Chapter 10: Professional courtesy
1109 Words
Leo had been telling himself it was just a professional courtesy and nothing more.
He brought two coffees from his usual spot.
Leo had been there yesterday on his way to the estate and the owner had already started on his usual before he reached the counter.
He ordered two today, and told himself it was professional courtesy.
He drove through the coral gables gate with both cups in the holder.
He went for a standard second visit to ensure the contract work was proceeding according to schedule.
He turned the corner into the garden and Sofia Navarro was already there.
She was on the West side today,crouched in front of a section of garden bed that had been cleared since yesterday. She was working with the same focused, unhurried energy.
Her hair was up with the pencil again,same boots,a different jacket but the same logo.
She hadn't heard him come in.
He stood at the edge of the garden for a moment and watched her work.
Sofia was talking to herself or to the plant,he couldn't tell which,her hands moved through the soil with confidence.
He walked towards her.
“Morning," he said.
She looked up. She had the same complete assessment like the last time. Entirely unbothered by the last name.
He held out the second coffee,she looked at him and back to him.
She then pulled off one glove and took it.
Leo was stunned,she didn't even say thank you.
She took the coffee and went right back to work.
Leo stood there with his own cup of coffee,he had the specific feeling of someone who had driven twenty minutes out of his way to bring coffee to someone who had received it the same way someone would receive a staple remover.
Leo had a meeting at eleven that required preparation,a draft acquisition proposal sitting on his desk at Henderson capital that Chad had asked for by the end of the week.
Leo sat at the garden wall instead,Leo and Sofia did not talk for the next fifteen minutes.
Sofia worked and Leo sat on the wall with his coffee and the Miami morning moving around them.
The birds doing whatever they did in the coral gables gardens,the distant sound of water beyond the terrace.
“You came back” Sofia said,she didn't look up from what she was doing.
“I said I would"
" You said you'd come back to check on the progress. That's different from actually coming back.” She said,
“I'm here,aren't I?”
She sat back on her heels and looked at him over her shoulders with those hazel eyes that were more green this morning in the light.
“You are," she said. Something moved at the corner of her mouth.
" Why” she asked
Leo looked at his coffee cup.
The honest answer was that he had woken up this morning thinking about the banyan tree argument and had found himself wondering what she would say next.
“About the tree" he said
" The tree?” She repeated.
“I wanted to look at it again, the sightline issue"
Sofia turned back to her work.
" The tree stays Mr Henderson” she said flatly, with the authority of someone who had made up her mind a long time ago.
“ Leo,” he said.
She glanced back at him.
“What?"
" Leo,call me Leo. Mr Henderson is my brother" he said
“Leo," she repeated. Then she went back to work.
Leo stayed another forty minutes. He said it was because the sightline issue genuinely required more consideration and he needed to walk the terrace again from several angles to properly assess the impact of the tree on the water view.
He only walked the terrace once and came back and sat on the wall and watched Sofia move through the west garden with her coffee going slowly cold beside her on the ground and her hands on the soil and that low continuous murmur.
“What are you saying?" He asked.
" When you work,you talk the whole time”
She didn't look up, " I talk to the plants”
She said,
" About what?”
“About what they need.” She moved three feet to the left.
“Does it help?"
She considered that with the same seriousness she appeared to bring into everything
" I think better out loud,” she said. “My mother used to say I process the world through my mouth before my brain catches up. She wasn't wrong” she glanced at him
Leo smiled but Sofia did not see it,she had already looked back down.
“The east bed will take longer than I said yesterday. The root system is worse than I thought. Once I got under the surface,someone planted things here without thinking of what they needed to grow." She said,
" Does that happen often?” Leo asked.
“More than it should. People want the results without thinking about what the thing needs to get there" she pulled something loose from the soil and examined it briefly.
Leo looked at the garden,he thought of Henderson capital,about the way acquisition worked,the way his brother worked. The particular ruthlessness of going underneath the surface of something,taking what is useful and leaving the rest to manage on its own.
" The coffee is going cold,” he said instead.
Sofia looked at it, picked it up and took a long sip.
“You could have reminded me earlier," she smirked.
" You looked busy,” he replied.
She looked at him properly for the first time. She stood up and brushed the soil from her knees and picked up her tools
And moved to the next section of the west bed.
" Same time tomorrow?” Leo asked.
Sofia stopped walking.
He watched her back,the navarro landscape design logo.
“You don't need to come everyday," she said.
She stood there for a moment with her back to him and her tools in her hand.
She kept walking.
Leo finished his coffee,he sat on the garden wall for another ten minutes after she moved out of the conversation range.
His phone buzzed in his pocket,he pulled it out, it was his brother, Chad.
The message said. ‘the file,my office today’
Leo looked at the message and didn't reply.
He put his phone back in his pocket and looked at the garden.
Leo stood up and picked his empty cup and walked back towards the front of the estate.
Something about the banyan tree in the garden felt unnatural to Leo.
- Writer
