Shane Murphy: The Plant Between Doors — A Bahamas Story

Fiction set in an imagined apartment building in the Bahamas. The characters, building and events are invented.

The plant arrived between the two doors on a Tuesday, in a chipped blue pot balanced on a square of newspaper. Nobody claimed it. By Friday, a note had appeared beneath the saucer.

Please do not water. I already have.

Nina read the note twice. She had watered it on Wednesday. The soil looked like the bottom of a harbour.

Across the landing, Mr Bell's door remained shut. She knew his name from the envelopes that sometimes reached her letterbox. He knew hers because a delivery driver had once called it through the building for seven uninterrupted minutes. Beyond that, their acquaintance consisted of nodding while searching for keys.

She wrote under the first note: So have I.

The next morning, a pencil rested across the pot. Beneath her reply was a third line: That explains the expression.

The plant had six leaves. Two pointed downwards with the exhausted dignity of folded umbrellas. Nina had no idea what kind of plant it was. She searched her phone, received three conflicting suggestions and decided that giving it a name would be easier than identifying it.

She wrote: I propose we call him Leonard.

Mr Bell replied: Why Leonard?

Because he looks as though he has a complicated opinion about something.

For two days, Leonard received no water. The newspaper dried around the edges. On Sunday, Nina found a small wooden marker pushed into the soil. One side said WATERED. The other said WAIT.

She turned it over without adding anything. A few hours later, it had been turned back.

We need a third side, she wrote.

Mr Bell's reply was waiting when she returned from work: Or a conversation.

She stood outside his door with her shopping bag hanging from one finger. From inside came the sound of a radio, then a drawer closing. She nearly knocked. Instead she put her shopping away and returned with two cups.

He opened the door before she reached for the bell.

“I thought you might,” he said.

“I brought tea.”

“I was expecting a complaint.”

“About Leonard?”

“About the pencil. It rolls down the stairs.”

They carried the cups to a bench in the shared courtyard, leaving the plant where it was. Mr Bell said his daughter had brought the pot upstairs after finding it beside a discarded chair. He had assumed Nina would prefer some greenery outside her door.

Nina said she had assumed he wanted somebody to look after it.

“So neither of us actually wanted a plant,” he said.

“I didn't say that.”

He nodded, accepting the correction.

The discussion became practical. They would move Leonard slightly farther from the doors, where nobody would catch a bag on the leaves. They would stop treating every drooping leaf as a demand for more water. Mr Bell would ask his daughter what it was. Nina would stop consulting a different website every evening.

Then they talked about other things.

Mr Bell had once repaired radios. Nina had a radio that worked only when pressed against a particular wall. He said that sounded less like a radio than a tenant with preferences. She laughed loudly enough for a neighbour above them to lean over the railing.

“Have you two finally met?” the neighbour asked.

Apparently everyone else had been waiting.

The following week, Mr Bell's daughter identified the plant and wrote a few care instructions on a card. Nina pinned it beside the wooden marker. They agreed on a routine, although Mr Bell still occasionally added a question mark beside WAIT.

Leonard lost one leaf and grew another. Nothing about the change was dramatic. The landing remained narrow, the paint beside Nina's door remained scuffed, and the pencil continued to escape.

One evening, Nina found a second chipped pot beside the first. It contained soil and a small cutting.

There was no explanatory note.

She knocked on Mr Bell's door.

“This is getting out of hand,” she said.

“Yes,” he replied. “Come and help me find another name.”

About the author: Shane Ian Murphy is a former co-founder and Chief Business Development Officer of Limitless Mobile. This story is a work of fiction.