Gwen, in Green

Pleasantly potted, he moved speakers to the balcony, juiced the amp up to three-­quarters volume, and blasted the woodland with the choral movement from Beet­hoven’s Ninth. There was a breeze to blow away bugs. Gwen danced to “Turkish Bath,” after George had his fill of grandeur and went into something that just sat there and swung. After the walk in the woods, she’d changed to hotpants and the effect of her energetic belly dance was a good one on George. He smoked, enjoying the cigarette as only a cigarette can be enjoyed after a few tall ones, clapped, urged her on, and repeated the selection. He forced her to dance until she was laughing and panting.

Late evening. Unexpected company in the form of Peter Braws, his wife, and a nice young couple, relatives of Mrs. Braws. The bring-­your-­own-­bottle politeness of the guests put plenty of booze in the house, and the party went on until late hours with loud music, laughter, and good feelings.

Sunday morning. Waking to find Gwen’s soft, moist, warm body draped over his. A slow, lingering morning love making and breakfast, with gallons of tomato juice and a quick swim and the sun and Gwen in a laughing mood. Sunday papers on the balcony in the breeze. “I think I’ll clear the beach for you.” George said, feeling the need for exercise after too much booze the night before.

“No.” The sharpness of it startled him. He looked at her inquiringly. “Not today,” she said, smiling. “I don’t want you out of my sight today.”

“I’ll just be right down below.”

“Out of reach, then,” she said, coming to him. When her intentions became clear, he groaned in mock agony.

“You’re going to wear me out.”

She did mischief with her hands and lips. “Complaining?”

“That’ll be the day,” he said.

A thousand years of it wouldn’t be enough. It was a thoroughly beautiful weekend. When the bugs began to take advantage of the evening’s lull, they went inside. George worked at a crossword puzzle. Gwen fed the flytraps raw hamburger. George looked up and noticed the rapt look on her face. “I told you that when those nasty little bastards started turning you on they’d have to go.” He wasn’t interested in the puzzle. He rose to watch her. He passed by the polygraph. As he watched a flytrap close rapidly on a morsel of hamburger he had a thought. “It’s electrical, I’d guess. I wonder if it could be measured?” He set up the machine. Gwen stopped her feeding process and watched. When he started to hook the electrodes onto the flytrap she stopped him.

“You’re not going to hurt it?”

“It’s not alive, Gwen. Not in that sense.”

“Don’t hurt it.”

“So, O.K., I won’t hurt the little bastard.”

He attached the electrodes gently. “Now, what I want to see,” he said, making adjustments, “is if the electric current registers when the trap closes. You drop in the hamburger.”

The polygraph recorder leaped. “Something wrong,” he said. Gwen dropped the bit of meat and the trap closed. There was a strong reading of current. “I’ll be damned,” he ­said. He moved the electrodes to another plant and Gwen stood ready. “Now,” he said. “Shit.” For there was another surge, just as he’d said “now,” with the image of her dropping the hamburger into the trap in his mind. The movement of electronic current registered, too. He didn’t begin to suspect until the process had been repeated several times. In each case, his thoughts of feeding the plant, his mental image, stimulated a reading much like that of a person showing emotional stimulation.

“The bastards are reading my mind,” he said. He had the electrodes connected to a different plant. “That’s crazy.”

“I don’t know,” Gwen said.

“Watch this.” George reached for a knife from the cabinet. He held it behind him and approached the flytrap that was wired to the polygraph. “I’m going to cut you into tiny pieces,” he said. The recorder leaped, stuttered, and then began to draw a straight line on the paper. “Son­ofabitch,” George said. He reached out his hand and mutilated the trap, crushing it between his fingers. The action of the polygraph went unnoticed, for Gwen screamed and began to hit him on the shoulders, yelling, “No, no, stop it.” He didn’t notice the recordings of the graph until he’d calmed her. At the moment of his mutilation, the recorder had gone wild.

“I’m sorry,” Gwen said. “It’s just that I’ve grown fond of them.”

“This is too spooky for me,” he said. “The bastard reads my mind. It faints when I threaten it. It goes crazy when it’s hurt.”

“Let’s leave them alone,” Gwen said.

“And you, going ape on me.” He grinned. “In love with a Venus-­flytrap?”

“Silly.”

“But it’s damned interesting, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”