Community Service Read Free Page B

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
coffee, 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