As she rides by

hour and it takes me that long just to fix my hair.”
    “No problem,” she said. “Catch ya later, but sooner would be better.” Hmm. Wonder what she wanted, I thought, taking the stairs two at a time. She looked a mite worried, but if I was a fanatical San Diego Padres fan, like her, I figured I’d look worried too, if not downright terrified.
    In the apartment I did what had to be done, packed a few overnight things in an airline bag, downed a hasty glass of buttermilk, and managed to get back to the office just before the hour. I pulled in and parked right beside a lilac and green painted van that had “Flora by Phineas” painted on both sides in a tasteful running script. The driver put his green cap back on, poked his head out the window, and said, “Victor Daniel?”
    “Yep.”
    “I’m Jesse. Ready to roll?”
    “Yep.”
    “Door’s open, so hop in.”
    I opened the back doors of the van, which were mostly windows, and climbed in, rather than hopped, Jesse watching me over his shoulder. I sat down on a bench that ran along one side, and Jesse took off. About twenty-five minutes later he said to me, “Gettin’ close,” so I stretched out full-length on the fake grass the van was carpeted with, as far under the bench as I could get, then covered up the rest of me with three fifty-pound sacks of potting compost, rendering me virtually invisible. About ten minutes later, I felt the van turn into the boutique’s driveway, then a minute or two after that, it reversed briefly, then stopped. A moment after that, one of the rear doors was opened just enough for me to slither through it into the far end of the greenhouse. The elderly Japanese nurseryman closed the door behind me and pointed to a wooden stool off on one side; when I sat on it the surrounding greenery effectively hid me from sight again.
    Some forty minutes after that, the same venerable gentleman opened the greenhouse door a few inches, peeked out, then beckoned me over with one finger. I did my slithering act again, only this time in the opposite direction, and into the luckily commodious trunk of Phineas’s Merc. The lid was closed gently by an unseen hand, but not all the way, because by then I’d stuck the end of a twist of green gardeners’ wire in the gap to make sure it didn’t, and I used another bit of wire to tie the lid down, thus ensuring that (a) the lid wouldn’t pop open during the ride, and (b) I’d still be breathing at the end of it.
    Then, off we went. We made a stop or two for what had to be red lights, then a longer one for Phineas to make his customary night deposit at the bank, during which, if he’d followed my suggestion, he’d left the car door open so any nosey parkers could see how empty it was.
    In due course we pulled into Phineas’s drive, and came to a stop in his carport, only this time he backed in. During the minute or two it took him to open his front door, then enter, then switch on the outside lights, I scrambled out of the trunk and snuck around to the back door. He closed the kitchen curtains, just in case, then let me in and I stayed in the kitchen, just in case, for the whole evening, while Phineas proceeded with further elements of the master plan. He turned on the lights in the living room, then closed the curtains, carelessly leaving them slightly ajar so his figure and his figure alone could be plainly seen from the street as he flitted in and out of the room. And the reason he’d backed into the carport this time was soon made clear to anyone interested in observing such detail. After we’d snacked on even more unlikely leftovers, including pressed duck, although who knows how (or why) you press a duck, he began loading bulky objects into the car trunk that he took from the appropriate shed out behind the pool, and as his Mercedes was huge and his carport small, if he hadn’t backed in, he’d have had to lug his seemingly never-ending vacation necessities— his weights and his bicycle and what-all—either through the house or all the way around the other side. As a final touch, before switching off the exterior lighting for the night, he firmly affixed one of his surfboards to the car’s roof rack, using about a dozen of those stretchy rubber things. And, hopeful sign number one, he’d noticed the same dark sedan passing the house twice while he was so engaged, once in each direction. Hopeful sign number two was, of the five phone calls he received that evening on his