terrible.
âRun!â said half of the little lady. âRun, Not-My-Death! I will distract him!â She turned her little head and bit the lady on her thumb, which only caused her to laugh. Will turned and ran, not noticing his floppy sock or his single shoe, not considering that he was running away from the opportunity finally to solve the mystery of Carolinaâs tree. He wasnât thinking of anything except getting away from the horrible monster. He ran back the way he came, the little trees spaced themselves farther on the ground, and the silver trunks flew by. He ran and ran and ran but never came to the edge of the dell or found the slope heâd tumbled down, and though very soon he gave up hope of finding a way out, he didnât stop running.
Â
Â
Carolina was one of Willâs clients: they met over a sick tree. She contacted him through his website, attaching a picture of her tree, a stately oak. He hadnât ever gotten a picture through his website beforeâyou werenât supposed to be able to do that. It was a premium feature, and he could not afford premium features. Her note was short. I love him. Can you help me? It was the sort of note a freak would send, with the telling substitution of him for it . Will had discovered since becoming an arborist that there were crazy tree and shrub ladies out there just like there were crazy cat ladies (and sometimes they were men), people who preferred the company of nonhumans, or even nonanimals. They were perfectly pleasant people, just deeply strange and difficult to work with, since they acted like
tree surgery was baby surgery, and acted like you were sawing off the limb of their child when you sawed off the limb of their tree.
So when he arrived at the house on Fourteenth Street, he was expecting a sixty-year-old lady in a housedress and slippers, or a divorcée in a caftan, or even a spritely twenty-year-old dressed in bark. He had actually encountered the twenty-year-old, in the treeless Outer Sunset, of all places, presiding over a secret garden at Thirty-fourth and Judah. She had turned him away even before showing him her problem tree, because of his vibe. It was a surprise to see who finally opened the door, a full five minutes after he started ringing the bell. Something kept him from giving up, though he had other work he could have been doing, other trees to check up on: there was a flax-leaf paperbark in Pacific Heights with cankers, a trident maple in the Castro with gall, a jacaranda in the Marina with chlorosis. But he sat there on his toolbox with his chin in his hand, looking out on the street and not understanding why he was waiting.
She was pretty close to Willâs own age, with short brown hair and very large brown eyes that gave her the appearance of being pleasantly surprised by something, and Will thought perhaps she was favorably surprised by his appearance (though his picture was all over his website). But then she cast the same pleasantly surprised look at his toolbox, then down at the doorknob, and he realized that she looked like that at everything and everyone.
âIâm so glad youâve come,â she said.
âSure,â Will said, and followed her into the house, which was both grander and more decrepit than he could have guessed, just by looking at it from the outside. It was enormous, but the rooms were alternately fancy and dilapidated; lovely murals alternated with cracked plaster and bare lath, and though the
kitchen was done up as snobbishly as any heâd seen in Seacliff, there was a hole in the floor. Big expensive rooms made him both a little anxious and a little bored. He had enough rich clients that any wonder at the dizzying extremes of wealth in this city had worn off a while ago, but it made him unsettled in some small way to see what he didnât have, and would never have, with his combination career of tree surgeon and ultra-obscure short-story writer. He
âRun!â said half of the little lady. âRun, Not-My-Death! I will distract him!â She turned her little head and bit the lady on her thumb, which only caused her to laugh. Will turned and ran, not noticing his floppy sock or his single shoe, not considering that he was running away from the opportunity finally to solve the mystery of Carolinaâs tree. He wasnât thinking of anything except getting away from the horrible monster. He ran back the way he came, the little trees spaced themselves farther on the ground, and the silver trunks flew by. He ran and ran and ran but never came to the edge of the dell or found the slope heâd tumbled down, and though very soon he gave up hope of finding a way out, he didnât stop running.
Â
Â
Carolina was one of Willâs clients: they met over a sick tree. She contacted him through his website, attaching a picture of her tree, a stately oak. He hadnât ever gotten a picture through his website beforeâyou werenât supposed to be able to do that. It was a premium feature, and he could not afford premium features. Her note was short. I love him. Can you help me? It was the sort of note a freak would send, with the telling substitution of him for it . Will had discovered since becoming an arborist that there were crazy tree and shrub ladies out there just like there were crazy cat ladies (and sometimes they were men), people who preferred the company of nonhumans, or even nonanimals. They were perfectly pleasant people, just deeply strange and difficult to work with, since they acted like
tree surgery was baby surgery, and acted like you were sawing off the limb of their child when you sawed off the limb of their tree.
So when he arrived at the house on Fourteenth Street, he was expecting a sixty-year-old lady in a housedress and slippers, or a divorcée in a caftan, or even a spritely twenty-year-old dressed in bark. He had actually encountered the twenty-year-old, in the treeless Outer Sunset, of all places, presiding over a secret garden at Thirty-fourth and Judah. She had turned him away even before showing him her problem tree, because of his vibe. It was a surprise to see who finally opened the door, a full five minutes after he started ringing the bell. Something kept him from giving up, though he had other work he could have been doing, other trees to check up on: there was a flax-leaf paperbark in Pacific Heights with cankers, a trident maple in the Castro with gall, a jacaranda in the Marina with chlorosis. But he sat there on his toolbox with his chin in his hand, looking out on the street and not understanding why he was waiting.
She was pretty close to Willâs own age, with short brown hair and very large brown eyes that gave her the appearance of being pleasantly surprised by something, and Will thought perhaps she was favorably surprised by his appearance (though his picture was all over his website). But then she cast the same pleasantly surprised look at his toolbox, then down at the doorknob, and he realized that she looked like that at everything and everyone.
âIâm so glad youâve come,â she said.
âSure,â Will said, and followed her into the house, which was both grander and more decrepit than he could have guessed, just by looking at it from the outside. It was enormous, but the rooms were alternately fancy and dilapidated; lovely murals alternated with cracked plaster and bare lath, and though the
kitchen was done up as snobbishly as any heâd seen in Seacliff, there was a hole in the floor. Big expensive rooms made him both a little anxious and a little bored. He had enough rich clients that any wonder at the dizzying extremes of wealth in this city had worn off a while ago, but it made him unsettled in some small way to see what he didnât have, and would never have, with his combination career of tree surgeon and ultra-obscure short-story writer. He
Similar Books
