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?”
“That’s what people do when they are young and foolish. I’m thirty-eight years old. It took me years to acquire my doctorate. Years of study and self-sacrifice. I can’t afford a summer fling.”
“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 Forty-Five
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 pe
rcent 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. She’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.
“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 priest
s. 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.
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