Green Thumb

Sitting alone at a table in the corner of a noisy bar, Billy Foster glanced at his watch. His co-workers Enrique and Juan were playing pool. Jose and Jesus were in the corner, feeding dollar bills into the jukebox. His boss was in the men’s room. The crew from Green Thumb Landscaping had been pounding them down for hours.

A few of the newcomers left early or begged off entirely. Billy knew those men wouldn’t last long. Though unwritten, the owner of Green Thumb expected his crew to have a few beers with him after work. Those who didn’t never lasted long. In his eighteen months on the job, Billy had watched them come and go.

But it was after 9:30 now. Billy’s wife couldn’t but help resent him being out while she was stuck at home with their one-year-old son. Sighing, Billy downed the last of his beer, promising himself that when Jean came back, he would make an excuse and leave.

The door of the men’s room opened and Jean LaPlante exited. When Billy saw him stop at the bar to signal another round, his frustration at his predicament grew.

He was stuck at Green Thumb, he knew that much, knew that a guy who got his girlfriend pregnant while both were still in high school had limited options. Especially a guy who wants to make a go of it, who truly loves his girlfriend and wants to marry her and raise the kid together.

His boss sat back down at the table. The waitress came by with another round, taking away as many empties as would fit on her tray. Billy didn’t want the beer, but knew he was stuck until it was gone. Jean raised his bottle in Billy’s direction.

“Here’s to sunshine, green pastures, and tight pussy,” he said.

Billy raised his own bottle and took a long swig. Crude remarks and innuendo were just another bonus of working at Green Thumb. Anyway, he’d downed half the thing already. Should be able to escape any minute now.

He stole another glance at his watch before noticing Jean hadn’t taken his eyes off him since his toast. Embarrassed, Billy looked away. He took another long sip before looking again to see his middle-aged boss’s eyes still turned toward him. He began nervously tearing the label off his bottle.

“How old’re you, Billy?” Jean asked with a slight slur to his words.

Billy stayed focused on tearing off as much label as he could without ripping it. “Eighteen,” he replied.

“Eighteen, huh?” Jean said. “I remember when I was eighteen, I was fucking everything in sight. Had some good times back then too. But you? You went and got married, son! You’re missing out on your prime pussy years!”

Billy didn’t know what to say to that. He was also increasingly uncomfortable with both the turn the conversation had taken and his boss’s continued stare. In fact, if he didn’t know any better, he might think it was a leer.

“You’re a good looking kid,” Jean said as if reading his thoughts.

Billy felt his face flush. Done with the now ripped and torn label, he picked a spot on the table to stare at while downing the last of his beer, bracing himself for what he thought would be an inevitable hand on his thigh. He’d never even imagined this sort of behavior from Jean before. Then again, you never knew.

He remained frozen, unsure what was coming, but he knew one thing. No job was worth this.

“Look at me, Billy,” Jean said softly. After Billy raised his eyes, his boss went on. “I got a proposition for you, and I think it’s one you’re going to like. You wanna hear it?”

Billy couldn’t stop himself. He shook his head no.

“Ha ha. Can’t say I blame ya. But it ain’t nothin’ like that, least, whatever you’re thinkin’ it might be.”

Looking up, Billy was grateful his boss had looked away from him, to have himself a long sip of beer and find his own spot on the table to stare at.

“The thing is, Billy, well. It’s kind of embarrassing. But … the wife and me been trying to have kids going on twenty years now. And for most of that time, I’ve been keeping a secret from her. That is, it’s me that’s the problem. You understand?”

Billy had no idea why any of this was his business, but nodded his head anyway.

“Now, my Zelda,” his boss continued, “she’s … well, she’s kind of a shut-in. Hasn’t left the house in oh, I don’t know how long. But she knows her clock is ticking, and I’ve been waiting for just the right person to come along who could help us. The truth is, I see a lot of myself in you, and I’ve known for some time now that the right person was you.”

Jean reached into his pocket. Billy reached for his coat.

“A thousand dollars,” Jean said, pressing something into Billy’s hand. “Five hundred in this envelope, five hundred on the nightstand. For one night’s work.”

Before he knew it, Jean had pulled his hand away and the envelope was in Billy’s hand alone.

“Be our little secret,” Jean went on. “But it has to happen tomorrow night. Be at my place at nine o’clock. We figure … just after that is the best chance for it to happen.”

When it seemed Jean was finished, Billy grabbed his coat, stepped out of the booth, and began walking away. He’d gone only a few steps when he heard his boss go on.

“Nine o’clock,” Jean said. “On the dot. Oh, and Billy…”

Halfway to the door, Billy stopped and waited for it.

“Don’t bother coming in on Monday should you miss the appointment.”

Holding the envelope with only his fingertips as if it contained some flavor of deadly toxin, Billy exited the noisy bar.

* * *

What the fuck just happened? he asked himself on the drive home. What the fuck just happened?

Looking back on it, he almost smiled to recall he’d thought for a moment his boss was about to put the moves on him. I could deal with that, he thought. I could deal with anything but this.

He glanced toward the passenger seat where he’d tossed the envelope. He hadn’t bothered to look in it, certain there were five one-hundred-dollar bills in there.

While slowing for a red light, ending up halfway into the intersection because of dicey brakes on his ten-year-old shitbox, he wondered again why he’d taken the envelope at all. Why hadn’t he just thrown it on the table and said no thanks? Better yet, why hadn’t he told his boss to go fuck himself?

Because he wasn’t the sort of person to tell people to go fuck themselves, that’s why.

But there was more to it than that. In truth, he’d always kind of liked Jean. After all, he’d given him a job, always paid on time, and taught him everything he knew about landscaping. For a gruff and crude guy, Jean was a genius when it came to plants, unashamed to talk to them, to sing to them, coaxing them back to health seemingly by the power of his words.

He often told stories of his days in the merchant marine, which he’d joined specifically so he could travel the globe and see exotic flora. He said he’d brought back specimens from all over the world, sometimes having to smuggle the rarer ones through customs.

He had a real gift too. Billy had seen Jean resurrect plants Billy had thought were long dead, had watched him make concoctions out of various fertilizers that, combined with his soothing words and occasional singing, brought them back from the brink. There was a reason that, though small, Green Thumb had one of the most prestigious client bases around, turning down far more work than they could handle.

Blocks from his apartment, while driving through the mostly shuttered storefronts of downtown, Billy was reminded again how lucky he was to even have the job. While slowing for another red light, this time leaving himself plenty of stopping room, he wondered again just how much it would cost to fix the brakes on his car. Probably a few hundred and he’d get another year out of it.

His son’s birthday was coming up. He wanted that to be special. And he and Donna hadn’t so much as gone out to dinner or a movie in the year since she’d had the baby.

Stop it, he thought. Just stop. You are not doing this. You are not going to prostitute yourself for a thousand bucks.

On the other hand, it wasn’t like he was being unfaithful, or carrying on a sleazy affair with another woman. It might even be the charitable thing to do, helping out a childless couple. And hell, what did it matter where he blew his loads? That’s all it would be. Blowing a single load. For a thousand bucks.

* * *

Billy’s headlights shone on carefully trimmed topiary as he drove up the long driveway, going past lush green plants carved in images of lions and giraffes and bears and elephants. The heady aroma of fertilizer came through his half-open window.

He had lost his brakes entirely that afternoon, while his son had been sleeping peacefully in the backseat. In the left-hand lane of a busy three-lane street, he was coming up to a red light. After stepping on the brake pedal, it pressed spongily all the way to the floorboard, and he swerved into the middle lane just in time to avoid rear-ending the car in front of him. Mercifully, no one had been coming up alongside. He’d had the presence of mind to pull on the emergency brake and managed to anxiously limp his way home.

That was the moment he resolved that he would do it.

Donna thought he was meeting his friend Rob. She got angry and petulant, and Billy couldn’t blame her. He promised to be home by eleven. Now, as he sat outside the well-kept house trying to get up the courage to go inside, he wished Rob really had called to invite him out. Sighing, he opened the door and stepped into the cool of the evening, into air that was redolent with the funk of fertilizer and manure.

In truth, he’d always kind of liked the smell. There was just something primal about it. He’d been mired in the stuff so long, sometimes elbow-deep, there was even the hint of something erotic about it. Donna certainly didn’t mind it. She was often at her horniest when he came home sweat-stained and smelling of dirt and manure. They’d make love on the living room floor like animals before she’d let him take a shower.

He walked past a greenhouse that was connected to the side of Jean’s house. At the front door, he wavered only long enough to remember the panic he’d felt when his brake pedal went to the floor before knocking. Nobody answered. He knocked again. After another moment, he rang the bell. He heard it jingle inside the house, but nobody came. Reaching for the doorhandle, he found it unlocked. He opened the door.

A steaming jet of sultry air greeted him. It’s like a sauna in here, he thought. He detected too in that warm draft the same ponderous odors of fertilizer and manure, of dirt and earth and chlorophyll that he’d smelled in the outside air. There was something different about it inside though, some sort of undersmell that was darker and richer and for some reason, more than a little arousing. He was reminded then what he came here to do.

What will she be like? he wondered, wondering too what kind of a woman would allow herself to be … well. He realized only then he hadn’t thought at all beyond this night, hadn’t considered what it would be like for there to be a piece of him out there, another living, breathing thing that he’d created.

Probably no worse than owning a car that didn’t stop, he reminded himself darkly before stepping into the sticky humidity of Jean LaPlante’s living room.

Though he’d been to the house many times, trimming the topiary, doing some landscaping, or dropping off and picking things up in the truck, he’d never been invited into Jean’s home before. He was surprised to see it looked somewhat ordinary. Through soft light coming into the room from somewhere down the hallway, Billy saw a sofa and a love seat arranged on the floor in front of a stone fireplace.

“Hello?” he said, though he knew too softly to be heard. He walked across the hardwood floor, past a dining area and into the hallway. At the end of the hall, a door was open. A light was on. “Hello?” he said again as he walked down the hall. Even through his trepidation and nervousness, he was surprised to find himself more than a little aroused at what he was about to do.

The rank smell he’d sensed earlier in the house seemed to grow stronger the nearer he got to the bedroom, which only added to his excitement (and yes, he admitted to himself, relaxed his fear that he wouldn’t be able to perform.) In fact, he was surprised to find that his jeans had never felt as tight as they did right now, except maybe that first night with Donna. His heart racing, he reached the end of the hall and pushed open the door.

It was the master bedroom. A large chest of drawers with framed photos on top sat across from an empty and well-made queen size bed. He glanced at the nightstand nearest him and saw beneath the lamplight was an envelope. Reaching down, he picked it up and saw inside five one-hundred-dollar bills.

What the hell? he thought, feeling his face flush red.

Was it some sort of test, or maybe a sick joke being played on him? He turned quickly and saw nothing, then glanced toward the closet doors, half expecting Jean and some of the crew to pop out laughing. But the room was empty. He could feel it.

He glanced once more at the empty bed before turning and walking up the hallway. Drops of sweat from the now overwhelming heat fell from his forehead, dripping into his eyes. He used his shoulders to wipe them away. When the rank smell grew stronger toward the end of the hall, he realized the odor was coming not from the bedroom behind him, but from the greenhouse entrance across the room. Curious, he walked toward it, pushing aside the thick strips of plastic and stepping in.

Another furnace blast of heat hit him, along with that rank odor and an undercurrent of something else, something vaguely like slightly rotten meat. Amazingly, he found it only added to the excitement building in his groin. Reaching down, he adjusted himself, knowing that whatever happened, he was going to have to take care of that soon.

After fumbling for the switch, he turned on the fluorescent lights that ran along the ceiling. To the left was a coiled green hose along with a half-dozen or so burlapped hedges and shrubs ready for delivery to one of Green Thumb’s clients. Rows of smaller plants not quite ready to use ran along both sides of the greenhouse.

Walking in further, he dipped his head beneath hanging and flowering plants in various stages of development. Past them, at the far end of the greenhouse, all alone on a raised wooden dais that appeared to have been built especially for it, he found what had to be the source of the smell.

It was like no plant he’d ever seen.

Dozens of thick, tubular vines lay criss-crossed and coiled in upon themselves. More blue than green, glistening with moisture, each vine pulsed from some kind of an inner heartbeat. He didn’t think it possible, but for some reason, his erection grew stronger. Moments later, Billy watched, mesmerized, as the plant began to move.

Its lower tendrils began to slink languorously across the platform in a lazy caterpillar motion, while the uppermost tentacles rose slowly into the air, unveiling the heart of the plant, its pulsating wet, red core. The vines shivered and trembled a moment, and then the center of the plant opened and emitted a liquid aerosol that reached Billy’s nostrils, and he was suddenly more aroused than he’d ever been in his life. He moved closer.

Two vines reached out and began worming their way up his leg. The center of the plant began weeping what looked like wild honey. Overwhelmed, Billy fell down on his knees just as the two vines reached his crotch and commenced a light back and forth motion. A third vine he hadn’t even noticed wrapped itself gently around his neck, pulling him closer to the winking center of the plant. He emitted a grunt before plunging his face and tongue into the sweetly rotting nectar.

Other vines went to work, unbuckling his belt and pulling down his pants. Though he hadn’t yet had his fill of the sweet ambrosia, the vine at his neck moved his head away, while the vines around his leg and now his arms lifted him off the floor and moved him into position. He instinctively balanced himself by grabbing hold of the vines moments before they plunged him into the warmest wetness he’d ever felt.

After entering the plant, other vines reached out and took hold and Billy was no longer in control, and in that moment, that was okay with him. His eyes were closed in ecstasy when another vine probed and then entered his mouth. Another two entered his ears. Still another slowly crawled beneath him and behind him and moments later inserted itself. He wanted to explode right then, but the plant wouldn’t allow it.

The vines that were raising and lowering him slowed for a few agonizing seconds, before the vine inside him pressed against something and he convulsively spurted his essence into the plant. The vines gripped tighter then, not permitting him to move while the plant sucked at him like a baby on her mother’s teat; in another moment, he was empty. Only when the plant had her fill did it release him. The vines in his mouth and ears and ass pulled away. The vines holding him up lowered him gently onto the platform, where he lay for a moment to catch his breath before opening his eyes to find himself lying atop and still inside the plant.

Woozy, he used his arms to push himself up and off the now dormant vines. There was a sucking sound as his manhood came out of the plant. He collapsed onto his back. Once he’d caught his breath and again opened his eyes, both shame and embarrassment began swirling through his system.

If this were a joke, he thought, now would be a good time for his colleagues and boss to show themselves and have a real good laugh.

But aside from a slow drip coming from somewhere, he heard nothing. Still on his back, he began creeping backward, away from the plant, clumsily pulling up his pants along the way, not daring to look down at himself for fear … something might have happened. Turning onto his stomach, he crawled another few feet before standing up and rushing from the greenhouse, not bothering to turn off the lights.

He hurried through the dimly lit living room, slowing only to glance at something he hadn’t noticed before, a series of photographs Jean had placed upon the mantel, some showing a younger version of his boss with a smaller version of the plant. Another showed an older Jean smiling and holding a larger version of the plant up to the camera. The largest photograph was a framed portrait of the plant itself. Tearing his eyes away, Billy ran from the house and did not look back.

* * *

A few months later, Billy heard back from a Home Depot being built on the outskirts of town. His application had been accepted. Jean and the crew from Green Thumb took him out for beers and got him good and drunk. Alone at the table, while waiting for Jean to return from the restroom, Billy took another swig of beer

He’d expected things to be awkward between them, but Jean never said a word to him about the events of that evening. Billy had never asked, though he sometimes asked himself if it ever really happened at all. Perhaps he’d only imagined it, he sometimes thought.

But looking down at himself after getting home that evening, taking a long shower in the hopes that Donna wouldn’t smell whatever it was that had gotten into his hair and his mouth and his pores, he saw the redness and the rawness and knew he had done something shameful, something he would never share with any living person.

* * *

In his third month at the new job, Billy came home to find his wife and young son playing in the front yard. He beeped and waved before pulling into the driveway. Getting out of his car, he threw his gleeful little boy into the air and then looked over at Donna, who was sitting on the front porch smiling at them both. At that moment, Billy was truly happy.

“Oh,” Donna said. “I almost forgot. A package came for you, from Green Thumb.”

Billy kept the smile on his face while throwing the boy into the air, before putting him down. “Oh, yeah? Where is it?” he asked.

“Kitchen table.”

Billy bent down to give his wife a kiss before going into the apartment and then into the kitchen. On the table was a medium size package with Green Thumb’s return address. “This Side Up” with pointing arrows was emblazoned across all four sides. With some apprehension, Billy tore open the box and lifted the flaps.

Inside was a potted plant that hadn’t quite bloomed yet. Only three or four tiny tubers jetted up from the soil, surrounding a wet, moist, pink center. He immediately felt himself get hard. He wondered then how long the plant took to mature. One year? Three years? Five?

He didn’t know, but did know one thing for sure. A smile slowly came to his face as he reached down to adjust himself. He couldn’t wait.