Connecticut was one of them.
'New York.'
'Oh.'
I might as well have said Mars.
'You know,' she said, leaning in and getting close again with the coffeepot, 'from this angle it looks a little like . . .'
'Yup.'
She let out a whoop and moved off to the newcomers' table, a big grin on her face as if she finally got the joke.
I tried to use my found time well. I'd ratcheted down quite a bit since my BlackBerry-24/7 days but still found it difficult to sit still for long stretches of time. And single-tasking made me feel like a shirker.
I e-mailed Caroline Sturgis and rescheduled for early the next morning. Then I left Sumatra and went back to work on Caroline's garden design and crossed my fingers that she'd sign off on the plans. Now that Laurie and I had shared diet tips and a naughty joke, she kept me refueled with coffee as if I was a hotel regular. I asked her if she liked working there.
'Oh, yeah, beats unemployment.' Laurie had worked at Titans for eight years, since her youngest started school. Her husband had worked in a local factory that had closed so he now had a two-hour commute each way. 'That's why I take the early shift. Otherwise I'd never see him.'
She liked Bernie more than Rachel but thought that was natural, 'him being a man and easier to deal with.'
'I guess she's gotta come off that way,' Laurie said. 'She's one of those hard women. Hard to deal with, hard to like.'
Bernie was the opposite. A pushover.
'Those Ukrainian girls walk all over him.' A slim blonde in a rabbit-fur jacket caught her eye and sat at the counter. 'I gotta go. That's a pal.'
By the time I packed up my computer to leave, they were breaking down the breakfast bar and setting up for lunch. Similar to a cruise ship, life at the Titans Hotel revolved around mealtimes. I felt guilty for not generating a bigger tab so I left Laurie a generous tip and headed for the lobby, looking for something else to occupy my time until my spa visit this afternoon.
'Thanks, honey,' Laurie yelled after me, pocketing the bill. 'See ya tomorrow.' Not likely.
I made my way to the corpse flower, waiting for whoever it was that had the task of monitoring the plant. I didn't have long to wait.
She bounced in, wearing a UConn baby T-shirt and a canvas cap I would have described as early Mao, but college kids probably called something else. About nineteen years old, she was a sturdy girl with pale freckles and light brown hair in a thick, no-nonsense ponytail, set high on the back of her head. Her rectangular-framed glasses gave her an edgier look than her unmade-up, corn-fed features did, and I guessed that was the intention. She said her name was Amanda.
After I introduced myself as a fellow gardener, Amanda Bornhurst invited me into the greenhouse to watch her work. According to Amanda, when the Mishkins had agreed to buy the six-year-old corpse flower, they hadn't had the slightest idea it would need daily attention and the aforementioned hand-pollination, if it was ever to flower.
'How did you get the job?' I asked.
'Mr. Mishkin called the plant clinic at the arboretum. They turned him on to my school's extension university. My professor offered me the assignment for extra credit. I've never spoken to Mr. Mishkin personally, but I send him e-mails of my progress reports. He's very into it.'
Amanda's gear was in a canvas bag, with skinny pockets and loops for tools. She set it down on the small table next to the wrought-iron bench where I was sitting. She took out her records, notes, and tape measure and laid them out with the precision of a surgical nurse.
'He's the only one, though. No one else seems to care much about it,' she said, shaking her head and causing her ponytail to swish back and forth rhythmically. 'Wait till it flowers, though. It's practically a miracle.'
She explained how she'd cut a thick wedge out of the bulb to collect the pollen and used a paintbrush attached to a wire hanger to deposit it on the stamens. Then she slid the chunk of plant material back into place. Now it was close to flowering.
'Okay, drumroll.' Amanda stood on a small ladder. In a practiced move she hooked one end of a metal builder's tape measure under one of the ladder's feet. 'Ninety-seven and a half inches. That's only one and a half inches more than yesterday. We're getting close!' She was as excited as if this was her personal space launch or the countdown to midnight on New Year's Eve. I snapped her picture as she climbed down from her perch.
'So what does that mean?' I asked, although I sort of knew.
'As long as it keeps growing, it won't bloom. The aroma is really starting to kick in. It's intense from up here. Wanna smell?'
I passed; it was pretty pungent from where I sat.
She'd never seen one in the flesh, so to speak, but the Internet was filled with pictures. It would be impressive. 'We've got a few more days,' she said. 'Then pow!' She may have had a few more days, I didn't.
The girl entered her observations in a Huskies notebook and took pictures of her own. I checked my watch. Still hours until Bernie Mishkin returned. If this baby wasn't going to bloom today, I'd be on the road shortly after I saw him. But I did have a story to write.
I offered Amanda fifty bucks for copies of her digital pictures, gave her two of my cards and asked her to write her e-mail address on the back of one of them.
'I'll send you the pictures, but I don't think I should take any money,' she said, writing down her info. 'That might not be right.' I was charmed that she was grappling with an ethical issue, so few kids these days seemed to, but I came down to earth when she asked her next question.
'Will I be in the newspaper?' she asked, brightening. I guess the news articles and surveys were true—more young people wanted to be famous than be rich, or successful, although all three would be nice.
'The world-famous
'Cool. Can I get tearsheets?' Tearsheets? Jeez, did she have a publicist?
'Sure,' I said. She told me her boyfriend also worked at the hotel and I promised I'd try to mention him in the article, too.
Amanda stashed the ladder behind the bench, ushered me out of the greenhouse, and locked the door with a heavy chain and a bicycle lock.
'It's nothing personal,' she said, 'just security.' I laughed to myself and decided not to tell her that while the hotel was securing a glorified houseplant, a guy had been killed there the night before.
'No probs.'
Amanda bounded out of the lobby, to field hockey practice or some other overbooked suburban kid activity, checking off another item on her busy schedule.
It was still thirty minutes until spa time. I moseyed around the lobby, trying to eat some clock when I saw Oksana setting up the bar and chatting with a guy who punctuated his speech with frequent wheezing. The previous night she'd all but accused me of being involved in Nick's death so I slipped outside to the pool area, staying under her radar by using that ability to make myself invisible that I'd cultivated in high school. I knew high school was good for something.
Six
If the Titans spa had ever been an ongoing concern, it must have been back in the days when women in turbans stood in exercise machines and tried to jiggle the fat away. A glass door on the second floor was labeled Gaia's Palace—at least someone knew their Greek mythology. The room held little more than a bare reception desk, some candles, and a small bamboo plant in a shallow dish of wet pebbles—dollar-store nods to an Asian sensibility, but they were trying.
While I waited for someone to greet me, I poked around, eventually sneaking a peek at the spa's
