She’s asking me? Not only did I arrive this very morning, many of these issues have gone unchecked for a year. Still, spies who collect information on sexually transmitted infections and diseases? Hardly a Bond mission. “It’s definitely an option we should consider.”
I’m also not sure why the universe finds it necessary to rub in my face that everyone but me is getting laid, butrude.
My gaze snags on another title, and as I pinch the stapled corner and lift the article closer, every instinct shouts at me not to look.
Loofah Colors Reveal the Golden Rules… A Guide to Getting Down and Dirty after 60
Evidently, there’s an entire code, with different shades of loofahs signifying interests and preferences.
With the color key widely known and used among residents of Lakeview Retirement Village, I read in horror,no one has to feel awkward.
Let the record show, we surpassed awkward three articles ago. But Jan takes it to the next level by informing me she’s already planned a safe sex seminar for this upcoming Friday. She’s been so stressed out about it, too, and how it might affect her rapport with the residents. “Which is why,” she continues, and a hollow pit forms in my gut, “it’ll be such a relief that you can give it.”
Chapter Four
By the time I pull into Wanda’s and Grandma Helen’s driveway, I’m thoroughly drained of energy and in need of bleach for my eyeballsandbrain. It took the entire afternoon and a little into the evening, but I pored through every headline and story, compiling notes and to-dos, along with ideas on how to spin the community’s image.
I cut the engine of my car and just sit there in a daze, struggling to conquer the lump of anxiety that seems to be getting bigger, not smaller, now that I’m here. For up to ninety days, as that’s the allotted yearly amount for guests below the minimum age requirement. It’s how they—and I quote—“keep the riffraff out.”
After what I’ve learned today, I’m pretty sure most of the riffraff is coming frominsidethe village. Golf cart incidents are at an all-time high, as are calls to police, and contrary to what one might think, the two are completely unrelated. A portion of Lakeview’s residents thought the city’s law enforcement officers should cater to their every grievance and whim, and boy did they have a lot of both.
An ongoing dispute resulted in the arrest of a seventy-eight-year-old woman for the unwanted trimming of her neighbor’s hedges. When an uncooperative patient in his sixties was discharged from the clinic for being abusive to the staff, he stole a medical transport van. Police later found him three miles down the road in the parking lot of a Publix, drinking coffee and smoking a cigarette he bummed off a customer.
There were also multiple instances of public indecency, and…drunken orgies.
No wonder they need all those loofahs.
I shudder and slam my eyes shut, but it doesn’t make the connotations behind the colors go away. Same goes for the ticking clock Jan hung above my head, when she told me she would have no choice but to sell if she couldn’t turn things around. Her voice had cracked at the end. “This property is the only piece of Ed I have left.”
Naturally, I asked what occupancy rate we’d need to hit to cover baseline expenses. After hemming and hawing, she admitted she didn’t precisely know and brought me several spreadsheets with numbers that didn’t match or add up. “Ed handled the financials and the majority of the business side,” she confessed as she gnawed on a fingernail. “I liked tours and signing up residents who became my friends. Now everyone’s upset with me.”
It reminded me of my mom, how she’d divulge more than was appropriate or land us in a situation beyond her and then look to me to fix it.
From taking care of her infant stepson so she could focus on building a marriage that’d started with her being the other woman; getting out in the snowstorm and pushing the car after she landed us in a snowbank and began to panic; or when I came home every afternoon from school with a backpack full of assignments I had to put off so I could do laundry or handle dinner or put the siblings she continued to have with good old Larry to bed.
Again and again, I’ve rolled up my sleeves and figured it out, pay no attention to the woman behind the curtain.
Ninety-six percent occupancy’s the industry sweet spot; Lakeview Retirement Village requires eighty-five to stay afloat; and residency’s currently sitting at a dismal sixty-two percent.
But it’s not like sitting in my car will change a job that’s more property manager than publicist, so I climb out and snag my large roller suitcase, a duffel, and my laptop bag—the rest can wait.
Weighed down and wearing heels that pinch my toes, I wobble to the front door with an impressive cacophony of swears and grunts.
I test the knob, find it unlocked, and shove inside, practically tripping over the threshold. Or perhaps it’s the folded rug locking up the wheels on my suitcase.
Oof.At the dig of the handle in my gut, I stumble inside, as graceful as a giraffe on skates and twice as loud.
I pause and strain my ears, tuning in to the rhythm of the house.
Glasses clink, swirling into happy chatter and laughter, the sounds of a wine or margarita night drifting from the kitchen. Wanda’s laugh always gives away her level of inebriation, as she goes from loud and giggly to boisterous and cackling.
And what I heard was definitely a cackle, even louder than the ticking of the vintage clock on the mantel that occasionally chimes and scares the shit out of me.
A feline face peeks from around the corner, reluctant, and I hold my breath. With Fifi, you only get so many chances.
Keeping my movements slow, I drop all but my laptop bag, which gets nestled on the second shelf of a console table that holds an assortment of knickknacks. Essential-oil-infused-steam billows from a moon goddess diffuser I’d recognize as a gift from Wanda even if I hadn’t watched Grandma Helen unwrap it at her eightieth birthday bash three summers ago.
With a sigh of relief, I kick off my shoes, then crouch next to my stuff and extend my hand to the longhaired kitty with a smoky face and one bright blue eye.
