was going on, he was informed that Walter was fixing a bookshelf.
“That’s one broken bookshelf,” Lucius said under his breath.
Devin choked down a snicker, pondering what Lucius might have been thinking. It occurred to him then that he could use this situation to screw with his head in a variety of ways. All he needed to do was intensify his already-existing paranoia and twist his mind to make him believe something crazy was going on. He would be putty in their hands, hilarity would ensue, and Devin would have his epic prankster revenge.
He would need to get the go-ahead from Walter first of course, but he had a feeling he would be down with the idea. Especially since he wanted to reveal the new party spot this weekend anyway.
After dinner, he cleaned up, made himself some extra-strong tea, and prepared for a night of writing. Just when he was settling down to begin, Panky appeared in the doorway.
“Get ready,” she said. “We’re going out to celebrate your departure.”
“Why would you celebrate something so tragic?”
She laughed. “Just get ready, would you? It’s a surprise.”
“I was kinda thinking of just chilling out.”
“Stop being a pansy. You’re not missing this.”
“Tell me about the surprise,” he said, sitting up. “One thing.”