Once You Go Back. 26
Previously, Buckey, Diego, and the crew looked forward to being on the isolated estate mostly alone. With the owners gone for a few months, they would be able to attend to the gardening and planning without worrying about guests' or clients' needs. But for gardeners to the super-rich, every changes on the whims of the movie star boss. Read Previous Chapters.
I was dozing on the plane. It was just Diego and me. MissK’s pilot, too, of course. An ‘80s pop song drifted through my head. The rocker/singer had a high school crush, a pure, innocent love but years later; he opened a porn magazine to see his crush, so he sang, “My baby is a centerfold in a girlie magazine.” His fantasy was crushed.
I feel his pain. I longed for your perfection from the day back in high school. I dreamed of where you would fit into my life.
You beguiled me. I didn't know how to approach. You were way too perfect. You became a tender memory.
Until years later, suddenly, you were real again.
On a college road trip, we ended up in Portland with a broken axle. There you were, by the sign pointing to the gorillas. Sexy still, even damp and dripping in the Portland mist.
I had to know you. A zoo gardener told me a nursery by the river sold little ones. I got you—my first you. My love, we cuddled on the long ride back. The guys laughed at me for cuddling a spiny, rough-leafed plant.
After all those years of longing, I planted you. My Gunnera. From high Andes rivers, to Portland and now, to a special spot in Georgia. My centerfold. But you died. Three times. I've let you go after that. But I still feel the longing.
After we landed at the private airport, Diego gathered our shovels and pry bars. We each had a backpack of work clothes, and we walked down the little plane steps across an asphalt runway toward the secluded terminal. It sat in an array of cool tropical plants. A greeter met us, “Mr. Basinger, your car is waiting, just through this door.”
Joyce made reservations in MissK names, so they called me that. She told me they would. She, Joyce, prepped me yesterday. Apparently, for people like MissK, they’d have a car right where the plane lands. But we needed a 16-foot box truck. So Joyce set up a driver to take us to the U-Haul truck place.
She didn’t say we’d be in a limo. She didn’t say we’d be the only people in this posh private terminal carrying shovels either. I guess setting up this last-minute adventure, this quest for a rare plant, for something MissK longed for, had too many other details to consider.
Three days ago, Diego, the jovens Bella, and I had been enjoying the quiet of summer life on the estate. We were swimming after work when Joyce called and didn’t bother to say hello. “Three things for you to know. First, MissK does some things, to try to feel like she’s one of the cool crowd. Remember, her cool crowd is very different from ours. Sometimes, if she feels out of her element, she commits to things that seem cool but may have unforeseen issues. This week, she’s around a plant-obsessed crowd in Monterey who are serious, informed, and have tons of money. They have just been to this garden called Lotusland.”
I played it cool, “I’ve been there a few times.”
Joyce ignored me, “Second, rich as she is, she loves a deal. Even when she hasn’t thought through all the ancillary costs. She gets an inkling, an idea, and we carry it out. Which brings us to number three and you. She wants you to carry out this hunt for a special plant that she’s heard will be a deal. Could you fly to Miami this week to dig up some plants at the old Versace mansion? Do you know who Versace is? Was?”
I sighed, “Joyce, every gay person knows that Versace was gunned down in front of his house by some guy with a crazy crush.”
“What’s happening now is that someone bought the place to set up a private restaurant club. Some of MissK’s California plant collector friends say there are a few rare things left, but the real estate agents are ready to get rid of them. That’s where you come in.”
“I’m lost.”
“Well, act like you are not. You are her garden expert. And you are going to Miami to evaluate, estimate, then purchase, dig, and drive home any plants that will work in her garden.”
“Ridiculous. It’s the tropics. And I can’t assess the value ....”
She cut me off again, “Find someone down there who can help.”
She rambled on about travel details while I remembered a hot one-night stand I had back in Hollywood, California.
“Oh yeah, Joyce, I do know someone. I’ll see if he’s at his place in Miami. But I’ll need Diego. That’s his home; he can help find guys and tools we might need.”
“Great. Set it up. I’ll pay him. I’ll attend to the travel details. Remember, she’s going to be bragging to all her friends about this.”
On the little plane, Diego downed five Dews and a few mini bottles. On top of that, he’d just arrived back home on a private plane, in a private airport, and with a private truck waiting. Diego was jacked up.
“Damn, Diego, that’s the way to come home, cowboy!” I popped him on the shoulder.
“You’re telling me! We’re going to party tonight!” said Diego. “After we go see mi madre y mis hermanos.”
“Only after we go meet this tropical plant expert, scout this mansion, and figure out what our plan is and what equipment we need,” I said. I had no intention of a long night with Diego. I’d never used “party” as a verb. But I didn’t want to bring him down. “Take the maps I printed out? I’ll drive. You navigate.”
He narrated his memories as we drove past landmarks from his teens.
I interrupted, “Diego, can I ask you something?”
“Anything.”
“Are your parents legal?”
“No, man. But you’ll see,” he replied. “The entire neighborhood is like them. Just a few blocks, but it’s a little Mexico. Then, three blocks away, everyone is Cuban, and that goes for miles.”
Eager to share, he continued, “My parents own a little house. It’s cute. They live in a Spanish world. They’ve been here 20 years and have four American hijos, including me, but they don’t speak a word of English. Not too far away, there’s Little Haiti, where everyone is black and speaks something else and doesn’t work much,” said Diego. “You’ll see. You’ll see when we cross certain streets, it’s like the little houses are the same, but the food and people are different every few blocks.”
While he was reminiscing, I thought of my buddy Wilfredo, half Haitian, half Dominican, and black as he could be. He was just hours from here. Without birth papers, he’d never be able to leave the island. He’d never be legal, even in his own country. But he was fun. Diego would love him. Would Diego, a new generation, a man reared and living in a world of all sorts of people, dismiss him as a ‘Haitian who didn’t work and spoke something else’? Would he really this way? Or was he just repeating things he’d learned in childhood? Is there a difference?
We passed into glittery South Beach and parked on a dingy, industrial-looking block. I knocked on a little back alley door, and the guy I’d hooked up with years ago let us into planet Versace. He’d already scouted the place and had a plan for us.
Years ago, at a trade show, this guy cruised me, and we had lunch and an afternoon of great sex. We kept in touch via random emails. Seymour was born in Queens but moved away as early as he could. He’d become a cycad specialist. A privateer who worked only for super rich plant-obsessed cycad collectors. Yeah, there’s a world of them. These prehistoric plants were no longer allowed to be sold across national borders. And because the plants were super rare and male or female, their sexual activity had to be managed. These collectors didn’t want inbreeding, but they wanted their plants to have offspring. So Seymour had developed a database of all the living specimens of rare cycads and started servicing them for the fervid collectors - and some botanical gardens.
“My main client is a Saudi prince whose plants are in Thailand. But David Bowie calls, too. He has an entire island of cycads in the Caribbean. They call to ask me to procure pollen and bring it to their female and pollinate her. Or to collect and store male pollen. They send their planes and staff, and they put me up and tell their chefs to cook what I want. I rarely meet them. I flit around doing cycad sex and taking notes. That’s what I do for a living. Weird, isn’t it?”
Miami was his home base because it is the only place in the U.S. where tropicals can grow outside all year. And it’s home to the Montgomery Foundation, a private, non-profit botanical garden that specialized in palms and cycads. He’d worked there after college.
“So you decided on a career pimping for cycads? I asked.
Seymour sneered, "No. I saw that all the rich donors at the Foundation had plant fantasies, just like I did. I decided someone needed to massage their fantasies. I make their dreams come true."
He led us through a plaza that looked like a movie set from some old Hollywood golden age set. The entire plaza floor was mosaic. A scalloped pool held water as blue as mouthwash. On the bottom, a mosaic of intertwined dragons or Medusa heads made of tile swam. From the surface, the facade of an Italian palazzo rose up. Frescos and marble sculptures squirted into the pool. The entire scene softened, made real by fishtail palms and bird of paradise plants leaning in from the outer garden. The entire place smelled of Indian jasmine and conjured opulence.
In the little service courtyard stood a double-trunk Palm of the Virgin, like a sculpture. Holding her arms high, hair up, fronds graceful, her face—I mean the rich velvety center point of growth—looked away.
I loved her. She was a cycad but with the common name, Palm of the Virgin. "In the botanical garden in Atlanta, they grow a few in warm spots by the conservatory. But they were knee-high. I had no idea they got so big."
I thought of my Gunnera; this Palm of the Virgin made her look simple and squat.
He went on to share the history of this particular plant. According to Seymour, renowned botanist and food explorer David Fairchild imported this cycad from Mexico. She had lived in his botanical garden since. But she didn’t have any papers. No one knew where she came from, or exactly how she got here or how old she was. So, the botanical garden decided to get rid of this specimen. They put her up for sale. The big-time collectors don’t want her due to her questionable provenance. But she’s probably 400 years old. Or more.
But she was spectacular. And a little sad in this pool pump courtyard.
Seymour said, “Offer them 15K. You’d be getting a deal, and the new owners of this place would be thrilled,” he suggested. “Then you could sell it to your client for 30K.”
“I can’t do that. I represent her. I’m here on her dime.” I said. “Could we successfully dig it?”
“Sure you can. Rent a mini backhoe. Plywood this entire courtyard floor. A trip to Home Depot, and we’ll be ready first thing in the morning. It’ll be a blast. But you need to learn about making money.” He looked at Diego and said, in Spanish, “Can you get us four more strong guys?” Diego rolled his eyes at this assumption that he only spoke Spanish.
I got Joyce and MissK on the phone for the low down. 20 minutes later, MissK was probably bragging to her California friends, Joyce settled with the owners, Diego had guys, and we had all night to enjoy Miami.
I ended up staying with Seymour, of course. Fun, but it felt like duty. Or solidifying a contract. We should have been a great match. He was physically sexy, with dark curly hair, and he loved plants. But there was something a bit femme about him and he was so confident, so polished, that he seemed closed off to me.
Now he snored beside me and I lay awake worrying about this outrageously expensive, historically important plant. The dig, the danger, the pipes and power to the pool, hoisting a ton of roots with straps, and the possibility of a guy getting hurt. Details, procedures, and complications ran through my mind.
Randy, our construction guy back in Georgia, wouldn’t have missed a minute of sleep over this. Randy, Kenny, Wilfredo, and all straight guys I’d had crushes on over the years. I’d idealized them. They were my Gunnera. If I ever captured the fantasy, the beauty would dissipate. Or rot.
Maybe this spectacular Palm of the Virgin was Fairchild’s fantasy a hundred years ago. I’ll bet that after being dug up in Mexico and transported by train to Miami, she looked terrible for a decade. Later, someone else, probably a landscaper or whoever picked her for this gaudy courtyard, turned her into a runway model, a centerfold of sorts. She was a sculpture here, not the spectacular plant growing with other plants. Now MissK may only want her story and status.
As stunning as she was, she wasn’t my fantasy. This was real. Somehow, that made it more comfortable. I wasn’t capturing her or idealizing them. I was like the Greenpeace folk sneaking into the zoo at night and releasing birds. I was rescuing her. Was that real? What the hell is real? Here I am lying in bed with a Jewish cycad specialist, planning on driving an orange backhoe through a fantasy swimming pool garden to dig up a 400-year-old plant that cost half my salary, then carrying her in a U-Haul north, with a handsome young Mexican cowboy, to plant her on a superstar actress’ estate in bumfuck Georgia.
Pretty sure this is enough, and my time dreaming of centerfolds is past. Who needs idealized fantasy when you’re living like this?
Great story darlin. Now is the Virgin still alive and kicking?