Slugfest

actual product for fear that it would be ripped off.

“We’re in a good spot, strategically,” Nikki said. “He’ll bring a lot of action our way.” That’s what we all wanted—action.

Nine

After three hours I called it a day. I stored the packing materials, leaving one box intact for box cutters, water bottles, and whatever supplies I’d need during the show. I tucked a piece of bubble wrap around the bag I was babysitting to make it less attractive to potential thieves. It was a drawstring bag with some of the same patches I’d noticed on the kid’s jacket. I wasn’t normally a suspicious person, but why tempt anyone? I was surprised the kid hadn’t come back for it, but perhaps he’d run into another security guard with the same SWAT team training and dedication Rolanda Knox had. When the lost and found opened, I’d dump it.

In the meantime I headed to the ladies’ room to wash up. Two women entered, whispering conspicuously in a fashion guaranteed to attract attention. One of them I’d seen at this morning’s excitement; she was the charmer who’d offered Connie Anzalone the cigarette.

Her badge read Allegra Douglas, Riverdale Garden Club. Allegra was all of four foot eleven in ballet flats, slim black slacks, and a black smock not unlike the ones worn by employees at department store makeup counters. Her short gray hair looked like half a dozen steel wool pads had been knitted together to form an unbecoming cap, and her eyes were rimmed with a black pencil liner in a style that no doubt suited her better in her youth. Her companion was a jolly woman in frameless glasses, a white turtleneck, and a novelty sweater bearing the image of an enormous golden retriever and the message Prince of Pups. She had the same sloppy, puppylike demeanor as a golden, and if she’d been any shorter, I’d have been sorely tempted to bend down and scratch her behind the ears.

We mumbled hellos and I continued scrubbing my hands with a small nailbrush and a bar of gardener’s soap I’d brought from home. I was stunned when Allegra blissfully ignored the Thank You for Not Smoking sign, produced a pack of Winstons, and lit up. She inhaled deeply, then released a plume of smoke that drifted my way. I imagined her forty years younger, hand on hip in a slinky dress. The only things missing were the cigarette holder and a martini glass.

“All I know is the exhibitors’ committee opened a Pandora’s box when they started allowing that element into the competition. This is the second year, and it’s changed the entire complexion of the event.” She dragged on her cigarette again, and her cheeks and the wizened, red scar that was her mouth were sucked into her skull.

“You’d know,” the retrieverlike friend agreed. A perfect straight man.

The smoke was getting to me, but I was nosy enough to want to know who they were discussing. I dried my hands and fished in my bag for an emery board I knew I didn’t have. I kept listening.

“For one hundred years, this show has kept to the highest standards, and now…” Allegra didn’t finish her sentence but made a sweeping gesture with her right hand as if her friend and I could see the obvious destruction in our midst. Was it possible she’d been exhibiting that long? Could be.

She squinted and tipped her helmet head back, trying to read the name on my badge to see if I was one of the interlopers. I abandoned my phony search and turned to face the tiny despot full-on. “Excuse me,” I said, “you seem to know so much about the show. This is my first time exhibiting.”

“Oh, please don’t take anything Allegra said personally,” the friend said. “She didn’t mean you.”

It hadn’t even occurred to me that they might be talking about me, but if she felt like apologizing, I’d accept it on behalf of whomever they were maligning.

“It’s the public school exhibit,” the friend said, lowering her voice. “Allegra feels some of the students aren’t taking the show seriously.”

That’s right, heaven forbid anyone have fun at a flower show. I had seen the teenagers near Connie’s beach garden but assumed they were volunteers or kids pressed into service as some sort of punishment, not fledgling gardeners. Apparently, they were exhibiting.

“And if you ask me,” Allegra said, running the tap to douse her cigarette after a few more hearty puffs, “someone should talk to them about these little mishaps we’ve been having this year.”

“Mishaps?” I asked.

“The headless gnomes? The crew cut on Mrs. Hamilton’s dwarf bamboo?” They were stunned by my ignorance. “Ask anyone in the members’ lounge,” Allegra said, knowing full well I wasn’t a member. The door flapped as she strode out of the ladies’ room, her meek friend and the stench of stale smoke trailing behind her. On their way out they all but knocked down the young woman in overalls I’d seen earlier. She closed her eyes as if counting to ten.

Ten

“I tell my students high school is only four years—what’s happening now is just one brief chapter in their lives. Then I meet a woman like that and I’m beamed back to my own high school days. Mean girls. Even when they get old, they stay mean girls.”

“True,” I said. “Although I doubt if anyone has referred to Allegra Douglas as a girl in quite some time.” I introduced myself.

“Lauryn Peete. I’d shake but my hands are grubby.” She held them up as if it were a stickup. Other than that, she looked tidy in ironed overalls and a clean, long-sleeved T-shirt with the sleeves pushed up. Her hair was almost entirely covered by a wide headband; just a soft, lamblike fuzz escaped out the back.

Lauryn told me she taught at High School 240 and still loved the job now as much as she had that first day when one of her students brought in a plant and pretended not to know it was a marijuana seedling. “They must have thought I was going to run crying to the principal,” she said. Instead the pot plant inspired her to start a garden project with her homeroom class.

That year they grudgingly planted annuals in the front of the school, mostly bedraggled flats that Lauryn had wheedled out of a local supermarket. The following semester they started seeds on the windowsill. Easy stuff— basil, parsley, morning glories. Seeds almost guaranteed to germinate because Lauryn didn’t want her students’ early efforts not to bear fruit. “They’re good kids, despite what that Ms. Douglas thinks.”

Of course, some kids couldn’t be bothered. This was real life, not some touchy-feely after-school movie. But every year four or five students got into it, enough to convince the principal and the school board to front them the money to enter a borough-wide contest that they ended up winning. Jamal Harrington was among them.

At least one of her fellow teachers thought Jamal was too much of a favorite and secretly suggested Lauryn’s botanical teachings were helping Jamal cultivate a garden less likely to result in an appearance on Martha Stewart and more likely an appearance before a judge—charged with growing and intending to distribute a controlled substance—but Lauryn took the high road and ignored them, even though Jamal had been in trouble in the past.

Not all the Big Apple participants had appreciated the lifelike rubber rat Jamal had used to adorn his part of the school’s garden exhibit—a fire escape trellis. According to Lauryn, he had thrown himself into the project and had even confided his dreams of becoming an artist or set designer. But that wasn’t something he wanted spread around. In Jamal’s neighborhood that kind of talk could get the crap knocked out of you.

I thought the fake rat sounded clever, but apparently it had been responsible for a few rapid heartbeats during setup, so the students were personae non gratae with some attendees, including Allegra Douglas.

“To paraphrase Jamal, these other entrants think their manure smells better than ours does.” After my own encounter with Allegra, I tended to agree with Jamal. Forewarned about the rat, I promised to check on their exhibit the next day.

On the way out, we bumped into a woman who was dressed like an extra from the film A League of Their Own—baseball cap with the bill worn high like a 1950s gas pump jockey and a peach-colored