The Gardener (11 page)

Gradually slowing, the train came to a stop. When the doors opened, I held the girl back. The guy hesitated. The chimes sounded, signaling the doors were going to close, and in a flash, I whirled, grabbed the iPod, and shoved the guy out the doors just as they closed. As the train started to move, he glared at me and reached into his bag, yelling into a phone before we had gone fifty yards.

My hands were trembling as I peered at the iPod’s screen. A song was playing. Some pop-star girl. I flipped through everything. Other than a few lousy movies and more girl songs, there was nothing to suggest anything amiss. “Oops. Guess I was a little paranoid.”

The girl placed a hand on my shoulder. “You think he was watching me.”

“They found you once. They can find you again.” We took our seats. Great. I was just trying to help a girl and I stole some poor college kid’s iPod. I turned around to look at the map and see how many stops we had left. If we stayed on the train for long, we might get hassled for stealing the iPod if the guy had called the cops. “We could get off at the next stop. It would just mean a longer walk.”

She smiled. “That’s fine. I like to walk.” She sucked on her lower lip for a second. “I mean, so far, the walking we’ve done? I liked it. I’m not sure if I liked walking before.”

A few minutes later, the automated voice announced the next stop and the train slowed.

I stood up. “Let’s go.” The doors opened. Dropping the iPod where the guy had sat, I held out my hand and the girl reached out and took it, and I had a feeling that was beginning to seem very familiar.

The drizzle was just enough to annoy and soak anyone out walking. With one arm, I held a section of the newspaper over our heads, while the other lay around her shoulders. We tried to stay under the awnings, but there weren’t that many. Kind of stupid, in my opinion, given Portland is probably one of the rainiest cities in the country. Awnings should be mandatory. We’d gone about ten blocks when I felt her shiver under my arm. With the newspaper, I pointed at a Starbucks, then led her down a set of steps into the café, which was connected to an old hotel that looked new on the inside. A big fireplace sat in one corner. I motioned to a couch in front of it and told the girl, “You can sit here and get warmed up.”

I shoved my wet newspaper into the garbage, then went to order coffee. The barista had a thick, silver ring, bull-like through his nostrils, a green streak in his purple hair. He didn’t give me more than a token glance. I imagine he knew what it was like to be stared at.

The girl took the coffee and held it. We sat there in front of the fire, warming up and drying off.

The girl asked, “How much farther?”

“Not far at all.” I jabbed my thumb to the right. “Just two blocks down there.” I looked up as a couple walked in, but they were too busy looking at their kid in a stroller to notice us.

Was I crazy, looking for bad guys? What would the guy at the cabin have done if we’d let him in? Steal the girl?

She sat near the blazing fire, but still shivered.

“You okay?”

She nodded. “Just chilly. A little.”

I took off my flannel shirt and gave it to her, though I kind of shivered in my T-shirt. So far, I’d let her be. Maybe it was high time to push it a little bit.

I thought about the story she’d told me, about the place where she sat, where the gardener came. “Can you tell me more about those visions you were having?”

She nodded. “They’re more like memories, only kind of foggy. Like, when they are in my head, I feel a little removed. I’m not actually sure it was an experience or just something I dreamed up.”

“When you remember the place, do you feel…?” I wasn’t sure how to ask what I wanted, so I came right out with it. “Were you a prisoner?”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so. When I’m upset, I feel it here.” She touched her stomach. “But I don’t get upset when I have these memories. I don’t really feel anything.”

“Is it possible they didn’t happen?” I asked, trying to keep my tone gentle. The story she’d told me at the cabin about being in a place before the Haven was just too odd. I had to face the idea that she might really have a brain injury, like my mom had said.

She looked at me for a moment. “Maybe. But if that’s true, why am I like this? Walking around in a fog, not knowing who I am?”

I had no answer for her.

Holding the coffee between her hands, she lifted the warm cup to her face and held it there for a moment. “I’m not dumb.”

I touched her arm. “I never said you were.”

She didn’t say anything, so I added, “I never even thoughtit.”

The girl lowered the coffee. “I’m just a little out of sorts. Lacking common sense maybe, not sure how to deal with the everyday stuff. But trust me.” She tapped her head and smiled a bit. “I’ve got a good brain in here.”

I smiled back. “I’m sure you do.”

We stayed there about fifteen minutes, but she didn’t drink the coffee, just held it.

I said, “This seems to be some kind of pattern with you.”

Her forehead wrinkled. “What?”

I pointed at her cup. “Beverage holding.”

And, for the first time, she laughed, this wonderful giggle that made me chuckle along.

She stopped giggling but didn’t stop smiling for a few seconds. But she still didn’t drink any coffee.

I asked, “Aren’t you hungry?”

She shook her head and held out the cup. “There’s a little left.”

I didn’t want any more coffee, so I tossed both our cups into the garbage. Heading out, I grabbed a free arts newspaper from the rack near the door. “Umbrella.” I held it over the girl’s head as we stepped back into the drizzle.

We reached the street across from Powell’s and weren’t too drenched when we finally walked in the front door of the massive bookstore.

Inside, I grabbed a color-coded map from the stack on the counter. “This place is huge,” I explained.

With four floors, numerous sections, and even a coffeehouse, Powell’s Books was an event. The girl stood, staring.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” Quickly she turned to me, the biggest smile I’d seen yet on her face, enough to make little wrinkles appear by the corners of her eyes. “Look at all the books.”

Smiling back, I squeezed her hand.

She said, “I know it sounds funny, not knowing anything about myself. But I can tell, just from the feeling I have right now, that I love books.”

My breath caught. As much as she was a stranger to me, I was starting to feel I knew her. But it wasn’t enough. I wanted to know everything about her.

We walked over to the information desk, where a man in a ponytail and horn-rim glasses stood behind the wooden counter. His T-shirt said will write for food. His gaze rested appraisingly on the girl for a moment, then he turned to me, his eyes widening a bit before they locked with mine, avoiding my scar. I could almost hear him thinking
What is she doing with him?
Then he asked if he could help us.

I nodded. “Where’s the Dr. Emerson talk?”

“You guys have a big interest in the food crisis?”

“Huh?” I glanced sideways at the girl.

The guy rubbed his beard a little. “The food crisis that Dr. Emerson’s new book is about?”

Thinking fast, I said, “No interest other than a little extra credit.”

“Aha. Gotcha.” He pointed up. “Pearl, upstairs.”

The sections of Powell’s bookstore were color coded, purple, rose, gold, and so forth. But I thought it might be wise to browse in the stacks near the stairs for a bit. For what, I wasn’t really sure.

The girl pulled out book after book, running her hands over the covers, then putting them back. She saw me watching her and blushed. “I can’t help it. I want to touch them all.”

As we looked at books, several people went up. No one seemed interested in anything other than heading up the stairs. Maybe I
was
being overly paranoid.

Finally, I looked at the girl and said, “Ready?” We climbed three flights to the pearl section. Like the rest of the store, it was a huge room in sections with rows and rows of bookshelves, stacked with hundreds and hundreds of books everywhere you looked. Several dozen metal folding chairs faced a screen and podium, where a lady in a blue dress fiddled with the microphone. She looked up at us. “Reading starts at three.”

With the day we’d had, it already felt like midnight, but we were actually early. I led us over to a couple of couches. The girl dropped onto one with a sigh. She looked paler than she had before, which worried me. “You okay?”

With two fingers, she pinched the bridge of her nose and shut her eyes. “I don’t know. I just feel kind of tired.” Shaking her head slightly, she dropped her hand and blinked. Then she wrapped her arms around herself and shivered.

I reached out a hand and set it on her arm. “Still cold?”

Her expression went slack and she froze, seeming to ignore me. Then she spoke in a quiet, detached voice, as if she were telling me what someone else was experiencing.

“The arrival of the Gardener was met first with the trembling, then with a shared stirring, as if we were all awakening at once. We knew the arrival meant the stimulating part of our existence was about to occur.

“The Gardener moved to the front; the odd accompanying squeaks were familiar sounds to me. In anticipation, my heart beat faster. I waited for what I needed. Craved. Desired. And then, with a loud clank, the Gardener pulled the switch up front, and the light came.”

God, it was so weird, like she was watching a movie, narrating it. I glanced around to see if anyone noticed. A woman and a little kid were looking at books nearby, but they weren’t paying any attention to us.

“As one, our heads turned upward to the false sun. A murmur rose, like one big satisfying Ahhhhhhh.…”

The sound was too loud, and I quickly covered her mouth. She stopped. When I removed my hand, she spoke again.

“Revived vitality and strength seeped into me. Into us. I felt myself renewing, growing stronger, and I felt the shared strength emanating from my neighbors. My eyes opened and lowered as a small whirring sound preceded the opening of the small hole in the floor in front of me, from which rose a monitor, the same as the one that sat in front of the group. The screen flickered in blue, and I readied myself for that day’s education.”

She stopped speaking.

“What education?” I waved my hand in front of her face.

She finally met my gaze, but her hands were twisting together in her lap. “What?”

Hesitating just a little, I set a hand on hers. They were icy. “You said something about education. And I wondered, what education?”

Her gaze darted quickly from side to side. “I don’t know. I’m remembering more. But it’s just small … pieces. The books…”

“You remember books?”

She shook her head. “Not books. Information. There was a screen with information. So much.”

“A computer? Is that the education?”

She hesitated, and then said, “Maybe.” She sounded unconvinced.

Holding my breath, I pulled her close to me. I let out my breath. “We’ll figure this out.”

At that moment, the little kid walked over by us. He had red hair that stuck up, and there was a Transformer on his blue sweatshirt. He looked at the girl and said, “Hi.”

She looked at me, then back at the boy. “Hi.”

Wanting him to go back to his mother, I told the kid, “You shouldn’t talk to strangers.”

He stared at my scar for a moment. “Did a stranger do that to you?”

I probably could have gotten rid of him by lying and saying yes, but instead I shook my head. “It was a dog. A dog I knew, actually.”

The girl reached up and touched my face. “I’m sorry.”

I shrugged.

The boy pointed up at the girl’s exposed arm. “Is that a butterfly?”

She twisted her arm to give him a better view of her tattoo.

He said, “Hey, I’ve seen that one before.”

“You have?” she asked.

He nodded. “Want to see?”

The girl and I both said, “Yes.”

The boy disappeared around the corner, and I half hoped he wouldn’t come back. But a couple of minutes later he returned, hoisting a coffee table book in both arms. He plunked it down on the table in front of us. The cover photo was of a blue butterfly. The boy tapped it. “See?”

Leaning forward, the girl compared her tattoo to the butterfly on the cover. The boy sighed. “Oh. It’s not the same one.”

The girl frowned and said, “That’s okay.” She opened the cover and started paging through the book. “There are lots of blue butterflies in here.”

The boy brightened. “Maybe we can find it.”

“Maybe.” The girl smiled. “Let’s look.”

As they searched, stopping at each page to compare the photos to her tattoo, I started to pay attention. Both she and my father had blue butterfly tattoos. But the video of my father was old and not that crisp, so it was hard to tell just how alike, or different, they actually were.

The boy squealed. “That’s it! That’s the one.”

Taking a good look at both the book and her tattoo, I said, “Yeah, looks like it.”

The boy’s mom called him then, and he waved at the girl before running off. The girl was already leaning down to read the book, and I joined her. According to the book, the butterfly was the Karner Blue, about one inch across. I kept reading. The Karner Blue was completely dependent on one plant, the wild lupine, which they laid their eggs on. But with lupine becoming more and more scarce because of developers digging up and building on native prairie, the butterfly was losing its habitat.

“Bummer,” I muttered.

The girl asked, “Are they endangered?”

I nodded, reading a bit more. “Yeah. They’re pretty much toast. They probably should have expanded to different kinds of plants.”

People started arriving and, before the seats filled up, we took seats near the back. The lady in the blue dress introduced Dr. Emerson’s new book
When the Food Runs Out
.

Not exactly a picker upper.

The author was short, with dark hair to her shoulders, and wore a black suit with a white shirt. She immediately started referring to her PowerPoint, where a photo of Earth seen from space filled the screen. “Today in the world, approximately 120,000 people will die. Also today, approximately 360,000 people will be born. Meaning that, on the average, every two days we add the equivalent of the population of Portland to an already overcrowded world. But that doesn’t affect you, right? That’s what you’re thinking?”