Aurora(44)

Pothead Phil was asleep in the webbed aluminum lawn chair on his front lawn. Hearing a sound, he looked up and saw that Aubrey was coming toward him. She seemed determined, so much so that Phil glanced behind him to see if she was headed toward somebody else. But, no, she was coming straight for him, a purposeful look in her eye. She raised a hand and waved.

“Hi there.”

Phil stood, uncomfortable. Many things made Phil uncomfortable, but his attractive neighbor across the street was near the top of the list. “Hi.”

“You don’t have to get up,” she said as she reached him.

“OK,” he said, sitting back down for a nanosecond before realizing, no, that made him even more uncomfortable, and standing up again. “How’s it, um, going?” he asked.

“You know. Shitty. How about you? Doing some work on your yard?” she asked, nodding toward his clothes. Phil was dressed in dirty chinos and a faded I LIKE PI T-shirt that hugged a little too tightly around his slightly thickened middle. He smiled at her beneath the brim of the old straw hat he wore, like the kind you’d find on a scarecrow’s head. Phil looked pretty ridiculous. But Phil also didn’t care. Somehow, it was a look he pulled off.

“Some. Fell asleep.”

Aubrey turned, looking at the long-handled lawn tool that was leaning against his chair. “What’s that thing?”

Phil picked it up and flipped it around, showing the half-moon-shaped blade, which looked sharp along its outer edge. “Sod lifter.”

“Why are you lifting your sod?”

“Planting.” He gestured to his front yard and the small but decent patch of grass he was in the process of upending. “We’re really lucky this happened now.”

“We are?” she asked.

“Oh, God, yeah. Mid-April? Kinda couldn’t be better, if you think about it. We gotta get started. I have a full garden in back, but I was going for mostly herbs and such. Those won’t be much use now.”

“What kind of herbs?”

Phil’s cheeks colored. “Nah, I know what you mean, but I’m not into that.”

“Uh-huh,” she said.

Phil continued, some rising anxiety in his voice. “Anyway, I was turning some sod, you know, out here, ’cause I wanted to do some planting. But it’s a fuckload of work. I got that six-foot section up and had to take a nap.”

“Do you know anything about gardening?”

“I know kind of a lot,” he said, enthusiastic. “But so far it’s mostly been little stuff that I grow, you know, um, inside the house.”

Aubrey stared at him for a long moment, the picture becoming clearer in her mind. She turned and looked at his house, a single-story number with a half-exposed basement. The top halves of the basement windows were above ground and looked to be blacked out. One of them was boarded up. She turned and looked at Phil again, assessing the state of his black eye.

“How’s the eye?”

He touched it self-consciously. “Oh, you know, fine. I’m fine. I got off lucky, probably.”

“Phil, you grow hydroponics in your basement, don’t you?”

“Yeah. Little bit. Some. Veggies and such.”

“Weed. A lot of it.”

“What? No!”

“C’mon.”

“I don’t know what you even mean,” Phil said, anger creeping into his voice. “I thought we were talking about vegetables.”

“This is where Scott gets the pot he told me he sells. From you. You grow it in your basement, he sells it, you split the profits. And somebody you sell to knew where it was and came and stole it when the power went out. Is that right?”

“This is, this is uncool. I got robbed, I’m the victim here, and you’re, you’re—I don’t have to stand here and—” Not finishing his sentence, he turned away from her, picked up his chair, and began to fold it. The webbing, half-torn, got stuck in the aluminum frame, leaving him wrestling with it. Aubrey watched him, waiting.

“It’s OK. I know it’s legal now. Just maybe not to sell it?”

Phil threw the chair down on the ground, frustrated, and turned around to her. “He asked me, OK? I was growing strictly for my personal use, and that’s it. Your kid came over—”

“Step-kid.”

“Whatever. He came over, I don’t know how he knew—”

“Maybe it’s the blacked-out windows and that you smoke pot in the yard every night?”

“And he just started pressuring me. Scott is very, you know, he’s very ambitious.”

That was not a word Aubrey had ever heard used to describe Scott. In a way, she was kind of proud of him. “Anyway, the fuckers stole most of it, and the rest is dying without the grow lights.” He looked over at the boarded-up window morosely. “Worst part is they made me help load it in their truck.”

She looked at him. She didn’t exactly feel sympathy, but she knew loss when she saw it. The guy took pride in his plants.

“What do you do, Phil?”

“I’m a data analyst for CRB?” He said it like a question, as if clearing it with her.

“Well, there’s not going to be any data to analyze for a long time,” she said, “so you’re a farmer now. If we turn all the soil out here, what kind of edible food could we get down in the next week or so?”