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Dan had never met the guy from 10B.
He knew that 9B was Roxanne, the chatty old lady with seemingly infinite crusty little curly-haired off white dogs. 10A was Leland and Penny, the anxious couple with the new baby who were always glaring at Dan when he turned on the weed whacker.
To be clear, Dan didn’t speak to these people, or hardly– he certainly wasn’t holding any conversations – but he saw their names by their doorbells and he’ll wave to them when they pass by. They know that he’s the landscaping guy. Sure, Roxanne doesn’t like him to touch her window boxes, but she massacres them anyway, and Dan has no desire to be accessory to petunia murder in the first degree.
But 10B was a mystery. The previous occupant had died, Dan thinks, or maybe moved to a nursing home– he’d been awfully old. The new occupant, who hadn’t updated their name plate and kept the blinds drawn at all hours, had been here for all of a few months, and the only evidence of their existence was a yellow sticky note on the gate to their yard– hello, please don’t disturb my yard, no landscaping needed, thank you. – 10B.
So the next week, Dan had left the grass, and only trimmed the hedges and removed the dead flowers from the begonias. The next time he returned, another note on the gate: PLEASE do not trim my shrubbery. Thanks. – 10B.
So the next week, Dan only weeded along the path, and with his hoe too, not even with the “organic” herbicide some of the other occupants of the condominium complex preferred him to use. The increasing height of the grass inside the yard irritated him to no end, but he left it be. And then, again, another fucking note: PLEASE DO NOT DISTURB MY YARD. Including the footpath :(. Thanks. – 10B.
Dan had kept the notes. They lived in the bottom of his work bag. He knew them each by heart and he despised them all. Landscaping wasn’t exactly the career path he’d had in mind when he had dropped out of law school, but it had been a few years, and he was good at it. He was gainfully employed, thanks very much, and the yards in these condos were fucking immaculate. He was good at his job. He knew how to make things look nice. He knew how to take care of plants. And now, every day he had to set foot in the east courtyard, 10B was a fucking eyesore, with its overgrown grass and unpruned hedges and fallen leaves on the weedy brick path. It would have been one thing if 10B had taken it upon themself to care for their yard because he had some fucking vision, or whatever, but as far as Dan could tell they never even left the house.
Today had to be the day, he decided. The property manager who contracted him was starting to get terse about the situation, and he wasn’t about to lose his job over some hermit’s bizarre gardening preferences. It wouldn’t kill them to get their lawn mowed. The yard looked like Where the fucking Wild Things Are, for god’s sake.
So against his better judgment, he marched up to the door at 10B and rang the bell.
A minute passes. He fiddles with his tool belt, snapping and unsnapping one of the pockets. He’s about to give up and just go mow the grass without giving 10B so much as the time of day when there’s shuffling on the other side of the door, and the lock clicks. The door opens a crack, and one blue eye peers out. “Delivery?”
“Uh– no,” Dan says, thrown off. “I’m Dan? The gardener.”
“Oh.” The blue eye widens in alarm, and the door crack narrows slightly. “Uh, sorry, I was expecting a package.”
“Sorry to disappoint, Mr…?” Dan says, scrambling to reclaim the righteous irritation he had been nursing when he’d rung the doorbell.
“I’m Phil,” he says. “Can I help you with anything?”
“Yeah,” Dan starts. “Y’know, I’m in charge of all the gardens here, and, well, I think my boss is going to have it out with me if you won’t let me cut your grass.”
Phil sighs and opens the door a little further. It hits the chain on the top, and he fumbles to unlatch it. Dan can see him now; a tall guy, around his age, pale, with frizzy bleached hair. He is wearing bright green minecraft pajama bottoms and a white t-shirt that had an image of a small dog and the words “useless and gay” in a wavy font.
“You can’t cut my grass,” Phil says, with an air of grave finality. He won’t meet Dan’s eyes.
“Listen, mate, I dunno what grass is like where you’re from but I can guarantee you it’ll grow back.”
Phil scowls. “I know that. It’s just– the UK’s flying insect population has declined by 60% over the last 20 years, did you know that? And there was a pair of nesting swallows in my hedge, you nearly displaced them when you went to prune it. I can’t stand to see all these perfectly neat yards and there’s no life in them. It’s so sad. And the butterflies haven’t got anywhere to rest their wings.”
Dan, abruptly, is at a loss for words, his jaw hanging open around some half-baked notion. Something clenches in his chest. “I– um.” He clears his throat, but whatever was lodged there won’t leave. “Oh.”
Phil deflates a little, seeming embarrassed. “If the property manager is bothering you I could go and speak with him, I guess. I’m sorry, I thought I’d be making less trouble for you, not more.”
“No, no no.” Dan says. “No no. Here’s what we’re going to do.” He pulls out his phone and types into google search. “Christ, you could’ve just said– I saw the swallows, you know, I’m not a monster.”
“You cut off the whole top of their house!” Phil exclaims.
“They’re swallows, mate. They live in a nest made out of twigs and dog hair. It’s not a house that needs a roof.”
Phil just makes a noise of disbelief, and squints at Dan’s phone where he’s holding it out.
“I’ll put in something like this,” Dan says. “Just letting a lawn grow out won’t provide native insects with the habitat they need. If we put in these sedges and some perennial flowers, it’ll do a lot more for them. And it’ll look nicer.”
Phil looks up at Dan, wide eyed. “You can do that?”
Dan shrugs. “Sure, why not? I’d be more than happy too. Most of the people here just want a nice, normal lawn, so that’s what I give ‘em. But there’s nothing saying you have to. Just has to look halfway decent.”
“Oh!” Phil’s smiling, and his tongue is sticking out between his teeth as he laughs. “I feel stupid, I just assumed we weren’t allowed.”
“I mean, maybe we aren’t, but I’m sure the property manager would rather some nice native plants than a yard full of weeds.”
“I’ll take it,” Phil meets his eyes for a second before dithering away. “I’m sorry, I’m being rude keeping you out here. Do you want to come in for a cuppa and talk about it?”
“Oh,” Dan’s startled. “Alright.”
Phil opens the door wide behind him and putters into the house, leaving Dan to close it behind him. There’s a lot of light from the back window, and warm wood floors, with an assortment of colorful rugs that Dan does not see any rhyme or reason too other than that they are all brighter than he would go for, personally. Every surface is absolutely choked with little things, some rocks, some carvings, strange pieces of pottery, action figures, unidentifiable miscellany. A wall is half painted green, like someone had gotten partway through and then decided they didn’t like the color. The windowsill hosted a soldierly row of absolutely desiccated houseplants, adjacent to a huge, lush fish tank. If there was a fish in there, Dan couldn’t see it.
“I’m fresh out of tea– sorry,” Phil’s saying from the next room down. “Want some lemonade?”
“Yeah, sure,” Dan says. It’s a little hot out anyway.
Phil comes back with two glasses of lemonade and passes Dan one. “D’you want a fun straw?” He asks.
“What?”
“Got these from the shop the other day, look,” and he holds out two absolutely ridiculous squiggly straws, one blue and one orange.
“Is that… a squirtle?” Dan squints.
“Yeah! It’s squirtle and charmander. Which one do you want?”
“I always picked charmander for my starter,” Dan admits. He’s smiling, he realizes, as he takes the red straw.
Phil clears a space on his little round table, which is piled with a combination of books, a laptop, coffee mugs, and various charging cords. Dan accepts the lemonade in both hands, and perches on the creaky chair opposite Phil, who is occupying what is clearly His Spot.
Phil extracts a mostly blank piece of paper and a pen and puts it down in front of Dan. “So this is the garden,” he says, drawing a haphazard rectangle. “Here’s the path. Here’s the crabapple tree. Here’s the hedge.”
“Right,” says Dan, and before he knows it, an hour and the lemonade are gone, and they’ve scribbled all over Phil’s diagram. Phil is humming something absolutely tuneless and scrolling through a long list of pollinator-friendly flower options.
The humming stops. “Are you all right?” Phil’s asking, and Dan realizes he’d been staring.
“Yeah, fine.” He says. And it’s not true at all, which he knows straight away when he says it. He doesn’t understand why, though, and it’ll take him a few months or a few years to figure it out (depending on how you count these things): he’s in love.