A Rock and a High Place

by Dan Mooney

  “Well,” Adams noted, with a raised eyebrow, “she is going to be tremendous fun.”

  Then he winked impudently at Una, who laughed at his flirtation.

  Joel stared balefully at him again. No one had consulted him. Again. No one had asked his opinion, or sought his permission or even given him a moments’ warning. Again. Just as they had after Lucey had died, they shoved the next person on the waiting list into his room without so much as a by your leave, and of all the people, this eccentric upstart with his fifteen scarves and his winking at Una and his soap opera nonsense. It was a complete insult to Joel. But before he could voice his opposition, Adams bent over—still surprisingly limber for an old one—and picked up the photograph of Lucey. Pulling an embroidered handkerchief from his pocket, he gently cleaned the frame of the spilled tea and water and polished the glass on the front, and tenderly placed it on the shelf above the bed. Even his handkerchief was over the top.

  “Your wife?” he asked Joel without a trace of his impudent, irritating smile.

  “She was.”

  The past tense was obvious and awful.

  “Sorry for your loss,” Adams told him, with complete sincerity.

  Joel scanned the man’s face for signs of mockery or cruelty. There was none. He was taken aback. There was sentimentality in the act, and genuine feeling. It felt alien to Joel. Perhaps the interloper could be tolerated. The soap operas could not be, though. There would have to be a discussion about that.

  “Now, Nurse Dwight, be a doll and fetch my things. I believe Ms. Clarke here is trying to get me on my own for a minute,” Adams told Nurse Liam, lapsing back into his foppishness. “We’ll draw a curtain so you don’t have to watch, old boy,” he finished, turning to Joel with another long wink.

  “Oh, you’re just terrible,” Una laughed again.

  Just terrible. Joel agreed with her.

  Chapter Four

  The Terrible Frank Adams—Joel was determined not to refer to the man as de Selby—turned out to be a talker. After two years of sharing a room with the most agreeable of roommates, Joel suddenly found himself being bombarded with questions.

  “What do you do for fun, Joel?” he asked jovially, after they had been formally introduced in the common room at dinner.

  “Fun? Here?” Joel asked incredulously. “This is a nursing home. We don’t do fun.”

  “Everyone else seems to be enjoying themselves,” Adams replied, glancing around the room where the residents and nurses chatted amiably amongst themselves. Mighty Jim was wolfing down his dinner, pausing every now and then to smile broadly at no one in particular. Some of the residents had finished their meals and played cards. Some of them read in the old but comfortable armchairs that were scattered about the room.

  “Everyone else is kidding themselves,” Joel told him, in no mood to be corrected.

  “Ever get any of those youth groups coming in singing? Nothing like a good singsong.”

  “Yes. We get them. Church groups with their phony smiles.”

  “Don’t like the church, Joel?”

  “Never mind,” Joel told him, remembering years of attending mass with his father. Obligatory. Followed by years of practically forcing Lucey to attend with him. Wasted years.

  “Anything you do like, Joel?” Adams asked him with a smile.

  “I like eating in peace,” Joel replied, returning to his dinner with determination.

  *

  Later that evening, sitting in front of the television in their room, he started again.

  “Sports, Joel. You like sports, surely? There was sports on when I arrived this morning.”

  Joel sighed and tried to ignore him.

  “Me, I like dramas.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Dabbled a little in television. Never got to play the parts I wanted. Got a few minor roles in the movies. Went close a couple of times. Ended up on a soap opera.”

  “Figures,” Joel grunted.

  “Ever watch Glory Days?”

  Joel clenched his jaw. Lucey had loved Glory Days. Watched it religiously every night. He had often watched it with her, though more often than not, he simply read while she watched. He liked just being in the same room as her. They had sat in their living room, him reading a book, little Eva lying flat on her stomach, Lucey with her tea and her smile, and Glory Days had played for them. The Terrible Frank Adams had probably graced their living room. He remembered those times, when Eva was his little girl and Lucey his wife and felt a pang in his stomach. Better times. He glanced at her photo sitting on the bedside stand again. She would probably have enjoyed Adams’s relentless chattering. She probably would have asked him all kinds of questions about being on television, about the show, about what the actors were really like.

  “Don’t watch soaps,” he said, instead of telling Adams any of that.

  “Not much of a fan myself. Classically trained. Don’t mean to be snob about it, but give me hard drama every day of the week.”

  “You were watching them this morning,” Joel corrected him.

  “Reliving the glory days,” Adams told him, with a grin. “If you’ll pardon the pun.”

  Joel tried not to smile, but failed.

  There was something about the chatter of the man. On the surface it seemed inane, pointless, but there was a quality about Adams that seemed to suggest he was too smart for this insipid small talk. He seemed, to Joel, to be laughing at a joke no one else could see, and all the talking, all the probing, all the questions were a means to an end. It made him interesting in a way that Joel couldn’t quite put his finger on.

  “I like football,” Joel told him eventually.

  “Me, too. Tremendous drama in football.”

  Drama? In football? Nonsense.

  “It’s not about the drama, Adams,” Joel corrected him. “It’s about the athleticism.”

  “Ah, stop, who do you think you’re kidding with that? Do you watch track and field events?”

  “What? No…” Too late Joel spotted the trap he’d fallen into.

  “See. If it was about the athleticism you’d be all over that like a rash, but it’s not. Oh, it might be a part of it, sure, but it’s the drama that makes sports interesting. The ups and downs of it all, the great reversal, the inspiring underdogs, the swagger of the champions…”

  As he spoke his voice rose and fell, a storyteller’s voice with the delivery of a performer.

  “…There’s villains and good guys, and sometimes the heroes win and we love it, and sometimes they lose and we love that too, even if we’re heartbroken for them. Tremendous drama. Better than any soap opera.”

  “But it’s mostly about the athleticism,” Joel told him obstinately.

  “Good God,” Adams groaned in despair. “Are you going to turn out to be one of those people who’ll tell me it’s not raining while we’re outside getting soaking wet?”

  “What? No.”

  “Sure you are. That’s what it is, isn’t it? You’re a contrarian. If everyone else says black, you’ll say white.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Joel spluttered.

  “Oh yes. I know your type. Sinatra? Good or bad?”

  “A gangster.”

  “I’m not asking about his personal life. A good singer or a bad singer?

  “Good,” Joel told him from between clenched teeth.

  “Ha! You wanted to say bad, but then you’d prove my point, and you’re so contrary that you couldn’t even agree with yourself, so you said good.”

  “Are you this annoying everywhere you go?” Joel asked him, feeling his irritation rising.

  “Are you this cranky everywhere you go?”

  “I don’t go anywhere. So there.”

  “So if you don’t go anywhere, and you’re always this cranky here, I can logically declare that you are this cranky everywhere you go.”

  Joel turned to shoot an angry retort at his new roommate and realised the man was deliberately goading him, with a gr
eat big grin on his face. He had been winding Joel up, and enjoying every second of it. Someone had once told Joel that arguing with some people was like wrestling with a pig; after a while you realise that the pig is enjoying it. Instead of biting back, Joel shifted to face the television again and turned up the volume.

  “Oh don’t be like that,” Adams told him, laughing to himself.

  Joel raised the volume a little higher. If it bothered Adams, he didn’t let on but chuckled to himself and picked up his book. It was an ancient old thing with a battered cover, something pretentious and over the top, Joel assumed. Just like the man reading it.

  *

  Joel woke the following morning as Nurse Liam was delivering Adams’s breakfast. It was the first morning in three years that he’d woken up without silence all around him. His first reaction was to be irritated by the presence of the interloper, but the feeling was immediately followed by something else.

  It was relief. Joel felt relieved. The feeling irritated him.

  “Loud enough, aren’t you?” he asked of Adams and Liam.

  “Pfffft. You’re one to talk. Snored all night like a fella sawing logs.”

  “I do not snore,” Joel told him indignantly.

  “Clearing your throat for eight hours, then? It’s a good thing I don’t need much sleep.”

  “Well, what are you complaining for, then?”

  “Merciful hour, is that Joel over there complaining about someone else complaining?”

  “How dare you?” Joel asked without venom, adjusting himself in the bed. “A man I barely know.”

  “I’ve been here less than twenty-four hours, and I already feel like I’ve known you too long,” Adams replied, also without venom.

  Nurse Liam smiled at them both.

  “What are you smiling at?” Joel growled.

  Liam’s smile just widened. Like Adams, he had a terrible habit of looking like he was in on a joke that no one else was.

  “I’ll get your breakfast, shall I, Joel?” he asked patiently.

  Joel grimaced at the younger man, drawing yet another smile from him. He turned to Adams before he left.

  “Anything for you, Mr. de Selby?”

  Adams smiled a false smile and shook his head. It was a patently false smile, not like the day before where he was so cheery it was cloying. That at least had looked convincing. This smile was something else. It had a sickly quality to it.

  It was a curious thing, the false smile. The sickliness of it. In less than a day Adams had shown himself to be easy in everyone’s company. Even The Rhino, who was imposing, sometimes even terrifying, hadn’t knocked a stir out of him, but there was something in the smile, something uneasy. Joel wondered at it.

  “Don’t like Nurse Liam?” he asked.

  “Oh, I know you don’t, Joel. You don’t like anything,” Adams replied drily.

  “Hey. I was talking about you. I actually do like Nurse Liam.”

  “Really? Wow. You have a funny way of showing it.”

  “You wouldn’t understand. You haven’t been here long enough.”

  “I don’t imagine many of the residents will be here for long enough,” Adams replied with a laugh.

  Joel didn’t smile. He wasn’t going to be here for too much longer. He wouldn’t have to tolerate Adams and his questions and jokes. He was going to whatever was waiting for him when his life was over, and whatever it was, Joel reckoned it was better than here.

  The comment was also too close to the reality of living in Hilltop. Death strolled about the place casually, picking whoever it chose, whenever it fancied. Not Joel. Joel would pick death before Death could pick him.

  “Sorry,” Adams said, the roguish look gone again. “I forgot about the last fella. Miller wasn’t it? That was insensitive.”

  “Hmm. Sensitivity doesn’t seem too high up on the priority list for a fella like you,” Joel told him, as though Adams hadn’t cleaned the photo of Lucey so delicately the day before.

  “I am what I am, and what I am needs no excuses,” Adams replied, and the twinkle was back in his eyes, the sardonic smile playing across his face again.

  “Miller was a strange friend to have,” Joel told him, though he didn’t know why. “Never said a word. Didn’t move, didn’t laugh, didn’t sing, didn’t read pretentious books, didn’t do anything. But there was a comfort to having him here. And now he’s gone.”

  “And now you’re stuck with me,” Adams replied, smiling.

  “I am. God help me.”

  Adams chuckled at that, and Joel found himself smiling slightly. There was another wave of relief, this one without the irritation. A pleasant feeling of camaraderie, something he hadn’t had in a while. It was a good feeling, one he tried to hold on to. He couldn’t. Joel couldn’t even keep a good mood alive. He felt it slide off him. He hoped it didn’t show on his face, the sliding off. He sat there with his grin fixed. If Adams noticed, he didn’t mention it.

  The next morning Adams was awake before him again. Sitting up in his bed, reading from his cache of pretentious books and loudly laughing to himself. This one was about theatre and Joel was convinced that the man was only reading it to be seen reading it. No one could possibly want to read a book on theatre.

  He considered telling the popinjay, but before he had the chance, a visitor arrived.

  Una Clarke.

  Once again she was well turned out, in a pink jacket over a white blouse and black trousers. She always wore some of what little jewelry she possessed even when she was just ambling about Hilltop, pearl earrings and various necklaces her children and grandchildren had given her as gifts.

  “Oh heavens, my dear,” Adams cried, in his most performative voice. “But you cannot come in here when we’re in such a state of undress. We’re positively unseemly, made all the more so by your radiant presence.”

  “You old rogue, you.” She smiled at him. She had seen the flattery for what it was, but enjoyed the compliment nonetheless. “I just came in to see how you’re both doing, and to see what kind of mood Joel was in.”

  “The life and soul of the party has recently awakened, and is already brimming over with good humour. He’s scowled at me twice and I think he farted.”

  Una reddened at the joke. She was terribly prudish that way. Joel thought it was a sort of charming quality about her.

  “I think that’s more likely than him being in good humour.” She smiled.

  The joke was made lightly, and Joel forced himself to smile at it. The gall of her, accusing him of being without a sense of humour. He bristled inside at the insult.

  “Old Joel knows how to smile, my dear. He’s just sparing with his gifts is all,” Adams told her with a grin.

  “Did I hear rightly that you used to be on Glory Days, Mr. de Selby?” she asked.

  So this is why she came in, Joel thought wryly. To kiss up to the D-list TV star.

  “Please, Una, Frank will do.”

  “And his name is Adams, not de Selby,” Joel chimed in.

  Rather than be outraged by the interruption, Adams leaned over in the bed, stuck his tongue out at Joel and blew a raspberry at him.

  Joel spat out a laugh in spite of himself. It was a curious moment. He couldn’t remember his last laugh.

  “Old fart,” Adams told him, before returning to Una. “Yes, my dear, I spent two years on the show as the local shopkeeper, Andrew Duggan. It was back in the eighties, I doubt a woman as young as yourself would remember so long ago.”

  “Oh I remember all right. Now that you mention it, I think I see the resemblance. Why did you ever leave?”

  “They killed me off. Heartlessly, ruthlessly, murdered me. Death by writing. They gave me a heart attack.”

  “Oh what a shame.”

  “Not at all, my dear,” he assured her. “I was done with it. I must admit to not being much of a soap opera fan. I wanted to get back to the boards. Where I absolutely excelled. To the theatre. My true love.”

  “Besides yourse
lf,” Joel chimed in again. The conversation was happening whether he liked it or not. His room had been so bereft of it for so long, it was a curiosity to find that he was pleased to hear it again.

  “Joel, don’t be unkind,” Una told him firmly.

  He took it on the chin.

  “Not at all, Una, not at all,” Adams said, rescuing him. “I’m learning to take the rough with the smooth with Mr. Monroe over here. So far he’s proving to be quite fun. And do you know, I think he likes me.”

  “I do not,” Joel spluttered, caught off guard. Grudgingly, for this was the only way that Joel Monroe would admit anything, he had to accept that Adams wasn’t entirely wrong. He wasn’t the most awful thing Joel had ever encountered.

  Nurse Liam bustled back in to save Joel’s blushes with breakfast and pills. Multivitamins, cod liver oil, beta blockers, thiazide diuretics. A cocktail provided by doctors over the course of years to stave off the stroke that everyone except Joel just knew was coming. Joel didn’t even know what he was taking anymore. They simply dropped them off, and he shoveled them down.

  “Now, Joel,” Liam announced cheerily. Too cheerily for this hour of the morning. “Time for breakfast, and of course…”

  Joel felt his hackles rise again.

  “You can just leave them on the stand, please, Liam,” he said, locking eyes with the young nurse.

  “Mr. Monroe…”

  Mr. Monroe again. Always bloody Mr. Monroe when there were orders to be giving.

  “I said leave them on the bloody stand, Liam,” Joel barked.

  “Joel…” Una began.

  “No. Don’t Joel me. I’ll take the damn pills all right. But I’ll take them when I want.”

  “I’d listen to him,” Adams interjected. “Woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. Mind you, for Joel I think they’re both the wrong sides.”

  Joking again. Bloody joker.

  “Joel,” Liam pleaded, “this isn’t like you. You know the drill by now. I’d leave them with you, but I have to make sure you take the pills. This isn’t optional. This is for your own good.”

  As if these people knew what was good for Joel Monroe.

  “Well, it bloody well better get optional quick. I’m not having you, or this bloody joker over there telling me what to bloody do,” he told them, thrusting his finger at each of them in turn.