“Maybe you can help.”
Jack Jones was screaming bloody murder but hadn’t moved an inch from the spot just below the side of the porch. When he saw Dr. Andrews, he began trying to win him over to his side. “Lee! Help me! Tell these girls I have a special condition. I have a low tolerance to water, especially cold water. I’ll die from hypothermia.”
Dr. Andrews threw a small, plastic bottle in the pool of water around Jack’s feet. “Start with this. Scrub your hair and your whole body with it. It’ll loosen up and kill off just about any skin parasite.”
Jack opened the bottle and sniffed inside, then wrinkled his nose with disgust. “No sir! I’m not pouring this Agent Orange or whatever you have in there all over me. You want me to disintegrate?”
“It’s not going to harm you, only your bugs.”
“Now look here. I agreed to stay here, in this spot, while Linda changed into a bikini. I’ll stay here until hell freezes over or Briana drowns me, but I didn’t agree to pour poison all over my skin. Them bugs is a part of me now. We’ve made our amends.”
About that time, Linda appeared at the porch steps, looking severely down at her victim. She was wearing a long, silk robe, so skillfully draped, it didn’t give up one of her secrets, but still left you wanting to know more about them. “Jack Lee,” she called. “If you want me to take off this robe, you take that bottle and wash down every inch of yourself. I’m not touching your hair until there’s nothing left crawling in it.”
I never saw anything more pitiful than Jack Lee at that moment. He was huddled in the pair of shorts the man with the cane had brought him. They were just a little baggy and a little too long, so that his knees popped out like the joints in a folding table. His arms were drawn in so that it was difficult to tell if he had any real muscle definition or if the bulge just below his shoulders was just tension. The matted hair sprang away from his head like the ears of a shaggy dog.
He stood for a moment, his eyes squeezed shut, the bottle held over his head, torn between his lack of trust and his insatiable desire. He took the big douse, jumping around as he furiously spread the contents of the bottle throughout his head and worked them into his beard. “They’re biting me! They’re biting me!” He howled. “They’ve started a revolution.”
“Keep going,” said Linda.
He uttered some expletives no self-respecting woman should have to hear, then began furiously rubbing the liquid down his arms, across his chest, and over his belly. He turned his back to jiggle around his body parts, then faced forward again as he wiped his hands inside his pants and under his bottom. His fingers worked down his hairy legs, scratching and rubbing while he cursed under his breath. He kept looking up at her as though he expected to dissolve like the wicked witch and he just wanted to be able to say, “I told you so,” with his last breath.
At last, thoroughly deloused, he stood shivering and waited for a blast from the terrible garden hose to rinse him off. In that moment, when he was his most miserable, his metropolis destroyed, he looked up and his eyes lit with wonder. Linda removed her robe and walked slowly down the porch steps, taking the hose from Briana.
Linda has the type of bosom comic book artists dream about, the kind that would win a wet tee shirt contest every time. They were guided missiles pointing over the top of extremely curvy hips and buttocks and a flat waist. Three triangles of cloth look like nothing more than pasties on a body like Linda’s, and when you maximize those proportions into six feet of heaven sent flesh, you have a weapon of mass destruction.
Jack’s jaw dropped so low, I was afraid he had disjointed it. He straightened up, forgetting he was wet, cold and nearly naked. She was much gentler than Briana had been, who will enthusiastically do just about anything just for sport, and directed the hose carefully, lifting his hair and rinsing him down thoroughly. “There,” she said when she had finished. “You get up there on the porch and sit in the chair Jenna has ready for you. We can attach the hose to the kitchen sink and finish bathing you with warm water.”
“Ain’t I bathed yet?” He asked querulously.
“No, you’re not. You need a shampoo and rinse… and another scrub-down. Up you go. Don’t be a baby about it.”
I settled him back in the chair, trying to relax him as best I could. He still looked disastrous. Even the cold water blasts had not removed all of his grime, and below it, his skin prickled with goose bumps. We got the hose assembled, and Linda straddled his lap, running shampoo from the hairline back. She nodded at me and I began massaging his scalp, bending over so his head was cradled between my breasts. A giant smile passed over Jack Jones’ face and he sat back passively while we scrubbed and massaged, and managed to wipe away every last inch of grunge from the top of his head to the soles of his feet.
We were all quite wet by the time we were finished bathing Jack Jones, but he didn’t seem to mind. We wrapped him in a large, fluffy blanket so he would be cozy, while Linda started on his hair.
Linda is a very skillful beautician. Her little scissors never cut wickedly, but snip and inquire into the state of the hair, then snip again, so the hair falls away like feathers. Slowly, she began accomplishing one of her miracles. Underneath the mat was a pile of rich, brown hair, slowly becoming paler and streaked with silver. She clipped his hair so it was just a little longer on the top than it was on the sides, and parted naturally at the left, then swirled back.
She scraped away his beard just as gently, his face puffing and looking babyishly tender after years hidden inside a nest that would accommodate a family of seagulls. While she worked, her barely clad breasts nuzzling close to his face, Briana and I gave him a manicure and clipped his toenails.
We stood back to view the transformation from cave man to a civilized human being. It was remarkable – more than remarkable! Seattle must be filled with good looking men because even in a neighborhood going gray, there were so many of them. The doctor was so handsome, you wanted to lick the sidewalk behind him. Briana’s favorite mechanic, a fellow named Burke, was cuter than a Cocker Spaniel puppy. Zeke looked like a movie star, and Jack Jones looked like a middle-aged poster child for the National Guard.
His long, narrow nose, which had seemed his most prominent feature, actually balanced a long, narrow face. His cheek bones were high, his eyes dark and sensitive, his lower lip a little wide. “Well,” he asked. “Am I fit now to be seen in public with my little chickadee?” He asked.
“You are,” agreed Linda. “As soon as you buy some new clothes, and you will buy me a dress to wear for the banquet. That’s my price. My haircuts don’t come free.”
“I’ll pay for a haircut,” said the man with a cane eagerly. He held out a small wad of bills. Because we’re friendly girls, we gave him his haircut, although he did not have to go through the same torments we had piled on Jack, nor did he receive the same close attention. He was happy enough, however, to have three blondes in bikinis hovering around him and left hardly hobbling with his cane at all.
We checked what he left behind. Forty-six dollars. Not bad. I turned to the doctor who had watched the entire show with something close to amusement playing on his face. “What about you, doc? Want a trim and manicure?”
“I’ll take a rain check.”
He looked like he was getting ready to go, so I said quickly, “how about a cup of coffee? You don’t have anything against coffee, do you?”
He looked at my bikini state, and I grabbed the housecoat that was hanging from the kitchen door, slipping it on and tying the belt at the waist. “Better?”
He sat down at the table. “That really was a very nice thing you girls did. But Jenna, what kind of person is Linda, really? I need to know. Jack Jones has been through a lot. If she’s just playing around with him and breaks his heart… there’s no telling what could happen. He has PTSD. He could snap.”
“Linda doesn’t lead people on,” I interrupted. “None of us do. Haven’t you ever just opened yourself up to enjoy life?”
“Look around you, Dr. Andrews. Most of the elderly here have been playing their whole lives. They had a zest for life. They formed co-ops, raced motorcycles, gave stage performances, married half a dozen times, but is their health any worse than that of any other seventy-year-old?”
“Most of them had started killing off their brain cells by any means available by the time I got to them. They were hyped on pharmaceuticals after a long career of street drugs or had joined the crying-in-your-beer club. You’re encouraging their youthful fantasies, and I’m not sure that’s good for them in the long run.”
I’m not sure how I found the liberty to do so, but I reached across the table and folded my hands over his. “I can assure you, whatever Linda’s intentions, if she acts like she’s interested in Jack Jones, it’s because she is. A moment of joy doesn’t have to mean a lifetime of calamity.”
He looked down at my hands as though it was strange to feel a human connection. “It really was a very nice thing that you did, just so you know. It wasn’t exactly orthodox and I doubt if it would pass the approval of a caregiving board, but it was effective. I owe you one.”
“And I won’t let you forget.”
Chapter Four
Linda and Jack Jones were becoming an item and the talk of the whole neighborhood. While some of the young men were disappointed, nearly everyone was in agreement that they made a good match. They were vibrant together.
Our house had become the central meeting point for all the neighborhood news and gossip. It didn’t matter what time of the day or night it was, unless it was an hour when you should seriously be slumbering. Briana still hadn’t found a job and the porch steps were always open to visitors. The one particular she asked was for steady donations of coffee and beer. Our freshly baked pastries, which rolled out once a week, were amply provided while supplies lasted.
Not having to pay for our beverages did help our budget, but not really enough. We were also beginning to suspect Briana’s mechanic friend, Burke, was starting to run a tab. He was at the house nearly every day, eating and drinking, but there hadn’t been a need for him to tinker with the Bronco in over a month. Summer was coming to an end and the only one who had really been able to enjoy the house was Briana. It really didn’t seem fair.
Nor did it seem fair that Briana had more time to work on her wiles with Dr. Andrews than I did. I never saw anybody exciting in the kitchen where I slopped around soup and beans all day. There were two young boys still polka dotted with zits, a short, dowdy prep cook who despised me, a chef who never slowed down, even when his wife came to the door, and an assortment of waiters who never stayed on very long.
There’s that whole wide world of Seattle filled with single men, but I never had the time to go out in it. Briana did but instead chose to spend it trying to hold the attention of the doctor when she wasn’t entertaining the mechanic.
I grumbled quite a bit, but mainly because the rent was coming due again and we were still just skating along by the skin of our teeth. Winter would mean higher energy costs and a new wardrobe for staying warm. Already we could tell that some of our best southern garbs wasn’t going to be enough to ward off Seattle’s chill.
We probably would have come to blows again, but we were met by another opportunity. The neighborhood wanted a block party and they wanted the central location to be at our house. We were flattered but wondered just how far our budget would stretch if we held a potluck in a neighborhood where practically nobody cooked.
This was precisely why they wanted to hold it at our house. They all wanted to eat a little southern cooking. Jack Jones finally settled it by forming a committee. The three bounteous blondes would prepare the neighborhood barbecue if all the adults over age thirteen would donate a minimum of ten bucks. In all, we received over three hundred dollars to spend on the party, ten pounds of hamburger meat, twenty pounds of chicken, a basket of cherries and three dozen tomatoes. By the time we had purchased everything needed, there was a hundred-fifty dollars left over.
That, at least, would put gas in the car for a month. We enthusiastically set about to prepare, beginning our breads and sauces three days in advance. The morning for the block party began with a slight nip in the air to remind us winter was coming. We got around slowly, remaining in our housecoats and sipping coffee until early afternoon. One by one, people had dropped by to add to a growing pile of beer and soda in their cartons.
It was nippy on the porch, but warm and cozy inside the kitchen. The chili beans were simmering, the oven was heating up baked goods, and the chicken had been late out on the barbecue grill. I scarcely noticed when the kitchen began to fill so much, our guests were playing musical chair with the seats. As soon as one person got up, another person sat in the chair. I decided it was time to go to my room and change into my party clothes.
My window had a direct view into the doctor’s yard. I opened the curtains and stared down, looking for a flicker of movement. I couldn’t see him, but I stayed in front of the window anyway, stripping down to my panties, then changing them for a clean pair. I strapped on my bra, then looked at myself in the mirror. My proportions were big, but I didn’t have any real rolls of fat. It all attached itself to my hips, my butt, and my boobs. I kind of liked the way my waist veered in, and the small pocket of tummy underneath. I ran my hands down my hips and waist. The skin was soft but taut.
“What do you think, Dr. Andrews?” I murmured, leaning so that my breasts pressed against the window. I answered my own question. “I think you like big. I think your manhood and your professional brain are having a disagreement.”
I wore a lacy, Victorian bra and a square bodice peasant top that cut off at the waist. My skirt was a full-length, India print, gathered together with an elastic band. I felt much like a hippie or a gypsy, but I also felt very feminine.
They were already mixing drinks, sliding into corners to snort tiny dabs of street cocaine, which I heard was only about fifteen percent pure, trading pharmaceuticals chawing down on the feast when I returned. Liz was breezing through the house in a long, silky scarf, an oversized princess dress and a wreath of flowers woven swiftly together and stuck in her hair. She saw me and clung to my arm, her eyes dancing with excitement. “This is so trippy! Oh, I say, it’s groovy, man.” She giggled. “Do you have any acid?”
“Liz, are you out of your mind? You shouldn’t be thinking about acid trips.” I wanted to add, “At your age”, but left that off.
“Oh, you’re right. My last trip was a real bummer. Did I tell you about it? I was stuck in a house that kept cracking open, then closing up again. Then I saw animals coming out of the faces of the people around me. It was very terrible. Now my guru says those animals are real. We carry them inside us and can only see them when we’re under the influence of psychedelics. That’s what he said, and…. Oh, no. The doctor is coming. Everybody hide your stuff.”
You would have thought the police were making a raid. Coke sniffers dried their noses and melted back into the main crowd. The pharmaceuticals went back into ladies’ snap purses and tiny zip lock bags that slipped into men’s pockets. Some of the guests even pretended they weren’t drinking anything stronger than soda pop. Yet they all greeted Dr. Andrews like he was the star attraction.
“Come in, come in. Have some fried chicken,” shouted somebody, waving a plate in his face.
“How about a beer? Ice cold!”
“Dr. Andrews! Lee!” Said Melanie, attaching herself to his side and smothering him with kisses. “You really have to join us. We’re doing mutual massage therapy.” She propelled him into the middle of a room, where people were sitting cross-legged, one behind the other, like a choo-choo train, squeezing each other’s shoulders and rubbing each other’s backs. “You can squeeze in, right in front of Briana. Sh
e’s been dying for a back to scratch.”
If he had thought to walk away, he was mistaken. Briana reached up with her bone-crunching left grip and yanked him down to the floor in front of her. “Just sit still, Dr. Andrews. We’ll have you loosened up in no time.” She began squeezing his neck and shoulders, then shook them so that his arms flopped around like rag doll. “Oh, tension! So much tension. Really, Dr. Andrews, you should know better.” Her fist went down the back of his neck, pummeling the muscles. It was difficult to say whether she was relaxing him or simply pounding him to the point of zero resistance.
“I was at the back of the line. I get to move to the front,” said Melanie, plopping herself in front of the doctor. “Do me good, now, Lee. Let me feel those healing hands.”
His hands moved across her bony shoulders and down her back, applying light pressure to the flattening muscles. He was really very gentle, even though his own back was being beaten like a carpet hanging on a clothes line. He had such a painfully resigned look on his face, I decided it was time for an intervention.
“You girls have had enough fun with him, and I’ll bet Dr. Andrews is starving. Aren’t you, Dr. Andrews?” I nodded my head up and down exaggeratedly.
“I could use a hamburger,” he agreed. “And a fruit salad.”
“Come on outside where the picnic tables are set up.”
There were four times the number of people outside as there were inside. A band had set up on the lawn and was playing the favorite rock and roll tunes of the baby boomers, which were also on my list of favorite music. While I listened to some country music, I never could swing into rap or hip hop because I loved so much that frantic drum beat and those smoking guitars. They were southern dreaming with “Sweet Home Alabama,” and I couldn’t resist adding a little bebop to my stride.
“I thought all you kids listened to electronic music,” remarked the doctor. He took the plate I offered him and added a small portion of food.
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