Wishing in the Wings by Mindy Klasky

asylum escapee when I stood in my doorway, waving Maureen toward the elevators. Yes, elevators. Plural. “Thank you!” I said, pumping her hand once again.
    “No,” she said with a throaty chuckle. “Thank you!”
    I barely kept from squealing as I gazed down the carpeted hallway (carpet!) and watched the whisper-quiet doors whisk away my fairy real estate godmother. Before I could turn back to explore my domain further, the door across the hall opened. Still reeling at my personal good fortune, I grinned and took a step forward, forgetting New York City’s unspoken Good Neighbor Rules, the ones that mandated silence and polite disinterest in all public interaction with strangers. “Hi!” I said, extending my hand.
    The woman in the doorway could have been the cover model for the debut issue of Earth Mother magazine. Her elaborately embroidered blue cotton workshirt hung loose over faded jeans. The pants were too long for her; she’d rolled them up in cuffs that displayed beat-up Birkenstock sandals. Bright red socks peeped out between the shoes’ leather straps. Her face was weathered, as if she’d spent long hours in the sun, and her eyes were the color of well-watered earth. A long braid hung down to her waist, generous strands of gray twining around dark chestnut.
    “Hello,” she said, and her voice was soft, like a brown paper bag that had been reused so many times it felt like cloth. “You’re the new neighbor?”
    “Becca,” I said.
    She shook my hand firmly, and I felt the rasp of calluses on her palms. “Dani. We were wondering who would move in here.”
    “We?” I looked behind her, into the violet-tinged shadows of her apartment. From the hallway, it looked much smaller than mine.
    “My son and I.” She sighed, sifting a layer of sweet fondness across her placid features. “He’s new to the building, but I’ve lived here forever. The Bentley is a perfect place for gorilla gardening.”
    Okay… What was that supposed to mean? Did she raise primates for the Bronx Zoo? I resisted the urge to take a deep sniff in the direction of her apartment. Nothing seemed too strange there, no bizarre noises, no caged-animal stink. There was the slight flicker of the purplish lights, though…. I tried to smile. “Um, gorilla gardening?”
    “Guerilla,” Dani repeated. When I still stared at her without comprehension, she enunciated the word with care, trilling an exaggerated Spanish accent: “Guer-ee-ya. As in ‘warfare?’”
    “Guerilla gardening,” I repeated, a little relieved that I wasn’t going to have giant apes across the hall. The purple cast must be from grow lights. But growing what? My pulse surged momentarily, and I wondered if Teel had dropped me into the middle of some clandestine West Village marijuana-growing cooperative. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t know what that is.”
    Dani nodded patiently, as if she were accustomed to people admitting such ignorance. Her earthen eyes twinkled as she said, “It’s my passion.”
    “Passion?” The psychedelic embroidery on her blouse made my throat seize up. I pictured police raids throughout the building, being thrown out of my new home before I’d even settled into it. Out of the frying pan, into the fire… I fought to swallow my panic.
    Obviously unaware of my reaction, Dani elaborated with a rapturous smile. “We call ourselves the Gray Guerillas. Most of us are over seventy—who else has time to do this sort of thing?” She shook her head. “There’s so much space that goes unused in the City—on rooftops and fire escapes, in those cut-outs of dirt by trees on the sidewalk.” Her sing-song voice told me she’d recited her words a thousand times. “We can reclaim that space. We can use it. Guerilla gardeners create little havens, right here in the middle of Manhattan. Today, we might be growing a few sprigs of parsley, some basil, some sage. But tomorrow, we’ll have peppers! Tomatoes! Flowers of all kinds!