He glances at his watch—one of those techy exercise bands, causing me to wonder if he’s a runner like Harrison—and I take a step back, clearly having held him longer than social etiquette allows. I open my mouth to say something benign, normal. Like how nice it was to run into him again. Good luck with the plumbing.
“I’ve actually got some time,” he says, scratching his jawline with his free hand. It’s covered in black pinpricks of day-old stubble. “Want me to come take a look?”
“What?”
“At your garden?” he says slowly.
“Oh, uh . . . no,” I stutter, caught off guard. “That’s OK. It’s fine. I’m sure you have a million other things you could be doing. Like plumbing.”
“I really don’t mind,” he says. “I kind of owe you.”
“You do?”
“Your husband saving Caroline and all.” He pauses. “Harrison is your husband, yeah?”
“Yeah, yes. Right.” I swallow, hoping I don’t sound as idiotic as I think I do. And then I consider his offer—the thought of spending more time with him both appealing and daunting. I’m obviously a ball of bumbling nerves in his presence, but I’m also wildly curious to know more about him. Maybe I could uncover something—anything—that would explain the dreams. And really, what else am I going to do today? “OK, that would be great. I mean, if you really don’t mind.”
“’Course not,” he says. “Let me check out and then I can follow you.”
I drive like a little old lady to my house, my hands gripping the steering wheel at ten and two, my eyes glancing in the rearview mirror every twenty seconds to check that Oliver is still there. That he is a real person, driving a real car (a gray Prius), coming to my real house. I even pinch myself. Hard. On the skin of my wrist, leaving a red mark. It still stings as I pull onto the gravel driveway, Oliver right behind me.
* * *
“Wow. You’ve gotta lot of land out here,” he says once we’re out of our cars.
“Yeah. I’ve thought about getting chickens or something, you know, to make use of the space. And it is a farmhouse. I feel like it’s a prerequisite.”
Oliver doesn’t reply and I will myself to stop talking as I lead him through the yard, but anxiety grips my belly, and I tend to ramble when I’m nervous. “I read this article a few years ago about the rise of suburban chicken farming, and it looked so quaint, so This American Life. And the chickens were kinda cute.”
Oliver raises an eyebrow.
“I could totally see myself coming out here collecting the eggs every morning. I feel like I’d be a good chicken mom.”
Oh my god—STOP TALKING ABOUT CHICKENS.
Thankfully, we get to the edge of the garden, affording me the opportunity to change the topic. “Here we are. Welcome to the jungle,” I say, because that’s what it looks like. A dead jungle, anyway. Most everything is brown and yellow and dry and withering, except for the weeds, which seem to be thriving.
“You know the thing no one tells you about chickens?” Oliver says.
I swivel toward him. “What?”
“They smell.”
“They do?”
“Something awful.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “How do you know that?”
“Worked on a poultry farm in Oregon once.”
A poultry farm? I squint harder, as if trying to see him more clearly. These little unexpected tidbits of information remind me that I don’t know this man at all. Even as I feel like I do. And it’s frustrating, not least because it feels like he’s being cryptic—offering small insights without any explanation. Maybe he’s naturally a man of few words, but I want to know more—need to know—and it’s starting to irk me.
“You know, it’s funny—I worked on a poultry farm once, too.”
His eyebrows shoot skyward. “Really?”
“No,” I say. “Not really. That’s a very uncommon thing.”
His mouth breaks into its lopsided smile, deepening the groove in his cheek. He shifts his weight onto his other leg. “About seven—maybe eight years ago, I stumbled across this organization called the Association of Global Organic Farm Opportunities, where you can get matched with a farm in the country of your choice and go work there for two, three months at a time. On a whim, I signed up. I’ve been all over—Peru, Alaska, Khartoum. I just got back from a vineyard in Australia.”
He paces around the garden, studying it from all angles like someone buying a new car. “Wait—you get paid to travel the globe and . . . farm?” With his devil-may-care hair and hipsterish vibe I would have guessed Oliver did something creative—like a graphic designer or a drummer or a tattoo artist. I would not in a million years have guessed his actual job. Or that it was actually a job for anyone.
“Nah,” he says. “It’s volunteer. I only get room and board.” Oliver bends his knees, fingers a few leaves, appraises plants.
“So . . . you’re independently wealthy?”
His eyes flash in amusement. He jerks his head. “No.”
I open my mouth to ask one of the string of new questions I have for him, but suddenly he stands, clapping his hands together, effectively cutting me off. “Right. Well, I have good news and bad news.”
I tilt my head. “Bad news first.”
“The tomatoes are past salvaging. We can harvest all of those jalapeños, and you might get a few more if we leave them in. The herbs are fine, they just need weeding. And I might be able to revive the Japanese eggplant, but everything else should probably come out.”
I stare at him. “I have Japanese eggplant?”
His mouth turns up in a half grin. “You do.”
“Oh.” I scan the garden, wondering which one is the eggplant. “Well, what’s the good news?”
“It should only take a few hours of hard manual labor to do it all?”
“Oh,” I repeat. “That sounds like bad news and bad news.”
He lifts his shoulders in apology. “I like to put an optimistic spin on things. Tiny character flaw.”
* * *
Though I told him it wasn’t necessary to help, I was grateful when he insisted, not only because it was an enormous job, but because I had more questions than answers and wanted more time with him. After grabbing the few garden tools left behind by the previous owner from my studio, we started working on opposite sides of the garden, baking under the hot sun, the only sound the drone of bees and insects buzzing through the air. Now I pause, breathing heavily, and swipe at the beads of sweat on my forehead with my forearm. Oliver’s on his knees, back curved, dark circles staining the armpits of his shirt. He’s narrower than Harrison, wiry, but still, I can’t help noticing his triceps flex and loosen with each grunting effort of uprooting the plants with his spade and hand.