Watering the plants
He pulls the sliding door across and steps out onto the balcony. His bare feet are warm on the tiled floor. He puts his hands on his hips. This bloody summer sun – his girls have been fried. He picks up the two plastic bottles he keeps by the door and takes them inside. At the basin in the laundry, he fills up the bottles, turning the tap off just as the second bottle is filled to the top and a small jet of water squirts up. Back outside, he begins watering, starting always with the maidenhair fern in the balcony’s right corner. He is fond of his maidenhair fern. Her lovely fronds reach out like octopus legs across the balcony’s tiles. He gives her a good drink, pouring the water right into the centre of the plant. He then waters the herbs – the basil bush and the big messy knot of thyme. Although he doesn’t need to – he could just go back inside and refill the bottle – he rations the water out, like one does when pouring cups of tea for visitors. Some water here, some there, and more if there is any left. Water tinkles onto the tiles while the light of day fades overhead.
His friend Fran – she comes over for tea, is a lesbian with short jetblack hair – once gave him a book on gardening. One of the things it recommended was talking to the plants because the love and attention made them grow and respond to their owner’s care. He stopped reading there and hasn’t looked inside the book since. Sometimes he wonders why he and Fran are even friends. They have nothing in common and most times when she comes over she just complains about her colleagues at work while he nods and sips his tea. Anyway, she probably gave him the book as a joke. She doesn’t understand why he calls the plants his ‘girls’ and he didn’t understand when she said watering plants was like protecting endangered species. She said if you needed to protect a species the cause was already lost, that if they couldn’t survive on their own then that was the end. He didn’t know what she was talking about but he didn’t say that. She can be a real pitbull, Fran. She’s skinny, is part Chinese and so well spoken but her face can scrunch up to match her demeanour and she can be so pitbullish.
The plastic bottle crumples in his hand, empty, as he shakes the last drops off. He tucks it under his arm, moves across his balcony to water those plants with the other bottle. The first to get a drink is always a twisted viney thing with stems that look like bamboo but aren’t. He’s had her for a while – she’s pretty durable. He remembers that the lottery is being drawn tonight and pats his pocket, as if that’s where his ticket is. Last week he won $26.40. He’s put so much money into it, he should win that amount – at least – every week. Gives you a nice little thrill when you win, though.
Next is a bush with tough, waxey leaves in a nice stone pot. When he bought it it was sculptured, a near-perfect sphere of green, but he hasn’t maintained it and now it’s more of a polyhedrom of some sort. When he bought it he had the idea of making it the centrepiece of his balcony, thinking it would compliment the tiles and the other plants nicely and bring it all together. The lady at the counter scanned it in and, as she took the money, said, “Oh,” as if jolted into consciousness, ”that’s cheap.” He didn’t know how to take such a comment and as he heaved away his new plant he wondered if she’d meant good on you for picking up such a bargain or the price is obviously incorrect and I’m doing you a favour by not double-checking and selling it to you for that amount. Her tone hadn’t suggested one more than the other. He thinks of that every time he waters this plant. He doubts she was the shop’s owner, or even manager – it was a big store – so maybe it was a friendly comment. But some people take their jobs so seriously, preferring to put what they perceive as the integrity of their job ahead of those they serve. Making matters worse was the fact he’d taken only vague notice of the price and didn’t know what was and wasn’t cheap for such a plant. He’d just liked it, but the woman at the register had cursed it and it made him not like it, making him go as far as offering it to Fran before relegating it to the balcony’s left corner and giving it probably less water than it needs in the hope it will wither and he could use the pot for something else.
He pours the last of the water into the small petunia with pink flowers then shakes the bottle at his girls, the leaves that catch the drops bouncing under the weight. He supposes he should get a watering can – but he only has nine or ten plants. He screws the caps back on the bottles. What Fran said about it being pointless really struck a nerve. Or a chord. Whichever. He could leave this to nature – he doesn’t even remember the names of all the plants. But it doesn’t rain enough and days like this would kill them in no time without his help. The sun is so hot now, like there’s a raging fire in the sky that just won’t burn out and it just fries everything. His neighbour to the right is out on the balcony, smoking. Nobody uses balconies for much at all. Just for plants and to hang clothes and to smoke. He holds a bottle in each hand and rests his hands on his hips, winces.
LI
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