Greenhouse Gore

CHAPTER TWO: GRINNING GREEN GINA

"There are the ugliest gardening gloves I have ever seen," said Paul. He was my favorite cashier from Grinning Green Gina's, or Triple G's, the best gardening store in BV.

"They're cuter than yours," I said, pointing to a rank pair of beige gloves sticking out from his pockets. He oversaw the potting and repotting of the store's plants and always kept his gloves within reach. "Those are older than the Angel Oak tree in South Carolina.

Paul picked up the gloves I had selected from aisle four and glared at them accusingly, "Polka dots make me want to throw up."

A couple days after learning about Lockpick Larry's comeback, I decided to pop by Triple G's, located on the edge of BV, to pick up some supplies. Mr. Coffin had old receipts from Triple G's wedged in the splinters of his table and I used those receipts to conduct an inventory of all the pots, soil, leaf sprays, thermometers for the temperature and soil moisture, miscellaneous tools, and whatever else he bought that was now available for my use. 

Surprising as it was, I admired Mr. Coffin's taste in ceramic pots, especially smaller ones for succulents. It was obvious to me just how much care he put into organizing a specific color scheme for his greenhouse: stone gray, honey brown, mauve, ivory, terracotta, and, of course, a spectrum of greens. Mr. Coffin cared for the greenhouse so well that when I first opened its door and saw its state years after his death, I felt like I'd entered an oasis. Even in ruin, the greenhouse was a beauty. 

Never mind the fact that he kept a dead girl's skeleton for company.

To start, I used almost everything Mr. Coffin had in the greenhouse and only went to the store when I ran out of soil or didn't have the right sized pot. My first purchase was a pair of gardening gloves. I refused to use his gloves because it felt like a violation. Who was on the receiving end of this violation, me or Mr. Coffin, that I couldn't quite figure out. 

"I've never seen anyone go through as many gloves like you do," Paul said, scanning my polka dot pair before he shoved them into a paper bag with disgust. "Part of the beauty of the gardening is getting dirt and stains on your gloves that will never wash off." 

"You only say that because yours are a thousand years old," I said, pushing my bag of soil towards him. "They belong in the ancient artifact section of the Smithsonian at this point."

There were only two regular cashiers who worked at Grinning Green Gina's. During the summers, the store would hire seasonal workers who were almost always my classmates at BV whose parents ordered them to find a summer job "for experience." Axel Barnett, a classmate from BV and always the first-place winner of the worst-employee-at-any-fine-establishment, once dropped a pot I picked up for my new aloe and watched it shatter into fragments. He didn't even flinch when Paul chastised him on my behalf. 

Other customers always thought I was an employee at the store because I wore a Grinning Green Gina's baseball cap that was part of the employee uniform. When I was fourteen, I witnessed a new employee cause a scene when they found a spider in the soil of new plant arrivals. Paul, who was always calm and capable of calming others, couldn't not save the situation and watched the employee throw their hat on the ground, stomp on it, and march out the door. Paul picked up the hat and placed it on my head before using a handheld shovel to tap both of my shoulders with excessive pomp and circumstance.

"I'm knighting you," he said in the most exhausted tone I'd ever heard from him. 'You're an honorary Grinning Green Gina's employee." 

I wore the hat all the time, but never when I was in the store because that just seemed far too embarrassing. In all honesty, I'd probably have been more help than all the other employees that worked there, aside from Paul. I knew where everything was, and I knew more about plants and botany than most people in BV did.