She Walks Away to See If He Follows

It didn’t mean anything. She had already gone through it, more than once, lying on her back in the dark with the window open and the street noise coming in. The pause when he said her name. The way he had started leaving the potting-shed door open when she was in there, which she had told herself was about ventilation. Three weeks of charged silences that she could still, if she wanted to, file under professionalism. She was twenty-three. He was her supervisor. The university had a policy and she had read it twice.

She was standing too close to him.

The greenhouse held the heat the way a closed mouth holds breath. One long glass house, a central bench running its length with the orchids hung on a rail above it, so that the space was split into two aisles that met at either end. More benches against the glass on both sides. Each aisle was the width of a body and not much more. A fine mist that never quite settled. It was past three; the sun had come round to the west panes and lay across the slats in strips. The air smelled of damp earth and the sweet-rot of orchid media and something floral that sat at the back of the throat. Cotton clung. There was nowhere to put her feet that was not already occupied by the aisle, or by him.

Richard had the reluctant bloom between two fingers. He did not look at her.

He noticed the damp patch at her collar first. Then the way she held still when he reached past her for the shears. He looked at the bloom instead. Cattleya. Late. He had been waiting on it for eleven days and it had done nothing useful. He set the shears down on the bench without handing them over.

“Hold the spike,” he said.

She did. Her knuckles were near his. He did not comment on that either. He had spent twenty years controlling variables and this was a variable he had already decided not to name. She was on a six-month placement. He had watched her arrive in the mornings, the small adjustment of the face before she came through the door. He was forty-seven. He looked at the flower.

Bianca watched his hands. Precise. Economical. He never used two motions where one would do. The irrigation dripped somewhere behind them, regular, and a leaf lifted and settled against another leaf when the mist came on. She could hear him breathe. She could hear herself. The glass made the far end of the house and the door in it visible and empty, which was not the same as private. Someone could come. No one did.

He let go of the bloom. She let go of the spike. He shifted a tray. The scrape of terracotta on wet slat was loud in the quiet. She took the other end of it because that was the work, and their knuckles brushed, and neither of them said anything. She set her end down a fraction too carefully. He aligned his with the edge of the bench, as if the alignment mattered.

She went through it again, the way she had gone through it every day for three weeks. He was showing her the bloom. That was the job. The humidity had put a sheen on his forehead and on the back of her neck and that was weather. Her shirt was stuck between her shoulder blades. That was also weather.

Richard reached past her a second time, for the label pushed into the medium. She did not move. He registered that she did not move, and looked at the label, and then at the pot, and then at nothing. The air between them was the same air. There was not enough of it. He had been using silence as a shield for weeks and so had she, and the silence was still there, intact, doing its job, while the rest of it was not.

“The sheath is tight,” he said.

“I know.”

She said it to the flower. He heard the rest of it anyway, or thought he did, and immediately decided he had not. He picked up the shears again and this time he did hand them over. She took them by the handle. His fingers left the metal a moment after hers arrived. The mist came on. A drop ran from a hanging spray onto the bench and sat there.

The face Bianca put on in the mornings was not holding. She could feel it going in small ways: the stillness, the fact that she had not stepped back when there was, technically, a half-step of aisle behind her. She listed the reasons again. Placement. Ethics. The difference in their ages, which she could do as arithmetic and which did not, standing here, feel like arithmetic. Her body had already decided. She had noticed that three weeks ago and had been arguing with it since.

He noticed the way she held the shears. Too still. He looked away.

They moved down the bench because the next pot needed turning. The aisle forced them into the same line. His shoulder passed the hanging orchids and the leaves made a small sound. She followed because the work required it, or because she had decided the work required it. Damp earth under the benches. The sweet-rot smell thicker here. She could feel the cotton of her shirt against her skin with every breath, which was too many breaths. She laid the shears on the slat. Metal on wet wood; the sound carried.

Richard set the pot down. It rocked. Not much. Enough.

Bianca put her hand on his wrist to steady it.

The pot stopped. Her palm was on the inside of his wrist, over the tendon, and the skin there was warmer than the air, which was already warm. They were breathing the same humid air. Neither of them looked at the pot. He did not pull his arm away. She did not take her hand back. The silence they had both been using held, and held, and did not quite hold.

She took her hand back. If it was going to happen he would have to cross the house to do it, and she wanted to know whether he would. She walked to the end of the bench, the end away from the door, and round it into the other aisle as if the next pot were there. She kept walking. The hanging sprays were between them now and not much else. She had not gone far. There was nowhere in the house far enough to go.

Richard stood with his hand still flat on the pot. The skin of his wrist was cooler where she had been. He looked at the shears on the slat, then at her back moving behind the hanging orchids. He could not call after her. That would have broken the silence they had both been using as a shield. He lifted his hand off the pot. He followed.

His shoes were loud on the wet concrete. Six steps to the end of the bench and round it, and a few more down the other aisle. She had stopped facing the central bench, an upturned tray on the slat in front of her, and when he came up behind her she turned her head and not the rest of her. The orchids hung at her shoulder. Past her, the door at the far end was still glass and still empty.

He stopped at her back. There was no other place in the aisle to stop. She turned then, the whole of her, and the space allowed for that and for nothing further; her shoulder blades were near the glass bench behind her and his chest was near the buttons of her shirt. He noticed the shirt first, stuck to her. The buttons were already damp. His hand went to the top one because the cotton was an obstruction, because the heat had done that work already, and she did not stop him. Her right hand went to his belt. The buckle gave with a small metal sound and the leather pulled through and it was quiet again. He worked his way down her buttons. Nothing was flung. He peeled the shirt back off her shoulders and the wet cotton came away from her skin with a small sound. He set it on the upturned tray beside them, folded once. A plain bra, damp at the band. She reached behind herself and undid it and put it on top of the shirt. She pushed his trousers and the rest down and left them where they stopped, bunched above his shoes.

Bianca turned back to the bench. She did not look at his face. She could tell where he was by the heat of him at her back. His hands found the waist of her trousers and she undid the button herself and he took them and her underwear down together to her knees and stopped. The mist came on. It came down on her bare shoulders and she felt every drop of it, and she heard the hiss in the nozzles and the tick of water on leaves, and under that she heard him breathing through his nose. She put her right hand flat on the wet slat in front of her, a hand’s width from the tray. The bench took her weight and one of the boards shifted and a pot on it rang against another pot. They both stopped moving.

A shadow crossed the glass of the door at the far end.

Richard’s hand went still on her hip. She had gone still under it. The shadow moved along the outside of the house, a person on the path, the shape of a head and shoulders passing pane after pane, and then the last pane, and then the wall. He let his breath out. She let hers out a second after. Neither of them said anything about it. His hand moved again.

He stood close behind her. Her feet were held together by the trousers at her knees and his knees came against the backs of hers. His left hand came down on the bench beside her right. She felt him find her with the other hand and bring himself into her, and she bent forward to make room, and her hips met the edge of the bench and stayed there. The edge was wet and cold where it pressed across the front of her thighs. Her free hand found that edge and gripped it. He moved slowly. The aisle gave him no room to do otherwise.

She had been at the edge since she had walked away and heard him follow. She had not known that until now. It built with the mist coming down on her back and the bench pressing her hips, and she kept her mouth shut, and it went on longer than she thought she could keep her mouth shut for. Her shoulder knocked a hanging spray and the leaves made a small sound. Then she came. It was fast, and she bit down on the sound it pulled out of her, and it came out anyway, one short note through her teeth. Her arms shook. Her right hand slid on the wet slat and struck the tray and it moved a quarter inch with a scrape. She stayed quiet after that and held on to the bench and let it finish.

Richard felt her go before he heard her. He had been controlling this variable all afternoon and for weeks before that, and he found he could keep controlling it a little longer, and did. He braced his palm flat on the wet wood beside hers and looked at the two hands, his and hers, and at the water standing in the grain between them. The mist cycled off. In the quiet he could hear the drip from the nozzles and his own breath and nothing from her now. He held through that. He held until the holding was the only thing left in him and then his hand closed on the edge of the bench and the slat took his weight with a low creak and he let it go. It went out of him slowly, in the body only, with no sound but the breath. When it was done he stayed where he was with his forehead near her shoulder and did not move for the length of two more drips.

They dressed in the same economical silence. The humidity made it clumsy. He pulled his trousers up and the belt went through the buckle with a small sound and then the buckle clicked shut. She took the bra from the tray and put it on with her back to him, then pulled her trousers up and fastened the button, then took the shirt. Buttons that had been stuck were still damp; the shirt went on wrong the first time and she corrected it without looking at him. Bianca wiped a smear of potting mix from her forearm with the back of her hand. Richard slid the tray she had knocked back to its exact previous position, aligned with the edge of the bench, as if the alignment mattered. Neither looked at the other for a long moment. A leaf against a leaf.

She left first, down the aisle toward the door. He went back round the end of the bench and turned the next pot, the work they had been doing. The reluctant bloom was still closed. He did not look at it.

When they eventually stepped outside, separately, the greenhouse smell clung to both of them. Damp earth. The sweet-rot of the media. Something floral at the back of the throat that did not leave.