Orchard Grove (4 page)

Naturally, I chose the latter.

T
he brutal truth: I looked like shit.

For sure I smelled like it too.

In the six weeks since my “comprehensive foot reconstruction surgery,” or so the doctors called it, I’d only bathed three times since the act of setting myself down into a tub of hot water was a project that required so much strength and balance, I couldn’t possibly do it alone. That meant enlisting Susan. While she portrayed someone who was always willing to help, it was just easier to let the bathing go, opting instead for sponge baths. Take it from a scriptwriter, portraying the willing wife and actually wanting to be the willing wife are two different things entirely.

But even when I did bathe, I had to be careful. From what the doctors told me, getting any water on my incisions would mean infection. I also had a six-inch stainless steel rod that had been drilled through the bones of my index toe. A full inch of the rod now stuck out of the toe. One day when I was finally healed, the doctor would grab hold of the one inch piece of rod and yank the entire length out with a pair of common constructer worker pliers. In the meantime, should the rod become bent or misaligned in any way, it would not only cause severe pain, but it would require a second surgery to straighten it out.

No two ways about it: I was housebound, and smelly, and for good reason.

In the bathroom, I shaved and gave myself a sponge bath. Slipped into a fresh, plain black T-shirt and put on a pair of clean Levis. For footwear, a single, brown leather, Tony Lama cowboy boot on my left foot while the bandaged wounds and the exposed rod on my right foot were covered with a thin black sock and a knee-high, Velcro-strapped walking boot. Stealing a look at myself in the mirror, I smiled. It might have been the first smile I’d seen on my face in ages (who looks at their face all that much when they’re not content?). Maybe my house was about to be foreclosed on, and maybe I wasn’t working, and maybe my wife and I had drifted apart, and maybe I was in a great deal of pain all the time, but a big part of me felt like a teenager again.

“
Here’s Johnny
,” I said to my reflection. And then, for the first time in a long time, I made my way out of the house.

S
he lies back on the chaise lounge, feeling the sun soak into her face and her naked breasts, and she once more wonders how she got back here. To this place that holds so many horrid memories. Why purposely seek out a house that’s been built on the property where you were hunted like a wild animal by a monster who called himself your stepfather?

The answer is simple. This is no longer the place where she was hunted, but instead the place where she became the hunter.

Sure, she sees herself as a girl running desperately through the trees trying to hide from the step-monster. But she also feels empowered. She beat the son of a bitch and now, by returning to this place where the apple trees have been ripped out to make way for homes and cute little families, she’s come full circle. It will become the place where she will beat another monster.

Meet the new monster… same as the old monster…

But for now, no one knows what happened on Orchard Grove back in the late 1970s and early Eighties, and no one ever will. Only she, her step-monster, an Albany Police Department Detective by the name of Miller, and the Devil know. And that’s enough.

B
olstered by my crutches, I stood as straight and upright as possible inside the dining room, my eyes looking out the rear picture window onto the backyard and the invisible pot patch beyond the privacy fence. I inhaled and exhaled to calm my nerves, like I was only moments away from picking up my date for the junior prom.

When I felt good enough about “me,” I carefully negotiated the two steps down into the den and opened the sliding glass doors. I stepped out onto the deck, leaned my bodyweight onto the crutches, looked up to the sky, felt the good warmth of the morning sun shining down upon my clean-shaven face. It was then that I heard the distinct and pretty sound of chirping and I was almost ashamed of myself for having forgotten what for the past two springs and summers had become my, let’s call it, fatherly duty.

Nested inside a small hole up over my head in the aluminum soffit was a pair of robins that had been coming to this house to birth their babies for years now. The robins were so used to Susan and me at this point, they didn’t even fly away when we came outside onto the deck. Some of that had to do with familiarity and some of it had to do with the fact that I often fed them birdseed, especially when the momma robin was clearly with child. But since my foot operation, even a simple task like feeding the birds had become a project. Sometimes Susan fed the birds, but more often, she forgot all about it.

Susan was a working girl after all.

Now that I was outside however, I had no trouble with grabbing a scoop full of seed from the fifty pound bag that leaned up against a small metal shelf to my left, and reaching up into the round hole, gently depositing the food inside it, onto the flat interior aluminum panel. Almost immediately you could hear the robins pecking at the food, like I was their life savior, and I guess, in a way I was. But I’d grown to love those birds over the years, and who knows, maybe they loved me. This might seem a bit silly, but they are what we had in the place of children, and to be further honest, I sometimes worried about what would become of them when the day finally came for Susan and I to move out, and move on with our separate lives.

I wiped my hands off on my jeans and once more inhaled and exhaled.

Shifting my gaze over my right shoulder, I caught sight of her. With the wood stockade fence surrounding the perimeter of our property and a similar fence surrounding hers, I could only make out the upper portion of her body. The portion that enticed me the most since it was naked. The back of her head, the erect nipple-tipped left breast, her bare shoulders and arms.

My breath escaped me. It was all I could do not to pass out on the spot.

Shifting myself on my crutches so that I faced her property directly, I started to make my way across the wood deck in her direction. It was only a walk of maybe fifty or so paces, but it seemed like fifty miles.

By the time I got to the other side of the house-length wood deck, I knew I’d crossed the point of no return. Lana was not only sexy and alluring, but she was intuitive too. I’ll say that for her. Because my deck was a good two or three feet higher than hers, it allowed me to peer over the tops of both privacy fences, down on her. All the time I had been hobbling my way across the deck, I sensed she knew her morning sunning routine was suddenly about to be intruded upon. It was as if I could see the fine hairs on her pretty little neck standing up at attention the closer I came to the edge of my deck, and the fence gate just beyond it.

Then, just like that, she lifted up her head, rolled over on the chaise lounge, and looked up at me. Even though both our fences and a narrow strip of grass in between separated us, the distance between us could not have been more than fifteen feet. I was that close, but considering the relative difficulty of using the crutches on uneven ground, I was also that far away.

Quickly, but somehow gracefully, she snatched the Japanese robe from off the empty lounge beside her, and tossed it over herself. Sitting up, she tied the drawstring around her narrow waist. Did it in one fluid, natural, if not panic-free motion.

“Can I help you?” she said loud enough for me to hear over both fences. When she spoke, a slight smile formed on her face. I took the smile as part embarrassment, part taken-by-surprise, part happy for the unexpected company.

“I’m sorry,” I said, my now sweaty palms squeezing the rubber-gripped crutch handles. “I didn’t mean to startle you.” Which is to say, our relationship began with an apology of sorts. My apology for sneaking up on her.

She raised herself up off the lounge, stood up on the deck looking as smooth and beautifully shaped as she did lying down.

“You’ll have to pardon me,” she said. “We lived in Southern California for ages. I’m soaking in the sun while the getting is good.”

“The sun has been shining on you ever since you moved in,” I pointed out. I started to laugh nervously, and I felt the blood’s warmth as it filled my cheeks and made them blush. “I hope you don’t think I’ve been spying on you.”

She casually crossed her arms over her chest. “Well, have you been?”

I felt a slight start in my pulse.

“Me?” I said. “Not a chance.”

“You’re the screenwriter. I’ve met your wife Susan. She’s very attractive.”

“You both attend the same sweat shop, or so I’m told.”

“P90X,” she said. “Susan knows how to use her body, let me tell you.” I sensed her shooting me a wink under her sunglasses. “You’re one lucky boy.”

Reaching with both hands around the back of her head, she pulled out the rubber band that was holding her hair in a tight ponytail, allowing it to fall to her shoulders. Running both her hands through the thick hair, it came to veil her face.

She added, “I just assumed I was the only one on Orchard Grove who stayed home during the day.”

“Used to be
I
was the only one.”

“So you get to hang around the house all day and ahhh, spy on the new neighbors?”

Another start in my heart. More intense this time. Already, she knew how to play me.

“Screenwriters always work from home,” I said. Then, looking down at my black-booted right foot where it rested on its heel on the edge of my wood deck. “I’ve tried the Starbucks thing and it just doesn’t work.”

“You step on a landmine in some faraway war zone?”

Her question took me by surprise since I was sure she couldn’t see it from where she was standing. But then, I’m sure that at some point during the many weeks she and her husband had been living on Orchard Grove, she’d seen me getting around on a rare venture outside with my crutches. Or, more realistically, perhaps Susan had let her in on my operation.

“Nothing so romantic, I’m afraid,” I said. “Hammer toe and bunion surgery. Plus a crack in the foot plate.”

“Ouch, that sounds worse than a landmine injury.”

“You make it past forty, the parts start to wear out. One by one.”

“But once you replace them all, the vehicle is as good as new. Besides, from where I’m standing, the body looks as though it’s still in mint condition.”

Her compliment sent a wave of warmth shooting up and down my spine. Thank God for the sun shining down so brightly on our backyards, because otherwise, she might have noticed how red my face must have been by then. I don’t think I’d blushed over something a woman said to me in ten years. But in the span of two minutes, Lana made me blush twice.

“But where are my manners?” she said. “I’m Lana, and I was just about to grab an iced coffee. Would you like one?”

Thought she’d never ask.

“I’m Ethan, Lana,” I said, gingerly making my way down the deck stairs, then hobbling toward the fence gate. “It’s really great to meet you, and if it’s okay with you, I like my coffee hot.”

“Like my women,”
I wanted to add. But I didn’t want to seem too forward to a woman I’d already fallen head over heels for.