a deep breath and savors the lingering aroma of Diana’s fragrant perfume, which has recently replaced the chronic household odor of burnt toast and stale tomato soup. Yes, it was a brand-new day. And he actually has a date lined up for later in the week! Okay, she’s a nun. Then again, it made sense to befriend someone who believes in an afterlife, seeing as they don’t have much time left in the current one.
He walks over to the window and looks out at Bobbie Anne’s postage stamp of a backyard. She’s hanging wash on the line, as she does every morning about this time when it’s not raining. Hayden breathes a sigh of relief that Diana didn’t pursue the subject of his intimate knowledge of Bobbie Anne’s rates. Besides, he can’t ever tell her the truth anyway.
chapter ten
F ive months earlier, the week before he’d been diagnosed with The Cancer, Hayden had paid a professional call on Bobbie Anne. It was the one-year anniversary of Mary’s death and Hayden felt so wretched that he was preparing to get extremely drunk and start the car with the garage door closed in order to join Mary, wherever she was. Or at the very least, escape an anguished existence without her. She had been his compass in life. And though he’d been tempted several times throughout the years by attractive female coworkers and clients in distant cities, where he could have easily had a fling, he was never unfaithful.
While swigging scotch and fashioning the garden hose into a suicide apparatus he’d seen the fresh-faced and curvaceous Bobbie Anne in the adjacent backyard shaking out some rugs, her gorgeous hair that appeared reddish-gold in the sunlight hanging loose about her shoulders, and making for a striking contrast against her creamy complexion. In the neighborhood it was rather common knowledge that she saw men between ten and two. And so with his mind clouded by grief and whiskey he’d put down the hose, crossed the yard, and requested an appointment.
Bobbie Anne smiled pleasantly, as if Hayden was asking to borrow a cup of sugar. And in her friendly southern drawl she instructed him to arrive at eleven the following morning and confirmed that her fee was indeed two hundred dollars in cash.
Hayden immediately abandoned the hooch and hose and worked himself into a complete panic over the upcoming “date.” He picked up the phone to call and cancel a dozen times but was too nervous to even dial her number. And standing in front of the bank teller was the first time in his life that he wished he had accepted one of those plastic cards that enables a customer to enjoy the anonymity of an ATM. Hayden was convinced that the woman behind the bulletproof Plexiglas partition knew exactly what he wanted the money for, because in all his twenty years at that branch he’d never withdrawn more than a hundred dollars in cash during a single visit to the bank.
Having lived as a bachelor for a year Hayden was also afraid that his appearance had deteriorated, much like the backyard, which since the day of the funeral had been slowly overtaken by weeds and undergrowth. At work his secretary regularly arrived with Tupperware containers filled with food for Hayden to take home and instructed him to get more rest. She was suspicious that outside of work hours he’d abandoned himself to alcohol and disarray. And a visit to the town house would have proved her instincts to be correct.
To be on the safe side Hayden went to Gus the barber for a haircut.
“Big business deal?” joked Gus.
“No, it’s a personal, I mean a social—”
“Oh.” Gus nodded and gave him a big wink in the mirror. “Then you’ll want my Ladies’ Man Special. That’s thirty dollars and cheap at the price.”
“Thirty dollars!” His regular haircut was only ten. “What can I possibly get for thirty dollars—a little off the top and ten years off my age I would expect.”
“Trust me,” said Gus. After cutting Hayden’s hair he gave him a shave and
He walks over to the window and looks out at Bobbie Anne’s postage stamp of a backyard. She’s hanging wash on the line, as she does every morning about this time when it’s not raining. Hayden breathes a sigh of relief that Diana didn’t pursue the subject of his intimate knowledge of Bobbie Anne’s rates. Besides, he can’t ever tell her the truth anyway.
chapter ten
F ive months earlier, the week before he’d been diagnosed with The Cancer, Hayden had paid a professional call on Bobbie Anne. It was the one-year anniversary of Mary’s death and Hayden felt so wretched that he was preparing to get extremely drunk and start the car with the garage door closed in order to join Mary, wherever she was. Or at the very least, escape an anguished existence without her. She had been his compass in life. And though he’d been tempted several times throughout the years by attractive female coworkers and clients in distant cities, where he could have easily had a fling, he was never unfaithful.
While swigging scotch and fashioning the garden hose into a suicide apparatus he’d seen the fresh-faced and curvaceous Bobbie Anne in the adjacent backyard shaking out some rugs, her gorgeous hair that appeared reddish-gold in the sunlight hanging loose about her shoulders, and making for a striking contrast against her creamy complexion. In the neighborhood it was rather common knowledge that she saw men between ten and two. And so with his mind clouded by grief and whiskey he’d put down the hose, crossed the yard, and requested an appointment.
Bobbie Anne smiled pleasantly, as if Hayden was asking to borrow a cup of sugar. And in her friendly southern drawl she instructed him to arrive at eleven the following morning and confirmed that her fee was indeed two hundred dollars in cash.
Hayden immediately abandoned the hooch and hose and worked himself into a complete panic over the upcoming “date.” He picked up the phone to call and cancel a dozen times but was too nervous to even dial her number. And standing in front of the bank teller was the first time in his life that he wished he had accepted one of those plastic cards that enables a customer to enjoy the anonymity of an ATM. Hayden was convinced that the woman behind the bulletproof Plexiglas partition knew exactly what he wanted the money for, because in all his twenty years at that branch he’d never withdrawn more than a hundred dollars in cash during a single visit to the bank.
Having lived as a bachelor for a year Hayden was also afraid that his appearance had deteriorated, much like the backyard, which since the day of the funeral had been slowly overtaken by weeds and undergrowth. At work his secretary regularly arrived with Tupperware containers filled with food for Hayden to take home and instructed him to get more rest. She was suspicious that outside of work hours he’d abandoned himself to alcohol and disarray. And a visit to the town house would have proved her instincts to be correct.
To be on the safe side Hayden went to Gus the barber for a haircut.
“Big business deal?” joked Gus.
“No, it’s a personal, I mean a social—”
“Oh.” Gus nodded and gave him a big wink in the mirror. “Then you’ll want my Ladies’ Man Special. That’s thirty dollars and cheap at the price.”
“Thirty dollars!” His regular haircut was only ten. “What can I possibly get for thirty dollars—a little off the top and ten years off my age I would expect.”
“Trust me,” said Gus. After cutting Hayden’s hair he gave him a shave and
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