The Orchid Eater Read Online Free PDF Page A

trance. “You just have to visualize it clearly
and it’ll manifest in your life. Close your eyes and picture yourself walking
up to old man Glantz and saying ‘Kiss my ass, dick-breath!’”
    “I suppose
that would work,” Mike admitted. “Is that what they teach you in the
Alt-School?”
    Edgar’s eyes
opened slowly, his grin broadening. “Naw. My mom taught me that one.”
    “Let’s get
going,” Scott said. “We’ve got a sortie to plan.”
    “A sortie?”
said Mike.
    “I think he
means a raid,” Edgar said. “Right, Scott?”
    “I was just
lamenting the fact that all the avocados get picked or shaken from this tree
before they’re ripe enough to eat. Edgar let on that he knows a few trees that
are peaking even as we speak.”
    “Gah,” Mike
said. “I wouldn’t care if you had a whole orchard. I hate avocados. All that
greeny brown smoosh.”
    “You must
never’ve had a really fresh one,” Edgar said. “Right off the tree, they’re
sweet as butter.” Edgar licked his wide lips. “When they’re even slightly past
their prime, they get all gray and gross. You’ve got to catch them right at
that perfect moment. Which happens to be today.”
    Scott said,
“Mike’s still a ripe avocado virgin.”
    Mike shoved
Scott, who hardly budged.
    “So where
are these trees?”
    “There’s a
grove in this old farmer’s back pasture, halfway up the hill to Shangri-La. He
doesn’t have any friends to give them to, doesn’t sell them or anything, so I
just help myself. They just fall and rot otherwise.”
    “It occurred
to us,” Scott added, “that we should invest in a few giant grocery bags.
Between the three of us, we could bring home quite a booty.”
    Mike
shrugged. “What are we waiting for?”
    They walked
abreast down Glen Ellen Boulevard, the thoroughfare of choice for local
traffic, now that the Coast Highway was perpetually clogged with its summer
load of tourist cars. Striding along with a raid in the offing—an adventure of
almost mythical promise—Mike found himself laughing for no reason. Well, there
were good reasons really. He was out of school, so why waste his summer in an
appliance store? It’s not as though he had a family to support. Hell, his
mother’s boyfriend Jack was buying a house, freeing them from the tiny
two-bedroom seacliff apartment they’d been living in for a year. Mike and his
brother Ryan would have their own rooms for the first time. No more moving from
place to place. He was set!
    They went
into the Glen Ellen Supermarket. Edgar idled before the snack rack with great
deliberation, picking through the assortment of candy and gum. He finally settled
on a small packet of Chiclets, but not before a man with a push broom came out
of an aisle and stood behind them. He followed them to the register.
    “Will that
be all?” asked the checker, a fat woman who kept staring suspiciously at Scott,
enfolded in his thick army coat.
    “Yes,
please,” said Edgar, handing her a few coins. “I’ll bag it myself.”
    He reached
around the end of the counter, pulled out a large paper bag, and shook it open.
The woman glared at him as if she wanted to hurry him up. Mike at first assumed
he wasn’t attracted to her, since she was fat and all, but even so he couldn’t
help imagining her with her clothes off, as a sort of thought-experiment. He
realized, with faint humility at the stirring in his underwear, that he would
have accepted it even from her. If she’d have him.
    Edgar,
meanwhile, had taken out a second bag, shaken it open, and shoved it down
inside the first.
    “What are
you doing?” she said.
    He unfolded
a third bag and fit it into the others, straightened the edges, thumped it
several times lightly as if to check the sturdiness of his construction. Then
he picked up the tiny packet of Chiclets and tossed it in.
    “I don’t
want the bottom falling out,” he said, lifting the triple-lined bag in his
arms. He grunted as if it weighed a ton, staggering