1. Terrifying Tale of the Garden Rapist

          In the midst of a completely random day at work, my office phone rang. “This is Dr. Stiles.”

          “Don’t kill me.” It was my boyfriend, Thad. As he was capable of many, many things that could result in me murdering him, I was immediately afraid.       

          “Oh, good God, what did you do now?” I sat down in my old desk chair wondering how much this escapade was going to cost me, emotionally or fiscally.  

          “What made you think I did anything?” He scoffed. I heard him light a cigarette.

          “Are you smoking in the house?”

          “No,” He lied. He always lied. He considered it one of his charms. “And anyway I’m outside on the porch.”

          “So you are smoking?” We had both quit smoking last year; I having given it up after twenty years, and he about the same. But he had decided himself fickle enough to pick it back up.

          “No,” he exhaled. “Lookit, someone just came to the door and it was this weirdo lady and she wanted to know about the irises out in the front yard…”

          “The tall white ones?” I asked. As a stay-at-home husband, my dear Thaddeus was easily excitable.

          “I dunno. Let me talk!” Thad hated to be interrupted, but as I relished asides, I seldom provided him this peace. “Lookit, she said she liked them-the irises- and wanted to dig them up or something, or exchange plants-flowers-with you, something like that, but I told her she would have to come back after you got off work and talk to you, since they’re yours.”

          I pivoted my chair to look out my office window at all of the passing college students outside the English building. "So she didn’t just take any?”       

          “No,” he exhaled and I imagine the long beautiful plume of smoke and cringed in regret: I could still taste it, and it tasted good. “I just told her to come back after five. That’s it.”

          “So the house is okay?”

          “Yes! Why do you always think that I’ve burned it down or something?”

“Because you did set the kitchen on fire…”

“I did not!”

“You did.”

“It was just a singed tea towel!” he yelled, “And I should never have even told you about it! You never would have known!”

“I smelled it for weeks…”

 “I thought you said we weren’t going to bring that up again?”

“You said I wasn’t allowed to bring it up again. I never said anything to the effect.”

“Whatever, Mike! I just wanted to tell you some crazy gardening lady was going to be here after five to talk to you.”

          “Oh, well, that’s fine.” Once I realized he had not lost the cat or crashed the car or accidentally dropped the laptop in the sink (again), I was suddenly terribly amused with the thought that some random woman was so taken by my irises. As a middle-aged gay man who had recently settled down into non-state sanctioned matrimonial bliss, gardening was one of my few free joys. “What did she look like?”

          “A weirdo. Long hair like Crystal Gayle, but up in pony tails with little girl ribbons.”

          “You’re kidding?” I laughed.

          “No,” he chuckled, “She looked kinda like an insane German doll. I was afraid of her so I only talked to her through the screen.”

          “So she couldn’t kill you? You know that mesh screening saves lives. Did she have a knife?”

          “No. She just looked very, very intense, with these crazy eyes. Like she really wanted those irises…”

          “Well,” I sighed, “She can’t have them. They are heirloom. I bet they’re as old as the house…”

          “Whatever,” he exhaled and hung up.

          I held the phone and hated that he hung up before I could say goodbye. My step-father did that, and I hated it when he did it too.

          Once home I paced, straightening, in preparation for our guest.

          “What are you doing?” Thad said. “You’re not having her in are you? The insane crazy eyed German doll?”

          “Well, what if she wants to come in, we could at least tour her through the house. Do we have any lemonade?”

          “Lord! You’re the crazy one! ” He threw his hands up and left the room.

          I was very proud of the house: a 1925 California Bungalow in pristine condition. I had bought it in 2000, and Thad had lived with me since late 2008. The house was full of many antiques, mostly tasteful, but some questionable. The house was very much reflective of my whims, filled to the brim in a sort of decadent Victorian whirl. And Thad, God love him, humored me by allowing me to continue to collect old china pieces, odd bits of furniture, and the random taxidermied bird here and there.

          A car pulled up in the drive and I readied myself. Through the tea-stained eyelet lace curtains I watched a man and a woman emerge and walk up the big steps to the broad porch that hugged the entire front of the house.

          “There’s two of them,” I whispered loudly to Thad, who was back in the Den, clearly out of earshot.

          “Can’t hear you,” he called over the TV.

          “Come here!” I barked.

          “Can’t. News is on.”

          Flummoxed, I checked myself in the mirror and peered back outside to find them standing right on the other side of the glass.

A knock and I jumped back with a small shriek, which is an unappealing thing for a large bald man to emit.   

          Clearing my throat in the most masculine way, I opened the door to find the couple. She was wide-eyed, short, with odd ponytails peaking off her head at strange and exotic angles. Thad was right: she had very crazy eyes. The man with her looked like a reformed hippy, calm from years of pot smoking, his pants pulled up too high.

          “Well, Hello. I am Angelique and this is my husband Paul. I came by earlier and your-friend-said I should talk to you about the irises out here.” She had the slight cadence of the country; clearly uneducated, but not deep country, so I was not too afraid.   

          “Yes, hello. My name is Michael. My friend told me you were coming by.” We were using ‘friend’ in that way polite Oklahoma people meant ‘homosexual counterpart,’ as we can’t use  ‘partner’  around here as people just think you’re talking about cowboys. But I was used to it, so it was fine.

          The woman continued, “I told your friend that I was interested in talking to you about your irises.” She said it in a very Jehovah’s Witness ‘May I talk to you about Jesus’ kind of way.

          As she talked I looked her up and down. Her crazy eyes had a rather odd LaToya Jackson slant to them. The man just smiled and nodded along, as if he was used to taking orders. But they were both clearly odd, and not in the good way. It was then that I decided I did not want to give them the tour of the house.

          “Yes, well, let’s go look at the irises you’re talking about…” I said, exiting out to the porch.

          We walked out into the front garden and made a few more general pleasantries before she got down to business.

          “I was just driving by. We live just around the corner some, and I work down at the Dairy, so I drive by here a lot. And I’ve noticed what a great garden you got, and I’ve just started gardening myself, and plants are real pricey at Wal-Mart, and I got me a lot of smaller irises and I was wondering of you might want to trade some of yours for some of mine?”

          “Why, sure,” I said without thinking. I was just mesmerized by the woman herself. She wore snug mom jeans, 3 or 4 sizes too tight. She had a sleeveless blouse on typical of the local folk, and was pretty enough for a 40 or 50 year old, but it was that hair that got me. It was the sort of hair that was highly prized in the 1970s: big and long and flowing free in those two majestic tails. The husband had still yet to speak.

          “So I brought you some of my irises in case. They’re out in the trunk.” She continued, “So, you want to do this?”

          “Well, sure. Sure. That sounds fine.” I said, again, without thinking. Beyond her appearance I was also taken up by the desire to be courteous to a neighbor, as well as charmed by the fact that she admired my garden, which I had worked so hard on. But she was moving this transaction faster than I anticipated.  

“Okay, then,” she said, and as I continued to be filled with that silly Sally Field, “You like me! You really like me!” feeling, she went out to her car and came back with a bucket and a giant three foot gardening fork. She dropped the bucket at my feet and brought the big fork up in front of her like a samurai sword. It was buffed to a fine shine, tipped with five, eight inch long tines. I saw her crazy eyes reflected in it, as she passed it between us, almost ritualistically.   

“There they are.” She said proudly, nudging the bucket with the fork.   

“Oh, yes,” I smiled, bending to inspect the bucket.  

What she had dumped before me were the withered carcasses of 5 or 6 limp, feckless miniature irises of the most commonplace colors. But as I looked back to her, what took me more was the fact that her Charles Manson eyes were now roaming my perfect lawn, zeroing in my gorgeous four-foot tall majestic heirloom beauties. My eyes narrowed and I realized I was cornered, as I had agreed to this swap.

It was at this point that the porch door slammed and Thad emerged.

“Hey,” he smiled at them, joining us, no handshake. “How’s it going?”

“Well, look,” I pointed down at her mean little bucket, “They want to do an irises exchange. Isn’t that neat?”

He peered into her bucket, and not one to be bothered by tact snorted, “Are those even irises?”

“Well, yes, they’re irises, you silly” the woman snapped, moving close to us, “They’re real pretty, they’ve just already bloomed.” She looked back to me, brandishing her giant shiny fork.

“Oh, I bet they are…” I said looking to Thad with that imploring look of

‘SAVE ME! THEY ARE TAKING ME HOSTAGE AND THIS IS MY ONE ATTEMPT AT FREEDOM!’ kind of way.

But he just smiled a chimerical smile and said, “Okay, just thought I would say ‘hi.’ Bye.” And he turned and went back into the house.

Coward! And just typical. He could beat rats off a burning ship if there was a couch and a TV remote somewhere in his eye line.

The woman and her husband looked at me. I could tell she knew that her shoddy little crap flowers were crap, but  she was too caught up in getting her hands on my innocent heirlooms to care. Her lips pursed and slightly curled up one side, revealing cruel teeth.  

“They are really pretty when they bloom,” the husband said to break the silence, pointing to his wife’s bucket. He had finally spoken, to defend his mate’s insanity. 

I looked around and realized there was only one answer without looking like the worst neighbor ever: “Sure. No problem. But let’s get them from the backyard.”

“Ha!” She cackled, grabbing the bucket and handing it to me. “Here, now you go empty this and I’ll start getting me some.”

My stomach turned. I looked toward the house and saw Thad standing in the Study window smirking at me thought the eyelet lace curtains.

Bastard.  

The woman wanted the entire backyard garden tour now that she had victims to stalk. As we walked, I pointed to the native Oklahoma rose stand and the wisteria covered arbor, but her big crazy moon eyes darted from one iris bed to the next.

“Oh, you have so many. So many. I didn’t know you had them back here too…”

“Yes, they came with the house…”

“Is it okay if I start?” she jittered.

As looked like she might jab me with the giant fork of hers so I just smiled, “Sure…” 

With a laugh she began her harvest, thrusting that fork into the ground with more gusto that I would imagine from a small pig-tailed woman. She wailed on the end of it till a fat tubular root popped from the ground. Then she grabbed it, and massaged it with her fake French manicured nails to get the dirt off, and then tossed it in her bucket. Over and over this happened. The husband just following her silently, as she danced around, talking to herself, “Oh, here’s one!” and “I need a violet! Oh, yes, a violet!” and “Just one more yellow. They are so tall and so pretty.”

I stood transfixed: I was not a lenient sort, and she was messing with my OCD perfection.

“Oh! Look at these!” She headed straight for my Grande Dame irises.

“No, no," I stopped her. "Those are my favorite. I planted those special, right there next to the back door …” They were tall and sleek with an iridescent white flower, like no other in the yard.

“Oh.” She looked very hurt

I felt bad as compared to her I clearly had so much: nice clothes, an education, decent diction. But I stood my ground.

She slumped away and I watched her begin to dig in the back part of the yard. As I watched I realized that there was an uncomfortable passion to her progress. This led me to believe there had never been any children in her life, only odd periodic hobbies to fill that void, and this was her current one: terrorist gardening. And for that I felt for her, as gardening had often filled a similar void in my life over the years.   

Once she filled her bucket with 10 or 12 of my babies she asked, “Oh, but can I have just a few more? I can empty the bucket in my trunk and fill it up again.”

I had begun to sweat, although it was a comfortable spring day. I was beginning to feel that horror I felt when as a child I watched the Grinch slither after the last can of Who Hash.

“Well, it’s getting late…” I began.

“Ah, what do you say? It’ll just take a second!” She waggled her bucket at me and I realized that I was now standing between her and that which comforted her at night and whispered sweet things to her in her dreams, covering her childless hollow.
“Well, I have had a long day….”  I continued.     

“Oh, you silly!” she giggled, “It won’t take a minute.” And with that she skipped out to her car, leaving me completely aghast: I had just used the white polite suburban ‘no’ and she had just ignored it.

I looked over at her husband, who shook his head and snickered, “When Angelique gets an idea…she gets an idea” he said.

I wanted him gone too. I wanted them both gone. And I desperately wanted a cigarette.

The horrid woman returned with her bucket empty and fork at the ready. I was now determined to speak up for myself and tell her we were done here.

But I did not, could not be so rude, as she dug up some more tall yellow ones and I even stayed mum as she went after the brilliant violet ones, but then as she lurched near the Grande Dames again I blurted out, “Ok, that’s it-we’re done here!”

She looked stunned, as I guess I had bellowed it.

“Okay. Oh!” she said, sounding hurt. “What about just one more of these? You have so many…”
The Grande Dames appeared powerless next to her and her giant shimmering fork. Her look was one of crafty country guile.  

I cleared my throat and mentally total myself not to scream. “Well, like I said before, those are really my favorites.  So ‘no’ really does mean ‘no’ here…”    

“What if I bring you some more of my nice ones to make up for it?” she sing-sang like a little girl, twisting one of her braids in her fingers, in what I assumed was suppose to appeal to me in a come hithery coy way. Instead it just made me very, very afraid of her, like I had just heard her rattle snake rattle.     

So I said nothing, but my face turned a dark crimson. 

“She’s real persistent.” The husband said, sidling up behind me.

I turned to him to say, “She certainly is…” and we exchanged a few meaningless words between strangers before I turned back and saw that devil of a woman depositing a huge forkful of my precious Grande Dames straight down into her grimy bucket. It was like they had been working in a team, he to distract me, and she to grab them.

 “Hey!” I began, stomping over to her.The Grande Dames were now half gone, a crater now gaping right next to the back door.  

“Oh,” she scoffed, dancing back away from me. “It’ll be fine. I’ll bring you some more of mine to fill that, and maybe we can do this again soon. Paul, come on!” And with that she smiled and exited the yard, her bucket bulging with my precious flower bulbs, her silent husband in tow.

I looked about, mortified, mouth agape: my perfectly manicured garden now had little dirt piles all over, as if mole men had attacked and sucked the plants down into their lair in the center of the Earth.   

In the Den, I walked up to Thad. He looked up at me and rolled his eyes, “What happened?”

“She just wouldn’t stop. I mean I asked her too. I mean I said ‘that’s enough,’ and  ‘no means no...’” I sat down dramatically, and continued, as if recanting a scene from The Accused. “And she just took and took, some of the prettiest ones, and it was like I couldn’t stop her…”

He lowered his magazine, “So she raped your garden?”

“Yes. Yes she did. She raped my garden.”
The fear in my voice was only half put on.