Boxer Next Door

by Summer Cooper

  “Neah. Not everyone. Some good heavy metal going down, but the best sounds are still old-fashioned rock and roll. It’s heart music and it’s dancing music. You know, rock ‘n’ rollers don’t cry about their lives. They rock and roll with the punches. That way, they’re never down. You don’t listen to it?”

  He gave me one of his infrequent but very sincere smiles. He had a set of such well-cared for teeth, it made me want to keep breath freshener on hand at all times. “Actually, I do at times, but I lean more toward heavy instrumentals, like Moody Blues and Santana.”

  “Yeah, they trip pretty hard.”

  He chuckled. “I suppose they do.” He drank some of his beer and ate a bite of his burger. “I used to lay in bed at night and wonder where composers found their music. It’s as though they snatch it out of the sky, somehow. I was thinking about this one night while listening to Beethoven’s Ninth. I was half-asleep, my dreaming mind following the music when I swear I heard him play his Tenth!”

  I pressed my lips together, not completely sure how amazing this story really was, but from the look on his face, it was astonishing, so I said, “Wow. That must have been a life-changing event.”

  “Not life changing. A change in philosophy or perspective. I think the music is all there, floating eternally in space, and some people know how to pull it down and transform it into sounds we can all hear.”

  “And that’s how you heard Beethoven’s Tenth?”

  “Yes, you see, because it hasn’t been written.”

  I’ll admit I don’t know much about Beethoven’s music, but I knew he was a great composer, just as I knew Einstein was a brilliant scientist. It must have taken one psychedelic dream to pull off a symphony that hadn’t been written yet, whether it was Beethoven’s or Rick Wakeman’s. “You were stoned, weren’t you?”

  “It was in college. You do these things when you’re in college.”

  “But not at any other time?”

  “I know nearly everybody here smokes weed, and I don’t care. Most of them have been doing it for over half their lives. What I worry about is the alcohol and the… other stuff. They aren’t as robust as they think they are. I know I rain on their parade when I come over, so I won’t spend too much time circulating. But Jenna, you’ll help keep watch, won’t you?”

  “You want me to babysit the old-timers?”

  “Just make sure things don’t get too out of hand, for their sake.”

  “I don’t know…”

  “What if one of them was to overdose?”

  “Good thing you live next door.” I saw the flicker of disappointment cross his face, so added, “I’ll do the best I can, but I’m not going to promise anything. We’re all grown-ups here, and this is a party. You really should enjoy it.”

  “I’m sitting at a picnic table, with a pretty girl, listening to live music. I’m enjoying myself.”

  He enjoyed himself until one of his patients pulled him away to discuss his colon. The colon case was followed by someone else, and then another until I lost him in the crowd. Linda was beckoning from the window for me to come in, so I decided it was a good time to mingle.

  The party inside had reached epidemic sized flower explosion. The temperature had been turned up enough to make it uncomfortable to wear heavy clothing. Most of the pillows, blankets, and spreads had found their way out of the bedrooms and onto the living room floor. They were all trying to psychically connect through yoga positions, holding hands, massage or meditation. To encourage them on their way, Jack Jones held in his lap, a full pound bag of the biggest marijuana buds I’ve ever seen. “Straight from Humboldt,” he said. “None of this Seattle grow light stuff. Mm, mm. You can smell the potency.”

  The potency was very clear. Whatever flashbacks any of the gray haired company were grasping at, became abundantly clear with just a few tokes of his green lightening special.

  The man with the cane was recalling his earliest exposure to the queen of all that flowered and breathed pure psychedelic cannabis, Thai Stick. Thai Stick was what they smoked out there in that jungle when the war became too hideous to remember. “Thai Stick, understand,” said the man with the cane. “Was the smoke of the Buddhist priests. It was the best there was. To dry it, they rolled it around a stick and sprayed it with opium water. It wasn’t green. It was bright gold. Oh, man.

  “One time, you see, we’re all in the shower, when one of the guys comes in with the Thai Stick. We came out and lit up right then before going back to our showers. We got so relaxed, we just melted in the shower stalls. We were in this wet, wild, wonderful paradise. But then there was Georgie. He had never tried Thai Stick before, but heard it could cure hemorrhoids. He had them bad. He was always moaning and groaning, but now he’s in the shower and he’s stoned on the strongest marijuana in the world. He gets so relaxed, his hemorrhoids fall out! But what does he do? He tries to push them back in! He thinks he’s losing his organs!”

  He howled and we howled with him, even though the story was most likely a yarn. Whatever the potency of the Vietnamese weed, this Humboldt lightening had its own kick. It was especially lethal when mixed with Polar Bears, a drink made with ice cream and vodka. It was a good thing I had promised the doctor nothing, because this was not a good time for me to be babysitting; or rather, elder sitting.

  Somebody had brought in some large pots of finger paint and rolls of white paper. The paper had been rolled out on the tiled floor that constituted the dining area and kitchen. Several people had started out painting the paper, but as the drinks flowed, the pills popped and heavy, blue smoke filled the air, they began painting each other.

  I wanted to be painted, too. I pulled up my skirt and started on my feet. After a few minutes, I heard Zeek whisper in my ear, “Why don’t you take off your blouse so we can body-paint you?”

  I took it off and sat in the middle of one of the rolled out papers, happy as a five-year-old at a birthday party. Zeek gave me a toke of something even stronger and bitterer than what Jack had brought in, and I felt my ears buzz.

  The after-effects were delicious, though. I felt the cool paint drawn up over my arms, and around my necks and shoulders, and it was a pure, continuous, writhing stream of rainbow colors. I laid back in Zeek’s arms and he turned me over so I was on my back. The painting assembly drew swirls and bursts of flowering color and I could trace it all through the cool, liquid flow of the paint.

  Deleted Scene

  I was mesmerized for so long, I didn’t realize when it became late evening. I went into the bathroom, showered off most of the paint and put on a pair of jeans and a sweater. I didn’t know what was in Zeke’s pipe, but it left me with bizarre, confused impressions of the finger paints coming to life and swarming over my body, causing me to climax in ways I never thought were possible. And my body was completely painted. It was also tingling with that particular hunger a girl sometimes gets when there’s been great oral sex but no penetration.

  I tried to track back, but the last clear memory was my conversation with the doctor. I was going to have to keep an eye on Zeke. I suspected he was more of a free spirit than I could handle. Fortunately, sobriety hadn’t fared very well with anybody. Some of the party makers had gone home, but most were either passed out in the house or camped out in the yard. I did a quick check to make sure they were still alive, then covered the naked ones with blankets.

  I found Briana among the survivors. She had also been liberally painted, but only remembered going out to the garage with Burke. When I asked her if she remembered a body painting orgy, she laughed. “Those must have been some really good drugs. You were hallucinating.” She drew us both a cup of coffee. “Wow,” she said. “Who would have thought old timers could get down like that?”

  “How did they make it out of the sixties?” I asked, holding my head with both hands.

  “Who said they did?” She found a left-over piece of chicken and picked at it. “You still mad at me?”

  “For what?”


  “I’m still going to try and get the doctor. C’mon, Jenna. He’s the kind of available bachelor women dream about, even if he is a sourpuss. Until he stakes one of us out, he’s fair game to both of us.”

  “Oh, he is. He is. He’s a red-blooded, heterosexual male, and the average woman he gets to see unrobed is over forty. And I don’t give a whit about your sob story about the lady doctor of his life. You know what I think? She was a mean, cold, cynical bitch, and her joints were all angles. She gave up Seattle and a sizzling hot date for San Diego? I wouldn’t. Maybe for Paris or the Bahamas, but San Diego?”

  “It was to advance her career.”

  “There. That’s just what I’m saying. If you had someone who makes plenty of money and is smoking hot like the doctor, wouldn’t you be satisfied with your career? You’re going to move because, oh! You can become a big chef in San Diego instead of a little chef in Seattle. Would you move for that?”

  “Well, if I had him…”

  “Exactly. And you know, I don’t think San Diego is as cool as Seattle. I like it here.”

  “I do, too. That’s why we need to start taking our lives here more seriously. Briana, we need to start making money so these mortgage payments don’t drown us. I still have a balance to settle with my attorney but he’s willing to hold off until the house is paid for…”

  “There are options. You could re-finance.”

  “Yes, I know I could, but that’s not the way. Create more debt to get out of debt. It doesn’t work. You just keep paying and paying. This is our chance to get ahead. We need to do this.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that.” We looked up to see Linda in the doorway. She was slightly disheveled, but well covered with a thick, fuzzy robe. Jack Jones was standing beside her, looking as spry as he had when he first joined the party. There probably wasn’t a psychedelic drug on earth powerful enough to knock him down, since he already was a walking psychosis.

  “I could kick up some extra bucks giving the men haircuts on my days off. You could work as a manicurist. You’re good at it.”

  “That’s good,” agreed Briana. “But Burke gave me another idea. I know you don’t like him,” she said hastily when she saw me screw up my nose. “But he knows some things. He knows the community. His mom has already passed away and his dad has a care taker come in three times a week. He orders his meals from the senior services, but he doesn’t like them. Won’t eat them. There are a lot of people like that around here. They never get out much. Hardly go to the grocery stores. Don’t cook.

  Burke said it wouldn’t take very much to turn your Bronco into a delivery service. Everyone loves your food, Jenna. They’ll buy from you. You could turn your kitchen into a place of business.”

  I guess I’m not very quick witted. It took me several minutes to digest this information and examine its feasibility. In the meantime, Jack was already enthusiastically examining the feasible parts. “You’re an accredited chef. It will be a snap for you to get your food license. We’ll have to do a little renovating for the kitchen to pass inspection…” He was on the verge of sitting down with the rest of us for coffee, but now jumped up and looked around, examining every nook and cranny of the kitchen.

  “There’s insurance,” I reminded him. “That’s expensive.”

  He shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. Never let it be said that Jack Jones was too much of a cad to invest in the future of three beautiful princesses.”

  I gave him a suspicious look. “You profited tonight.”

  “What goes around, comes around sweety. You girls can put on a hell of a party, but when it comes to food, you have us all by the balls. If you want to start a catering service, I’ll invest in it. You’ve earned it.”

  Chapter Five

  If it had been just me, I would have plodded through the same way I had done with the house; listening to my attorney’s advice, checking websites for additional info, doing the math over and over with my not very clever thought processes. I would have talked to everyone and meditated, before making a move, but it wasn’t just about me.

  It was a whirlwind. Jack brought a couple of carpenters in and a plumbing expert; all of whom looked like they were in their retirement years. They worked three times faster than any young handyman I’d ever seen however, and did a job on the kitchen and dining area that should be featured in Homes and Gardens. It was squeaky clean, with stainless steel sinks that slurped up every bit of carelessly left debris, and silent pipes sunk deep into the walls. There were oak cabinets and bins and broad counter tops, all snuggled around the not-quite-so-modern stove and refrigerator.

  It only took Burke three days to convert the Bronco into a food wagon. He cleaned out the back and placed a collapsible set of trays that could be disassembled and removed with ease, or so he said. Once it was in place, I never tried changing it. It was a guy thing, and now that we had our male crew, I let the guys do it.

  He pimped out our ride. As a favor, he put new seats in front and back. They were a plush, burgundy color, with matching colored leather wrap. He also added hand grips and steps, making it easier to get in and out for both elderly companions and three big girls. This wouldn’t have been quite so necessary, but he had also replaced the Bronco’s wheels with slightly larger ones; jacking up the suspension to accommodate them. It was easier on the carriage, he said. Remembering its sobs when we’d hit some especially critical bumps in the road, I believed him.

  The weather changed. The leaves turned bright yellow, then fell to the ground, squashing together under steady rains. We bundled in hooded jackets and laced up boots to go for walks, watching our breath form steam clouds in front our faces. The doctor had put his lawn mower away and had started jogging each morning. I watched from the kitchen window, while I began the breakfast preparations for the day. Sometimes I thought about putting on jogging shoes and bouncing alongside him. A bounce is what it would have been. My bosom plays the percussions for Star Spangled Banner just at a fast walk.

  It was nippy outside, but wonderfully warm and cozy inside. The visitors that had once occupied our front porch, now migrated into the dining area, where they spread the latest rumors, or talked politics, or said anything else that came to their minds. My catering had extended to a coffee shop service. I bought another table for the dining area, moved back the furniture in the living room, shrinking down its size, and began making fresh breads and pastries on a daily basis to sell to my in-house community.

  Sometimes the doctor came in, always taking a chair at the end of the far table and asking only for coffee. I was always so busy in the kitchen, it was Briana who would end up waiting on him and sitting down to chat, leaning her arms against the table and pushing back the chair so that her butt made a wide U-turn between her arched back and her legs.

  He would talk with her a bit, then leave for that dreary clinic filled with test tubes and aging flesh. I wondered what he did in the evenings when he came home, when both our days were finished. Did he look into my yard the way I looked into his? He hadn’t talked to me since the block party, which made me wonder what really happened.

  Nobody at all was very helpful in that respect. All Liz remembered was that it was raining flowers. Melanie talked at length about a psychic energy field that had channeled their minds into one. Jack Jones and Linda – well, they had their own link going on and it was rather physical.

  Zeek asked why I worried about such things. “Body paint that sexually assaulted you? It sounds like repressed sexual desires.”

  Zeek’s diagnosis sounded spot on. He had stretched an arm across my shoulders while we munched popcorn in front of the television and watched superhero movies. When I cuddled with him, I sometimes felt like a big mama with an affectionate youngster. It wasn’t a turn-off though. It was part of his charm. He managed to open up the nurturing side in women. No woman could stay mad at him, no matter what he did, because it was all done out of affection.

  His hand strayed down my shoulder, rubbing my arm.
“I like the way you feel. You’re so soft in all the right places. It makes me want to cozy down with you all night.”

  I reached across the coffee table and grasped the bottle of wine, pouring us both another glass. “You feel pretty nice, too.”

  “Are you feeling lonely tonight?”

  “A little bit.”

  “Me too.”

  “Why don’t you get a real girlfriend?”

  “I don’t know. Fear of commitment. Falling in love is scary, Jenna.”

  “I know it is.”

  “You’ve got the hots for the doctor. It’s got you all wound up inside.”

  “He doesn’t even notice me.”

  “Oh yes, he does. I’ll tell you the truth since you’re my snow bunny. He was hurt, really crushed when Julia left him. I think he planned to marry her.”

  “What was she like, this Julia?”

  He shrugged. “Not my type. She was pushy. She had this attitude that she was always right. She had biceps! They popped right out at the sleeves, especially when she got mad, and she had a quick temper.”

  “What did he see in her?”

  “Oh, she looked good to some men. She was the right shape and size, with straight brown hair cut straight across and off the neck. But it wasn’t her looks that attracted him. I think he believed her. He believed in her superiority and believed he could prove himself worthy of her.” He chuckled without humor. “She took him for a ride. She’s not the kind of woman who loves anything except herself.”

  “That’s sad.”

  “There’s a lesson involved. Never let anybody make you believe they are better or smarter than you are.”

  I looked at him with amusement. We had run out of wine, so I had gotten up to grab another. He took my arm. “I mean it, Jenna. If the doctor ever makes you feel less than who you are, run away quickly.”

  “I don’t think that will be difficult since he doesn’t pursue me.”