Chapter Nine
NOTE: I DECIDED THAT MRS. ROSEMAN IS A BAD NAME FOR A WOMAN WHO OWNS A FLOWER GARDEN. FROM NOW ON, SHE’S JUST ELIZABETH. (UNTIL I CAN THINK OF A BETTER NAME)
***
Ben’s apartment still had no furniture. Stephanie sat on the floor, on the orange carpet with the cigarette burns in it. Ben stood before her, passionately reciting a poem called Tulip Love.
“The scent of your pollen makes me feel like a honeybee,” he said.
The poem talked about how if he were a honeybee, he wouldn’t take her pollen back to the hive to make honey for the queen; he would run away from the hive and keep all the pollen for himself.
Ben told Stephanie that she was the inspiration for the poem, that the flower was a metaphor for her. This was a lie. The poem was about an actual flower in Elizabeth’s garden.
Ben felt guilty for lying to her. It took him several days to build up his courage to tell her the truth. He decided to tell her while they were walking through the park. If they were in a public place, there was less of a chance that she would gouge his eyes out. They walked along in the cool evening, sharing a grape popsicle.
"You know that poem about the beautiful flower?" he asked her.
She smiled. "Did you write a sequel?"
"There's something I have to tell you about that poem."
Her face dropped and she nodded her head. “I knew it was too good to be true. You didn't write it, did you? It’s just like Cyrano de Bergerac. Some hunchback with a gift for poetry is in love with me. He got you to pretend that you’re him.” She shook her head. “It was Derrick, wasn’t it?”
"No, I wrote it, but the poem isn't about you?"
"There’s another girl? You’re a playboy, aren’t you?"
"No. There’s no other girl. The poem’s about a flower. A real flower."
"I'm not a real flower?"
"You are, but not in the biological sense. I’m talking about a real flower, with cell walls and photosynthesis.”
"What are you, some kind of pervert? A flower pervert?"
"No."
"Is that why you read poetry to them?"
"It’s my job."
“And you enjoy this job, don’t you?”
“I didn’t mean to deceive you. But you just assumed the flower was a metaphor for you and I didn’t want to tell you it was an actual flower, that I wasn’t using a metaphor.”
"Aren't poems supposed to have metaphors?"
"You sound just like my father. Poems don’t have to have metaphors. I’m trying to be realistic so working people can see real beauty, not fictional beauty. Flowers have beauty you can touch and see and smell, not an imaginary made-up beauty that you get after you die if you behave yourself and respect the private property of your oppressors."
Stephanie dumped him.
Although Ben had only known her for a short time, he was devastated. At work, he sat in the grass next to the tulips, weeping as he read to the flowers. The weather was mockingly perfect; warm sunshine and a refreshing breeze. Puffy clouds painted the rich blue sky.
“You’re ugly,” he told the tulip. “Nobody loves you. All you do is soak up sunlight and nutrients from the soil. Everybody hates you. Why don’t you just kill yourself and leave the nutrients for other flowers?”
Birds sang happily to each other in the trees. They weren’t alone. Only Ben was.
Ben popped the flower off its stem, shoved it in his mouth, and chewed up the bitter petals.
***
The next day, Elizabeth said she wanted to talk to him. She asked him to step into her office (the gazebo,) so he knew it was serious. He had a pretty good idea what it was about. He had only eaten one flower but he had terrorized the others. They had probably wilted and died. Ben was a terrorist and would be fired. Once you got fired for terrorism you couldn’t get another job.
They sat down at a small glass table in the center of the gazebo. She filled his glass from a pitcher of iced tea with a whole lemon floating in it. Ben drank it all in one gulp.
“The party was an amazing success!" Elizabeth announced.
A success? Ben was taken aback. Marcy quit her job to become a plus-size model. Down Syndrome Bobby quit his job to campaign for the oval office. Derrick also quit his job to follow his dream, but then realized he didn’t have a dream and rescinded his resignation. Although Ben didn’t think it was a success, he nodded politely. He was glad she didn’t bring up the decapitated tulip.
"We should do it again," Elizabeth said.
Ben frowned. He didn’t relish having to round up another herd of working people. He was still recovering from his previous trial of rounding up the workers.
“I don’t know if I can rustle up any more downtrodden. It’s hard work bringing them to see the flowers. And it’s not in my job description.”
Elizabeth grinned conspiratorially at him. “That’s not what I had in mind at all.” She leaned in close to him and whispered. “If we can’t bring the people to the flowers then we’ll bring the flowers to the people.”
"I'm gonna be a flower delivery boy?"
"No.” She giggled and took a long draught of iced tea. “You’ll still read poetry to them and help them grow. But we’re going to pack up all the flowers and put them on the back of trucks. We’ll travel around the country, drive to small towns, places where the people have never seen a flower before. We’ll share the beauty of flowers with these gray little towns.”
“What about the cactuses?”
“We’ll take the greenhouse. The gazebo too.”
“Why are we bringing the gazebo?”
“You never know when you’ll need one.”
Ben thought it sounded like fun. Traveling around the country having adventures; it would be just like Scooby Doo. Derrick did kind of look like Shaggy. They just needed a dog. When people saw the flowers, they would quit their jobs to follow their dreams. It would be a great adventure; traveling around the country in a flower caravan, leaving a trail of unemployed people in their wake.
“Derrick will come, right?” Ben asked.
“Of course. We’ll need someone to keep the mosquitoes away. He’ll always be welcome until he finds out what his dream is.”
***
When Ben told Derrick about the plans to take the garden on the road, Derrick looked up from the television and stared at him blankly.
“I’m not going.”
“It’ll be just like the Partridge Family,” Ben said. “Only without music.”
“You watch the Partridge Family?”
“It was on Nick at Nite. I had insomnia.”
“What if we run into some backwards town where they sit in rocking chairs and whittle wood?”
“We’ll show them the flowers.”
"We don't take kindly to flowers 'round here," Derrick said in his best redneck voice.
Although Derrick wasn’t enthusiastic about a cross-country trip to share the beauty of flowers, Derrick’s parents were. They wanted him out of their basement. Derrick had no choice and reluctantly agreed to come.
Ben’s family wasn’t so excited about the idea. Ben called up his father and explained the new job to him.
"So you're homeless," Max said. "I knew this would happen."
"I'm not homeless. I'll be sleeping in a mobile home."
"You're living in a trailer?"
"It's a mobile home."
"So you're white trash now?"
"Movie stars live in mobile homes."
"Ben, are you in a cult?"
"What? Of course not!"
"I've been researching this on the internet, and I saw how they do it. They recruit on college campuses. They look for lonely, isolated students, the misfits."
"I'm not a misfit."
"You read poetry to flowers—you’re a misfit.”
“I’m not a misfit. I’m a traveling bard.”
“I read all about these cults. They love bomb you. That's what the experts call it: love bombing. They give you hugs and friendship and drugs and flowers and then you believe any crazy thing they tell you."
"Have you been talking to Pat Henderson again?"
“That man knows what he’s talking about.”
Ben hung up the phone.
***
Ben found Tyrone sitting in the back alley, soaking his feet in a kiddy pool.
“I’m leaving town,” Ben told him. He hoped to convince Tyrone to return his security deposit even though he hadn’t given any notice.
“Goin’ back t’England?”
“No. I’m going to be traveling in a convoy of flower trucks and showing the flowers to people all over the country. Then they’ll see how beautiful flowers are and realize how beautiful life can be.”
“Gonna give ‘em crumpets?”
“No. Just flowers.”
“A travelin flower show?”
“Yes.”
“You got groupies?”
“No.”
“You needs to get you some groupies.”
“Only musicians have groupies. We don’t have music. Just flowers and poetry.”
“Yo man, what you tink music be? It’s poem widda beat. You just needs a beat, then you say the poem, and you got yo’self music. Den comes de groupies.”
Tyrone slapped his palms rhythmically against the seat of his plastic chair and splashed his feet around in the pool.
“Go on man. Act like I a daisy and read me yo’ poem.”
Ben began reciting his poem about the beautiful flower to the beat that Tyrone made. It started off well, the combination of Ben’s lyrics and Tyrone’s percussion was quite catchy, but then when Ben got to the part about leaving the hive, he thought of Stephanie and broke into sobs.
Tyrone stopped slapping his palms on the chair, stopped kicking his feet, and looked at his weeping tenant.
“You gonna follow yo’ dream now, right?” Tyrone asked.
Ben sniffled and wiped his nose with the back of his sleeve. He was about to tell Tyrone that he already was following his dream when he wondered--was he? He had wanted to feel the plight of the workingman, to feel it in his bones and in his sore muscles. But now he was just sitting in an ivory tower; an ivory tower filled with flowers, and berating the workingman for not having flowers. He had sold out. He needed to swallow his pride, tell Elizabeth that he couldn’t travel around the country with her and Derrick, reading poetry to flowers and showing them to America’s lowly people. He needed to go crawling back to Reggie and beg him for his job back washing dishes. It would be humiliating, but that was why Ben dropped out of University--to feel the humiliation that the workingman feels every day.
On the other hand, maybe he hadn’t sold out. He could still be a poet of the downtrodden while traveling around the country, reading poetry to flowers and living in a mobile home. Instead of being a worker’s poet, he would be a hobo poet. He would feel in his bones what it’s like to be a hobo and write hobo poetry.
Ben felt weak and all cried out. He breathed in deeply and the air revived him.
“Thank you, Tyrone. I’m going to follow my dream now. My hobo dream.”
**
April 29, 2007
Jerusalem, Israel
***
Ben’s apartment still had no furniture. Stephanie sat on the floor, on the orange carpet with the cigarette burns in it. Ben stood before her, passionately reciting a poem called Tulip Love.
“The scent of your pollen makes me feel like a honeybee,” he said.
The poem talked about how if he were a honeybee, he wouldn’t take her pollen back to the hive to make honey for the queen; he would run away from the hive and keep all the pollen for himself.
Ben told Stephanie that she was the inspiration for the poem, that the flower was a metaphor for her. This was a lie. The poem was about an actual flower in Elizabeth’s garden.
Ben felt guilty for lying to her. It took him several days to build up his courage to tell her the truth. He decided to tell her while they were walking through the park. If they were in a public place, there was less of a chance that she would gouge his eyes out. They walked along in the cool evening, sharing a grape popsicle.
"You know that poem about the beautiful flower?" he asked her.
She smiled. "Did you write a sequel?"
"There's something I have to tell you about that poem."
Her face dropped and she nodded her head. “I knew it was too good to be true. You didn't write it, did you? It’s just like Cyrano de Bergerac. Some hunchback with a gift for poetry is in love with me. He got you to pretend that you’re him.” She shook her head. “It was Derrick, wasn’t it?”
"No, I wrote it, but the poem isn't about you?"
"There’s another girl? You’re a playboy, aren’t you?"
"No. There’s no other girl. The poem’s about a flower. A real flower."
"I'm not a real flower?"
"You are, but not in the biological sense. I’m talking about a real flower, with cell walls and photosynthesis.”
"What are you, some kind of pervert? A flower pervert?"
"No."
"Is that why you read poetry to them?"
"It’s my job."
“And you enjoy this job, don’t you?”
“I didn’t mean to deceive you. But you just assumed the flower was a metaphor for you and I didn’t want to tell you it was an actual flower, that I wasn’t using a metaphor.”
"Aren't poems supposed to have metaphors?"
"You sound just like my father. Poems don’t have to have metaphors. I’m trying to be realistic so working people can see real beauty, not fictional beauty. Flowers have beauty you can touch and see and smell, not an imaginary made-up beauty that you get after you die if you behave yourself and respect the private property of your oppressors."
Stephanie dumped him.
Although Ben had only known her for a short time, he was devastated. At work, he sat in the grass next to the tulips, weeping as he read to the flowers. The weather was mockingly perfect; warm sunshine and a refreshing breeze. Puffy clouds painted the rich blue sky.
“You’re ugly,” he told the tulip. “Nobody loves you. All you do is soak up sunlight and nutrients from the soil. Everybody hates you. Why don’t you just kill yourself and leave the nutrients for other flowers?”
Birds sang happily to each other in the trees. They weren’t alone. Only Ben was.
Ben popped the flower off its stem, shoved it in his mouth, and chewed up the bitter petals.
***
The next day, Elizabeth said she wanted to talk to him. She asked him to step into her office (the gazebo,) so he knew it was serious. He had a pretty good idea what it was about. He had only eaten one flower but he had terrorized the others. They had probably wilted and died. Ben was a terrorist and would be fired. Once you got fired for terrorism you couldn’t get another job.
They sat down at a small glass table in the center of the gazebo. She filled his glass from a pitcher of iced tea with a whole lemon floating in it. Ben drank it all in one gulp.
“The party was an amazing success!" Elizabeth announced.
A success? Ben was taken aback. Marcy quit her job to become a plus-size model. Down Syndrome Bobby quit his job to campaign for the oval office. Derrick also quit his job to follow his dream, but then realized he didn’t have a dream and rescinded his resignation. Although Ben didn’t think it was a success, he nodded politely. He was glad she didn’t bring up the decapitated tulip.
"We should do it again," Elizabeth said.
Ben frowned. He didn’t relish having to round up another herd of working people. He was still recovering from his previous trial of rounding up the workers.
“I don’t know if I can rustle up any more downtrodden. It’s hard work bringing them to see the flowers. And it’s not in my job description.”
Elizabeth grinned conspiratorially at him. “That’s not what I had in mind at all.” She leaned in close to him and whispered. “If we can’t bring the people to the flowers then we’ll bring the flowers to the people.”
"I'm gonna be a flower delivery boy?"
"No.” She giggled and took a long draught of iced tea. “You’ll still read poetry to them and help them grow. But we’re going to pack up all the flowers and put them on the back of trucks. We’ll travel around the country, drive to small towns, places where the people have never seen a flower before. We’ll share the beauty of flowers with these gray little towns.”
“What about the cactuses?”
“We’ll take the greenhouse. The gazebo too.”
“Why are we bringing the gazebo?”
“You never know when you’ll need one.”
Ben thought it sounded like fun. Traveling around the country having adventures; it would be just like Scooby Doo. Derrick did kind of look like Shaggy. They just needed a dog. When people saw the flowers, they would quit their jobs to follow their dreams. It would be a great adventure; traveling around the country in a flower caravan, leaving a trail of unemployed people in their wake.
“Derrick will come, right?” Ben asked.
“Of course. We’ll need someone to keep the mosquitoes away. He’ll always be welcome until he finds out what his dream is.”
***
When Ben told Derrick about the plans to take the garden on the road, Derrick looked up from the television and stared at him blankly.
“I’m not going.”
“It’ll be just like the Partridge Family,” Ben said. “Only without music.”
“You watch the Partridge Family?”
“It was on Nick at Nite. I had insomnia.”
“What if we run into some backwards town where they sit in rocking chairs and whittle wood?”
“We’ll show them the flowers.”
"We don't take kindly to flowers 'round here," Derrick said in his best redneck voice.
Although Derrick wasn’t enthusiastic about a cross-country trip to share the beauty of flowers, Derrick’s parents were. They wanted him out of their basement. Derrick had no choice and reluctantly agreed to come.
Ben’s family wasn’t so excited about the idea. Ben called up his father and explained the new job to him.
"So you're homeless," Max said. "I knew this would happen."
"I'm not homeless. I'll be sleeping in a mobile home."
"You're living in a trailer?"
"It's a mobile home."
"So you're white trash now?"
"Movie stars live in mobile homes."
"Ben, are you in a cult?"
"What? Of course not!"
"I've been researching this on the internet, and I saw how they do it. They recruit on college campuses. They look for lonely, isolated students, the misfits."
"I'm not a misfit."
"You read poetry to flowers—you’re a misfit.”
“I’m not a misfit. I’m a traveling bard.”
“I read all about these cults. They love bomb you. That's what the experts call it: love bombing. They give you hugs and friendship and drugs and flowers and then you believe any crazy thing they tell you."
"Have you been talking to Pat Henderson again?"
“That man knows what he’s talking about.”
Ben hung up the phone.
***
Ben found Tyrone sitting in the back alley, soaking his feet in a kiddy pool.
“I’m leaving town,” Ben told him. He hoped to convince Tyrone to return his security deposit even though he hadn’t given any notice.
“Goin’ back t’England?”
“No. I’m going to be traveling in a convoy of flower trucks and showing the flowers to people all over the country. Then they’ll see how beautiful flowers are and realize how beautiful life can be.”
“Gonna give ‘em crumpets?”
“No. Just flowers.”
“A travelin flower show?”
“Yes.”
“You got groupies?”
“No.”
“You needs to get you some groupies.”
“Only musicians have groupies. We don’t have music. Just flowers and poetry.”
“Yo man, what you tink music be? It’s poem widda beat. You just needs a beat, then you say the poem, and you got yo’self music. Den comes de groupies.”
Tyrone slapped his palms rhythmically against the seat of his plastic chair and splashed his feet around in the pool.
“Go on man. Act like I a daisy and read me yo’ poem.”
Ben began reciting his poem about the beautiful flower to the beat that Tyrone made. It started off well, the combination of Ben’s lyrics and Tyrone’s percussion was quite catchy, but then when Ben got to the part about leaving the hive, he thought of Stephanie and broke into sobs.
Tyrone stopped slapping his palms on the chair, stopped kicking his feet, and looked at his weeping tenant.
“You gonna follow yo’ dream now, right?” Tyrone asked.
Ben sniffled and wiped his nose with the back of his sleeve. He was about to tell Tyrone that he already was following his dream when he wondered--was he? He had wanted to feel the plight of the workingman, to feel it in his bones and in his sore muscles. But now he was just sitting in an ivory tower; an ivory tower filled with flowers, and berating the workingman for not having flowers. He had sold out. He needed to swallow his pride, tell Elizabeth that he couldn’t travel around the country with her and Derrick, reading poetry to flowers and showing them to America’s lowly people. He needed to go crawling back to Reggie and beg him for his job back washing dishes. It would be humiliating, but that was why Ben dropped out of University--to feel the humiliation that the workingman feels every day.
On the other hand, maybe he hadn’t sold out. He could still be a poet of the downtrodden while traveling around the country, reading poetry to flowers and living in a mobile home. Instead of being a worker’s poet, he would be a hobo poet. He would feel in his bones what it’s like to be a hobo and write hobo poetry.
Ben felt weak and all cried out. He breathed in deeply and the air revived him.
“Thank you, Tyrone. I’m going to follow my dream now. My hobo dream.”
**
April 29, 2007
Jerusalem, Israel
posted by Benjamin Fishbein at Sunday, April 29, 2007
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