Grandmom's backyard, sort of: Lorie and I are discussing gardening, trying to figure out what it's called when someone asks you to take care of their plants for them. "Plantsitting" doesn't occur to either of us as we start moving potted plants around the backyard, looking for where they go. There is the added complication of mistaking plants for birds and vice versa, seeing as how leaves and feathers are interchangeable, modular, like Tinkertoys. "Petsitting for plants!" I offer, but I know it's silly. We ask the person in the visitor center, but that person is either confused or bored by the inquiry.
Shortly thereafter, Roze continues the gardening theme by planting two rose bushes by the fence to the north of the house. She has definitely placed them where they go. We are then in her van with more gardening supplies in the back, and as we approach the house we drive past the landlady, who has a reputation as a sort of evil Disney matron: superior, suspicious, miserable. We hear her instructing a minion (her son?) to keep an eye on us, and as we turn into the drive, we hear incredulity: "What do they think they're doing?" Apparently we are now minions, too, and with gardening errands in hand we are perfectly authorized to drive the van into the property—but the landlady never recognizes the van, even though she sees it every day. So as we come to a stop, she's all up in the backseat, snapping at Roze. She doesn't seem to know me from the back of my head, and I refuse to turn when I say "Hi," attitudinously. She manages a formal, "How are you?" during which utterance I decide to effuse. I turn around and tell her "SPLENDID!" and keep a big, warm smile on my face while we get out of the van. I can't tell if she recognizes me, though we have met before.
Irrespective of the garden, I am alone in a darkened classroom, writing on the chalkboard, of which there are two, extending the lengths of the front and back walls. They are simultaneously chalkboards and corkboards. I am at the back of the room, scribbling, and occasionally moving push-pins around, apparently prepping a lesson for the instructor, whom I admire. But he doesn't show up tonight, and instead I encounter some folks in various contexts just outside the classroom door: there is, for instance, a bridegroom standing there at one point—he is perhaps Ryan Raz—surrounded by his groomspersons, and I ask him if there's anything I can do for him. To my chagrin there is not. Later—in the same space, except it's now a veranda overlooking various gorgeous natural landscapes—some interested parties in a documentary film project are discussing the upcoming work; I am obviously involved in this project primarily because two of the documentary's subjects present at this discussion are hot men in their mid to late 30s; and they are naked and they give every indication of intending to remain so forever.
In the school cafeteria, a friend called Sherry or some such asks me whom I'll be rooting for next season—at least I thought she said next season and I consider my response to an obvious baseball question. But then she starts naming football teams, so I explain I have zero interest in le zutball américain. Indeed, I explain, I've only ever been to one football game in my life, and that was an Eagles game where the Hammonton High School "Blue Devils" marching band—then regional champions or serious contenders every year—played at halftime.
So we have a flashback, which is narrated by an unspecified high school bandmate: she complains that, at said Eagles game certain band members were off, hitting their percussion cues horribly late and so forth. I wander off midstory to find a place to pee, though I can still hear her narration the whole time. I think to pee against the back of an industrial cooler, but the space between the base and the lid has some scary oozy horror movie things going on. So I go away.
I'm in a house considering animal conservation; so of course Lorie is here again—or perhaps I'm just standing in for her, approximating her reactions to certain news reports, which are either on a widescreen TV or a handheld tablet computer (or both). There's the usual talk of the lions, but I'm worried about the hippos, who are drying out in the recent drought. So I go find one, in the back bedroom, in a ditch of dried mud, and I pee on him. I know—it's not even in question—that this action is salubrious, not mean-spirited in any way. The urine soaks into his skin as quickly as it hits, and I realize he must have been near death with desiccation. I can see the symbiotic insects crawling around under his skin as he, revitalized, begins to stretch. His name is Shawn.
I go directly to the next room and do precisely the same for two other creatures sleeping next to each other in the bed. They are, I think, water buffalo.
Then I wake up. And goddamn, do I have to pee.
