The old woman next door was out in her garden again before five in the morning. Blowing steam from my coffee, I took a sip and watched her bend over the rows of flowers. She reached between the ones with pink petals and pulled out the weeds in the same motion she used to pluck eyebrows, with quick, controlled jerks. His hand tightened and closed and tightened. Then the arm was torn apart in one fluid motion. There she paused, stopping at the same distance from the ground each time. With a sudden movement to the side, thin blades of grass fell like spring green hair around his knees. The shiny sap must have stained her skin, her clothes, and the air around her because I could smell it from here. The breeze carried the hum of his one-way conversation with the black dog through my open window. His head rested on his outstretched front legs as he relaxed completely on his stomach. When I first pushed the window open to let in the sound of the birds, he noticed it with a flick of his ears but didn't take his eyes off it. Since I moved in three weeks ago, I had often thought about joining her for a morning chat. But she seemed grumpy in the way old people sometimes were, and I had particularly thin skin since my mother died. Death and needles, bugs in the dark and old age were all things we avoided thinking about. They never told us how many people died of natural causes. Instead, we were given lists of percentages of people who got cancer, got into a car accident, or drowned in a lake. My mouth was bitter with coffee dregs. I threw the cup in the sink and left. Apple blossoms floated through the window and swirled as I sat at the table. A newspaper was neatly folded in front of me. The bold headline, “God Has Left California,” covered half the visible middle of the ......d paper and jumped out at me, almost knocking me over and I forgot about it. "Attention!" I laughed. “Yes, I know we’re late. Carefree. Weeds won't grow any faster than I can pull them. He galloped around me playfully and happily, as my feet sank into the rich earth of the garden. We had been doing this for years. Serving in this garden was an honor and a task not left to fools. As I passed under the apple tree, I tapped my finger on a globe of shiny fruit. These same fools never listened to warnings and would bite into a poisoned apple if it looked good enough to eat. A snake, glistening with metallic rainbows, slithered along the branch. Cupid looked at him, ears forward, until he was out of sight. "I wouldn't worry about him, my friend." I told him. “He’s harmless.” It wasn't like I was wrong, I just lost the ability to care. At the moment there were rotten and wormy weeds to pull out.