Logs:Garden Variety

Garden Variety
Dramatis Personae Anahita, Lucien
In Absentia	2023-03-06 "The gods handed me a second chance, and I'm not about to waste it."
Location <NYC> All People's Garden - East Village
This park has come a long way from the debris-choked empty lot that it was in the 1970s. Now it sports garden plots, flower beds, a gazebo, murals, even a little amphitheater. Today it's buzzing with activity, GrowNYC employees and volunteers here to get a start on mulching and weeding for what's shaping up to be an early spring. Anahita is a new volunteer, but clearly not new to the work, though it's fairly simple at this stage. She's wearing a purple and gray flannel with the sleeves rolled halfway up her forearms, gardening gloves that started out the day pink, ancient but sturdy blue denim overalls, and heavy engineer's boots. Her long hair is braided and coiled up neatly out of her way, secured with a red jade hairstick, and she carries a faded gray canvas satchel across her back. She has just finished upending a wheelbarrowful of mulch onto one of the beds and delivered it back to the truck for refilling, and wandered off to the break area set up in the gazebo. Lucien is certainly proficient at many tasks necessary for gardening, but today his most useful contribution has been being one of the stark minority of Manhattanites with a driver's license. He is dressed for dirty work -- well-worn old jeans, a pale blue long-sleeved tee under a brown chore jacket. He's just returning to the garden -- not, this time, in the large mulch-laden truck he'd been in earlier but this time his own sleek Aston Martin convertible, laden not with bags of dirt but a carful of large takeout trays of Italian food, large drink carafes, boxes of disposable plates and flatware, napkins and cups. Lucien is hefting several of the stacked trays to cart them to the gazebo and deposit them on a picnic table, lifting his chin in greeting as he enters. "-- There is a bit more, if you wouldn't mind lending a hand." Anahita is in the process of tugging off her gloves when Lucien arrives. "Of course," she replies with the slightest dip of a bow. She tucks the gloves into a back pocket and follows the man out to the street. Her eyebrows lift at the incongruous luxury of the GT parked at the curb, but all she says is, "Thank you for making the run." She only hesitates slightly before reaching into the back seat and pulling out a large rectangular jug of water and two bags of lighter items to hook over her arms. "The folks who have been here since morning are starting to wilt." Lucien is hefting the last of the containers out of the car after Anahita claims her cargo, and nudging the door with a hip once he has it all (only slightly precariously balanced) in hand. He inclines his head very slightly at the thanks as he starts back to the gazebo. "Mmm, well. A bit of nutrients and watering will often help with that." There's a faint tug at the corner of her eyes and mouth, not quite a smile but pleased enough, if Lucien is paying attention. "So will the caffeine, no doubt, though that's less helpful to the plants." The water is heavy enough and Anahita small enough that she has to carry the boxy jug in both hands, but it seems to give her surprisingly little trouble, hardly sloshing around at all when she sets it down on the table beside the other refreshments. Her eyes are searching the rows of beverages, but slip back over to Lucien and linger there for a moment. "You look familiar. I'd say we must have volunteered together before, but this is my first event with them." "I will not pour it on the plants," Lucien assures Anahita gravely. "Much like with people, I fear its benefit there is short-term gain at the cost of long-term health." He is starting, now, to arrange the containers neatly on the coffee table, evidently dissatisfied with the initial layout. "Our paths crossed some few years ago. Just when you arrived in the city. I do hope you landed on more hospitable soil than that from which you came -- although, admittedly, the bar is quite low." He is frowning, now, at the carafes, but does not continue fussing with them. "It is not your first time gardening, though." This is not quite a question. Presumably it is not a criticism, either, though his frown has stayed firmly in place. Anahita unloads the bags, stacking boxes of bread next to tubs of olive oil and herbs. She stops mid-motion and looks up at Lucien, dark eyes blinking, brows intently furrowed then slowly clearing. "Ah, I remember now. Tessier. Lucien Tessier?" Belatedly, she sets down the tub in her hand. "I'm not sure I conveyed my gratitude, those weeks were such a blur, but thank you for all you did to help us." She actually does smile, now. "Well, I've wound up back here, and hospitable or not I am trying to put down roots." Her gaze follows his to the re-arranged carafes. No frown, but she does not reach for any of them. "Oh, I've been growing things since I was a little girl. For food, for medicine, for beauty or just for the joy of it. This." The sweep of her hand takes in the work party slowing down all around them as the smell of food and coffee spreads. "Feels like home to me." Lucien's head inclines once more, in affirmation. "You and my brother -- had a brief overlap." His voice is soft and even, but there is a faint tension in his jaw at this that swiftly clears into -- not quite a smile, but a definite warmth crinkling at his eyes. "Putting down roots quite literally, it seems -- or at least you will if you return for the planting. Will you? I'm afraid in this city space to actually work the soil can be a bit of a rarity." Anahita studies Lucien's features, thoughtful. "Matt, I think." Despite the wording, she does not sound at all uncertain. "In retrospect, I wish I'd overlapped with him a good while longer." Though she sounds more wry than rueful. "I intend to. The rhythm of the seasons calls to us even when we're kept from it by calendars and schedules." She obscures her own brief tension by fetching a paper cup. "Among other things. Tending to life with a more direct connection." She glances down at a nearby flower bed, at the green spears of spring bulbs nestled in their fresh blanket of mulch. "It's grounding." The small huff Lucien lets out is almost a laugh, though considerably too dry to be properly humoured. He stops frowning at the arrangement of the picnic table, drifting instead to the edge of the gazebo to fetch up against a post. "The Wheel of the Year does keep on turning, whether capitalism pauses for it or no." His gaze lingers on Anahita as she retrieves the cup, then turns out toward the garden. "Has that been lacking, for you? Connection?" "Long may it keep turning, whatever our follies." Anahita breaks the seal on the water jug's spigot and fills her cup, then raises it -- to the Wheel of the Year, presumably -- before drinking deep. She doesn't answer at once, but upends her cup over the flowerbed and leans back against an adjacent post, watching the water soak into the mulch. "Unfortunately, and not for lack of trying. I didn't expect to undo a decade in the labs overnight, but after three years..." She shakes her head, though there's no sorrow in her expression or her voice. "I guess I'm starting over. Again. There's a kind of joy in that, too. Like spring." She looks back at Lucien, appraising. "What are you looking for, here?" "I can only imagine what that re-acclimatization must take. It is a disgrace to our society to consider how many people have had to navigate the same waters. -- I do not expect there is any set timeline for that kind of adjustment." Lucien's eyes lower, fixing as well on the flowerbed and the water it is sponging up. "If you are starting over in fresh soil, what is it you hope to grow, this time around?" The question puts a very small furrow in his brow. "A different rhythm," he answers finally. "Plants do things on their own time, not ours. It is pleasant, sometimes, to have to slow down for it." Anahita considers the question, a faintly sardonic smile developing slow. "Just garden variety life goals, I suppose. Community. Family. A better world, where no one has to go through what your brother and I did." She looks up at the sky between buildings. "I spent so many years prioritizing the last one over the first two, and I also had many years to think through why that was wrong. By the time I got out. I didn't have much to go back to." Her dark eyes turn back to Lucien, serious and intent. "The gods handed me a second chance, and I'm not about to waste it. Though perhaps I should take a cue from you and from the plants, on patience." She tilts her head slightly. "I was about to say I expect you have many demands on your time, but frankly I'm not sure what it is you do, besides helping ex-labrats find their way in the world." "I expect that last one will only come to be when people are all truly prioritizing the first two." Lucien's head inclines slightly to Anahita. "May your second chance prove fruitful." His lips twitch very slightly, and the slight side to side waggle of his head is noncommittal. "I wear several different hats," he offers vaguely, before -- slightly more animated, he confides: "Lately I have been working on a new garden of my own, it turned out even better than I had hoped." But, there's a slightly regretful addition: "Unfortunately my other jobs do not allow me to devote the time to it that I would like." Anahita nods, even if her hum of agreement is slightly reserved. "I don't know that it needs to be everyone, but certainly a lot more than do now. It's hard to do, when capitalism visits so many atrocities on the world. Keeping a man from seeing to his garden is just one of myriad" Her eyes flick around the winter-bare garden. "And it isn't even spring, yet. It must be quite the garden." She sounds sincerely impressed, and sincerely curious. "Indoor, I presume? Or else your plants keep a very different rhythm indeed." "Indoor -- it is a conservatory in my hotel," Lucien explains to Anahita -- this point not as exciting, evidently, as his following: "I may have overloaded it with magical plants. I imagine the rhythm it keeps now is quite its own. If you ever find yourself in Queens, you ought visit. Le Bonne Entente, is the hotel." Anahita looks very much like someone who has momentarily lost the thread of the conversation and is still busy catching up. "Your hotel," she echoes, not sounding altogether confident she knows what the word means anymore. But then she evidently decides to move right past that onto her rudimentary command of French, "'The Good...Hear...ing'? I don't know if that's on my way anywhere, but I'm sure the Internet does." Her smile is just the faintest curl when she adds, "But. I would happily make a trip just to see a magic garden someone like you would brag about." "Consider it more like a positive spirit," Lucien replies, a ghost of amusement crossing his face that continues to his wondering: "What is someone like me?" As volunteers start to trickle in, lured by the smells of food, he's detaching himself from his post, slipping a small card case from his pocket -- the card he slips out is at once extremely plain and extremely fussy -- only his name and an email address in embossed silver on heavy green cardstock. He offers it to Anahita between two fingers. "If you do make it out there, I would love to know what you think." "Someone who's interested in other peoples' stories, and not in the habit of telling his own." There's something wistful in Anahita's half-smile. "However proud you may be of that garden, I don't think you'd have encouraged me to visit without some confidence I would like it. And that itself is interesting to me." She accept the card and at first tries to read it too close before pulling it back. "Lucien," she pronounces at last, correcting her earlier (English) rendition of the name so emphatically (and Englishly) that it comes out sounding almost feminine. Then, more to herself than him, "With an 'e'." She brushes the pad of her thumb over the embossed lettering on the card, turning it fluidly with a flex of slender fingers, then palms it away. "I suspect you remember our original introduction better than I, but please call me Anahita." "Lucien," is it an agreement or a correction? He says is very mildly, soft and offhand. His own forefinger and thumb brush together unconsciously as he watches Anahita trace the lettering. "I do hope you enjoy it, Anahita. I intended it to be -- grounding." His posture has gotten ever so slightly more tense as the gazebo starts to fill up -- it would be hardly noticeable for anyone who had not been with him here this whole time. His head inclines slightly to her as he steps down from the gazebo, his eyes fixed on the damp soil at the base of the bulb she had watered. "-- Welcome home."