The Stinking Corpse Lily

Victoria leaned over to her siblings.

"Is this how will readings are supposed to work?"

Penn, her elder brother, rolled his eyes.

"No, they're just emailed these days. Will reading was necessary when people were illiterate," responded her brother/lawyer. He also owned a skydiving business.

"Then why are we out here in this gazebo in the middle of a public park?" Victoria hissed in his ear. "It's weird! There's a family having a birthday party right over there! See them? The ones balancing the cake on their knees and glaring at us? And what is that smell? Is it coming from that box?"

"Tory, it's just how she wanted it read," soothed her older sister Rey. She owned a series of elite preschools. "You know how...unique Vanaema was. But as for the smell, I don't know. What a funk!" She fanned her nose with her pocketbook. It was, conveniently, shaped like a fan.

Victoria walked dogs for a living and watched her siblings' houses when they were out of town. She lived in a 300-square-foot apartment where her bed also served as sofa, storage, spice rack, ironing board, and kitchen table.

Mr. Byrd cleared his throat. The top of his neatly-trimmed black hair nearly brushed the gazebo's entrance. He wore a striped, navy-blue suit and looked sharp and ready to run a wedding, funeral, or old-fashioned will reading. He flipped a page.

"And why is Mr. Byrd smiling like that? He looks like he's ready to launch a nuclear weapon or issue a demand for random!"

Both siblings shushed her.

"And now, the fun part!" Mr. Byrd's eyes smiled at them through enormous lenses. "To my dear granddaughter Rey. The hours we spent building 3-D dinosaur kits were some of my favorites. I still have the essay you wrote about me in graduate school. I leave you $2 million. It's yours as soon as this sentence is read."

Mr. Byrd leaned forward gracefully and flicked an envelope to her from out of nowhere. Rey took it, snorting into her handkerchief.

Yes. Handkerchief.

"To my bold-hearted Penn, no dream is too big for you to achieve. I hope these $2 million will boost you along to your next accomplishment."

Penn leaned forward and shook Mr. Byrd's hand graciously before accepting his envelope. No rush, no grab.

"And for Victoria," Mr. Byrd paused and rolled his eyes to her.

There was that smile again.

Victoria felt adrenaline zip through her heart.

She'd heard somewhere there were two kinds of stress — eustress, which was the kind you got in a good situation, and distress.

She was feeling very distressed. She didn't like the lack of affectionate words, and she really didn't like that look on Mr. Byrd's face.

"Good luck," he said, and picked up the box.

As Mr. Byrd turned toward her, it became very clear that the smell came from within the box. It snugged around her like an unwanted hug. It curled up the nose and lodged in the brain.

"Nope. Whatever that is, it's not worth the dry-cleaning bill," Penn said, flapping his gray suit jacket by the lapels. He slipped quickly off the gazebo.

"Oh, Victoria. You should have spent more time with her," Rey said, backing to the edge of the gazebo, holding her scarf over her nose.

"But she had no interest in me!" cried Victoria. "I was never any good at building 3-D dinosaurs! I kept gluing my fingers together! Hey, is this because I couldn't make her 80th birthday? I had appendicitis!"

Mr. Byrd placed the box in the empty chair Rey had vacated. He lifted the lid and stepped backward, holding a handkerchief to his nose. Yep, he had one too.

It was a flower...the biggest one she had ever seen. It looked like a child's drawing of something that Brontosauruses ate. Its petals were the size of dinner plates, pocked with white blisters. They grew out around a thing that looked like a red, hollow hubcap, if the hubcap was made of rotting meat. Because that's what it smelled like. Rotting meat, rotting fish, and a marathon runner's favorite shoes.

It rested on a bed of innocent-looking bark, nestled in with heads of cabbage also stinking of meat.

"Rafflesia Arnoldii," wheezed Mr. Byrd through his handkerchief. "Also known as the Stinking Corpse Lily."

Victoria's cheeks were burning. It was bad enough her grandmother (because that's what Americans called grandmothers, not "Vanaema" after her one trip to Estonia) didn't have a check for her, bad enough to drag her out here and reward her successful siblings with yet more money right in front of her while denying her anything...but to insult her with this nightmare was just plain mean. She slapped the box shut.

"Well you can keep it, Mr. Byrd. I bequeath it to you." She stood and turned to storm off. She looked over at the party goers, who were handing out balloons. Maybe they would feel bad for her and give her cake. She could eat it on her own knees.

"Miss Plumm, there's more."

"Oh great," she said as she stepped off the gazebo. "Did she leave me a bag of garbage, too? I get it, she hated me."

"No, Miss Plumm, it's a challenge."

She paused.

She looked back at him. At least his smile was gone. "I'm going to be with you. And if you complete it, you get twice what your siblings received. Plus something else."

Victoria felt miserable, like all of her failures were slapped out there for everyone to see. Her siblings were always kind to her, but she never shined next to them, especially at holiday dinners. Her mother took pains to compliment her on her napkin folding to make her feel better. One year, she'd raved over how Victoria got just the right amount of ice in the glasses. Victoria had scrutinized her face to find sarcasm, and found none. Somehow, that was almost worse.

But there was rent. And she had run out of creative ways to prepare tuna fish and noodles. She looked at her shoes, which were coming apart at the toe. She sighed.

"What's the challenge?"

Mr. Byrd slowly lifted the box.

"Your challenge is to keep this alive for a year. It's very rare. Plus one more condition we will discuss later."

Victoria dropped her eyes onto its red, blistering surface.

"A year? Where am I going to keep it?"

"In its home," he said with a calm voice that made her want to scream.

"Well, where does it live?"

He pointed to her phone.

"You tell me."

Huffing, she typed.

"Stinking Corpse Flower, you said?"

"No, Lily."

More clicking.

"Borneo. It lives in Borneo."

"It did until your grandmother came along," Mr. Byrd said pointedly.

"They're endangered," she read. "Deforestation, shrinking habitat...fertilization gets harder and harder, cutting populations further...and she just took one?"

Nod.

Clickety click.

"And it only lives as a parasite in the Indian Chestnut Vine? Where'm I going to find one of those?"

Mr. Byrd said nothing.

She looked up.

"There's two here, both in museums that have greenhouses."

"Look up private collections."

Victoria's irritation receded just a bit.

"...and the private collection of Pinkie Atherton."

"Grandma had a private greenhouse?" asked Rey, one hand on the railing. "Since when?"

"She inherited it, and added a great deal to it," said Mr. Byrd. He held the box toward Victoria.

"So. Do you want to find out where this lives? And tend it for a year? Do you accept?"

Victoria put her phone away. She held her breath and stepped forward, arms out.

Holding her breath didn't stop the stench from lodging happily in her sinuses. Excitement zinged in her chest.

Hey, eustress, she thought. Who knew?

"I accept," she gurgled. "Can I put this in the trunk?"

After kissing her sister goodbye (her brother was long gone), Victoria put the monstrosity in the trunk and slipped into the passenger seat. They motored away. Suburbs stretched out into single houses on acreage, then to farms, then to a long, two-lane road so covered in trees, barely any of the afternoon sunlight got through.

She thought the ride might be over when Mr. Byrd parked, unlocked a green bar shrouded in trees, pulled through, and re-locked it, but they continued on for a further half hour. She was beginning to wonder if this was turning into a kidnap situation when the narrow, gravel road expanded to a small, square parking lot. It revealed...a bunch more trees.

No...she squinted...rising above the trees was a little bit of metal and glass.

A greenhouse.

"Did Vanae...Grandmother live here?" she asked, following his lead and getting out of the car.

"Not for the last ten years," he said, smoothing his perfectly smooth hair and straightening his suit. "When she lost the strength in her legs, she couldn't make it out here. Don't forget your buddy," he said, clicking the key to pop the trunk.

Wondering if she would ever get the smell out of her hair, she hoisted the box of stink. Holding it at a full arms' length, she followed Mr. Byrd. He had to yank some vines out of the way to find a glass door, then he unlocked it, and pushed it inward.

"After you."

A draft of smells poured over her. She could identify absolutely none of them.

The greenhouse was a jungle. Vines crept up the sides, blocking out the waning sunlight. In the center, a tree with branches big enough to support a swing sprouted orange pods. Wooden benches lined the sides and middle. Underneath lay broken terracotta pots where succulents busted out of them like tight pants after Thanksgiving dinner.

"These survived even with very sporadic care," Mr. Byrd said, wiping his glasses. She could feel the humidity tightening her hair up into frizzy curls and covering her face. "I have come here monthly and watered what I could, but they need much more than I can provide. Pruning, nutrition...if you think that plant smells bad, you should open the fertilizer cabinet."

Victoria shuffled along the wooden floor, stepping over long vines peppered with yellow flowers, ducking under branches that had grown across the boards and intertwined. She had seen her a familiar character along the far wall.

She felt goosebumps on her arms as she shuffled through pottery shards, arriving at a nest of vines that climbed up the back wall. Clusters of gray berries hung down, as if tempting her to grab them. And in the center of this mass was a large cavity, just about the right shape.

She held her breath before opening the box, although this just meant she sucked more stink into her lungs. Reaching under the heavy thing — it was like lifting a terrier — she nestled the flower back in its moist home. She looked around for a water bucket. Finding a metal one that looked a hundred years old, she filled it from a spigot and drizzled water on the plant that brought her here.

Victoria looked back, to see Mr. Byrd smiling at her. A real smile, this time.

"So I'm supposed to care for this place?" she asked. "I can live here, right? Is there a home attached?"

"The greenhouse is just the beginning."

He unlocked opened another door. It took a moment. It was six inches thick.

Victoria followed him through into darkness that smelled of cedar, grease, and dust.

"I don't remember where the light switches are," Mr. Byrd said.

Victoria felt for the wall, and traced her hands along it until she found a switch.

There was a click, there was one dim light.

And Victoria gazed into the ruined face of a dead man.

Victoria screamed with all the air in her lungs.

She whipped around and grabbed the fire extinguisher on the wall behind her. She hoisted it, ready to smash..but Mr. Byrd held it back.

"Please!" he panted. "Please stop! Look!"

He held her by her shoulders and pulled her away. Then he reached out and snapped on another light.

The ruined face stared out from a glass box. In better lighting, she understood why it was ruined, and it made a lot more sense.

"That's a mummy!" she said, feeling the adrenaline begin to leak out of her veins. "Why does she have a mummy? This is California!"

Mr. Byrd let go of her shoulders and wearily headed to a doorway.

"Have a look," he wheezed. "It's not the only thing she shouldn't have."

Glass cases lined the walls.

Victoria looked down onto artifacts millenniums old. Mummified cat heads looked back at her, beside alabaster jars and scarab beetles.

Another case held a collection of gold rings stamped with star designs, clearly dug out of a tomb. Golden warrior masks, arrowheads, pile of coins, marble statues, grass sandals worn thousands of years ago...it was a museum's worth of treasures.

Mr. Byrd came back in with two glasses and a bottle of wine.

"Did she steal that, too?" Victoria asked.

Mr. Byrd handed her a glass and poured her white wine.

"Life is about growth, my dear," he said, filling his glass. "In her youth, your grandmother knew how to bribe, steal...to take what she wanted. She wasn't alone, it was a common pass time for the wealthy. And as it often happens," he took a long sip, "when she finally realized what she had done, she was too old to fix it."

Victoria took in the mysteries around her, made by people not mere a century ago, but many thousands of years past. They put her sister's vintage sewing machine to shame.

"This isn't it, by the way," Mr. Byrd said, pouring a second glass. "Wait 'till you see the basement. They all need to go to the right place, every piece. Comes with the house behind it, of course, and a salary. And the inheritance."

"It'll take years," she said.

"I'll have to leave my dog-walking job," she said.

"I'll need to find the spice rack," she said.

Mr. Byrd leaned toward her.

"Penn and Rey will have to find a new house sitter," he whispered.

"Sold," she said, and sipped her wine.

She'd have more to talk about than napkin folding this Thanksgiving.