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Page 30.
Scene 11. Holographic Fantasy
 Jack headed downstairs to receive the shipment and then have dinner. Along the way, he tossed his filthy work clothes down the hallway laundry shute so they'd land in the basement, which had been carved into the granite cliffside of Paawik Mountain well over a century ago.
Jack stepped outside into the gravel drive amid late midafternoon sunlight glowing strongly from the west. The house, festooned with a century's accumulation of ornaments, loomed behind him. Over one doorway was a skeletal ox skull. There were rusty, antique wagon wheel rims whose wood had long ago dried out and fallen off. Things did not rot so much as they bleached in the sun and eventually blew away in the mountain winds. Winter snows and autumn sleet did their part as well. Neither the palm tree nor the cactus were at home here, though Janet had long struggled to maintain some of both in the protective lee of the house. Apple trees like to grow fecundly here, unlike down on the coastal plains. Then again, citrus and tomatoes grew in happy profusion there, along with aloe and loquats, while this range was better suited for gnarly, deciduous pear and apple. Everything in nature had its time and place. Being here helped Jack be grounded once again.
One day, he would stay here. That day had not yet come. He wasn’t ready to think about it. He wasn’t sure how that went, anyway. Did you have the sense to realize you were getting gray around the muzzle and better quit playing alpha? Or did you not have the sense, and end up never coming home? Would there be an empty spot, with a little blowing grass, next to Catherine on the high range? He’d figure it out, soon enough, all in due time.
A furniture van came rumbling up the driveway, herded by three leaping, squealing dogs. Janet came running out of the main ranch house to assure two sweaty, wide-eyed Tijuana truckers that it was safe to climb out.
The children appeared from the great room on the lower floor, with its usually warm and sunny western exposure, and ran yelling to Jack. He hugged each one—Tommy, 9, and Bobby, 11. They were Janet and Mark's boys, his nephews. They threw themselves at Jack and hugged him, and then just as quickly ran off to supervise the truck mystery.
Approaching with infinite aloofness and lady-like dignity came Marcia, 13, and Gail, 15, though they kissed their father, Jack, on the cheek as they held him tightly. "Somebody smells of Chanel 19," Jack said. It was a rich, but faded aroma, perhaps coming from that tiny, brassy bottle he'd bought a decade earlier for Catherine in an arcade boutique along the Champs Elsyees in Paris. She had treasured it, and now the girls had their parents' old bedroom. Certain things stayed where Catherine had left them—the Chanel No. 19 being one of them, saved for very special occasions. Like now. Pack animals have many ways to communicate besides barking.
"Daddy." Gail touched herself behind the ear with a defiant look. Like Janet and the boys, Gail, the oldest, shared the dark eyes common to the Leon heritage. By contrast, Jack and the younger girl, Marcia, shared blue eyes from their Irish-French heritage.
"It's okay, honey. It smells wonderful on you. That's what I meant to say."
Both girls clung to him and would not let go.
"Tell you what," he said, "now that you are becoming beautiful young ladies, I'll have to remember to bring you some presents for ladies. I picked up that perfume for your mother in Paris. Now I can bring home nice things for my girls. You just tell me what you want, and I'll personally buy it."
"We want you to stay home," Gail said.
"Stay with us, Daddy," said Marcia.
He held them close, suddenly brimming with emotion. Catherine, the perfume…it was her ghost at work on him. "I do what I do for all of us," he said. He couldn't get any other words out. He lowered his face, relishing their nurturing feminine presences around him. The girls did not change their desperate grip on him. Gail gently stroked his hair to comfort him.
Janet clapped her hands and chased everyone under five feet tall—dogs and boys—in circles. "Let's get those dogs under control so the men can get out of their truck. Jack, what did you order for yourself this time?"
"For all of us," Jack emended. I do the stuff I do for all of you.
The Latino drivers, looking relieved, climbed down. They wore dark green mechanics' overalls with embroidered name tags on one side of the chest, and their company logo on the other. As the drivers went back and rolled up the door with a snapping sound, Jack's family gathered around in curiosity. They went oo and ah as the huge box in the truck saw daylight. On the box were images representing the latest entertainment center—a holographic TV system.
"Jack!" Janet said in mixed awe and reproach.
"We can afford it," Jack said. "It's the latest thing."
"I've seen one on demo at Horton Plaza in San Diego," she said, "but I never thought we'd own one."
"You only live once," Jack said. "Might as well enjoy it."
Gail and Marcia clung to their dad, while fascinated by the holovideo.
The drivers slid the box onto the truck's rear gate-platform. They lowered platform and box amid whirring sounds. They wheeled the enormous device into the house, followed by boys, women, and dogs.
At that moment, two other feminine personae made their presence known.
Jack immediately understood—Janet's someone else.
A girl of Gail's age, Roberta, came out of nowhere and hugged him. "Hi, Uncle Jack." She was a tall, light-skinned girl of Scottish and Hawaiian ancestry, with scintillatingly dark blue eyes, and thick, finely frizzy black hair tied back with a white kerchief. As Jack hugged her, along came Roberta's mother, Molly Grace. Same eyes, same hair, same captivating facial features.
"Hello, Jack." Molly's voice was a melliflous music of mixed recognition, happiness, patience, and reproach.
"Molly," Jack managed to say while all at once letting go of Roberta and accepting Molly into his arms in a continuous three-way motion.
"Janet invited me." Molly was Janet's age, and statuesque like Roberta, only filled in at the right spots, with the same penetratingly blue, almond-shaped eyes. Molly wore a red, Asian-looking comb in her frizzy hair, and a Hawaiian mumu in fiery sunset colors over her shapely figure. Molly's frame was long, without being too angular. At 5'9", he was softly padded, without being plump—she was not overly skinny, but shapely. She was…was…enough to make a man close his eyes and inhale deeply of the scented atmosphere through which she gracefully flowed.
"I'm glad she did," Jack said as he closed his eyes, and inhaled deeply of the woman in his arms. Molly pushed him gently away. As she moved, his hand inadvertently brushed along the long, soft curve of her waist, touching the wider areas at the buttocks and hips below, and her shoulder blades and breasts higher up. She could push away, but her body was hungry for him. They read each other. They were a few words and gestures away from running muzzle by muzzle on the high summer meadows of life. His touch might be inadvertent, but a woman's movements were always deliberate.
"Roberta wanted to see you so much I couldn't say no." Molly's voice flowed softly, almost husky. She was full of mischief, a great tease, and Jack knew it, as well as Jack knew she knew he knew. Molly grabbed a pinch of his waist and twisted it so he saw stars.
"What did you do that for?"
"Adults—no roughhousing," Roberta said, getting between them. She took each by the hand, as if they were children needing guidance, and towed them toward the house.
"You didn't call me, Jack"
"I'm in town for a few weeks, or so I hope. I have you on speed dial."
"Not quick enough for me," Molly said. "Bad boy."
I had to chop wood for a while first.
(He didn’t say it. He didn’t need to. She knew.)
"Now, now," Roberta said, squeezing their hands tightly.
Together, they followed Janet into the house.
Mark Barger already sat at the table with an unopened bottle of Temecula Cabernet Eucalyptus Leaf. Mark remained seated, and embraced Janet around the hips, while she pecked him on the lips and opened the wine bottle with a puller.
"Hey, when did you get into town?" Jack said as he strolled arm in arm with Molly across the throw rugs of the wood-hued living room. Jack and Mark knuckle-butted fists, then shook hands, loudly, each with a well-timed round-house slap to the other’s palm.
"I was in LA and flew into Palomar Airport on a weekend hop," Mark said. "I hitched a ride on a resort shuttle about an hour ago."
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Copyright © 2018 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
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