“Are you sure?” Zeek’s hand explored the brim of my pants, pushing down until it found the down covered crease. One finger nudged teasingly inside, then withdrew.
I didn’t have time to say anything more. My two caterers were stumbling through the door, enormously high on the evening, giggling as two admirers stumbled after them. “People are hungry!” Announced Briana.
“Let’s take it out then!” I shouted back.
I didn’t remember much more about the evening. I looked around for the doctor and found him talking with an elderly woman in a wheelchair at one point, but when I approached, he walked away. Zeek remained busy, liberating other women and leaving them in various stages of anticipation and undress. The last I saw of Briana, she was flirting with the mechanic.
The most memorable part of the evening was that Linda gained an ardent and everlasting admirer. Jack Jones wasn’t much to look at. Only slightly over middle height, Linda towered nearly a whole head over him. He leaned against whatever was available and stationary whenever possible instead of standing up straight, wore very shabby, circa 1980’s style clothing and alternated continuously between rolling cigarettes and rolling marijuana joints. Instead of dreadlocks, his hair was practically one solid mat, with strangling tendrils floating around his face and down his neck. It was impossible to guess exactly how old he was as his full beard was at least eight inches long. Certainly middle-aged or older as both his hair and beard were heavily streaked with gray and he did look somewhat grizzled.
Jack followed Linda around like a lamb. He called on everyone to admire her. “She is the goddess, Freyja, unvanquished in battle, victorious in love. She is the modern statue of Liberty. She is Mae West.”
I don’t know why, but she tolerated him right from the start. He became a regular visitor at our evening meals, always bringing something along to make the evening more festive. Anything we needed, from fixing a plumbing leak to tuning the Bronco shifted to his hands and became his willing responsibility. Within weeks, Jack Jones had made himself invaluable.
Briana’s exercise program had turned into lazy days in the yard soaking up the last of the summer sun. Washington’s summers aren’t the same as North Carolina summers, and it’s not just a difference in temperatures. The skies are nearly always hazy or thick with fog in the morning, making it difficult to tell whether the weather would clear or not. Most of the time, it doesn’t. The clouds roll in, with gentle, fitful rains or the day remains overcast.
Overcast days are pleasant. They are warm, even steamy, with an ocean breeze leaving a salty taste in the air. It’s heavenly to lay out on a blanket. My skin is terrified of direct sunlight and blanches like a peeled potato on a clear, hot day. It settles down in cloudy weather, actually revealing a little color.
I was just drifting into half-sleep, half daydream when I heard someone clear their voice. I opened my eyes and saw the doctor. “If you want to speak to me, come around to the other side of the fence,” I said, flopping over on my stomach.
He came around, with a good show of exasperation. He sat on one corner of the blanket and looked suspiciously at the generous proportions of flesh pouring out of my sun suit. “I don’t suppose you could cover up.”
“I don’t suppose I could,” I said, sitting up. “I feel fine, just the way I am.”
He scowled and fastened his eyes on some invisible object of fascination behind me. “I couldn’t help but notice that one of your friends has a great deal of influence on Jack Jones. I was wondering if you could do me a favor.”
“If you think you can enlist us into your baby rubber bumper services, you’ve got the wrong thing coming. We haven’t done anything to Jack Jones he wasn’t doing already and we’re not going to stand guard over him doing them.”
“No, nothing like that. Okay, maybe I have been a little harsh. You’ve gotten people to come out and socialize that haven’t been out of their houses in years. You’ve got them doing stretches and crunches, but you have to understand, Jenna, there are still the dangers of heart disease and diabetes. I’ve worked hard to keep this community fit.”
“Are you apologizing?”
“Not quite. I still think you are reckless. You are careless. You never think about the possible consequences of your actions.”
“Are you talking about me or my father? You see, I don’t think you know me. How could you? You run away every time you see me. You put up blinders, like a horse in front of a cart. Are you a beast of burden, carrying the weight of humanity on your shoulders?”
“I am a man who has seen many more things than you have. You’re a small town girl who thinks the whole world is in her hands because she’s young, she’s pretty and blonde as a Norwegian goddess. You mean nothing by it, but you are careless and that carelessness will get you or others hurt.”
“You are making it difficult for me to get in the mood for doing favors.”
“I’m not accustomed to asking for them. You’ll have to bear with me.”
He studied his hand before placing it to his chin and rubbing his jaw. This placed his eyes in direct contact with my thighs, as in my sitting position, I had drawn up my knees and wrapped my arms around them. His eyes moved inch by inch until they again found that invisible something of interest in the background. “Jack Jones is a veteran of the Gulf Wars. A high ranking and well-decorated vet. There is a district VFW dinner next week and Jack is one of the guests of honor. Something has to be done about him, Jenna. He can’t go to a banquet looking like that.”
“He needs a haircut.”
“Among other things.”
I smiled. “You’ve contacted the right caretakers. But there’s something I want to know in return. Did your girlfriend misdiagnose my father?”
He looked like I had struck him, then recovered, blinking. “Julia did not misdiagnose the tumor. It was benign. I looked at the biopsy myself.”
“Then why is the neighborhood saying it was malignant?”
“Because that’s what he told them! He was probably planning another scam, one that involved you.”
“Do you think he was murdered?”
“He had a lot of enemies. There was an investigation, but they came up with too many leads. They pointed in every direction. Your father basically murdered himself, Jenna. He careened through life and continued weaving a path of destruction straight to his death.”
“Why did Julia leave?”
“She was offered a better position in San Diego. She accepted it.”
“She chose her career over her relationship with you.”
“We’re both professionals. We knew this could happen.”
He was looking at me now. Not just my body, but my face, studying something in my eyes, his mouth hovering close to mine. He broke it off, glancing at his watch and standing awkwardly. “I have a full work day tomorrow. I’ve got to get up early. I’ll appreciate whatever you girls can do for Jack Jones.”
For once he walked away without looking like he’d just had a spinal tap. My eyes followed him watchfully. He had shown a different side to himself. Maybe it was the side that had driven him to settle here; the side that cared enough about his patients to become involved with their lives. I got up slowly, folded my blanket and went inside.
Jack Jones proved a pretty tough nut to crack. At first, he would have nothing at all to do with it. “I don’t need no damned celebrity dinner,” he complained.
“But Jack, you’re the celebrity. You’re the star of the show.”
“Bah. It takes more than a medal on your chest to be a hero. I ain’t no better nor worse than twenty million other men. “You could just as well pin a medal on Billy Barrow,” he said, pointing to the man with the cane, who was securing a few biscuits inside his shirt. “He’s been to Vietnam. He didn’t get nothing but a purple heart for getting shot in the leg.
“And I got the bastard that did it!” Called out the man with the cane.
“If it’s a banquet for the vets, Billy will be
there too, won’t you Billy?” Said Linda.
“They’re gonna serve prime rib.”
“Prime rib. Did you hear that? How can it get any better?”
“You’ll be my plus one.”
“I won’t be your plus one if you don’t get a haircut. I have my standards about being seen in public.”
Jack Jones accepted a beer while he mulled things over. “You say you’ll go with me if I fancy myself up?”
“But you’ve got to look really good. I don’t go out with just anybody, you know.”
He pulled and scratched at his beard and hitched up his pants by the belt loops. Any moment now, I expected him to say, “dad nabbit”, and go chasing after a bunny. “Only one person in the world I’ll allow to touch my hair,” he said firmly. He made a broad gesture with his hand. “My little chickadee. But!” He added. “You’ll have to do it in a bikini.”
“Jack, I’m astonished by you!” I couldn’t hold back, and scolded him with a finger to his nose.
“Nope, nope. No offense, Miss Jenna, but I’ve done seen you in all kinds of little clothes, and it does make a big impression. It makes a healthy man’s heart beat with gladness. And Briana, no disrespect to you either, but Linda is the Mona Lisa of all women, and I swear I would give up every hope of going to heaven if she cut my hair while in a bikini.”
“Yeah, me too,” nodded the guy with the cane, assertively waving it up and down.
“Well, if I’m going to cut your hair, you’ll have to strip down to your shorts,” said Linda, looking at him appraisingly.
“My shorts?”
“Yes, your shorts. I’m not cutting your hair without washing it.”
“I ain’t got no shorts on.”
Linda sighed. “Billy, hobble to Jack’s house and bring back some shorts. Bring back some half-way decent clean clothes.”
“I don’t got no shorts!” Said Jack. “And I don’t have any other clothes.”
“Would you like some apple pie?” I asked the man with the cane. He gave me a toothy grin. “You go and find some fresh clothes Jack can wear and I’ll give you a big piece. It’s still warm from the oven.”
While Billy teetered away as fast as his tapping cane would let him, Linda picked up one end of the long, continuous mat and inspected it closely. “Yikes!” She said. “You have lice! Big ones! Jenna! Go to the doctor and tell him we need some anti-louse stuff. And you!” She stood over him and he shrank a good six inches under her gaze. “How could you bring bugs into the house? You get out to the yard. You’re going to get a spray down first, and then you’re going to take a proper shower.”
“No, no!” He cried. “We can’t do it that way. I’ll die of a heart attack.”
“Oh, no you won’t! I thought you were an old man. You were in the Gulf War! That makes you a middling man. You’re tough enough to take a cold shower.”
I continued to hear his pleas on the way to the doctor’s house. He must have had his ear at the door because he opened it instantly. “I need, um, Jack Jones has in his hair. He has a metropolis of very happy… ew. I need lice medicine.”
He laughed; something that sounded rather strange coming from the mouth of the venerable Dr. Lee Andrews. “I’ve got something in my medicine cabinet.” While he was gone, I peeked inside. The lighting was soft, absorbed by wood paneling. The interior reminded you that Seattle lived side by side with the northern Native American tribes, with some woven baskets, a wall hanging, two fur embroidered masks and several ivory carvings. The furniture was dark, seemed barely used and was stationed around a large, flat screen television.
He returned before I had a chance to notice anything else. “Can I watch?” He asked. He looked over into my yard, where Briana was hosing down hapless Jack Jones. By some miracle, he wasn’t running away.
“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.
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