Tropical leaf line art flash sheet

Nobody draws veins like that anymore. Every line curves with the leaf rather than against it, so a split monstera opens up like a hand letting go of something. The palm frond I'd drawn the week before had a rib that ran straight as a ruler down the stem, and Dad would have sent it back for being too tidy. He used to say a leaf is a map of the weather it survived.

At half three the phone rang from the depot. Someone had left the doors open on the glasshouse on Calder Street and the rain was getting into the cycads. The bus had stopped, so I took the van. When I got there the palms were already dripping across the floor, the big fan-shaped leaves bent like umbrellas turned inside out. I pulled the doors shut and stood in the wet with my torch, counting the leaves I could still see.

On the drive back I thought about the proof sheet pinned above the plotter, the nine drawings in their grey panel. I'd tell Mrs Okafor the leaves had come through the night. It was the only true thing I had to report, and I was glad of it. By the time I got back the plotter had finished, and the last sheet was curling on the tray, a fan leaf with every vein leaning towards the same small heart.