The Blue Flowers of Trouble and Desire
by Emjay Zielony
Part Four
The following are extracts of my erotica novella "The Blue Flowers of Trouble and Desire. I've condensed them and left off a previous chapter of backstory but I welcome any feedback (good or bad) to improve my writing. I will endeavour to publish one part per week. Please enjoy.
A good eight hours sleep still left me exhausted. I tried to hum the song 'Thank God it's Friday' but I couldn't find the tune in my head. Besides it was only Thursday. What a week so far. A cup of instant coffee which, as bland as it was, managed to pep me up.
Driving to Garden Village I mulled over where I thought I stood, not a hundred percent sure of anything. If I'd been reported I wouldn't be heading to work. Mrs Prendergast hadn't said a thing. Not a hint. Not even a sly look. Could she be playing her cards close to her chest? Surely she would have had some reaction if she'd seen something. I kept thinking about the curtains. How could she not have noticed? Maybe she was so obsessed with the photo she simply didn't. At least I wasn't anxious.
Mrs Quinn was in a singing mood.
"Thank God it's Thuuursday." She trilled.
"Funny," I said, "I was just thinking of that song this morning before I thought, oh yeah, its only Thursday."
"Thirsty Thursday."
"I thought it was tipple?"
"No dear, that's Tuesdays. Tipple Tuesday." I wondered what nicknames she had for the other days as she never, as far as I could tell, went a day without a drink.
"So are you coming by?" she asked.
"You know what Mrs Quinn, I will, thanks."
"Not before four-thirty" she reminded.
"Thats OK," I said, "I don't finish till five."
I knocked on the door of number 2 and poked my head into Mrs Rutherford's. "Ah Mrs Rutherford, just letting you now I'm changing the routine and I'll come after I've done Mrs Jackson's"
"Oh Dear." she said, " Did Rowena ask you to do that, I'm so sorry, I don't mean to make a fuss."
"It's all good, it doesn't make any difference to me, really it doesn't."
"Oh thank you," she said, " I don't know why I get so engrossed in those silly programmes.''
She turned her head back to the screen.
My heart started to race a little as I approached number three. I knocked on the door and waited.
"Come in."
I opened the door and took a tentative step inside. At her dining table Mrs Prendergast was sitting in a dressing gown eating a bowl of cereal while flicking through a magazine. She looked over the spectacles perched on her nose.
"Oh hello, I heard you'd be early today."
"Yes, Rowena has asked me to change the order so I don't interrupt Mrs Rutherford's TV."
"I thought it was something about the laundry. Never mind." She started to get up.
"No that's okay," I said, "finish your breakfast, I'll start on the bathroom." A quick shot of adrenalin stabbed me as I said 'bathroom' but Mrs Prendergast just smiled and went back to her magazine. I whipped the cloth around the bathroom feeling a touch jittery. I told myself not to read something out of nothing or I'd end up a nervous wreck. I grabbed the bin liner and as I headed back through to the kitchen Mrs Prendergast looked up.
"That was quick."
That was quick? What did she mean by that? But before I could head down the slide of paranoia she stood up and stepped to the sink.
"I'm not sure when you're expected to clean next door when she spends every minute in front of that TV." she said as she rinsed her bowl under the faucet, "It'd drive me quite potty,'' she placed the bowl upside down on the dish rack and looked straight at me. "Quite potty."
"Um yeah" I replied as I headed past her outside to the cart "I don't know how she does it" I came back in with the vacuum cleaner but by the time I'd bent down to plug it in and turned back I'd noticed she'd already slipped back into her bathroom.
Next door Mrs Jackson seemed subdued. Again she was in her dressing gown drying her hair but there were no snide accusations as I started with her kitchen. She stopped for a moment.
"Thank you for yesterday." she said.
"Sorry?"
"Cleaning up the plate, I meant to say thank you."
This was out of character and I couldn't help wondering why this sudden change of tune. Maybe she'd heard about the maple tree incident and didn't want to appear like a Mr Chivers. Maybe I'd done enough to soften her or it dawned on her I wasn't trying to spy on her. I had just started entertaining the dangerous thought she might be about to start flirting with me when she stopped her drying again.
"And
do
make sure you wipe under the taps in the bathroom, they're filthy!"
Nope, it was still the same Mrs Jackson.
That afternoon I was down for mowing grass. This was a job I shared with Archie. A retired bank manager, Archie had taken on the job as Head Maintenance Manager six years ago. If I wasn't around he was the only maintenance person but that was how liked to refer himself, Head Maintenance Manager at New Peterborough Garden Village. No-one saw any reason to begrudge him that. He was proud of his job and did it with diligence. It kept him fit and he was lean, save for a small paunch you'd expect of a man approaching seventy. With angular features and a full head of silvery hair he could, if he chose, flirt with a woman half his age and get away with it.
He told me over coffee breaks how he'd sat in the same office at the same bank looking out the same window over the town square for forty years. He had, he said, grown quite envious of the workmen that would tend the trees, shrubs and the flower gardens. Sleeves rolled up in summer, getting amongst the fall foliage with rakes when the seasons moved on and even in winter, being bundled up against the cold to shovel snow. It meant you could feel the air, and breath in the changes. He lived alone. His wife had been gone for six years and he said he couldn't stand the thought of being retired and rattling around his big house all day by himself. But he was also glad he didn't having to spend retirement rattling around his big house with his wife still in it. Either way he seemed quite nonchalant about his wife's passing and I suspected it hadn't been the greatest of marriages.
On gardening duties we would take turns. One week one of us would trim hedges and weed the gardens while the other would do the mowing and the next we'd swap about. I enjoyed the mowing far more. The main mower was a green John Deere ride-on with two big headlights which made me wonder who would want to mow lawns at night if not just to annoy the neighbours. But I found it somewhat meditative with earmuffs on, following the pattern of the cut, working my way up from the front gate to the main complex. I swerved round the trees, backed under shrubs and swung round past the cottages. Mrs Quinn caught my eye on my second pass and through her kitchen window she raised her glass of gin in salute. I checked the time, it was just after three so I figured she could easily be on her fourth.
I parked the mower back in the barn and was pleased to note I'd shaved five minutes off my previous best time but had to concede that the spring growth had slowed as we were edging into summer. It had also left me hot and sticky and so I headed into the laundry and rinsed off in the staff shower and put on a spare tunic from my locker. I'd also worked up a bit of a thirst and felt I could already taste the cool gin and tonic at Mrs Quinn's. I checked the time. 4.50.
Archie walked in under the roller door and set the rake he was carrying to one side and hung the pruning shears on the wall.
"Phew" said wiping his brow, "It's getting hot" He sauntered over to the old refrigerator and pulled out a couple of Budweisers, "Fancy a cold one?" he gestured as he flipped the top off one with the top of the other"
"Thanks" I said as I took a swig "Save me downing Mrs Quinn's gin in one hit"
Archie chuckled.
"It's that time, you go down, take a couple of beers, I'm gonna freshen up first," he said with a wink "I might get lucky!"
As I approached Mrs Quinn's, chatter and chortles were drifting out the open door.
They were dissecting the maple tree incident.
"Well he did apologise," said Mavis Dawes propped forward on a puffy green sofa wearing an outfit straight out of a 70s sitcom with a matching headband that held up a bouffant of hair too black to be true.
"He never?" Mrs Prendergast queried from the armchair.
"He did," Mrs Dawes continued, "Later in the afternoon, on the path to Moretons."
"Well I think he should have apologised to all of us, right there at the table."
"It was better than that dear, I got him to apologise twice." she explained, "He came up to me and sort of mumbled, I'm sorry for earlier, and I said, excuse me? and he went, I'm sorry for earlier...Now I heard him perfectly the first time, I just wanted to hear him say it again."
Mrs Quinn guffawed.
"Good for you" said Shirley Douglas sitting next Mrs Dawes. Shirley didn't live at Garden Village but was a long time friend of Mrs Quinn's. She ran a small nic-nac shop in town called The Studio where her own unsold paintings waited patiently about the walls. She wasn't the greatest artist but with faded blue jeans, a loose checked shirt over a t-shirt and her long grey hair pulled back in a pony tail she did look the part.
"Here he is!" Mrs Quinn announced, spying me as I stepped through the kitchen. "What can I fix you?"
"It's all right Mrs Quinn, I'll just start with a beer." I handed over the two bottles.
"Thirsty work on that mower I'll bet" She stepped to the sink and as swift as an oil-rig roughneck, popped open one of bottles with the other just as Archie had done. "Do you want a glass?"
"No thanks Mrs Quinn" I took back the beer back and gulped, "You're right, it is getting hot."
"Call me Edna, first names please," she said, "We're not some ladies society. Anyhoo, we were just talking about a maple tree. Funny story."
"He knows." Alice piped in, "He was at my place when I went to get the photo."
She looked at me with a smile. My heart skipped a beat but before I could work out if that was something Archie bounded through the door.
"Ive got you a present Edna" he announced as he produced a bottle of Old Forrester Bourbon from behind his back, "Ta-daa!"
"Ooh.' cooed Edna.
"And..." Archie pulled his other hand from behind his back. "..mint, fresh from the garden"
"Mint Juleps!" Edna exclaimed "I'll make a syrup right now." She pulled out a saucepan from under the sink, spooned in three or four tablespoons of sugar, ran in two cups of water from the faucet and placed it on the stove to simmer. "Oh Archie, you know I'll marry you if you ask me."
"Well, Edna fix me one of your special gins and I'll see if I get up the courage."
Edna popped two large cubes of ice in a glass and poured the gin till there was only a quarter of the glass left to squeeze in a splash of tonic and a slice of lemon. She passed it to Archie.
