Sex on Tuesdays (15 page)

“No, Jack's style would be to tie his poor victim to a chair and force her to listen to stories of his many conquests.”

I laughed as Simon pulled out into traffic to follow the van to its next destination. “Or the list of hair products he employs to maintain his carelessly tousled appearance.”

16

Thursday, 4:30 p.m.

“Dani,” Simon said as we turned into the driveway of Sunny Days. “If I'm still breathing when I turn into a mean cranky eighty-year-old, will you please book me into this amazing facility. It's like Las Vegas for the incontinent set.”

“Book yourself in, Templar,” I told him parking my beat-up car at the front entrance to the main building. “By then, I'll be fighting for a room myself. And you won't be a mean cranky eighty-year-old,” I added tossing him a grin. “You'll be a sweet, silver-haired old gentleman, with an ebony cane and an eye for the ladies.”

“If you're here I'll have eyes for
one
lady only.”

Oh, wow!
I thought, tugging at the neck of my shirt.
Where the heck did that come from?

And then I thought,
but that's thirty years away
. Damn. Nothing new here. I'd always known Simon was not a forever sort of guy, so I pushed away the image of him and me at Sunny Days in thirty years' time and gazed at the surrounding scenery.

Billiard-table-smooth grass. Residents sipping colorful drinks while lounging on comfortable outdoor furniture. A riot of flowers, shrubs and water fountains. An Olympic-size swimming pool. And even a par-three golf course with electric golf buggies.

Pensioner's Heaven
.

“I don't know where we'll find Mum at this hour,” I said, switching off the ignition and leaning back in my seat. “Bingo? Golf? Playing pokies in The Lucky Horseshoe room—”

“In bed with Henry?” suggested Simon with his lopsided grin.

“Oh, God, no. That's the last thing I need. To bust into Mum's room and find her and Henry in bed naked, going at it,” I groaned.

“With a gun tucked into her garter belt, courtesy of her toy-boy, Tug,” added Simon, starting to chuckle.

“Don't joke,” I warned him, shuddering as I imagined all that wrinkled, plucked chicken flesh bouncing around on the bed.

Before locking my car, I passed Simon the parcel containing Henry's new skateboard. “Here, carry this and make use of your empty arms,” I told him. “But don't let Henry con you into showing it to him or you'll have my mother to answer to. Which won't be nice.”

After identifying ourselves over the intercom, some unseen hand inside the building buzzed the front door open for us.

“Geez,” I said entering ahead of Simon and finding my feet sinking into a newly laid coffee-colored carpet in the reception area. “I wouldn't mind this carpet in my lounge room. Only one problem—Horace would lose his doggy toys in the pile.”

Studying the floor covering, Simon nodded. “This carpet is perfect. Soft to fall on. When you think about it, a threadbare carpet in a retirement home would have to be a health hazard.”

“Hmm…hadn't thought of it like that. I guess it's not
all
fun and games when you get old.”

“No, but at least at Sunny Days the elderly are treated like real people instead of inconveniences waiting to die and make room for the next name on the list.”

I glanced at Simon. He still blamed himself because his Dad, suffering from Alzheimer's two years ago, had been shuffled off to a nursing home exactly like the one he'd described. At the time, Simon had been too busy catching and locking up bad guys to look after his Dad. And his mother, Beryl, was too busy enjoying her social life and her wealthy fourth husband to give a rat's ass about one of her exes. To make the guilt trip even worse, Simon's Dad had died six weeks after being admitted to the nursing home.

I squeezed Simon's hand, but before I could attempt to cheer him up, Gloria Reeding, the manager of Sunny Days, drifted out of her office, her professional smile firmly in place. She nodded at Simon and then laid one cold hand on my arm. “Ms. Summers,” she said, her private-education voice honed over many years of being in authority. “May I please have a word before you visit your mother?”

Oh! Uh! Sounded like trouble.

Leaving Simon to chat up one of the wheelchair-bound residents, a sweet-faced lady with long silver hair that reached down to her waist, I reluctantly followed Gloria Reeding's stiff back into her office. Now I knew what it was like for my mother, all those years ago, when she'd been summoned to my headmistress's office the day after I'd climbed onto the school roof and hung a pair of her bloomers on the flagpole. Mum was getting her own back on me now. Then again, I couldn't see my arthritic parent reproducing
that
particular act of rebellion—her knees wouldn't get her two rungs up a ladder let alone all the way onto the roof.

“Coffee, Ms. Summers?” Dressed in a beautifully cut, oatmeal-colored suit with a silky saffron underblouse, Ms. Reeding crossed to the coffee machine and poured a straight black for herself.

“No thanks, I'm fine. And please, call me Dani.”

“Of course.” She indicated a chair on the other side of her desk. “Please sit and make yourself comfortable, Dani. I won't keep you long.”

The chair she'd pointed at wasn't much of an improvement over the police issue chair at the police station. Why is it people in authority always have a comfortable state-of-the-art chair for themselves and a reject from Cash Converters for the other side of their desk?

“Ms. Summers…Dani. I apologize for encroaching on your time, but I did leave a message with both your brother Robert and sister Penelope to contact me at their earliest convenience.”
So that was the reason Penny insisted it was my turn to visit Mother
. “But neither of your siblings returned my calls,” she went on. “So your visit today is quite auspicious.” Hell, the woman even sounded like my headmistress. Old
Droopy Tits
never used a simple word where a complex one would suffice.

I nodded, determined not to let her make me feel inferior. “Actually, Robert is out of the country on a business trip until the weekend. That would be the reason he hasn't returned your call.”
Penny could make her own excuses
.

The immaculate Ms. Reeding stared down at her desk, tapped one finger nervously against the wood before moving a glossy American magazine on
Aged Care
a few centimeters to the right. “As you know, we encourage relationships here at Sunny Days, along with a very liberal lifestyle. Our motto has always been ‘Age has no barriers,' so it's not easy for me to say this, Danielle…it's just that, well, your mother is….”

“Unpredictable?”

“Don't get me wrong. Gwen is a lovely woman and we all adore her. It's just that sometimes she can be a distracting influence on the other residents at the home.”

I frowned. This didn't sound good. “Distracting? In what way?”

“In many ways, Danielle.”

“Can you be a bit more specific?”

“As in last week, when two male residents were planning to duel at dawn—winner take Gwen. Luckily, dawn is very early and both parties slept in. They rescheduled for midday but were prevented from carrying out their plan when one of the staff members rang the dinner gong. Since then, our counselors have defused the situation.”

She must have noticed my gob-smacked expression, because when she went on her tone was slightly less uptight. “The two men were only planning to use their canes as weapons, but even so, both residents find it difficult to balance without the support of their walking-stick. And if the duel had proceeded, one or both could have fallen over and been hurt.”

The picture Ms. Reeding painted was so ludicrous, I had trouble keeping a straight face. “And my mother?” I asked almost choking. “Did she in any way instigate this er…duel by walking stick?”

“Well, actually…no,” came the uncomfortable reply. “I believe Gwen told both men to grow up, that she wasn't interested in either of them, and they could knock each other silly for all she cared, because she wasn't a piece of meat to be fought over.”

“Now
that
sounds more like my mother.”

“But the point is, Gwen needs to tone down her flirtatious behavior.”

“I don't see how—”

“And then there's what's been happening with Thomas.”

“Thomas?”

“You might know him as Tug.”

“Right,” I said, closing my eyes and slumping back in my chair. “The younger guy. Her toy-boy with connections to the Mob.”

“Yes, that's the one.” Gloria Reeding leant forward, her eyes almost pleading. “Danielle, if you could speak to your mother and ask her not to encourage Thomas to dramatize his
very
slim connections to the underworld—and his stint in jail when he was caught in the getaway car way back in his teens—I'd
really
appreciate it. All this talk of glocks and switchblades and laundering money has started to scare some of the frailer residents.”

I sighed. This was
so
not like the interview Mum had with
Droopy Tits
back in the early seventies.

* * *

If you've never witnessed an eighty-three-year-old woman dressed in black suede knee-high boots, tight-fitting mint-green leggings and a plum-colored knitted coat-dress—wielding a scorecard and playing a game of darts with an entourage of aged men, two of them pushing walking frames—you've never met my mother, Gwen.

“Hey, sweetie, what brand of condoms did you buy for me? Ribbed? Ooh, I love the feel of those ribbed suckers,” she whispered in a voice loud enough for everyone—not only in the next room, but outside on the golf course—to hear.

I groaned. This could not be the woman who gave birth to me almost fifty years ago. It just couldn't. The Gwen Summers I'd grown up with and fought with for my right to wear lipstick and control bras at fourteen, had been a June Cleaver clone. Now, six months after booking into Sunny Days, she'd turned into a senior Mata Hari.

“Hi, Mrs. S.,” cut in Simon, bending to plant a smacking kiss on my mother's wrinkled cheek. Over her shoulder he winked and I grinned my thanks for his intervention. “You guys need any help to win today's dart's match?”

“Simon, honey, always lovely to see you,” said Mum, her flushed face crinkling into a smile. She turned to the other members of her dart's team. “Hey, listen up. This fine specimen of manhood
almost
became my son-in-law,” she told Henry, Johnny with the full head of hair, Billy, Percy and bad-boy, Tug. “Luckily for him my uptight daughter, Penny dumped him.” She chuckled while giving Simon a sharp dig in the ribs. “And I bet you thank God every night for your lucky break. Anal retentive, I think they'd call Penny these days. Back in my day, we'd have called her a snotty-nosed bitch.”

“Penny isn't
that
bad,” I protested.

“Penny
is
that bad!” my mother and Simon responded in unison.

Mum laughed and slapped Simon on the back. “Not that I wouldn't love to have you as a son-in-law, Simon.” She peered across at me and lifted both eyebrows. “I
do
have another daughter, you know. Not real bright, but she has potential.”

“Muuum!” I yelled. “Behave yourself.”

Simon's lopsided grin had the blood rushing to my face again. “Okay, team,” he said leaving me to my embarrassment while addressing Mum's entourage like a life coach. “Let's see if we can beat this other mob. Whose turn is it to attack the dart board?”

Henry shuffled forward, his skinny chicken legs encased in thick baggy trousers. “I think it's my throw again. Is that right, Gwen?”

“Yes, Henry,” said Mum checking the scorecard. “And do try to hit the board this time, you silly bugger. Last time he hit the window, the light-fittings, the wall and even a passing care-worker. Everything
but
the dart board!”

While Henry digested Gwen's criticism, I steered my mother to one side, determined to broach the subject of her promiscuity. “Mum,” I said in what I hoped was a serious, you'd-better-listen-to-me voice, “we need to talk.”

Her eyes never left Henry as he shuffled into position in front of the dart board. “We do?”

“Yes, we do. Gloria Reeding is unhappy with your behavior. She tells me that men are dueling over you and—”

“Load of rubbish. A bit of fun that got blown way out of hand. Neither of the men got any farther than the garden where the duel was set to take place. Sam found the nearest chair to collapse on and Robert forgot what the heck he was out there for. Lovely guys—but all talk. No action.”

Simon passed Henry a set of darts. “Okay, Henry,” he said, punching the old man lightly on one arm. “Let's see your best winning technique.”

“Mum, what about Tug?” I continued, not letting her off the hook yet. “The guy's keen on you and Ms. Reeding says you've been encouraging him to boast about his shady past.”

Mum shrugged and I noticed a tightening of her thin lips, a tiny crack in her armor. “I find listening to Tug rattle on about his dubious connections to the bad guys helps ease the boredom around this place,” she explained and I suddenly understood. Even Sunny Days couldn't prevent the tedium of old age, with all its aches and pains and inevitable slowing down of body parts.

Henry's chest puffed up like a bantam rooster as his gnarled fingers closed around the darts. “I used to be good at this,” he told us, and from behind his coke-bottle glasses he peered intently at the board, shuffled his feet to the right…and then aimed his dart at Simon.

“Not quite on target, mate,” said Simon, jumping out of the way and then moving Henry around so he faced in the right direction. “Now, let's see you score.”

Fascinated, I watched Henry nudge his thick glasses back up his nose and then let fly with his first dart. Amazingly, it hit the target. Nowhere near the bull's-eye of course, but at least the dart landed on the board.

“Yay!” cheered Johnny, his full head of hair nodding rhythmically, as, hands shaking, he pushed his walking frame towards his elated teammate. “Good one, Henry. First hit for you today!”