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It started in college, when the mold growing under the window ledge in Stan's dorm room kept making him sneeze. "I've never had allergies before," he sniffled one afternoon, right after sneezing all over Kyle's anthro notes. "Do you want a Kleenex? I can wipe that off for you."
"You know what, no thanks." Kyle made a disgusted face, balling up his snotty sheet of lined paper. "I'll just Xerox from that guy who looks like he's in the Trenchcoat Mafia. No big deal." Kyle said this in a particular way that ensured there was no doubt in Stan's mind that it was a pretty huge deal.
"I don't want you talking to him," Stan replied, wiping his nose with his sleeve. "He threatened to put a Glock up your ass."
Kyle rolled his eyes, recalling the incident. "Look," he said. "Dress up like Joan from Mad Men for one Halloween, and everyone thinks you're a crazy bitch. Do you know what I liked best about that night?" Kyle lowered his eyes, and his voice. "You looked amazingly sexy in that gray flannel suit."
"I think I still have it around somepla-ah—" Stan interrupted himself by sneezing in Kyle's eyes.
Now two pages of Kyle's anthro notes were in the garbage. "Okay," he spat, rubbing antimicrobial sanitizer all over his hands and wrists. "We have to do something about this. It's impossible to talk to you. And you keep dripping on me when we fuck. It's not sexy, Stan. Not at all."
"I can't help it!"
"You could take some like, I don't know, Zyrtec or something."
"I'm not putting any chemical drug-company shit in my body." This was an old song and dance for Stan. "Only natural things."
"Like pot, of course, and … my cock, I guess?"
"Yes, exactly."
"Why don't you get some plants? They filter oxygen. It could help."
"You think so?"
"Totally." Kyle actually had no idea what he was talking about, but it made sense somewhere in his mind, and at least if Stan went down to the Home Depot to buy a plant, Kyle could write an outline for his paper without risking a face full of mucus.
~
Like most ideas Kyle surreptitiously planted in Stan's consciousness, this one took hold. Soon his dorm room (a single, thank god) was brimming with ferns and crotons. Stan's post-nasal drip, however, didn't improve at all. He consoled himself by naming all the plants.
"This one's Pinky," he said, tugging at the spine of an overgrown fig leaf. "Those two orchids over there are Chester and DeeDee."
"I don't understand," Kyle replied.
"Well, I don't know." Stan shrugged. "I just kind of name them after shit I hear on TV."
"Were you possibly also high at the time?" Kyle asked, ignoring the fact that they were actually both high while he was asking this.
"Yes, it's possible. All things are possible. I really like my plants. I'm so happy you suggested it. Do you ever think about what if the plants like came to life and I could like talk to them?"
"I believe that is called Little Shop of Horrors."
Stan got out of bed and added Little Shop of Horrors to his Netflix queue. When he came back, Kyle grabbed him by the ears and started licking up and down Stan's jawbone. He was able to move down Stan's neck to his clavicle before Stan sneezed again, right into Kyle's hair.
"God, I just washed it," Kyle moaned, grasping for a washcloth or a scrap of toilet paper or something. "I don't think these plants are working for you at all."
"Sorry." Stan felt pretty bad, but not all that bad, considering he had asked Kyle if they could hang out in his room, but Kyle's roommate (Chad the lacrosse player from Regina, Saskatchewan — Kyle called him "Chad from Vagina," which was neither funny nor helpful) had kicked them both out because Chad's boyfriend was coming over. (Once the four of them had gone on a double-date; it was so awkward that Kyle pretended he had an ulcer to get out of seeing the movie after dinner. Since then Kyle and Chad had tried not to talk to each other at all, which meant that when they ran out of toilet paper, they both just assumed the other guy was re-stocking. Due to this they never had any toilet paper.)
"Okay, so now we know plants don't work." Kyle pulled his T-shirt back on. He didn't care if he got mucus on it. It was from Ike's bar mitzvah and he had about six of them. "And you won't take Claritin. I'm sorry. This sucks."
"Don't be sorry. I love my plants."
Kyle thought about this for a moment. "Suddenly I'm super-hungry for Fritos," he concluded.
So Stan went down to the vending machine in his boxers and bought Kyle two baggies of Fritos. He got multiple nickels back in change and forgot to take them out of the machine. By the time he came back, Kyle was asleep.
~
They first rented a tiny bungalow in Thornton, not because it was a nice place at all but because it had a little greenhouse in the back. Stan was pretty happy with this, because he was afraid his crotons weren't getting enough sun in his mom's dining room, where they'd been sitting for four months. Kyle was just happy he was no longer sleeping in Stan's parents' basement. Both of them were utterly appalled by everything else about the house: cracked tiles in the kitchen, dingy carpets, shitty neighborhood. Kyle had wanted to move to Portland, where some college friends were trying to start up a blog about coffee. Their friend Kenny had been out there for a few years as well, but they weren't sure what it was that he was doing. Some weeks he told them it was Teach for America; sometimes he just refused to answer their questions.
After two years in Thornton, Kyle was sick of renting. "This makes no financial sense!" he'd rail. "We could pay into a mortgage and then all this cash would at least be going someplace!"
"Of course," Stan agreed. He knew better than to argue with Kyle about anything relating to their finances. He was also busy repotting a snake plant that had outgrown its terracotta. The best thing he'd done recently was pick up someone's abandoned chaise lounge on the side of the road and drag it back to the greenhouse. Now Kyle could lounge around ranting while Stan worked.
"I think it's time we moved to Portland."
Stan stuck up his head. "Uh, what?"
Kyle sat up on the chaise. It was 4 p.m. on Saturday and he'd been lying there for about three hours already. "We can move to Portland. Throw all this shit into a van and just leave already. I fucking hate Colorado. Mountains make me feel dizzy."
"Mountains made me feel safe," Stan countered.
"Why, because they're big?"
"No, because they surround us at all times. They're, like, huge, and can't be toppled."
Kyle sat up on the chaise and stretched out — dramatic, languid movements. "Do you know what I think we could have in Portland?"
Stan groaned and stabbed his spade into a bucket of peat moss. "I dunno, Kyle. What?" He wiped his hands on his jeans, which were already well-soiled from months of kneeling in mud puddles and hauling bags of compost. "I've spent my entire life here. What are we going to get if we move to Portland?"
"A small house, nothing fancy, with a proper backyard."
"Hmmm." Stan sat down, muddying his ass further. He tented his fingers and cocked his head. "You really want to move to Oregon?"
"Well, let me put it this way: I think assisted suicide is legal there."
"Is it, now?"
"Yes, and I'm sure they need medical marijuana growers or something."
"That's not funny." Stan had never attempted to grow a marijuana plant in his life. He didn't even smoke it anymore. Every so often one of Kyle's coworkers might hand him a joint at a party, but in general they'd both mellowed out somewhat. Stan had even agreed to take a Sudafed every so often.
Portland seemed like a natural next step on their journey to becoming real people.
~
The two-bedroom they bought at the edge of a wooded suburban cul-de-sac needed some renovation. Kyle immediately took to redecorating the bedroom, the guestroom, the bathrooms, and the kitchen. He ripped out the carpets in the living and dining rooms, replacing them with a modest hardwood. Other than that, he let them be. "You'll help me paint, when the time comes," he cautioned Stan on a windless Saturday in April. "You know I can't reach the ceiling even with a roller extension."
Stan agreed to help with whatever he could, and concentrated on his task at hand — the rolling expanse of two acres of gardens. He tore everything out, wasting not a second, sparing only the tangle of rosebushes that dotted the front yard. Centuries of tall, spindly pines lined the yard as property markers. Stan still sneezed in the mornings, but it often dissipated by lunchtime.
The white picket fence wasn't interesting, but Stan liked how it looked with morning glory creeping across the slats, shrinking up to lavender nothings by the time Stan's allergies trailed off around 1 p.m.
The entire rehab took about two years, during which time Stan cultivated a crop or two of handsome pumpkins. The first year they were on the small side, brilliant in orange but not large enough to sit on. The next autumn the vines exploded, filling their backyard with curious fauna, sniffing everything, hoping a pumpkin would split and spill its seeds out for consumption. Stan's pumpkins never split, though — they were as hardy as they were large, waxy and plump, like something on a postcard. Still, Kyle and Stan had little use for dozens of pumpkins.
"We have to do something with these," Kyle said, and sure enough they opened a pumpkin patch, which attracted all the neighborhood children. Their parents were wary enough of these two young gentlemen who lived alone together and grew large pumpkins and rarely left the house except to go to work. But one Sunday a neighborhood girl, about the age of 9 or 10, wandered over in the morning. Stan was sleeping in, but Kyle caught her when he brought out a tray of eggshells for compost.
"Oh, hello," he said, bringing the front of his robe together with one hand so she wouldn't see his well-trafficked chest. "You're Amanda, yes? From 1938?"
"No, from 2010," she replied.
"Oh, sweetie." Kyle sat down near her on a pumpkin so he wouldn't (literally) soil his robe. "I meant your address. You like my pumpkins?"
She nodded. "I've never seen ones this big."
"Thanks. My boyfriend grows them. He's really proud of them. We moved here to grow pumpkins. Did you know that?"
She shook her head. "No, I didn't. No one knows why you moved here. Was it really because of pumpkins?"
"Well, not particularly the pumpkins, but for the backyard, really. Do you like it? Stan planted it. Stan can do anything, except wake up in the morning without sneezing. Some of our friends lived out here, so we followed them." Kyle slipped off the pumpkin, and crawled up to the girl. Kneeling, he extended one pale hand. "I'm Kyle. Do you think your mother and father are looking for you?"
She grasped his hand. "Well, probably, but I don't have a father. Just me and my mom."
"Well, I bet she's looking for you." Kyle got up, and extended a hand to Amanda so she could get up, too. "Do you want to bring a pumpkin home?"
She didn't say yes or no. She just turned to her right, and pointed to the biggest one in sight. "That one," she said, kicking it with the bottom of her moccasin.
"Well, all right. Let's carry that inside, and I'll put on some clothes and take you home. Do you like coffee?"
Amanda shook her head.
"Well, it's Portland, sweetie. I think it's time you started."
~
After this, the neighborhood parents softened on Stan and Kyle. The weekend before Halloween, they had a pumpkin-carving party on picnic blankets in the front yard. Stan didn't believe in grass, but the soft groundcover was easy on his knees, and nobody complained. Kyle made cider, and his friends from the coffee blog came, bearing bags of whole-bean Stumptown. Even Kenny made an appearance, which was rare — he hadn't a car and often complained that if they were going to live out in the sticks, he was going to force them to come into the city to visit.
"This is a nice place, though," he finally conceded, admiring the toile wallpaper Kyle had finally pasted up in the kitchen, "even if it reminds me of a hothouse."
"For all intents and purposes, Kenny, it is a hothouse," Stan reminded him. There were humidifiers in every room, but particularly the kitchen, where Stan kept the orchids and succulents. "Do you know what a bitch it is to keep tropical plants alive in Portland in December?"
"Yeah, no, not really." Kenny lived in a studio above his boss' garage, which was free because he'd won it from the guy's daughter in their divorce settlement. It made things pretty awkward, but the fact that Kenny's wife had left him to join a convent didn't really sit well with anyone. His beard was now down to his tits, but Stan was trying not to go off on him about it. Every time he felt like he was going to barf, he held a pumpkin up to his face so Kenny couldn't tell.
"What are you guys going to do next?" Kenny asked.
This caught Stan pretty well off-guard. "What do you mean, next?"
"I mean, you did the college thing, the suburbs thing — I don't even know what's going on here, with the pumpkins."
"Well, the neighborhood children like it," Stan reasoned.
"It just seems like you're headed for something else." Kenny paused to sniff the scent of coffee that was beginning to mingle with the sharp, cinnamon smell of the cider Kyle had left sitting on the stovetop. "Maybe some kids?"
"Ha!" Stan rolled his eyes. "Not a fucking chance."
"You could get a dog."
"Kyle's allergic to dogs."
Kenny raised an eyebrow at that.
So Stan corrected: "Okay, Kyle's afraid of big dogs."
"Little dogs?"
"That's gay."
"Move to another city."
Stan shook his head. "I don't know, dude. We like it here."
"You're impossible! What the hell are you going to do next?"
Stan sighed, and cracked his fingers, and looked out to the yard, where about a dozen children under the age of 10 were swarming around Kyle's shins, trying to get him to appraise their pumpkin carvings. "I don't think anything is next, Kenny. I think this is our life."
"That's kind of nice," Kenny said. He put a hand on Stan's shoulder; Stan inched away so he wouldn't accidentally brush up against Kenny's beard. "By the way, I think I'm in love with my father-in-law. Ex-father-in-law, I mean. You know what, from now on I'm just going to call him Earl."
"That's great for you, Ken," Stan said, although he was trying to get away as quickly as possible.
~
The children left an awful mess, with gobs of pumpkin guts littering the front yard and sticky cider residue all over the lawn chairs.
"We're going to have an awful orgy of raccoons tomorrow morning," Kyle lamented. He was trying to scoop seeds out of the flower pots.
"At least it's Sunday."
"Yeah."
"We can sleep in."
"Yeah. Wait — no! We have to get up at sunrise and clean up the yard. Raccoons, Stan — they'll get into your butternut squash."
"It's nature, Ky — they're bound to get into something."
"Aw." Kyle stopped under the porch lamp, taking Stan's hands in his. "You only call me that when you're horny."
Stan couldn't deny this. "Yeahhh," he drawled, leaning in to kiss Kyle under the buzzing glow of a compact florescent. He was about to open his mouth and sneak out his tongue for the big transition from goodnight kiss to full-blown makeout, when suddenly his sinuses twitched, and he sneezed inadvertently right into Kyle's mouth, which was left hanging open in awe and terror.
"That wasn't exactly sexy," Kyle grunted, removing his glasses to wipe them against his flannel shirt.
"Sorry." Stan patted Kyle's stomach. "I'll go take a Claritin."
They filed into the house, Kyle shutting the door behind him. They dead-bolted it, shut off the porch lights, and got ready for bed.