***Hmmm, a little bonsai tree, a little um, manure-spreading, some light conversation, ...
What could go wrong?
0_o
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Taeko was looking for a regular job. She found herself wandering in the aisles of a business supply store, gradually working her way to the front with a small shopping cart which by then contained a laptop PC, an all-in-one printer, scanner and FAX, some art supplies, a graphics tablet and a couple of blocks of plain white paper.
It felt strange to her, this business of trying to build a semi-disposable life for herself. For most of her adult life, she'd been very self-reliant to her way of thinking. To a person born in most cultures and societies, that degree of self-reliance was not even possible. Most humans have other humans in their lives, people who they interact with, live with, love with and care for.
All that Taeko had on this side of the planet were contacts, people who she could get in touch with in order to obtain documents, money, even vehicles or weaponry. They were not the same thing. To meet one of her contacts in any social way would be very awkward indeed, the other person waiting silently to be told what was wanted or needed so that they could reply with a price. There was no friendship to be had there.
She was almost at the cashier for her short line when her attention was drawn by the presence of a man behind her. She didn't look much, other than to get a glimpse of his overall clothing peripherally as a form of shorthand in the art of quick recognition. She didn't need to see his face then in most cases, and in this case, she didn't look that far.
She pretended to be interested in a bin of bright highlighting pens for a moment, but she didn't understand the pricing. The cashier explained that the price was for three of the pens and Taeko smiled then and chose three different colors to add them to her purchases.
Just then, another cashier looked over and said, "I can take you here, sir," and the man walked past Taeko and set his purchases down on the counter. Taeko looked at him then from behind.
He was dressed in slightly dirty clothing and after a second, she knew that it was from working, so that got her interest a little. Taeko had never really known a man in much of any social context. The ones which she'd known had been superiors, mostly, and the ones that she'd been to bed with had mostly been targets for her in her unusual line of work. Sleeping with someone was an age-old way to get close enough to do what she'd been sent there to do. In the present day, it almost always worked as a means to get to a fool who couldn't pay his gambling debts and had managed to evade the other forms of contact.
She thought about that as she looked a second time, taking in details now. He wore workboots which were clean, though dusty, and his shirt looked to have been washed recently and he wore it with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. She thought about the dustiness on him and it came to her that he might be a farmer. From what she'd seen, farming here was a little different from what she'd seen elsewhere in her travels, though not all that much. He didn't look more than a little dusty to her.
Any other woman might have looked at him for the shape of his body, and Taeko did as well, but her gaze -- as well-concealed as it was -- lingered for a few seconds. She wondered if other women saw him as only a laborer or someone of a lower social stature. What she saw was a man who worked for a living and to a girl with hard-working fishermen in her upbringing, that wasn't a bad thing, necessarily.
He was a little broad-shouldered and she could see that by the sleeves over his upper arms, he was fit and she noticed his narrow waist. If she had to guess, she'd have put his age at somewhere in his early thirties, but then she hadn't seen his face. It was just what came to her.
That was when she noticed the hair on his forearms.
It caused her to look elsewhere on him, as much as his position allowed. He was about two meters tall and the skin that she could see was tanned, so he spent a lot of his time outdoors, she guessed -- probably being a farmer.
It was her turn with the cashier then and she paid and was ready to leave in only a few minutes. She glanced at him as she turned to go and she saw his face in a rearward profile. It was then that she knew what it was about his hair. It was golden.
It wasn't as though she'd never seen a blonde man before -- she'd seen many of them in her travels -- especially here. They didn't do much of anything for her. Not many of the men here did.
But this one ... his hair wasn't really blonde. It looked to be more of a light brown, and yet, it was as though the hair on his arms and what she could see curling out from underneath the ball cap that he wore was trying to be blonde, as though it wanted to be, but had been cast into the role of being brown and rebelled whenever it had the chance for it.
It almost made her smile as she walked past and out of the store.
By this time, Taeko had been here long enough to have seen the need for saddlebags for her bike, so now it wore a set of hard fiberglass bags which were fine for some things and not enough for others -- such as her printer. But she'd thought about this and had tons of bungee cords to tie it down with. She was in the process of that when she saw the man walk out and head toward a pickup truck. He got in and drove away long before she was done securing her printer.
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The next day was Saturday. Taeko had gotten her housework done and a bit of yardwork as well, just wanting to clean the place up a little. The old farmhouse had never had much of any pretense to it, but it was where she lived for the moment so ....
There had been evergreens planted around it many years ago and as they'd grown taller, the lower branches had died from being in perpetual shade. Some previous owner or resident had sawn them off to clear things a little. Taeko found a rake and went a little further hoping that if she removed a lot of the dead pine needles, the thin grass might have a chance at life. Somewhere in that, she'd seen the little seedling.
There were lots of them around here and there, but this one had a nice shape to it, so she dug it up with care and looked until she found a little oval pot. One thing led to another and before she knew it really, she was sitting on the old front porch in the thin rays of whatever sunlight could make it through the pines. She'd found some cast-off copper wire in a cable and a little work yielded her one of the conductors stripped bare.
That was how Kerry found her as he came up the long driveway.
She saw him coming after he'd parked his truck out on the road, but she gave no sign that she was aware of his approach. She recognized him as the man in the store and wondered about it, but she reasoned that she'd find out what he was here for soon enough. Besides, she was enjoying her tea and her little pine tree.
