Community Service Read online

She quickly showered, very much aware that she was naked and there was a strange man in the backyard tending to her flowers. The thought brought a grin. An exploratory pinch of her nipples, and a light kneading of her breasts brought some rather unwelcome answers to her unspoken questions.

  Oh, God, yes.

  That might work.

  She could not deny the language of her body. Marion shoved those thoughts aside and finished up her ablutions in a hurried and determined manner. One could even say it was a bit forced.

  It was a bit early in the year, and most of the flowers really hadn’t come up yet.

  Toweling off quickly, she tried not to fall into the trap, but sure enough, sooner or later, she had to catch a glimpse of her eyes in the mirror. They had a sneaky look in them. A guilty look.

  What in the hell are you thinking?

  And just what in the hell do you expect?

  And thank God it wasn’t that Alan Deering guy from two or three weeks ago—what a piece of work that one was. Deering would be upstate in a special place for about the next fifteen years, hopefully longer.

  Once back in her bedroom, and again very much aware of him still—she thought she heard him breathing out there from the exertion, she purposely ignored the small, two-inch open chink in the curtains and flung off her robe.

  And there was that damned mirror again.

  “Clothes, clothes for the day. What in the hell are we going to wear?”

  She settled for some khaki shorts, quickly shortened into hot-pants by rolling the cuffs and safety-pinning them into place. She had a white silk top, a strapless bra, and she had some beige sandals. Dropping into her seat in front of the vanity, she did a quick and bang-up paint-job job on her nails, finger and toe, and then applied a bit of matching lipstick. She ran a quick comb through her hair and it was only then that Marion felt able to face the day. A little scent, and an ankle chain, and some nice black pearl earrings to set off her silky pale hair, and that was it.

  There was coffee, and the paper, and the news channel, and it would come to her sooner or later, but there had been something she desperately needed at the market. She wasn’t really fooling anyone with that one, but she tried.

  Doyle…Salvatore Doyle. Who was he, exactly?

  She peeked out the bathroom window again, tempted to get rid of the bra, but she had to go out soon anyways and it really wasn’t her personal style.

  ***

  There came a knock at the patio door.

  “Oh.” Her heart fluttered again, and her still so young.

  She closed the kitchen cupboard door and went over and slid it back.

  “Yes?” Her tone was of polite inquiry.

  The day was warming up and he had his shirt off, tied around his waist so as not to lose it, she supposed.

  “Ah, I was just wondering what other sorts of things you have that need doin’. The weeds seem a lot better now, but you might want to have a look.”

  “Oh, thank you.” She shaded her eyes and stared out into the yard. “Hmn. Other jobs?”

  She hadn’t really thought about it. Marion hadn’t even had her breakfast yet.

  He took a half-step backwards and she came out on the rear deck and looked around.

  “Where did you put the weeds?”

  “Ah, in the composter, Ma’am.”

  “Thank you. Very good. Can you run a lawnmower?”

  Albert just grinned and again she felt a proper fool. Of course the man could run a lawnmower, and she had always hated the noisy, stinking thing. Her usual boy, a thirteen year-old named Jason, had moved last year with his family, and she didn’t have anyone on the hook yet. She’d been paying the kid forty bucks a week to do it and she had thought it a bargain. The lawn wasn’t all that big, really.

  “Sure. You’ll find it in the garage…ah…”

  He put his hat back on.

  “Albert.” He turned to go around to the front of the house again.

  With privacy fences on three sides and a fairly narrow frontage, there was really only one way around and that was down the sidewalk just outside of her breakfast nook.

  He was certainly very fit-looking, and he had definitely taken a look at her legs and her shorts.

  That was something, right?

  Now that the initial panic was gone.

  ***

  Marion took herself off to the shopping centre and got hung up there returning a blouse she had bought. The thing was coming apart at the seams. The attendant was asking if she’d washed it and she kept saying no, the tags are practically still on it…she’d only worn it once. She picked up fresh eggs and some green vegetables, feeling all health-conscious and not merely stalling for time.

  When she got home, the garage door was locked up. It was after noon and Albert was nowhere in sight. Her place seemed more airless and dismally quiet than usual all of a sudden.

  It was slightly deflating, as she had been hoping to talk to him a little bit. Now that she thought about it, there was any number of little jobs that needed doing around the place. The back yard was already looking better and the grass was neatly cut and trimmed.

  Interesting. She’d sort of forgotten what it used to look like, almost as if she’d been in a state of total denial these past years. The place had once given her, both of them really, a lot of pleasure and satisfaction—or at least she thought it had at the time.

  ***

  The rest of the weekend hung heavy on her hands, and while she flew into a flurry of spring-cleaning, as if inspired by the sight of her now weed-less garden, the fact was that she had hated weekends for quite some time.

  Her work schedule was jam-packed but when had it ever been any other way? It was her only defense. Working brought a busy mind. It blanked out her loneliness. Like anything else, she tended to throw herself into it. Plus there were the monthly Thursday lunches with a bunch of other judicial types, some prosecutors and one or two of the Mayor’s cronies always showed up. Another time-waster, one calculated to make you think you knew people, almost as if you had friends or that some exiting, absolutely scrumptious man would come along and scoop you up.

  Unspoken communication was key—it might help her a lot. At first she thought of music. She could just have things playing, soft, romantic, suggestive things, when he was around. Her mind wasn’t good at that sort of thing, song titles, the names of bands, but she could at least think on it. This was her first real opportunity in quite some time.

  Scent now. That would bear some thinking about. Food, yes, attention to the gentleman—that was very much a yes. She could do all of that…she would give the man a beer or two on a really hot day…that might help to break the ice.

  What a hopeful creature she was, or so she thought in a moment of disgust.

  It was never going to happen, was it?

  By the time Friday showed up, she was firmly reminding herself to check out this Salvatore Doyle character. Her clerk said something about the Parolee Employment Assignment desk, but it didn’t ring a bell and it was all very vague. It wasn’t that she hadn’t heard of this Doyle fellow somewhere, but in the end a harried Marion forgot all about it. It was after five when she remembered and by then it was too late to make the call.

  When Saturday morning rolled around, this time cloudy and overcast, she was still lying abed when the front doorbell rang.

  With a start, she sat bolt upright, hand up to her throat and heart beating wildly.

  The bell rang again.

  It was funny how things worked sometimes.

  She’d just been having the most warm and fuzzy dream about Mister Albert Wilson.

  ***

  Since it was drizzling and fairly cold for late May, Albert obviously couldn’t do much in the garden, she told him.

  She sat in the wing-chair and he stood, hands swinging loosely at his sides, at the top of the two steps that led into her sunken living room. She hadn’t even washed the crust out of her eyes yet.

  “Would you like some coffe
e, Albert?” She pursed her lips, getting up.

  “Of course you would.” She indicated he should follow.

  Leading him into the kitchen, she sat him down at her breakfast alcove, and bustled about with the cups, the coffeemaker, and the cream and sugar. They would needs spoons.

  “You seem very quiet this morning.”

  “Well, I mean—” He chuckled in self-deprecating manner.

  He cleared his throat.

  Marion had hastily donned an old T-shirt of Hank’s, left behind when he abandoned ship.

  Under that was a fairly substantial hot pink bikini bottom and she was also barefoot for now. He did look at her feet from time to time, in a way his eyes had no escape, and she was always finding things to say or questions to ask. She wasn’t wearing a bra but Mister Wilson wasn’t ogling her too badly and she was all right with the normal male visual responses. She’d seen a few over the years. His eyes were nice when he turned them her way.

  Question: Why in the hell am I so attracted to this man?

  Answer: Propinquity. He was the only one around. The only thing she could see, the only thing there was to look at around here…unwelcome answers, every one.

  It all sounded so flimsy.

  With the addition of a leather thong around her left wrist, and a handful of Goth rings on her fingers, it was surefire way to make old Albert think of her in some other terms, rather than Judge Judy or whatever.

  She was a person too, and showing him a little intimacy—a little vulnerability. That’s what she told herself.

  “There we go.” She brought everything over on a tray.

  She served him first, and then herself. She nipped to the bathroom and quickly washed her face, not taking too much time in there. When she came back he was looking a little lost, perhaps even a little sad.

  She sat across from him.

  “So what’s up for today, Ma’am?” His big dark eyes regarded her, and then tore themselves away.

  “Two things, and maybe even three.” She sipped the scalding liquid carefully, the brain fog only now beginning to fade. “One, we can clean out the garage and throw out a lot of old junk. Two, depending on how much time we have, we can make a start on the shed, or maybe the basement. I don’t really care which.”

  Albert, still uneasy with the relationship, felt compelled to take a strawberry Danish, and bite into it deeply. He just needed a moment to think, but that shirt was terribly magnetic on the eyes.

  He considered his words.

  “And three?”

  “Please call me Marion.” She sipped again, not taking her eyes off his face.

  Hmn. The man really could blush. Interesting.

  Without even looking at her, he just gave an exaggerated nod and kept on eating that Danish.

  If he dared to look, he might even see she that she was blushing too.

  Act Two

  Piddling Along in traffic

  Marion was piddling along in a long traffic queue, patiently waiting for her interchange, a mile or so up on the right, wondering if there was an accident up ahead. But likely not, it’s just that it was always this way on a Friday.

  It was the weekend again, much more tolerable now that she had Albert to look forward to, and yet that situation could not go on forever. She’d even considered calling somebody somewhere and asking for a replacement for him.

  Get me some stinking old wino, please. I don’t care if he can mow a lawn or not.

  It might get Albert out of her life and out of her restless mind. It seemed unfair to either one of them, or so she had decided. He really hadn’t done anything wrong. No, it was her that had the problem.

  She had a hunch it would feel dreadful and that it would just backfire anyway. This would prey on her mind for the foreseeable future…

  She accepted the fact the man had a bad back and his community service required light duties. She’d had quite some time to observe him now. He really didn’t impress her as a shirker. While never working hard, he’d cracked a sweat when the situation called or it, and yet he was always careful not to inflame old injuries.

  He had also gotten a lot done. As spring wore into summer, all of her perennials were up, in full bloom, and all the shrubs were fully in leaf, and the bedding plants that she had picked out and they had planted together, Marion getting down on hands and knees beside him, were taking just fine.

  Marion was enjoying her garden again, taking pride in the simple accomplishment and getting her hands dirty in the process. Her legs were tanning up nicely, and she had a bit of colour in her cheeks that she hadn’t seen much of in recent years. She had a glint in her eye when she looked in the mirror now, a guilty glint perhaps, but it was there and she was going to make sure it didn’t go away again anytime soon.

  She even started to think of men other than Albert, and she even began masturbating again.

  Her sex life had improved, compared to the way it had been before, when she had to sort of remind herself, sometimes as much as two or three weeks apart it had been getting…but of course in order to turn someone else on, you had to be able to turn yourself on.

  You had to be able to think and respond in those terms, and she had been in the habit of self-denial, a kind of remorseless self-sacrifice on the altar of respectability.

  She had been hiding from herself.

  What, was she thinking of running for Congress or something?

  Yeesh.

  That was never in the program. Her life was not a Norah Roberts novel.

  That whole notion, entertained from time to time and not just by her, but some real, die-hard (or blow-hard) political types, flattering intellectually as it was, was just sublimation for something else, pure and simple

  Oh, she had her own self figured out by this time, and pitied those who didn’t.

  Albert had been sick the week before. She had definitely found herself at a loose end, with nothing to do and no one to really talk to; except her sister in Rhode Island. She’d even tried calling, but Peg was out and her husband Don, whom Marion had met at the wedding and once or twice since, wasn’t in a talkative mood. That wasn’t much good.

  That day, Marion found herself in some zombie-like state. She recognized herself, halfway across town, on some impulsive shopping trip, and going into a lingerie store, one of the classier ones, and buying an armload of frilly things. Some of which were innocent and some not so innocent, thinking of him all the while.

  Argh.

  She remembered being so grateful, coming out the door, that the sales clerk, about twenty-five years her junior, didn’t ask if it was her fucking anniversary or somebody’s birthday or something.

  So it went on, from weekend to weekend. Albert would show up, and she’d make him a cup of coffee, and then they would go out in the yard. He had treats, pastries or cake, heavy on the icing, at ten o’clock. She always had something ready for him. She was tempted to offer him leftovers in a Tupperware container. Marion knew so little of his circumstances. She couldn’t bring herself to do it. She didn’t want to ask certain questions.

  He was apparently single, but she couldn’t be certain without obvious prying…what a pretty pickle she was in.

  She became less shy. Rather than retreat back into the house and drool from behind a crack in the curtains, she had helped him dig up a small vegetable garden, much neglected since Hank left four…no, five years ago now. Five and a half to be exact. Slowly she was coming out of her shell with Albert, painfully slowly as it was. She enjoyed supervising him as he worked, and then he would pass the time with small talk and gentle humour.

  Albert took it all in stride, and when she could no longer help herself, Marion would go in the house and take a shower, with the window open, humming or singing to herself, in the full knowledge that he was just on the other side of that wall, planting a shrub or edging the lawn or hosing down the driveway.

  She was also aware of the passage of time. She only had so much of it, and she sensed that Albert though
t there was some huge social gulf between them. If only the man would make a move.

  All he had to do was ask.

  Of course, he was desperately poor. What in the hell did she expect, anyways?

  All of this was madness, and yet it wouldn’t go away.

  Marion found herself going back over the weekends and counting up the man-hours in her head.

  One of them had better make a move, and pretty damn soon, otherwise it just wasn’t going to happen.

  However it all turned out, she was kind of grateful to Albert, for reminding her of something very important. It looked to be turning out all too badly, in other words much ado about nothing.

  She was a woman, and Woman, with a capital ‘W,’ was a sexual being by her very definition.

  What a terribly frustrating state of being it could be sometimes.

  More than anything she dreamed of being held in those strong arms, looking into those warm brown eyes and feeling safe. Feeling wanted—desperately needing to feel like someone really needed you.

  Marion wanted so desperately for someone to love her, and it was only now that the true cost of her professional success was brought home.

  Was that the real reason she and Hank had problems?

  She found she no longer cared, but it was certainly a possible factor.

  She was a desirable commodity for a certain segment of the male population, and the one man she really liked, for reasons she herself could not fathom, seemed blind to her.

  To all others, she would be perhaps desirable but unapproachable. Worse, she would be an asset, a trophy, an accoutrement. She wasn’t interested in the role.

  A terrible kind of frustration was building inside of her, and she had no outlet.

  Deep in the gut was the knowledge that this could quickly turn to self-hatred, and yet there didn’t seem to be much she could do about it.