Where the Wisteria Grows

The greenhouse looked like it would be hot from the outside, but that was nothing compared to what Hitomi had imagined. Sun beat in through the open glass and fell in bright, slanted lines over the flower-covered tables. The moment that she walked through the translucent plastic flaps that hung over the entrance, the heat hit her like a wave; an ocean wave, because it was that wet. Condensation clung to the glass, giving it a misted appearance. She breathed deeply, smelling the faint, mixed floral scent of blooming flowers and the deeper, heavier scent of wet earth.

The open space of the greenhouse was blocked only in the back left corner, where large green-metal shelves stood, heavy with packets of seeds, bags of fertilizer and topsoil, and taped-closed cardboard boxes. The rest of the space was taken up by tables. The grey, folding kind that sat low to the ground. Each flat face was covered in small, plastic black rectangles, each one containing a single plant. Through a pair of swinging doors, far to the right, the greenhouse connected to the larger structure of Crow's Nest Greenhouse. Hitomi had driven about forty minutes, from her families farm in Newport, down to the smaller town of Prices Fork.

There were closer greenhouses. She didn't know why she came to this one, most of the time; well, that wasn't exactly true. She came here for two reasons. Firstly, because it was one of the few places in the area that sold Japanese plants--not that all of the plants that she grew were Japanese, but she tried--and second, only slightly less importantly, because of a beard.

Not the beard, specifically. That had been the first thing that she'd noticed, but it wasn't the reason that she came here. Today, she saw him almost immediately. There were only two other people in the greenhouse, besides her and the beard; an elderly white couple, who Hitomi put in their late seventies or early eighties, browsing between the metal shelves near the back of the glass building.

She didn't know the boy's name. Perhaps boy was a little bit unfair; after all, he was probably about the same age that she was. Young man, then. Probably in his early twenties, though you'd be mistaken for not realizing that fact at first glance. He looked well into his thirties. Mostly it was the beard. A clump of well-trimmed dark hair that covered his chin and the two lines of his jaw in front of his ears, rising to meet a head that was more curls than hair. His shoulders were broad, a fact accentuated by the sleeveless black shirts that he wore. At 5'11, Hitomi was used to looking most men in the eyes when she spoke to them. It was for that reason that she knew the young man stood a couple inches over six feet--somewhere, she guessed, between 6'3" and 6'4".

It was only his eyes, that gave away his age. Dark circles which had yet to let go of the wide, guileless stare he must have had, as a child. They were the exact color of rich, newly-turned soil. Most times, they passed as black; except when the light caught them at just the right angle, bringing out the small striations of lighter brown toward either round edge. Soft-looking eyes, which weren't helped toward adulthood by the downturned, slightly round point of his nose or the curled length of his eyelashes.

Late twenties, then. Maybe pushing the edge of thirty. Definitely a couple of years younger than her, but not by many.

Hitomi couldn't see any of these things, as she approached. He stood with his back turned to her. A pair of khaki work pants led down to old boots. There were a pair of clippers tucked into the back left pocket, handles-up, and a pair of gardening gloves in the other. Even so, she found her eyes lingering on the space around them; where the beige fabric tucked in slightly where the bottom of his bum met the top of his legs, how the tucked-in black of his shirt bent in to create the arch of a powerful back.

She very nearly pulled up short, when she realized what he was doing. A small wooden bucket sat beside his right boot, filled with leaves and twigs. His arms were raised, accentuating the curves of muscle that made up the top of his arms, folding the skin in deep lines where they met his shoulders. But Hitomi wasn't looking at that any longer. She was looking at the plant in his hands, coming apart slowly under the pushed-out blade of a boxcutter.

Japanese Wisteria. She knew the variety as that of her homeland, because of the color. Unlike the natural purple-blue of the Chinese variety, or the bred-in deep purple of the American, these flowers were mostly white. Seeing each petal alone, you'd be easily forgiven for not noticing the faint touch of purple at the edge of each. Only when they were together, turning over in the breeze--or in this case, the gentle movement of air from the humidifiers--did their purpleness become obvious. Lavender, like the first touch of sunset coming to the evening sky.

This one was young. She could tell, because it stood slightly under the man's height. They could easily grow to three or four times that. She could see the twisted, scratchy-looking wood that made up the center of the plant, curling clockwise around what looked a bit like a broken-off broom handle. It wasn't the plant, that suddenly made Hitomi feel as if she were holding her breath, despite that she was still breathing evenly. It was his hands--white hands, in the purple-white petals. White men didn't trim wisteria; they were not subtle enough for the plant, they took too much, they reached too deep. You probably couldn't kill a tree, at this age, by mistrimmed it, but you could still hurt it.

She almost went to speak, getting as far as opening her mouth. They were separated only by the distance of about five feet, and the plant-heavy top of a folding table. Then she stopped herself. Not because she thought better of it, but because something about the young man's hands had caught her attention. The boxcutter was folded against one palm. Both hands brushed the outside of the plant, his fingers moving lightly over the curled-up flowers. The drooping racemes hung down around his forearms and elbows. He wasn't cutting the plant; it was almost as if he were... brushing it. Only once and a while did his hands pause, the knife clicking out and moving carefully between the outside of the branches, taking away a small strand where the bark split in opposite directions.

Hitomi watched, feeling a small knot forming between her eyebrows. Not in displeasure, but in confusion.

"Who taught you to do this?"

He turned, looking a bit surprised, giving Hitomi her first look at his face, that day. A line of dirt stuck to the bridge of his nose, wiped left across the top of his cheek. A sheen of sweat clung to his brow, which he pulled out a gardening glove to wipe away quickly before replacing in his back pocket. Hitomi could feel herself sweating as well, in the heat of the greenhouse; the slight itch of it against the front of her hairline, the light dampness of her blouse, though part of that was likely the overhead mist-lines.

"What part?" Each time, she found herself surprised by the young man's voice. It wasn't deep--not nearly as deep as the body which it came from indicated that it would be; instead, it was like the sound of a shovel going through dirt. A sound too breathy to be considered rough, and too gritty to be considered smooth.

"How to trim that plant," she blinked, indicating the wisteria behind him with a tilt of her forehead, "who taught you that?"

He frowned slightly. Not a real frown, but just a slightly tightening of his eyebrows toward the round circles of his eyes, "Nobody. My father, I suppose. He taught me to prune."

"But the hands--" she raised her hands flat in front of her, miming the action he had been doing a moment earlier, "who taught you? This--fanning?"

"Nobody."

"Then why do you do it?"

He considered that question for a moment, and then shrugged. The broadness of his shoulders made the motion seem heavy, "I don't know. It just seemed right. A delicate plant needs a delicate touch." He blinked, then, maybe realizing that the words sounded somewhere between poetic and erotic. A bit too much of either for a commercial greenhouse, or a customer. He cleared his throat before continuing, "Can I help you find something, today?"

"Perhaps," Hitomi lowered her hands, "perhaps... are you selling this plant?"

The young man glanced behind him, and then back to her. He shrugged, following the gesture with a nod, "This? Sure. You just have to be careful where you plant it, because--"

"It is very strong, yes." She didn't end high on the last word, indicating that she already knew. He nodded again.

"It likes full sun. And the soil--"

"Yes," Hitomi cut him off, "good drainage. Very wet. I have a spot.. behind the house. There is an oak trunk there, cut last year. About five feet. It will grow well around this."

"Okay," she thought she might have seen the twitch of a smile, behind the heavy brown curls of his beard, "Sounds like you already know more than me." He glanced at the plant again, over his shoulder, before turning back to her, "Need a hand getting that loaded up?"

"Yes, please. And two bags of fertilizer."

"You shouldn't--" he began, and then cut himself off. This time, the smile under his beard was wry and obvious, "Sorry."

"They're not for her," Hitomi shook her head, "They're for other plants. I have woodchips."

"Her?"

"She is a woman," Hitomi studied the flowers, damp with the condensation of mist, swaying gently on their racemes in the moving air of the humidifiers and air-conditioners, "She moves this way," she held up a hand, tilting it back and forth slightly, "like a woman. Strong enough to break rock, but needs..."

"A delicate touch?" He offered. Hitomi found herself smiling, nodding slightly. Her black length of her bangs, beneath her piled-up hair, swayed against her sweat-touched forehead.

"Yes, that."

"Well, alright," the young man nodded, pulling his gardening gloves from his back pocket, "Let me get her ready for you, and I'll bring her out. Silver Toyota, right?"

Hitomi nodded, slightly surprised that he knew. If he noticed her reaction, he gave no indication of it. He simply turned and, making his way between the tables, moved toward the shelves where the plastic bags of fertilizer sat. She made her way to the counter, beside the sliding doors near the side of the greenhouse; paying with a credit card. The machine beeped softly as she tapped the flat side of her VISA against it.

When the young man appeared once more, he was pushing a metal rolling card. It rattled, the wheels not quite greased properly, and jolted slightly over the brushed concrete. She held the plastic flaps open for him, recieving another beard-covered smile in return. As they made their way toward her truck, Hitomi pretended that she wasn't studying the young man from behind. The khaki pants shouldn't have been flattering, but there was no ignoring the way that they hugged the cheeks of his bum and accented the strong lengths of his legs. She appraised him silently as they made their way across the space of the parking lot.

"This is you, right?" His gravelly voice brought Hitomi, startlingly, back to reality.

She hadn't even realized that they'd reached the truck. A gentle wind blew over the back of her neck; it wasn't cool, but only felt like it after the sweltering, muggy heat of the greenhouse. Overhead, the sun was a white circle against the chalk blue of the sky. The clouds were wisps, streaking back and forth; like the lines left behind a brush eraser. Hitomi dug through her pockets for a moment, eventually finding the ring of her truck keys. Setting a small one into the lock on the back of the cab, she turned it and folded up the first panel from the top.

"We're going to need a..." Hitomi began, and then paused. Her voice trailed off to silence, at the realization of how close they were standing. When she'd turned to speak, the front of her breasts very nearly grazed the top of his forearm, just below the bend of his elbow. She could see by the ever so slight widening of his eyes that they'd come to the realization in the same moment. Neither stepped backward.

She looked upward, into a pair of black eyes--and they stared right back at her. She couldn't, but Hitomi felt as if she should be able to see herself reflected in those eyes; somehow both bright and dark at once. Mirrors in a windowless room. Her heart beat against the inside of her chest, like a moth held in cupped hands. Suddenly, her mouth felt dry. A kind of dryness that had nothing to do with the heat of the sun overhead.

"...ratchet strap," she finished, finally.

He glanced at her and nodded. Hitomi felt a strange knot, which started in her throat and then, much larger, in her stomach--like a rope had been pulled taut between the two. For just the briefest of moments, as his eyes narrowed against the glare of the sun, in their steadiness and their darkness, they looked nearly Japanese. But he wasn't, of course. He was hakujin; no matter that for a single moment he could have been looking at her through her grandfather's eyes--he was a white boy from southwest Virgina.

You're imagining things. You don't know a thing about him.

But, strangely, she didn't feel that was true. Hitomi had always believed that you could tell almost everything about a person by two things: their actions, and their eyes. One was meaningless, without the other. Terrible people could do kind things, and kind people could do terrible--but the eyes would always give them away. How did they look, when they were doing the thing? Were they joyful, excited, thoughtful, uncertain?

Hudson's eyes were... unwavering. She would have called them somber, but that wasn't quite right. There were a number of things that they were nearly--serious to the point of sternness, curious, watchful, steady. They were eyes that were somehow both too old and too young for the face which held them. She found herself unable to look away. She felt the moment stretching, becoming too long, their silence too filled with meaning to be anything but what it was.

"Do you have any in the truck?" When he spoke, Hudson's voice seemed to come from further away than the six inches that separated them. It was softer than she'd heard it before; Hitomi had to repress her bodies sudden urge to shiver, instead turning the motion into a quick, curt nod.

"I'll get these loaded up, then." The moment disappeared, vanishing like mist in the sun, as he stepped backward and reached down to sling one of the bags of fertilizer over his shoulder. Each one was 40 kilograms, but he lifted it easily. As he did so, she saw his fingers create indents in the soft plastic. They were creased deeply around his knuckle bones and the joints above them. His nails were neatly trimmed, and obviously taken care of despite the fact that they were currently rimmed in lines of black dirt. This did nothing to soften the knot in Hitomi's stomach--in fact, if anything, it made it pull tighter still.

"Right," she nodded again, more to herself this time, "Good." Her voice had a note of finality about it.

When I get home, the very first thing I will do is have a cold bath. As she thought it, instead of her bathroom, a picture of the creek in the back of their field came to mind. Even in the middle of summer, the water that came from underground and wove through the rocks remained cold and clear. She noddded a third time, as she pulled open the passenger side door of the truck; that was what she would do. She would take a swim in the creek, and forget all about Hudson and his eyes... and his arms... and his hands.

Silently, she vowed to hold her head underwater for at least thirty seconds.

When she made her way back to the open cab, she found that Hudson had finished arranging the supplies. The wisteria plant balanced in its large clay pot, sticking up just a few feet higher than the roof of the truck ahead of it. The two bags of fertilizer had been arranged in a wedge, holding it in place. Reaching up, she hooked one side of the strap beneath the wheel gunnel and wrapped it twice around the pot before stretching over and hooking it against the other side. She ratchetted it tight, until the strap let out a strange, throaty hum when she pulled against it.

"Alright," Hudson wiped his hands together, making a slapping sound, and tucked his gardening gloves into his back pocket, "you're all set. Drive safe."

Was it only Hitomi's imagination, or did his eyes linger on hers for just a little bit longer than was friendly? They shifted slightly, as if he were trying to draw out the soft planes of her face with them, molding it like clay in his memory. She opened her mouth, paused, and closed it. She gave him a deep nod instead.

He'd taken about two steps across the parking lot when her voice reached him. His long stride had already carried him passed the car parked beside her truck.

"Do you plant these, ever?"

He turned back, eyebrows rising slightly, "Uh--in the greenhouse?" Below his eyebrows, his eyes squinted at her, facing into the bright sunlight. The top of his cheeks were a bit flushed from it, a deeper pink against his already suntanned skin.

"No," she shook her head. Inside of herself, Hitomi shook her head at herself--she knew that this was uncertain territory, "At... at a customers house? I will pay you. What do you make here?"

"Seventeen, but--"

"Then I will pay you twenty." Hitomi cut him off, certain that if she stopped for longer than a moment she'd never find the words, or the courage, to begin again.

"--but I wouldn't let you pay me," Hudson finished. He reached behind him and fished out a previously-unseen pad of paper and a charcoal pencil. They'd been tucked in the pocket with his gardening clippers; the paper lined and marked with "Crow's Nest Greenhouse" along the top. A kind of receipt paper, she thought. Before she had a chance to study it properly, Hudson held it out to her, "Write down your address. I'm off at two-thirty."

"Good," Hitomi nodded, "but I will pay you."

He grinned, the motion nudging the top of his beard upward on one cheek. He was already shaking his head, but the argument that came to her lips disappeared at his words: "Alright. We'll talk about payment later."

We will not, Hitomi thought firmly. If she was paying him to come to her house for work, then she could pretend that this was a casual business exchange. If she did not pay him, then it was... something else. She didn't let herself think about what that might mean, but felt an uncalled flush enter the bottom of her cheeks through her chest. To hide it, she lowered her face to the notepad and pretended to stare at it while scratching down her address. 670 Bluegrass Trail, Newport. Take VA-42. White farmhouse. She pulled the paper off the pad. It fluttered slightly in the breeze as she offered it to him. As he took it, she felt his fingers brush against hers. They felt tough, like newly-formed roots.

"Call it three-thirty?" He asked.

"Three-thirty," she agreed.

***

Hitomi was sitting on her porch, when the car came down her driveway. Gravel crunched as the tires rolled over them. A silver hatchback; Toyota Prius. It wasn't what she would have imagined that Hudson drove--so much so that she didn't believe it was him, until he parked beside the house and stepped out from the drivers' seat. It was him, alright. The same broad, sun-darkened shoulders under a black tank top, the same almost lazy-looking strides, the same work-lined hand that he raised to greet her.

"You're early," she said, setting down her copy of War and Peace on the small wicker table beside her armchair and standing. She smoothed her hands down the front of her thighs.