Lorraine has been a recycler ever since she can remember. Not only does she recycle all her paper, plastic and glass, she recycles other people’s too. Lorraine keeps empty paper bags in her trunk. She takes them to all functions, be it a card game at someone’s house, a Neighbourhood Watch meeting, an art gallery opening, or a friend’s birthday party. She scoops up all the plastic water bottles, soft drink cans, scrap paper, newspapers, wrapping paper, anything that can be recycled.
At home Lorraine shreds most of her mail before recycling it. She rips the mailing labels off magazines, shreds the labels and puts them, along with the magazines, in the recycling bin. Her friends kid her that if she could recycle her used dental floss she would. One of Lorraine’s most valued possessions is the composter in her backyard. She loves making her own fertilizer. Her plants love it too. What her plants like best, though, are the coffee grounds she sprinkles in the yard every morning. Lorraine’s neighbours and friends always compliment her on her plants and flowers. She knows her secret is coffee grounds, but she just says thanks and leaves it at that. It doesn’t matter if the grounds are from the 99 Cents Store or the expensive Costa Rican coffee she buys for special occasions.
One night, after having several friends over for a game of canasta, she is left with half a pot of coffee. She’s just about to pour the coffee down the drain when she has an epiphany. If her plants like coffee grounds, won’t they like coffee too? Lorraine takes her big yellow flashlight out of the bottom kitchen drawer, grabs her heavy sweatshirt and coffee pot, and hurries into her backyard. Carefully she pours the coffee around her newly planted rose bushes.
The next day, after breakfast, Lorraine takes the grounds from her morning pot of coffee and goes into the backyard to scatter them. She does a double take. She stares at her new rose bushes in amazement. What had been small buds the day before are now giant red roses. The only thing she did differently was to pour coffee around the bushes. But how could coffee possibly produce blooming roses from buds overnight? Lorraine is anxious to pour coffee on her pansies. The next morning, even before getting dressed, she makes a pot of coffee. While the coffee brews, she quickly throws on jeans and a sweatshirt. When the coffee is done, she takes the pot and carefully pours it around the bed of pansies in her front yard.
The next morning, Lorraine rushes to her kitchen window. The pansies are in full bloom, more flowers than she’s ever seen. Lorraine now makes two pots of coffee every day, one for her and one for her plants. Her entire garden is awash in blooms. Plants are flowering out of season, bursting with vibrant colour.
Soon all Lorraine’s friends want to know her secret. She is frequently disturbed by neighbours knocking on her front door. She begins getting phone calls and emails from people she doesn’t even know. Everyone wants to know the secret. Lorraine is concerned that coffee might not work in other yards. That night, after the house next door goes dark, she grabs her flashlight, sweatshirt and coffee. She quietly creeps next door and pours the rich brew around three old rose bushes that Lorraine has never seen bloom. The next morning Lorraine is awakened by a knock on her front door. Her next-door neighbor is standing there speechless, eyes as big as saucers. “Did you do something to my roses?” she asks breathlessly.
People begin asking Lorraine if they can buy her fertilizer. “It’s not for sale,” she says. “But I’ll gladly come fertilize your garden on a regular basis, for a monthly fee.”
Lorraine begins making gallons of coffee. Her kitchen is full of pots, all of them percolating. As her business grows, every room in her house, even the bathroom, is filled with brewing coffee. Lorraine no longer drinks any coffee. Every drop means another happy customer, and every happy customer means more money. She’s so busy brewing, driving around the city and fertilizing, she no longer has time for anything else. She loses touch with her friends. She never goes to the movies. She stops taking walks in the hills near her house.
Lorraine feels increasingly isolated and depressed. She’s too exhausted to leave her house. Her next-door neighbour Sara becomes curious and concerned. After all, she’s used to seeing Lorraine leave early every morning and not return until nightfall. She calls Lorraine several times. No one ever answers or returns her calls. Three days in a row Sara goes next door and knocks on Lorraine’s door. On the fourth day, when no one answers, she gets the key Lorraine gave her several years ago and unlocks the back door. It feels like she has walked into a combination Starbucks/Coffee Bean/Seattle’s Best. The smell is overpowering. As she walks through the house, calling Lorraine’s name, the smell becomes even more pungent. She can’t help but notice multiple coffee pots in every room. Sara begins to fear that something must be seriously wrong with Lorraine. Has she had a nervous breakdown? Has she been inducted into some caffeine cult? Is she a drug addict? Or more likely, from the smell and look of things, Lorraine has a serious, possibly dangerous addiction to caffeine.
As Sara walks down the long, dark hallway leading to Lorraine’s bedroom and bathroom, she becomes increasingly uneasy. The bedroom door is ajar. Sara peeks in. The bed is made. Nothing seems out of the ordinary, other than the fact that, as in all the other rooms, there are coffee pots on every surface. Sara knocks on the closed bathroom door. No one answers. Sara looks down. Her feet are damp and brown. Coffee is leaking out from under the door. She turns the knob and slowly pushes it open. The tub is overflowing, coffee seeps over the edge. Under the rich, fertile aroma of Java, another odour invades Sara’s nose. It’s sickly sweet and putrid, like raw hamburger forgotten in the sun. She feels nauseous. Arising out of the rich brown liquid like strange fleshy plants extend Lorraine’s feet.
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