Chapter 1
Henry Jarvis stared up into the prematurely shedding branches of his prized orange tree as if it were a disobedient child. He hated to get started late working in the garden but he had overslept and was impatient to get caught up. Wearing nothing but an old faded bathing suit and ragged tennis shoes, his movements were almost frenetic. His dark forelock kept falling over his weather-beaten face and his bifocals were speckled with a fine dust of peat moss. He was lean for a man of fifty-seven, but his body was beginning to sag around the breasts and upper arms. He loathed the fact that his frequent jogging couldn’t remedy this unattractive result of aging. Above the frayed waistband of his bathing suit, the top two inches of a massive scar convoluted the skin of his abdomen, the aftermath of a bungling surgeon’s appendectomy when Henry was fourteen. He despised the ugly scar as much as he hated his sagging flesh.
He contemplated the strenuous task of spraying the leaves as the extension telephone in the adjacent tool shed began to ring. He stared at the yellow phone perched on an old kitchen stool as it rang three more times. Impatiently, he jerked up the receiver. “Hello?”
“Oh. Ann. Ann Pearson. It’s you, again.” He stared unblinkingly at the ceiling, his fist on his hip. “No. . .I’m not angry. . .I’m just busy, that’s all. . .Well, yes, I had a very nice time, too, but look. . .” Henry’s feet moved restlessly. “No! That would not be convenient. I. . .I’m expecting some of my business associates to arrive, any minute. . .I don’t know when they’ll leave. . .No. . .Tomorrow is out of the question. Excuse me, let me interrupt here, just a minute. Your persistence is forcing me into a compromising situation. I do not like to be rude and I know I was the one who answered your damned ad. We met, and I watched you consume nearly three bottles of wine as I listened to your endless self-pity. I do not care to relate to anyone with such an obvious psychological problem. It is my conclusion we are not compatible in any way and I do not care to hear from you again.” Henry’s hands were trembling. He slammed the receiver down with such force the supporting stool rocked precariously on its wooden legs.
“Women! Stupid, screwed-up cunts, every one of ’em!”
The telephone began ringing again. Henry jerked the plug of the telephone wire out of the receptacle on the shed wall. The ringing could still be heard from the telephone inside the house and he snorted in disgust as he wrestled his old wooden stepladder from the shed out into the yard. Stepping back up into the shed, he picked up his safety mask and the spray canister, shaking it to ascertain the quantity of the Bard-Oil mixture inside. Positioning the ladder, he climbed up into the branches of the tree and began spraying, still muttering aloud to himself.
The metal tool shed served another purpose, of which Henry was not aware. Words spoken from its interior were emitted through the double-door opening as if from a large megaphone.
“Yoo-hoo, Henry!” Miss Mabel stood quietly on the other side of the redwood fence, pensively fingering the stem of her climbing rose vine, her myopic stare bright and alert.
Engrossed in his task, Henry glanced down impatiently from his high perch toward the hailing voice.
“You look like a man from Mars with that mask on your face! You havin’ trouble with your orange tree? I hope it’s nothing serious. . .those are the sweetest oranges I’ve ever tasted and I always appreciate the ones you give me.”
“Oh, hello, Miss Mabel. She’s just got a touch of white fly. Nothing this Bard-Oil won’t cure. I’ll still have a nice crop of oranges.” Henry gave one last squirt of spray to the top leaves and backed down the ladder.
“Be careful, Henry. You sure could take a nasty fall from that old ladder.”
Henry walked over to the fence and noticed the pale eye watching him through a hole in one of the redwood planks was wrinkling itself at the corners. The old biddy must be smiling, he thought to himself. He removed his safety mask and wiped his forehead with a gritty forearm. He stared back at the eye and wanted to ram his finger into it, cataract lens and all. A slow smile stretched itself across his face.
“I’m careful, Miss Mable. How are things going for you?”
She prattled on like a demented magpie about her heart condition, her kidney problems and her rheumatism. She asked why he had been working so extra hard these last few weeks, where he’d rented the tiller he’s been using last Wednesday for that beautiful new bed of cauliflower and what had he been planting Friday when he’d been out here all the live-long day. Henry realized she must have been watching him from the hole in the fence on a regular basis.
“Well, I guess I’d better get on with my cookie baking. I’ll bring you a basket of warm ones as soon as they’re done, Henry. You look like you could use a nice treat today.” Miss Mabel apologized for interrupting Henry’s work and went inside her house still talking to herself or to her cat, Henry couldn’t tell which.
As soon as he heard her back door slam, Henry threw down his mask and spray gun, hurried into the tool shed and returned in seconds with a hammer and a handful of large nails. Digging a three-foot long board from the edge of a flower bed, he nailed it over the hole in the fence, slamming the hammer against the nails with all his strength.
Putting his tools away, Henry scowled at the clock he had propped in the window and decided to stop working and eat lunch. He drank three beers with his lentil soup and his stomach hurt like hell for the rest of the afternoon.
