Community Service (2 page)

“
What?”

“
The work program.” In the
ensuing five days the judge had completely forgotten Mister Wilson,
but Albert recognized her immediately. “You’re my assignment for
Saturdays.”

Albert recognized her instantly. His
heart sank. His back was a little stiff and sore this morning and
he hadn’t eaten much lately. Not in the last couple of days,
anyway.

“
Ah.” She shrunk back a
little in the doorway. “Oh. That’s right.”

She had, like a good little citizen,
and a shining example to her community, signed up for something of
the sort. A local NGO, a charitable organization that operated food
banks, soup kitchens and rehabilitation programs of one ilk or
another, had contacted her.

And of course the bloody fellow had to
show up at the crack of dawn. Marion had sort of thought it wasn’t
going to happen because it had been so long since she’d signed up.
She’d completely forgotten about it. All the applicants were
properly screened of course, or so she had been assured. There was
some shortage of suitable placements for people. She knew that
much.

“
All right, come in.”
Marion had suggested gardening on her application form, it was
either that or clean out the basement and the garage and she
wouldn’t wish that on herself, let alone some challenged individual
from the off-the-street program.

“
Salvatore Doyle set it
up.” The man stepped in, peering a little in the sudden dimness.
“He told me this was your day.”

She still had the curtains closed.
Marion hustled over and opened up the living room curtains,
opposite the entryway as Albert stood waiting. Marion turned and
looked at him brightly, not seeing any real significance in his
sudden intake of breath. The sun was right behind her and now she
could get a better look at him and have a moment to
think.

“
Gardening, gardening,
gardening.” She looked like a proper idiot with that one. “Ah,
Doyle, eh. I didn’t know he was involved in the
program.”

“
He’s my probie. Two
hundred hours of community service.”

“
Ah, okay.” Her eyes went
back and forth and then came up to him.

“
Ah, so, ah, I’ll just go
in the garage and, ah, find some shovels and stuff?”

She nodded brightly. He seemed to know
more about it than she did at this exact moment.

Pointing, in response to her nod,
Albert moved to a door off to his left. It was a split-level house,
with a two-car garage dominating the front elevation.

She nodded, still relatively
speechless. He had been between her and a long mirror beside the
door.

“
The switch is just inside
the door.” Marion was peering fixedly past Mister Wilson, for
surely this could be no one else, only she hadn’t got her contacts
in yet.

She was transfixed by the sight of her
body’s sharp silhouette, brightly limned from behind by the harsh
glare of the early-morning sun, through the thin white cotton of
her nightie.

He must have seen practically
everything.

Her heart palpitated somewhat when the
significance of all this sank in, but he was definitely gone. She
could hear him clunking and banging around out there and sooner or
later he was going to come back and ask a question.

Clothes.

She would need clothes for this.
Marion bolted for the bedroom, slightly giddy and with all sorts of
thoughts rushing through her head.

***

Gardening, gardening, gardening…what
in the hell do I know about gardening? Not much, on the spur of the
moment.

Shorts, that was it. A grubby old
man’s shirt, big and loose, some sandals or something, and she had
better get out there. Ah, yes, sunglasses and a hat of some
description. She settled for a straw hat with a narrow, up-turned
brim.

Screw the bra, this is
really something.

Albert was waiting for her out in
front of the garage door. To her embarrassment the Cudlows drove
past in their charcoal grey monstrosity of a vehicle. Their
eyebrows were twitching and they seemed unable to tear their eyes
away from the unusual sight of a strange man, wearing work clothes
on a Saturday morning in this neighbourhood.

And he looked like he was ready to go
to work, too. She sighed at her own thoughts, and transferring them
to the Cudlows might not be entirely fair. She was the one that was
all shook up.

Albert, not quite knowing what she
wanted, had a spade, a shovel, small hand tools, he had the
weed-whacker leaning up inside the garage door.

“
Oh, very good then.” She
stood there looking at the tools. “I have to be honest with
you.”

“
Ah, what’s
that?”

“
I don’t really know where
to start.”

He grinned, his ugly parting look from
court day long since forgotten.

“
Well, why don’t we take a
look around then, Ma’am?”

***

As she took the fellow around in the
backyard, and then along the front, showing him the ornamental
shrubs, the bedding plants, the accents and the structures, the
contrast or what should have been if the place was in a better
state, he nodded and said one or two nice things.

He quickly suggested weeding, which
she agreed to. If nothing else, it was a big and not very pleasant
job, and he was only here for four hours or so he said. She didn’t
really question it. Spring was well-advanced and quite frankly she
had been procrastinating.

“
All righty then.” She
said it confidently enough.

Marion desperately needed her coffee,
her paper, and a shower, in approximately that order.

It was pretty much the same on any
given Saturday or Sunday.

She was surprised by how dependent she
was on her little routine, as she patted him on his hard and
surprisingly high-off-the-ground bicep, turned and went into the
house to get her own drab and miserable little life back into some
semblance of order.

***

She watched him briefly through a
crack in her bedroom window curtains, thinking she really ought to
get moving. He was down on hands and knees. But he had set to with
a will, and at least had some idea of what he was doing if the
little piles of dead greenery stacked here and there along her
herbaceous border were anything to go by. Not that she could see
well enough from here to see what they were. Turning away, she
caught a furtive look in the mirror of her vanity table.

She smiled superciliously at herself
in passing.

Bitch. You’d better put
some eyes in.

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.