I woke slowly the fuzz of a bad hang over dissipating slowly. I let my left hand fall to my wife's side of the bed. For some reason I was afraid she might not be there. My hand fell on her hip as it had every day for the last ten years. I felt ill at ease as the memories of last night's New Years Eve party began to reassemble themselves in my mind. As I forced my eyes open I saw July sitting in the bed next to me looking at me with a strange expression it seemed almost like fear,
I said," Jules what happened last night?" An old adage my father told me ran through my thoughts if you don't want to know don't ask. My memories of last night were still jumbled in my mind but, I was worried about something.
July said," we went to a party at Brad and Diane's and you got drunk."
Then it hit me the question I didn't want the answer too I asked anyway," Jules where were you when the ball dropped. I looked every where for you so I could welcome the New Year in with a kiss from my wife."
The tracks her tears made on her cheeks told me what I didn't want to know.
To me Jules is the most beautiful girl in the world five foot four, long shoulder length black hair, and one hundred twenty pounds of all women. We have been together since junior high school. She keeps her weight at one twenty by walking. She is up every morning at seven o'clock makes breakfast and gets me off to work. Then she walks through the neighborhood two or three miles if she puts on a pound she adds another mile until it's gone.
That's one of the reasons I'm worried now. I cut almost everybody in the neighborhood's grass. As a matter of fact that's how I got our house. I am a landscape architect and I did all the landscaping for our subdivision. The builders didn't sell the houses as fast as they thought they could and got into money trouble they paid me with the house we live in. It was a lot more house than I could afford at the time so I was happy. Most of the people in the neighborhood sat in a chair to earn a living. I worked with one of my four crews every day.
About a week ago I had walked a few houses away from my crew to see what was wrong with a sprinkler head that wasn't popping up as it should.
As I was clearing the grass away from it I heard the owner of the house talking to a neighbor he said," Rob said he is going to bang that one at the next party." As he said it I saw Jules walking by.
I thought Rob was smelling around Jules at the last three or four parties they had a couple of dances and were talking off by themselves for a minute or two.
Rob was the local lothario. I saw his car occasionally parked in a driveway were it shouldn't have been and cars in his drive that shouldn't have been there. The word was he had banged half the wives in our neighborhood.
We usually had a party somewhere on Jefferson Circle every month and it was Brad and Diane's turn this month which was also New Years Eve all of the neighbors were invited.
I spent my evenings designing patios and gardens for my neighbors and surrounding areas. I had spent a lot of time designing Brad's back yard.
Our address was on Jefferson Circle we were one of the houses placed on the outside of a big circular road which was in the middle of a big square of land. Which meant each of us had a pie shaped lot brad's back yard was situated so that it went back to the corner of the square which made it very big in the back there were four yards that were like that in the allotment.
Brad had gotten complaints from the neighbors for the building he built in his back yard. He called it his garage or his workshop depending on what he was thinking at the time. But it was more than that. He put in a pool next to it and had three dressing rooms facing the pool each had a john and a shower up stairs three bedrooms and two baths. I designed and installed the patio that goes from the house surrounding the pool to the end of his big out building
I also designed the rose garden behind it. It's a maze between two trellises with climbing roses every ten feet or so the path widens with a table and a few chairs there is about two hundred feet of pathway that snakes from one side of the lot to the other. There is one way in and one way out unless you deal with the thorns on the rose bushes.
