Hard Boiled Love, An anthology of noir love,
a collection of 12 authors from Insomniac Press (2003).
"Look at it. It's all here. Everything we need: pumps, timers. Lookit. Lights, $75 for double four foot fixtures. Nutrients. Media, you know, Styrofoam, what we'll grow it in. All retail. We pay cash and there's no tracing. Everything we need we just walk in and buy."
Paul ran from rack to counter, hoisting sacks and boxes up for his companions to see. "What do we need, Shep? I mean, how much? What's the yield?"
Mona sighed. "Who's going to sell it? Because I'm not. I already put in a sixty-hour week at the Hole In One. I'm not getting up at three in the morning to open a market stall after spending all night slinging dough nuts.
"No, no. We're not growing vegetables here. See Mona, Shep is like, employee at large down at the foundry. He goes around, sees what people need and he sells it to them. Don't you Shep?"
Shep blinked. Paul took it as a nod.
Mona shook her head. "I'm not getting it. Sell them what? What would you buy at the foundry? Didn't the company provide your supplies?"
"Not supplies supplies, Mona. You know." Paul pressed together the forefinger and thumb of his right hand, held them to his mouth, inhaled, then bulged his cheeks and eyes.
Mona was still blank. She looked to Shep, who stared off like he hadn't worked with Paul at Fordham Foundries for nearly twenty years, right up to the day they'd laid Paul off with a year and a half severance and fifteen years of mortgage left on the farm.
Shep wore spotless, white sneakers with symbols on the ankles that made Moira wonder how he could afford them. She realized then that, though casual, all of Shep's clothing looked expensive, and his hair professionally groomed. Mona knew he'd been married before, twice, she thought, with kids from each go-round. How did he manage all that on a foundryman's income, even after the last contract? Admittedly that had looked pretty good, a decent income, finally, for those who remained as they'd downsized Paul and more than a thousand others out the gate.
A desperate tear wended down Paul's cheek. He sucked more air into his nearly busting lungs.
"Oh," Mona cried. "Ahhh. Oh!"
"Yeah," said Paul. He leaned in to whisper in her ear: "Shep gets more guys through their shifts than all the goddam foremen put together."
So that's where he gets it, Mona thought. She didn't mind, used to smoke a bit herself until it made the rest of life unbearable in comparison. It was either stay stoned or quit it altogether. Someone had to pay attention to their lives, so Mona didn't dope anymore.
"My feet hurt," she said, lifting one soft sole from the hard terrazzo, then the other.
Shep looked at her feet. White loafers curled beneath her thick ankles. Her shoes were the "after" to the "before" of his sneakers, the outside of her heels worn down from following around picking up after her husband's dreams.
Mona looked at Paul.
"Don't start that, Mona," he said. "I gotta have some hope. My buy-out from the foundry won't kill the mortgage. We both know that. Not by half, and that's before we catch up on the other bills. And I won't ask more of you, Mona, I just can't. Hell, you don't make enough. You could slop coffee twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, we'd still lose the farm." He smiled toward Shep.
Mona said, "If we'd kept the bungalow, we'd of been free and clear years ago."
"There you go. Always the down side. Every time I try to get us ahead, you throw a wet blanket. Why don't you try helping instead of all this whining?"
"We have the farm, Paul. I didn't stop you. I don't see that it's gotten us ahead at all."
"You have to be patient. One day there'll be little bungalows popping up all around us. Then, we'll cash in."
"Couldn't you do a little of the regular farming in the meantime?"
"Except the land needs building up. We knew that going in. It's why we got such a deal, remember? Fallow and fertilize is what it needs to do right now."
"Fallow and fertilize," Mona muttered. "Those are your skills, for sure." She wished she could stop herself saying these things aloud. It was a growing side of her she didn't like. Their old house in town was gone, nothing to be done about that now. Property values were down; that wasn't Paul's fault. He was right. They had to focus on saving the farm. Mona saw Shep turn a smile back down the aisle. She pulled the collars of her sweater together against the chill of the store's air-conditioning.
"Couldn't we just put your settlement toward the mortgage and you get a job somewhere? It wouldn't take much. Couple hundred a week. There's nothing we need, really, to get by. Maybe the bank could give us an extension so we pay a little less each month. We'd still not be sixty when the mortgage is done. That's younger than your father retired."
Paul stomped up the aisle to the garden hoses. He picked one up, turned it in his hands, then put it back on the shelf and returned.
"Where am I supposed to get a job, Mona? Doing what? Flipping...flippin' hamburgers? Pumping gas? Hell, they don't even pump gas anymore. They hire one kid to run the cash and let people pump their own gas." He turned to Shep for support, then continued. "Look at me. I'm closing on forty. I'm not taking some scum-sucking, floor-swabbing, part-time, job catching shit from a twenty-year-old ass-hole with a degree who gets 47 cents an hour more than me. That's bullshit. This is our chance to have some real money for a change. Not later. Now."
He reached over and pulled Shep's elbow. "Tell her it'll work Shep. A little grow operation in the barn, on the lower level. The basement. There's no windows, so no one'll see the lights. No airplanes spyin' from above. No one ever goes out to the barn but me. And, I mean, look at all this stuff here. All the equipment, these books on hydroponics. We'll be growin' twelve-foot, killer weed, no time. The best. Better than Mexican Gold, and Shep can sell it. He's already got the market. Tell her, Shep."
Shep surveyed the empty aisle. "It gets done...," he said.
Mona caught his tone. "But what?"
He hesitated, surprised someone was about to listen. "Well, one thing, electricity." He gestured down the aisle. "This stuff draws so much the hydro company tips the cops for a look-see."
"I by-pass the meter. Slip a few bucks to Phil Waszynski." Paul was headed up the aisle again. "He's electrical-maintenance at the foundry."
"And for another thing?" Mona said.
"I have suppliers, already."
Mona looked back to Paul, to see how he'd get around that one but he was squeezing an electric-timer, squinted eyes peeling the small print from the side of the box.
"Look at this," he said, holding it up. "We don't even have to fuckin' be there."
