both, 99 words:
After her husband ran off with the pool boy, Ellen found comfort in gardening. Alas, she discovered Japanese Beetles had infested her New Dawn roses. A disconcerting sight: shiny green beetles, their spurred legs clasped together in insect ecstasy. Curling themselves up in the pink petals, like sultans in silk.
“Fornicating!” she told her friend, Sue, “on my best climbing roses!”
“I know just the trick,” Sue said. “I’m sending over my yard man. He’s got quite a six-pack.”
“I don’t drink,” Ellen said. Sue laughed.
When the Happy Ending Landscaping truck arrived, the shirtless, muscular man in tight jeans strode over to Ellen, her infestation worries already forgotten.
* * *
Lila had never been so embarrassed. She’d arranged for this speaker for the Senior Center’s luncheon, having no idea he was such a coarse man.
“They are so fierce and clever,” the speaker said now from the podium. “All that finery to entice pollinators! Flowers are scented, glowing, magnificent reproductive organs.”
Lila, shocked, stood abruptly. She attempted to bring the talk to a close, but the audience would have none of it.
“The perfume, the nectar, the colors, the mimicry, the trickery. The lips on orchid! Exploding seed pods. I’ve seen pleated downy petals fragrant as a woman’s--”
Lila fled the room. She’d resign from the entertainment committee, and go back to finance.
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