The Lonely Girl’s Vegetable Patch

I never expected horses to become a theme in my life. When I was a young girl, I didn’t see them as animals so much as a child’s bedroom aesthetic, something that other girls—not me— chose to decorate their school binders with. The first time I met a horse up close, at a state fair, I was overcome by the unexpected smell of it. It was salty, dripping with thick saliva that did not strike me as icky, but somehow hard earned, like motor oil. A man—probably the owner of the horse—asked me if I wanted to sit on the horse’s back. I pondered this. Now that I understood the proportions of such an animal, sitting on it seemed like serious business. I worried that I would not fit the part. I might make a strange face while I was up there. I might not understand the deeper significance of what it meant to sit atop a creature with as much presence as a horse seemed to have. The man interpreted my hesitation as fear and told me that it was okay. Maybe next year I would be bigger and braver. As soon as he said “bigger and braver,” the horse let down his penis until it nearly touched the ground. It was pink and flakey like a sunburn. All around us, people laughed out of discomfort—I imagine because I was standing eye level to it and I seemed like a sweet child who maybe didn’t deserve the shock, and what else could you do but laugh? Until then, I had not been aware of the crowd, or that the whole interaction had been observed by so many strangers who now thought that I was a coward.

I took the next morning off to drive Nico’s parents to the airport. They acted like they were doing me a favor by letting me drive a car for once and said that as long as I replaced the gas in the tank, I could use it to move my belongings to the apartment that they still believed was lined up for me. On the drive back into town, I rolled down every window, letting the wind thud against my open hand, whip my hair, dry out my teeth. Even with all that air on me, I still felt trapped. The steering wheel looked preposterously bulky. The icons on the dashboard seemed unnecessary, the way outdated technology can appear naïve: Don’t the buttons know they can be smaller? Instead of bypassing Main Street to avoid traffic, I rolled through at a comfortable speed. Here was the benefit of the metal box: I could spy on Buster’s Café and the used bookstore without giving myself away. The bookstore was dead as always, but the café had added a new element. A sandwich board with a balloon attached. TOMORROW, it read. My thoughts turned cottony, my hands stuck hot to the wheel.

The next day was windy. The horses were on edge, snorting as if to filter the chaos. Voices were tossed around like buoys. Diane was a blender of hair and plaid, while Aurora moved solidly, pushing a wheelbarrow.

“I’m a Taurus,” she told me by way of an explanation.

“Oh wow! I’m a Libra!” Diane said, because she thought we were just throwing out signs for fun. Tristan, in the middle of putting down new wood shavings, looked at me shyly through the dust clouds. Had he missed me on my day off?

“You look—” he said, coughing. “Interesting.” It was because I was wearing a very thin layer of concealer and two flicks of mascara, and I had chosen a shirt that fit me. I told myself that I had taken these steps because I would not have time to change before going to the café later. As if I had an appointment with the place. I was tense. I gave Tristan a jumpy reply.

“Don’t call me interesting.”

We had two trail rides lined up that morning, but one turned out to be a mom wanting a pony ride for her four-year-old son. Tristan assigned it to the autumn girls because it only involved leading the pony around the property, then giving the kid a sugar cube, telling him to hold his hand flat so he wouldn’t be bitten. I was envious. Didn’t they know that walking circles was my specialty? I threw myself into the work of getting the horses ready for the other trail ride, going over the basics with the riders—a mother and teenage daughter this time—and leading the way up the trail. The wind did not relent. Manes and tails were a mess. There was a pillow fight in my eardrums. All the while, I was thinking about the café, imagining that it would be Cleo herself behind the counter, steaming milk, tamping espresso grounds, chatting casually with customers. There was not much about my little excursion that I could plan—how many options does one have in a coffee shop? So, it came down to my entrance: my pace and style of walking through the door, and whether I would find a table first, or go straight to the counter. Would I talk to her right away, or let my presence slowly build, my eyes dancing in her direction until she asked me a question? Was I from around here? A college student? Were those muck boots on my feet? I imagined her looking me up and down and understanding from my plainness and my shrewd expression that I did not fit with the summer girls or the autumn girls. I was of a separate category, one that I barely understood myself. We were almost to the clearing where the trail ended when the tree limbs ahead seemed suddenly fuller and darker. Black shadows expanded and floated down, and I thought, with alarming serenity: The branches are falling on us. I saw right away that it was only a group of turkey vultures, hopping down from a tree like black umbrellas onto a dead squirrel. They positioned themselves in a dark council. (Later I would learn that it is called a committee when vultures gather and a wake when they close in to eat something, and I would tell far too many people this fact.) The mother gasped, which I thought was a strangely delayed response. I halted my horse and turned to look at her. She had her hands in fists, holding the reins up by her face, as if to shield herself.

“They’re horrible!” she said.

You’re horrible, I thought.

“Fun fact,” I said to the grimacing mother, “if you get too close to a turkey vulture, it’ll projectile vomit on you. Roadkill.” I turned back toward the path and urged my horse forward before I could see Tristan’s disapproving face. I had, earlier and with amusement, considered what it would be like for me to become obsessed with Cleo, but it had already happened. I was so eager to get to Buster’s Café and lay eyes on the woman that I was becoming irritable, resentful of anyone who was in my way.

We were mostly quiet for the rest of the ride, hearing only the strange yawning of tree trunks in distress. When we were done, the mother handed me a tip and smiled apologetically before getting into her car. This caused me to feel such remorse that I went into the stable and pressed the bills into Tristan’s hand.

“What is up with you?” he asked, not angry. (Heaven forbid he react poorly to anything.) “I have my period,” I lied.

“Do you need some dark chocolate with paprika?” Diane asked. She was in a stall, leaning on a pitchfork. “I have some in my bag.”

“Of course you do,” I snapped. She wilted only slightly. “Why don’t you head home early,” Tristan suggested. I felt like an unruly child banished to the outdoors: liberated and skittish with guilt.

When Cleo was a girl, she went to one of those schools taught by nuns, where you could get in trouble for breathing. Cleo got in trouble for trying to poison the water fountain. She was always an overachiever.

When she was twelve, she raised a pair of prizewinning steers, which her father made into hamburgers on her thirteenth birthday. She has been a vegetarian ever since.

Cleo had an emergency appendectomy at fifteen. When they put her under, she claimed to have seen the future: a world where technological implants were the norm, but only men were allowed to have them.

Knowing everything that I knew about Cleo, I could not imagine her as anything less than ferocious: well structured, proud eyes. Anjelica Huston, Angela Bassett, Sigourney Weaver. Images of these women spun in my head like the portraits of queens. I could see all my weaknesses through their eyes. It made me want to clean under my fingernails, sit up straight, brush the back of my tongue.

I parked the Vespa in a public lot two blocks from the café and walked up the sidewalk with my helmet tucked under my arm. I liked to think that it gave me a certain unconscious swagger, but I am not sure that the rest of me—muddy boots, skinny arms, flat hair—supported this. Still, I walked like someone on a mission, passing the bookstore and checking my reflection brazenly in the many-paned window. That girl is on a mission, I thought. Let Byron see me and wonder what I am up to. Ahead, the sandwich-board balloon, swaying in the wind, said, This way, this way.

She was already looking at me when I walked in, which startled me so much that I forgot my plan entirely and approached the counter before finding a table first. I fell in line behind a large man with a blond, braided beard who I would one day know as Amos, but who, in that moment, I was only using as a buffer so I could collect myself. Soon, I would know practically everyone in that place—by drink order, first name, and private nickname. It’s funny to compare your first impression of a space to the intimate knowledge of it as time passes. Standing in line, hiding behind the big man, I saw the shop as spare but inviting, like a rectangle of sunlight on a hardwood floor. I had no idea how dramatically that impression would change through experience, as if experience were a can of spray paint, complicating every surface with all the moments I’d spend there. The big man paid for his drink and stepped away, and for a moment Cleo had her back to me while she prepared his order. I knew it was her, even though it could have easily been an employee—who was to say that the real Cleo wasn’t in the kitchen, in the back office? There was still the possibility that all of this had been a colossal instance of jumping to conclusions on Tristan’s part, and that the name Buster had been chosen at random for its mass appeal. Who wouldn’t like a place called Buster’s?

“What kind of bike do you ride?” She had turned around, and was leaning her elbows on the counter, pleasantly and unhurried, even though it was obvious that the place was packed, the line behind me still growing. “I’ve had my eye on a little mustard-yellow Honda. Listed online,” she continued. I knew that she had seen my motorcycle helmet. I knew that she was expressing interest in this thing that she assumed we both knew something about—that is, riding motorcycles—but I could not figure out what to say. My mind was filled with what Tristan had put there, and yet empty at the same time. I forgot how much I was or wasn’t supposed to know, how to act like I was totally ignorant of her.

“It’s just a Vespa,” I told her. Then: “But I had to get my motorcycle license to ride it.” She liked this, and I sensed that she approved of my need to tell her, as if we both desired to be tougher than your average scooter girl. She was cuter than I expected. Short, with wild, curly hair held back with a twisted scarf. Her features were small and direct, and I suspected that if she had been wearing makeup, the result would have been too on point. There were the hoop earrings that I had heard about, the flash of mica in her left eye. I was unexpectedly moved to see these things. I felt a rush of fondness toward Tristan for being truthful and reliable, then a similar fondness for Cleo for unknowingly keeping her end of the bargain.

“What kind of coffee do you like to drink?” She wanted me to order, of course, to keep the line moving, but the question felt personal, playful, and somehow flirtatious. I was moved a second time.

“Hot?” I said.

I sat in an armchair by the front window. It was all that was available. I regretted that I had not thought to bring something to read, or at the very least a newspaper that I could pretend to look at. But I had a decent view of the counter and the café’s steady stream of customers. I watched them wait in line and grow impatient, especially as it became clear that there was only one person taking orders, making drinks, and working the register. I was worried that someone would complain about the wait or storm out, but with every person it was the same thing: When it came their turn, Cleo smiled and somehow bewitched them into passivity. From where I sat, I could see her face and the way her eyes were filled with genuine mirth—which is not a word that I have ever wanted to use, but was the only one I could find to describe her. Her front teeth were turned slightly inward in way that made her smile utterly captivating. I wanted to see it again and again, as if it were a mechanism that I was trying to better understand. When she had handed me my mug, winking at my request for “hot” coffee, I had felt as though she was totally invested in me, and that she had appreciated my deadpan humor, as if no one else that day had thought to ask for coffee so cleverly. You’re not fussy, her eyes said to me. And I like that about you. I soon realized that I had not been the only person to have this experience. From my armchair I could see each new customer turn away from the counter, cup or pastry in hand, visibly lighter than when they had walked in.

At last, there was a lull in the crowd, and I watched Cleo cleaning up from the rush. She brewed more coffee, loaded the dishwasher, and stacked the trays from the display case that were now empty. The lingerers brought their dirty dishes to the bus tub, wiped their mouths one last time with a napkin, and waved to Cleo, their faces saying, Nice job! Thanks! Good luck! Was it possible that Cleo was known already throughout town and that all these people had come to support her on her first day? It seemed improbable to me, but perhaps no more improbable than the notion that she had won over an entire town of strangers. I would conclude later that it was a little bit of both, which I guess was the only realistic option. Eventually, it was just me and a man with large headphones. I supposed I was waiting for him to leave, although I couldn’t say what I planned to do once I found myself alone with Cleo. I was so disoriented that I did not even know what time it was. Maybe the shop was already closed and Cleo was politely waiting for us to clear out. I stood and brought my cold mug to the counter.

“Hey, Vespa Girl,” Cleo said. “How was it?” She took the mug from me in both hands. That was one of her moves; when she handed you something—a cup of coffee, a book, a muffin—she held it close to her chest first, both hands around it, as if warming it for you. It was the same for objects that she received—a borrowed pen, a hair scrunchie. This was not something that Tristan had told me, but something that I would learn for myself. I hadn’t thought about Tristan all afternoon.

“Everything was good,” I said. “Sufficiently hot.” Cleo seemed to look me over. I wanted to say more, to somehow justify my presence or to make myself interesting in her eyes. But, again, I couldn’t think of anything. My mind was as whitewashed as Nico’s basement. A feeling came over me then, like the feeling you get when you’re about to hear yourself confess a secret. I’m afraid of my job. I am running out of time. No angle of my life shimmers.

I was saved by the door opening and slapping shut behind me. A man with a closely trimmed white beard approached the counter, waving a five-dollar bill animatedly like a child excited to buy an ice cream cone.

“Got any coffee left?” he asked. He looked so sincere that I wanted to hide. I quickly moved out of the way and got my helmet from under the armchair. Somehow, I knew that this wasn’t for me. Whatever this was.

“Bye, Vespa Girl,” Cleo called. I left her behind the counter with the rosy old man. Even though Tristan had told me the logistics of her marriage, it did not occur to me that the man might be her husband, that she would have anyone so wholesome and ordinary in her life.

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From The Lonely Girl’s Vegetable Patch by Genevieve Plunkett. Used with permission of the publisher, Amethyst Editions/The Feminist Press. Copyright © 2026.