The Plant. Part 32

Roger shook his head and started toward the Zenith offices, walking with his hands rolled into fists. He stopped outside the office door. "Which of you has the key? Because I left mine at home."

I was rummaging for them in my pocket when Bill stepped forward and tried the k.n.o.b. It turned. He looked at us with his eyebrows raised, then went in.

I'd characterize what we'd smelled when the elevator door opened on Five as a scent. In the reception office it was much, much stronger-what you would have called a reek, if it had been unpleasant. It wasn't, so what does that leave? Pungent, I suppose; a pungent, earthy smell.

This is so hard. To this point I've been racing along, wanting to get to what we found (and what we didn't), but here I find myself moving much more slowly, searching for ways to describe what is, essentially, indescribable. And it occurs to me how infrequently we are called upon to write about smells and the powerful ways in which they affect us. The smell in the Central Falls House of Flowers was similar to this in its strength, but in other ways, important ways, entirely different. The greenhouse smell was threatening, sinister. This one was like...

Well, I might as well just say it. It was like coming home.

Roger looked around at Bill and me and gave us a forbidding District Attorney stare. "Toast and jam?" he asked. "Popcorn? Honeysuckle? New G.o.ddam car?"

We shook our heads. Zenith had put its various disguises aside, perhaps because it no longer needs them to entice us. I tuned into their thoughts again, just enough to know that Bill and Roger smelled what I did. There were variations, I'm sure, as no two sets of perception are alike (not to mention no two sets of olfactory receptors), but basically it was the same thing. Green...strong...friendly...home. I just hope and pray I'm not wrong about the friendly part.

"Come on," Roger said.

Herb grabbed his arm. "What if somebody-"

"n.o.body's here," I said. "Carlos was and the General was, but they're...you know...gone."

"Don't gild the lily," Bill said. "They're dead."

"Come on," Roger repeated, and we followed him.

The reception area was clean as a whistle, the garlic still holding Zenith at bay, but the first green scouts had already gotten to within five feet of the pa.s.s-through to the editorial department (there's no door at the reception end of the hallway, only a square arch flanked by Macho Man posters). Fifteen or twenty feet down, where the door to Roger's office opens on the left, the growth has thickened considerably, covering most of the carpet and climbing up the walls. By the point where Herb's office and Sandra's face each other, it has covered the old gray carpet in a new carpet of fresh green, as well as most of the walls. It has gotten a start on the ceiling for good measure, hanging from the fluorescent lights in ropy swags. Beyond that, down toward Riddley's country, it has become a jungle. Yet I knew that if I walked down there, it would open to let me pa.s.s.

Pa.s.s, friend, come home. Yes, I could hear it whi Roger said. "That was her gadget that went off in our heads, wasn't it? The Dark and Stormy Night whatsit."

I nodded. So did Bill and Herb.

Roger took a deep breath, held it, then let it out. "Come on, let's see what kind of a mess we're in." He paused. "And whether or not we can get out of it."

The elevator seemed to take forever. None of us said anything, not out loud, anyway, and when I discovered I could turn off the run of their thoughts, I did so. Hearing all those muttering voices twined together in the middle of your head is distressing. I suppose that now I know how schizophrenics must feel.

When the door opened on the fifth floor and the smell hit us, we all winced. Not in distaste, but in surprise. "Oh man," Herb said. "All the way out here in the f.u.c.king hall. Do you suppose anyone else could smell it? I mean, anyone else but us?"

Roger shook his head and started toward the Zenith offices, walking with his hands rolled into fists. He stopped outside the office door. "Which of you has the key? Because I left mine at home."

I was rummaging for them in my pocket when Bill stepped forward and tried the k.n.o.b. It turned. He looked at us with his eyebrows raised, then went in.

I'd characterize what we'd smelled when the elevator door opened on Five as a scent. In the reception office it was much, much stronger-what you would have called a reek, if it had been unpleasant. It wasn't, so what does that leave? Pungent, I suppose; a pungent, earthy smell.

This is so hard. To this point I've been racing along, wanting to get to what we found (and what we didn't), but here I find myself moving much more slowly, searching for ways to describe what is, essentially, indescribable. And it occurs to me how infrequently we are called upon to write about smells and the powerful ways in which they affect us. The smell in the Central Falls House of Flowers was similar to this in its strength, but in other ways, important ways, entirely different. The greenhouse smell was threatening, sinister. This one was like...

Well, I might as well just say it. It was like coming home.

Roger looked around at Bill and me and gave us a forbidding District Attorney stare. "Toast and jam?" he asked. "Popcorn? Honeysuckle? New G.o.ddam car?"

We shook our heads. Zenith had put its various disguises aside, perhaps because it no longer needs them to entice us. I tuned into their thoughts again, just enough to know that Bill and Roger smelled what I did. There were variations, I'm sure, as no two sets of perception are alike (not to mention no two sets of olfactory receptors), but basically it was the same thing. Green...strong...friendly...home. I just hope and pray I'm not wrong about the friendly part.

"Come on," Roger said.

Herb grabbed his arm. "What if somebody-"

"n.o.body's here," I said. "Carlos was and the General was, but they're...you know...gone."

"Don't gild the lily," Bill said. "They're dead."

"Come on," Roger repeated, and we followed him.

The reception area was clean as a whistle, the garlic still holding Zenith at bay, but the first green scouts had already gotten to within five feet of the pa.s.s-through to the editorial department (there's no door at the reception end of the hallway, only a square arch flanked by Macho Man posters). Fifteen or twenty feet down, where the door to Roger's office opens on the left, the growth has thickened considerably, covering most of the carpet and climbing up the walls. By the point where Herb's office and Sandra's face each other, it has covered the old gray carpet in a new carpet of fresh green, as well as most of the walls. It has gotten a start on the ceiling for good measure, hanging from the fluorescent lights in ropy swags. Beyond that, down toward Riddley's country, it has become a jungle. Yet I knew that if I walked down there, it would open to let me pa.s.s.

Pa.s.s, friend, come home. Yes, I could hear it whispering that to me.

"Ho...lee...s.h.i.t," Bill said.

"We've created a monster," Herb said, and even in that moment of stress and wonder it occurred to me that he'd been reading too many Anthony Las...o...b..a novels for his own good.

Roger started down the hallway, moving slowly. We had all heard pa.s.s, friend, and we all felt that undeniable welcome, but we were all ready to run, just the same. It was just too new, too weird.

Although there's only one corridor in the office suite, it makes that little zigzag jog in the middle. We call the part running through the editorial offices "the front corridor." Beyond the jog are the mailroom, the janitor's cubby, and a utility room to which only the building's personnel are supposed to have access (although I suspect Riddley has a key). This part is called "the back corridor."

In the front corridor, there are three offices on the left: Roger's, Bill's, and Herb's. On the right there's a small office supply closet mostly taken up by our cranky Xerox machine, then my office, and finally Sandra's. The doors to Roger's office, Bill's, and the supply closet were all closed. My door, Herb's door, and Sandra's door were all open.

"Fuu-uck," Herb said in a horrified whisper. "Look on the side of her door."

"It's not Kool-Aid, I can tell you that much," Bill said.

"More on the carpet, too," Roger said. Herb used the f-word again, once more breaking it into two syllables.

There was no blood on the ivy-runners, I noticed, and although I didn't want to think about that too much, I suppose I know why not. Our buddy gets hungry, and doesn't that make perfect sense? There's so much more of it to support now, so many new outposts and colonies, and our psychic vibrations can probably offer it only so much in the way of nourishment. There's an old blues tune on the subject. "Grits ain't groceries," the chorus goes. By the same token, friendly thoughts and supportive editors ain't...

Well, they ain't blood.

Are they?

Roger looked into Herb's office and I looked into mine. My place looked okay, but I knew d.a.m.ned well Carlos had been there, and not just because of the fancy-shmancy attache case sitting on top of the desk. I could almost smell him.

"Things are a trifle disarranged in your cubby, Herbert," Bill said in a really terrible English butler voice. Maybe it was his way of trying to lighten the tension. "In fact, I believe someone may have urinated a bit in theah."

Herb glanced in, saw the destruction, and grunted an oath that sounded almost absent-minded before turning to Sandra's office. By then, I was getting a pretty clear picture. Two crazy men, both with grudges against different Zenith House editors. I didn't care how they got in or which of them had arrived first, but I was curious about how far apart in time they'd been. If they'd met in the lobby and had their lunatic shootout there, they could have saved us a lot of trouble. Only that probably wasn't the way Zenith wanted it. Aside from the fact that Carlos may have owed a rather large debt to something (or Something) in the Great Beyond, there's the fact that grits ain't groceries. Telepathic plants get more than lonely, it seems. Pore little fellers get hungry, too.

It's certainly something to think about.

"Roger?" Herb asked. He was still standing by his door, and he sounded timid again. "She...she's not in there, is she?"

"No," Roger said absently, "you know she's not. Sandra's on her way back from Cony Island. But our friend from Central Falls is finally present and accounted for."

We gathered around the door and looked in.

Carlos Detweiller lay face-down in what Anthony Las...o...b..a would undoubtedly call "a gruesome pool of spreading blood." The back of his suitcoat was pulled upward in a tent-shape, and the tip of a knife protruded through it. His hands were outstretched toward the desk. His feet, pointing toward the door, had already been partially covered by thin green bows of ivy. Zenith had actually pulled off one of his loafers and worked his way through the sock beneath. Maybe there was a hole in the sock to begin with, but somehow I don't think so. Because there were broken strands of ivy, you see. As if it had tried to pull him out, out and down toward the main ma.s.s of the growth, and had been unable. You could almost feel the hunger. The longing to have his carca.s.s the way it had undoubtedly already had the General's.

"This is where they fought, of course," Roger said, still in that absent tone of voice. He saw the Rainy Day Friend lying on the floor, picked it up, sniffed at the little hole on top, and winced. His eyes began to water at once.

"If you set off the siren in that thing again, I will be forced to kill you as dead as the a.s.shole at your feet," Bill said.

"I think the battery's fried," Roger said, but he set the thing down on Sandra's desk very carefully, also being careful not to step on Detweiller's outstretched hand.

Carlos had been in my office, because I was the one against whom he'd built his grudge. Then he left for something.

"I think it was food," Bill said. "He got hungry and went looking for food. The General jumped him. Carlos got to Sandra's gadget before Hecksler could give him the coup de grace, but it wasn't enough. Do you see that part, John?"

I shook my head. Maybe I just didn't want to see it.

"What's this?" Bill was out in the hall. He dropped to one knee, moved aside a clump of ivy, and showed us a guitar pick. Like the leaves of Zenith himself, the pick was as clean as a whistle. No blood, I mean.

"Something printed on it," Bill said, and squinted. "JUST A CLOSER WALK WITH THEE, it says."

Roger looked at me, finally startled out of his daze. "Good G.o.d, John," he said, "that was him! He was her!"

"What are you talking about?" Bill asked, turning the pick over and over in his fingers. "What are you thinking about? Who's Crazy Guitar Gertie?"

"The General," I said hollowly, and wondered if he'd had the knife when I gave him the two dollars. If Herb had been there that day, he'd be dead now. There was absolutely no question about that in my mind. And I myself was lucky to be alive.

"Well, I wasn't there, and you are alive," Herb said. He spoke with his old don't-trouble-me-with-the-details irritability, but his face was still pale and shocked, the face of a man who is running entirely on instinct. "And congratulations, Gelb, you just left your dabs on that guitar pick. Better wipe em off."

I could see other stuff scattered amid the thickening greenery back down the hall: shredded bits of clothing, a few pieces of what looked like a pamphlet of some kind, paper money, coins.

"Fingerprints aren't a problem because n.o.body's ever going to see any of the old coot's stuff," Roger said. He took the pick from Bill, briefly examined the printing, then walked a little way down the corridor. The drifts and clumps of ivy drew back for him, just as I had known they would. Roger tossed the pick. A leaf folded over it and it was gone. Just like that.

Then, in my head, I heard Roger's voice. Zenith! As if calling a dog. Eat this c.r.a.p up! Make it gone!

And for the first time I heard it speak a coherent reply. There isn't anything I can do about the coins. Or these d.a.m.n things.

Halfway up the wall, just beyond Herb's office door, a shiny green leaf almost the size of a dinner plate unrolled. Something bright dropped to the carpet with a clink. I walked down and picked up Iron-Guts's Army ID tags on a silver beaded chain. Feeling very weird about it-you must believe me when I say words cannot begin to tell-I slipped them into my pants pocket. Meanwhile, Bill and Herb were picking up the General's silver change. As this went on, there was a low rustling sound. The bits of clothing and shreds of paper were disappearing back into the jungle where the front corridor becomes the back one.

"And Detweiller?" Bill asked in a hushed voice. "Same deal?"

Roger's eyes met mine for a moment, questioning. Then we shook our heads, both at the same time.

"Why not?" Herb asked.

"Too dangerous," I said.

We waited for Zenith to speak again, to contradict the idea, perhaps, but there was nothing.

"Then what?" Herb asked plaintively. "What are we supposed to do with him? What are we supposed to do with his G.o.ddam briefcase? For that matter, what are we supposed to do with any little pieces of the General we come across in the back corridor? His belt-buckle, for instance?"

Before any of us could answer, a man's voice called from the reception area. "h.e.l.lo? Is anyone here?"

We looked at each other in utter surprise, in that first moment too shocked for panic.

From the journals of Riddley Walker 4/5/81.

When I got to the train station, I stuck my suitcase into the first unoccupied coin-op locker I came to, s.n.a.t.c.hed the key with the big orange head out of the lock, and dropped it into my pocket, where it will undoubtedly stay at least until tomorrow. The worst is over-for now-but I can't even think about getting my luggage, or doing any sort of ordinary ch.o.r.e. Not yet. I'm too exhausted. Physically, yes, but I'll tell you what's worse: I'm morally exhausted. I think that is a result of returning to Zenith House so soon upon the heels of my nightmare falling-out with my sisters and brother. Any high moral ground I might have claimed when the train pulled out of Birmingham is all gone now, I can a.s.sure you. It's hard to feel moral after you've crossed the George Washington Bridge with a body in the back of a borrowed panel truck. Very hard indeed. And I can't get that G.o.dd.a.m.ned whitebread John Denver song out of my head. "There's a fire softly burning, supper's on the stove, gee it's good to be back home again." That's one wad I'm tard of chewin', Uncle Michael might have said.

But 490 Park Avenue did feel like home. Does. In spite of all the horror and strangeness, it feels like home. Kenton knows. The others, too, but Kenton knows it best of all. I've grown to like them all (in my own admittedly involuted way), but Kenton is the one I respect. And if this situation starts to spin out of control, I believe it's Kenton that I'd go to. Although I must say this before plunging back into narrative: I'm afraid of myself now. Afraid of my capacity to do ill, and to carry on doing ill until it's too late to turn around and make amends.

In other words, the situation may already be out of control, and me with it.

Gee, it's good to be back home again.

Well, let it go. I'm tired and I still have a lot to tell, so that's best. I feel a moral tract itching to get out, but we'll just save it for another day, shall we?

I told the cab driver to take me to 490, then changed my mind and had him drop me at Park and Twenty-ninth, instead. I wanted to scout a little bit, I suppose. Get the lay of the land and creep up on the blind side. It's important to make one thing clear: the range of the telepathy generated from the plant, while wider, is still limited to the vicinity of the building...unless the situation is extreme, as it was during the death-struggle between Hecksler and the Mad Florist.

I don't know if I expected police, SWAT teams, or fire trucks, but all I saw was Sandra Jackson, pacing up and down in front of the building, looking half-distracted with worry and indecision. She didn't see me. I don't think she would have seen Robert Redford if he'd strolled by stark naked. As I walked toward her, she went to the building's door, hands cupped to the sides of her face, then seemed to come to a decision. She spun on her heels and started toward the street, clearly meaning to cross to the uptown side.

"Sandra!" I called, breaking into a trot. "Sandra, hold on!"

She turned, first startled, then relieved. I saw she was wearing a big pink b.u.t.ton on her coat which read I LUV CONY ISLAND! She started running toward me, and I realized it was the first time I had ever seen her in a pair of sneakers. She threw herself into my arms so hard she almost knocked me onto the sidewalk.

"Riddley, Riddley, thank G.o.d you came back early," she babbled. "I took a cab all the way from Cony Island...cost a fortune...my niece thinks I'm either crazy or in love...I...what are you doing here?"

"Just think of me as the cavalry in a John Wayne movie," I said, and set her back on her feet. That much was easy. Getting her to let go, I thought, might not be. She clung like a barnacle.

"Tell me you've got your office keys," she said, and I could smell something sweet on her breath-cotton candy, maybe.

"I've got them," I said, "but I can't get them unless you let go of me, honey child." I called her that with no irony whatsoever. It's what Mama always called us when we came in with sc.r.a.ped knees, or upset from being teased.

She let go and looked up at me solemnly, as big-eyed as a waif in one of those velvet paintings. "Something's different about you, Riddley. What is it?"

I shrugged and shook my head. "Don't know. Maybe we can discuss it at another time."