The Corpse Flower

My joints ached as I made my way down the hall of the commercial-residential high-rise I bought. My plan was to cast out the dead beats, and up the rent. I invested my life saving, and after deducting what I owed, I found myself just the proud owner of mortgage papers.

I knocked on the door of 6A with my cane. “Landlord!” The sound of the afternoon soap opera that emanated from the apartment went silent. I heard the footsteps approaching the door, the peephole went dark.

I banged again, louder this time. “I’m the new landlord, come to pick up the rent.”

The door slowly opened to reveal a woman in her late sixties. She wore a red dress of ankle length, flat shoes and short gray hair. “Forgive me, I thought you might be one of those leafy green men.”

That’s all I needed. A tenant who’s not just slow in her rent, but also a nut job. “Leafy green men?”

“You must have seen them, everyone in the building has. They’re about half your height, dressed in leaves.”

They say to speak calmly to crazy people and play along. “No, I haven’t seen one, but I just bought this place and I need the rent.”

“Oh, I have the money. It’s in the bedroom.”

She walked down the hall and returned holding a wad of bills, probably the stuffing of her mattress. She counted out the money. “Times must be tough for rich landlords.”

“I wish I was. The cost of arthritis medicine these days is taking most of my savings.”

“I thought you had lots of money.” She handed me next month’s rent. “I just don’t want to go out with those green men running around. You must do something. They steal flowers, you know.”

I opened the door to leave. “I’ll see what I can do.” I pocketed the money and left.

On my way to the next dead beat, I noticed a wilted orchid from someone’s corsage....

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...the beholder, because it is certainly not in the nose.”

“You can’t smell it, Mr. Oake. She’s not in bloom.”

I needed this flower to get me out of this chair. “Can you propagate it?”

“Yes, but you won’t get paid. It has to flower and go to seed.”

“Can you propagate it another way?”

He studied the grapevine. “I don’t think so. Wait, there’s a second bud. It’s smaller but if I had another grapevine, I could transplant it.”

“Order one and have it here by tomorrow.”

Propagating the corpse flower would not only get me out of this chair, but I could sell each flower for thousands and the tonic would be priceless.

I looked at Sequoia. “Too bad you can’t propagate yourself.”

He picked up the grapevine and put it in its box. “I would if I could. I just don’t know how.”

Sequoia was the only plant I knew who did not know how to reproduce. No wonder he was the last of his kind.