INEZ

     Inez liked to tend her garden in the moonlight. Except for the slugs.

     How did she go from sunshine and spermatozoa to moonlight and slugs?

     Some women light up a room with their smile. Inez was forced to use a lamp. It's not that she was ugly, though she wasn't pretty, either. She had the body of a woman half her size, though hers was twice as large, of course. But she wore it well, and frequently. In fact, she never left the house without it, and always brought it home with her at night.

     In her youth things were different. Back then Inez and her body would wake up all over town. She was quite popular, especially at night. But as the years flew by the phone stopped ringing and the whippoorwills stopped warbling. The frost was on the pumpkin and the world was no longer her oyster. 

     Perhaps her mother was right and she should have married Jim, the aspiring botanist she dated in college. But she broke Jim's heart to pursue life in the fast lane and to spite her mother. 

     And what did she have to show for it? A drawer full of speeding tickets and an empty flower pot.