Even before the agoraphobia, I doubted Dougal was a match for the hot-tempered Glory, but now I wouldn’t have bet a loonie on his chances. The thousand dollars was fading away like mist at sunrise. I jammed another handful of popcorn into my mouth and tried to make peace with that fact. But it didn’t work. I wanted that money.
“Okay, start talking and make it fast. You have two minutes to make your case, and then you can get out of my house.” Glory looked at her jewel-studded watch, tapped a shapely foot, and glared at Dougal.
Hold on. I was under the impression that I had already blackmailed Glory into co-operating with Dougal’s absurd pollinating scheme. But it appeared she thought the blackmail covered talking to Dougal only and not actually agreeing to the pollination swap. Watching Dougal’s mouth impotently open and close, struck dumb by his ex-wife’s fury, I believed a quick intervention was in order.
I stood up and walked around behind Dougal. Once I knew Glory could see me, I mimed a smoking action and winked at her. She got the message. Her eyeballs turned red as Satan’s ass, and I turned away before I burst into flames. I poured two glasses of white wine and gave one to Pan. I decided I better find that list of ladies who wanted their houses cleaned on Wednesday mornings.
Her chest heaving with rage, Glory again addressed Dougal. “Well? Are you deaf? I said start talking.”
“I wish I was deaf. Then I couldn’t hear you screech like Simon when he wants a cracker.” Ah, good, Dougal had found his voice.
“Listen, you worm. Just tell me what you want or Pan will toss you out on your pointy, stupid head. You and your backstabbing nitwit of a cousin.”
The diminutive Pan paused with the wineglass halfway to his mouth, looking a bit concerned that he could shortly be called upon to bodily throw us out the door. “As you wish, Miss.”
Glory looked at the two of us. “Are you drinking my Riesling?”
“The popcorn made us thirsty,” I said, and took another swig in case she took the glass away from me. Pan upended his own wineglass and poured the contents down his throat.
“Okay, Glory, here’s the deal.” Dougal managed to pull himself together, looking less pasty and sweaty by the minute. “We both have an Amorphophallus titanum. Both plants appear to be ready to flower. This is an historic moment, and if we can put aside our differences, we can cross-pollinate these magnificent specimens. Best case scenario is that both Titans will produce tubers, but there’s a good chance that at least one will. We share the tubers equally, no matter which one reproduces. How about it? Just think, Sif and Thor can give us lots of little ones.”
Pan and I looked at each other. Good grief, whatever would they name the babies?
As soon as Dougal started talking about tubers, Glory’s red eyes turned bottle green with envy. The woman was an emotional chameleon. Dougal knew he had her hooked and moved in to close the deal.
“You won’t even have to see me. As soon as the plants are ready, Bliss will transport the pollen between our houses. I’ll pollinate Thor, and I’ll show Bliss how to pollinate Sif.”
Dougal looked every inch the expert botanist.
“Never mind Bliss.” Glory spared me one brief, scornful glance. “Just supply the pollen. I’ll do it myself. Or Pan will. And if Sif does flower, Pan can collect her pollen and send it over to Thor.”
Beside me, Pan stirred uneasily. Probably not a plant biology major.
“Great. Now I just need to see Sif and take a few measurements.” From his pocket, Dougal produced a carpenter’s measuring tape. His eyes shone and he seemed willing, even eager, to make the trip to Glory’s greenhouse. Next stop in his recovery: Shoppers Drug Mart to pick up his own medications.
I glanced at Glory, wondering how she was going to get around Dougal seeing her pot plants. No problem, it seemed.
“Uh uh,” she told Dougal. “Tell Pan what you want and he’ll do it. Bliss can go with him to help. You stay here and cogitate on your sins, which are many if you recall. If you open your mouth even once, you can wait outside on the front steps.”
Take that, you agoraphobic.
Dougal gave us some directions on measurements, then whipped out a small digital camera and gave it to me with instructions to take a few overall shots plus several close-ups of the spathe.
“And don’t, whatever you do, touch the Titan. It’s so fragile. It could collapse at the slightest stress.”
Glory gave Pan a meaningful look and raked me again with her eyes. The irises had more or less returned to their normal sea-blue, so I gave her another wink and followed Pan. Hopefully, Glory wouldn’t eviscerate Dougal in my absence with her pink-tipped talons.
On the way to the greenhouse, I asked Pan, “Do you know what Dougal did to Glory? It’s strange that no-one seems to have any idea.”
He shrugged. “Haven’t a clue. Don’t forget I’ve only worked here since Miss Yates tossed your cousin out, and she doesn’t confide in me. It must have been something serious, though. If anyone mentions him, her eyes turn red.”
“I’ve noticed. He won’t tell me either. He just calls her names and looks scared.”
Pan pulled up a tall stepladder close to the concrete planter. With me holding one end of the tape measure to the soil, Pan climbed to the top of the stepladder and called down the number. I found a writing pad and pen on a small table and wrote it down. We did the same for the height of the frilly, red-rimmed spathe, but it was more difficult measuring the circumference without touching it.
Finally, I took the required pictures. Pan insisted on checking the digital images, and I had to delete one shot where a tiny piece of pot frond showed in a corner. I avoided even looking at the crop, figuring if the whole thing went bad and I had to testify in court, I could almost truthfully say I never saw any pot plants in Glory Yates’s greenhouse.
“Why is Glory growing marijuana in her greenhouse? I mean, there are a lot of plants here. Surely even the two of you can’t smoke all this. And she can’t be selling it.”
Pan looked at me sideways from his glittery black eyes. “Are you kidding? Can you see Miss Glory smoking anything?”
“I don’t understand. What does she do with it all if she doesn’t smoke it?”
Pan leaned closer to me. “I shouldn’t tell you this, but it’s Miss Glory’s turn this year to grow the pot. It’s for all her friends. And they don’t smoke it.”
“Then what? And, why?”
He leaned even closer. “They eat it. Because it makes them feel good. And because it makes them feel naughty to get away with it. You sure don’t know much about the pot subculture, do you?”
I dared a look at the potted euphoria. The plants were close to six feet, healthy, green and dripping with buds. Running to catch up with Pan, I asked him, “How do they eat it? Do you mean, like, baking it into brownies?” I couldn’t imagine Glory and her friends eating high-carb brownies any more than smoking.
But Pan was already opening the front door. We found Glory and Dougal sitting mutely on separate couches. Dougal was chewing his cuticles while Glory tried to bore a hole in his neck with her laser eyeballs. Simon hadn’t moved from the table but his head swivelled back and forth between the two. The magazine had collected a six-inch pile of birdie doo.
As I handed Dougal the camera and the paper with the measurements, Simon spoke up. “Anyone for a smoke?” he asked, sounding like a cross between Dougal and Robert DeNiro.
Glory