Death of an Orchid Lover Read Online Free

kind?”
    “An epidendrum. Someone gave me a cutting, and I stuck it in a pot and it took off. Flowers all the time. Kind of neat.”
    “She nodded. Well. I think I’ll go freshen my drink.” She didn’t have a drink.
    She stuck out a hand. “Nice meeting you…”
    I told her my name. “And you’re?”
    “Sharon. Sharon Turner.” She looked into my eyes for a couple of seconds, turned, walked away.
    I watched her go out, then followed. When I got outside, she’d already disappeared. I wanted to talk to her some more. How could I arrange that?
    It would have to wait. All my greenhouse conversations had put me behind schedule. I tracked Gina down and we bid adieu to Albert and to Sam. As we reached the front door, I scanned the place for Sharon. I spotted her in the kitchen and caught her eye. She smiled slightly, gave me a half-wave, turned away. I watched her a second or two more before going.

3

    M Y DATSUN PICKUP WAS STOPPED AT A RED LIGHT AT L AUREL Canyon and Mt. Olympus. I had Procol Harum in the cassette deck. “Conquistador” was on, not the live-with-orchestra version they play on the classic rock stations, but the one on the first album, the one only people with their musical heads still stuck in the sixties know.
    Cassette deck.
It still sounded weird. My millions-of-years-old eight-track had finally given up the ghost the previous fall. After nearly mail-ordering a new one from the J.C. Whitney catalogue, I’d moved on to the nineties. Or at least the late seventies.
    “That woman,” Gina said.
    “Laura?”
    “No. The one you sort of said goodbye to when we left.”
    “Her name’s Sharon.”
    “You’re going to go out with her.”
    “Not that I know of. I’ll probably never see her again.”
    The light changed. We pulled away, continued down the hill, past Sunset, where Laurel Canyon turns into Crescent Heights. I thought about what Gina had said. I felt like ateenager whose mom had asked, “You like Susie, don’t you?”
    But Sharon was certainly intelligent and attractive. And we shared an interest in plants. Maybe asking her out would be an interesting idea.
    As we turned onto Santa Monica, a couple of blocks from Gina’s condo, she said, “You will, you know.”
    “Will what?”
    “Screw her.”
    “I love it when you talk dirty.”
    “Stop joking. This is serious.”
    “Why is it so serious?”
    “Because I don’t need you getting mixed up with some orchid woman.”
    “I’m not mixed up. Look, you’re acting weird. Will you tell me what’s wrong?”
    She shook her head. I dropped her at her condo and headed for Beverly Center.

    Most days I hung around the greenhouse, then maybe did some volunteer work at the Kawamura Conservatory at UCLA. Commercials paid well and made few claims on my time. And I didn’t really need much money. My father refused to accept any rent for the house, not that I pushed him very hard on it.
    My agent, Elaine Chen—who’s also my cousin; Chen is her married name—sent me on a couple of auditions a week. I got lucky on a fair percentage, and stole jobs from people who put all their waking hours into making themselves appealing to casting directors. I did maybe a half-dozen commercials a year, say twenty thousand dollars’ worth, and thatwas plenty. My daily rate had inched up to over a thousand, and with residuals I made out okay.
    The previous year I’d done a series of spots for Olsen’s Natural Garden Solutions, and somehow the chemistry between my “wife” and “kids” and me had touched a chord. People came up to me on the street and said, “It takes a bug to catch a bug,” and smiled knowingly. And I’d get embarrassed and hide in a doorway.
    Now, with warm weather breaking out and aphids having a field day with people’s roses and such, they’d brought the commercials back. And someone at Olsen’s ad agency had gotten the bright idea to take Diane Shostakovich—the actress who played my wife—and me, and dump us in