The Inmates, snippet #2
Back to work on Mom's story! I posted the first bit and people seemed to enjoy it, so I thought I would continue posting it as it's written. It's coming along! Slowly but surely. We're getting into the meat of the story right now. It's not going to be a bit action-y type thing, but there will be a "villain" of sorts to be dealt with. It's mostly about Rita accepting the new stage in her life.
If you read the first part, this one has a bit of overlap with that section.
"So what's your crime?" She raised an eyebrow and he chuckled. "You know, the reason for your incarceration with the rest of the inmates here. Me, I fell and broke my hip. Couldn't really navigate the stairs in my house. Never noticed how many of the damn things there were before I couldn't climb them. So I let my daughter have the house and I moved here. You?"
"My wife died." Dinner was a hearty beef stew, and she sipped it to test how hot it was. It needed a little cooling. "We were together fifty-three years. When she went into the hospital I realized that there was no way I could live in our house without her. So I got rid of it and put myself in here until... well, until whenever."
Richard had stared at her throughout the story. Finally he blinked and looked down at his stew. "Well. I can't say I expected that. How are you... coping? I assume she passed recently."
"Her suffering ended recently. But we've been saying goodbye. For a while." She sipped her tea to give herself a moment. "I'm fine now. I've made my peace with her passing."
He nodded. "I'm sorry to have been so casual about it."
Rita waved him off and began eating her soup. He did as well, and they ate in a certain companionable silence for a few minutes. She appreciated the company; she was so used to having another person across the table from her that she knew it would have seemed odd to be by herself.
She looked around the room at the other people enjoying their dinner. A few of them had nurses tending to them, but others were indistinguishable from a couple out for a nice dinner. "So you called us inmates. Hopefully that's just your way of being cute."
"Oh, sure. The staff can be as helpful or as invisible as you want them to be. I prefer to think of them as household staff, doing the things I never cared to do when I had my own house. It's liberating to just sit back and let someone else take care of things."
Rita pressed her lips together. "I don't know how well I'll adjust to that. I like doing chores."
"Well, you can just replace them with something else. Something you enjoy. Do you have any hobbies?"
"No."
"Reading? Knitting? Roller-skating? Juggling knives?"
Rita allowed him a small smile for that one. "Never quite got the hang of knife juggling. I suppose I like to read."
"They have a lending library here. Not a huge selection, but enough to keep you busy for a while, depending on how fast you can read. They have activities and we're free to come and go as we please. I finally caved and came here because of my hip, but I almost wish I'd moved in sooner."
Rita wasn't entirely convinced, but she was mollified.
"So what do you like to do, Ms. Musgrove?"
"It's Mrs. Musgrove." She pursed her lips and considered for a moment before she spoke again. "I like jigsaw puzzles."
Richard raised his eyebrows and clapped his hands together. "Well, you're in luck. They have a table set up in the rec room. I don't think there's one currently going, so why don't we go stake a claim on it after dinner?"
"Oh, I prefer to do puzzles on my own. At least for a while." Until she got used to not having Joan around to help her, she added mentally. "No offense."
"None taken." He tapped his finger on the edge of the table and stared at her for a moment, then smiled. "It can be hard, can't it? Learning to do things alone after so long."
"Yep." She picked up her glass and took a long sip. When she put it down, she sighed and met Richard's gaze. "Don't really have much of a choice, do I?"
#
The puzzle took up most of the living room table. Joan was on the edge of the couch, her lean body angled forward as she examined the piece pinched between her thumb and forefinger. Rita watched her from the living room doorway, barefoot and dressed in her nightgown. Joan examined the shape of the piece, and the jagged interior edge of the scene unfolding itself before her. She worried her bottom lip with her teeth and then smiled as she match the small design in her hand with the image. She carefully placed the piece and pushed it in with the pad of her thumb. Once it was taken care of, she looked at Rita, revealing she'd been aware of her scrutiny the whole time.
"Small victories. That's all a puzzle is. 500 small victories."
"Followed by a big one." She walked closer so she could see how much of the puzzle was done. It was a painting of the Seattle coastline, done in an exaggerated, cartoon style. Rita rubbed Joan's shoulder. "Come to bed. It's late."
"A few more pieces."
Rita walked to the couch and leaned back, resting her hand on Joan's lower back. She knew that she tended to get stiff from her awkward puzzle-position, and she began to knead the tight muscles with sure strokes of her fingers. She untucked Joan's shirt and slipped her hand underneath, and soon Joan was almost purring.
"You're not playing fair."
"Who said love was fair?" Rita ran her fingers down Joan's spine and stood up. "If you want the full treatment, you'll have to come upstairs."
Though Rita left the living room first, Joan almost beat her to the bedroom.
Rita snapped out of the memory and shook her head, angry at herself for being distracted by something as innocuous as the coffee table in her new home. It was too small for the sort of puzzle Joan preferred. She liked big, ornate puzzles that took her two weeks to complete. It was the one thing she specified when they went shopping for new furniture for their new house: the table had to be big.
She left the overhead light off and turned on the lamp next to the couch. She sat down and stared at the empty rectangle of wood. She didn't know what she was going to put on the coffee table; that was where the puzzles went, and if Joan finished one puzzle the table had to stay clear so she could start the next one.
Rita sighed and considered turning on the TV. Even if she did want to watch something, it had been so long since she'd paid attention to it that she didn't know what was worth her time. She doubted Carol Burnett was still on the air. The radio might be worth a shot. There were always oldies stations, and stations that played instrumental music and classical music. She stood and went to the radio, bending down to plug it in.
Buddy Holly started singing 'Oh, Boy!', and Rita stared at the front of the machine as if she suspected it was playing a trick on her.
"I don't dance."
"You dance. You were just waiting to be asked by the right person." Joan kept her hand out. She looked as if she was willing to stay there all night. "It's not even a slow song."
Rita looked past Joan at the other people in the diner. The people who would, if she gave in, would soon be staring at them in equal parts confusion and disapproval.
"Will you sit back down and finish your dinner?"
"I will. After the song." She followed Rita's gaze, smiled, and folded her hands in a 'come on' gesture. "With me standing here like this, people are gonna start staring anyway."
Rita put down her napkin and reluctantly took Joan's hand. She was pulled to her feet and Joan led her into the space between the booths and the counter. As soon as they were in position, Buddy Holly stopped singing. Rita tensed as the next record flipped onto the jukebox, and the Platters began singing 'Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.'
"You're stuck now, Miss Musgrove. You shouldn't have fought so long."
"Nope. I shouldn't have." She rubbed her forehead. Buddy Holly had stopped singing during her reverie, but instead of another song he was replaced with a disc-jockey's banter. Rita walked to the couch and sat down. She stared at the window at the rapidly dimming day. There was a tall lamppost about thirty yards away from her window, and it cast just the right amount of light on her room.
Joan loved music. And dancing. Rita smiled as she thought of how many times she'd come home to find Joan already there, swaying to record music or something on the radio or, more often than not, her own humming. It took a few months before Rita was comfortable taking Joan into her arms even in private. By the time they'd been together a few years, Rita was the one pulling Joan out of her seat for a quick spin. Sinatra sang so often in their house that the neighbors probably thought he was renting the back room.
Rita slipped off her shoes. "One more spin around the living room before bed?" She chuckled at herself so she wouldn't hear the silence in place of Joan's response. She rested her head on her fist, and closed her eyes as a new song started playing.
#
The rec room stretched from the front of the building to the back, with windows at both ends. The doors on either side of the room were all standing open, making it feel like a ballroom. Rita stood in the south entrance and watched the people within. Like Richard said, everyone did their own thing and they were left to their own devices. After far too much hesitation and consideration, she went inside. As Richard said, there was a large table under one of the windows that looked to be set up for puzzles.
The puzzles themselves were stacked on a bookshelf. Strips of masking tape on the corners of the box warned which ones were missing pieces, which Rita appreciated. She expected to find puzzles of kittens, puppies... the sort of elementary school crap that wasn't likely to offend or challenge anyone. She was pleasantly surprised: hot air balloons aloft on a crystal blue sky, bees on a honeycomb, nature scenes. The one that intrigued her the most was a round puzzle that made up a satellite image of the Earth. The cover of the box showed North and South America, with part of Africa and Europe at the side.
She carried Earth to the table and sat down, removing the lid from the box as reverently as Joan would have. According to the tape on this box, there weren't any pieces missing. She ran her palm over the sea of tessellated shapes, turning them over so they were all showing part of the image. Joan had said this was the most important part of doing a puzzle. Just spilling them onto the table and randomly snapping pieces together was sloppy. Why not just play with Lincoln logs?
"There's a logic to it. You have to figure out the puzzle before you can put it back together."
A few of the pieces were already combined, and she broke them apart. Joan's rule again: leaving them connected was cheating, on however small a scale.
She pushed the box toward the window and took out a few pieces of the puzzle. She spread them out and added more to the pile. She found the edges and separated them.
"Starting with the edges isn't cheating?" She took a drag off her cigarette and rested it on the ashtray.
"No. That's part of the logic. It's the way in. If you tried to just start randomly matching pieces you would never get started. The first clue is always right in front of you. The border is what gets you on your way."
The border on this puzzle was curved. She wondered what Joan would have thought about that. Through the window, she had a great view of the parking lot. The staff parked near the northern end of the building, and visitors parked wherever they pleased. When she'd first toured the place, she was told the residents could keep their cars either on-site or at a special storage building the center kept in the city.
A part of her mind tried to hold onto the lie that this was just a place she was staying. Like the hotel in Madrid where she and Joan went on their not-honeymoon or the no-name fleabags she stayed when she was on a road trip for her work. Aurora Gardens wasn't a temporary place to lay her head, it was home now.
"Good luck with that."
Rita didn't look up at Richard. "You have a bad habit of sneaking up on people."
"Yeah, I've been told that. I thought having the cane would help, but apparently I'm just naturally quiet. I didn't want to disturb you."
"There are two chairs." She gestured at the one across from her. "Sit if you want."
Richard stepped into view and lowered himself into the seat with a groan. He looked at the pieces spread out across the table but made no move to lend a hand. She appreciated that.
"Just so you know, if you don't finish this in one sitting, other people might take it up for you."
She nodded. "That's pretty much what I thought. Just as long as they don't try to join me while I'm working on it."
"Duly noted, ma'am." He smirked and looked around the room at the others. "Met any of the other inmates?"
"Why do you call them that?"
He shrugged. "I don't like residents. They're not patients. Inmates has a, uh... ring to it, I guess. So have you? Met any?"
Rita shook her head. "You're more than enough."
"I don't know whether to be flattered or insulted."
"Six of one, half-dozen of the other." She reached for her cigarette and folded her fingers into her palm when she realized it wouldn't be there. She hadn't smoked since the eighties. She only stopped because Joan hated the smell and didn't want to lose Rita to lung cancer. With her top two reasons for not smoking eliminated, why not start up again?
"Old habits?" Richard said. "I got a lifetime of 'em."
She picked up a piece and examined the shapes on it. The western coast of Africa, she thought, and placed it in the approximate part of the map. She already had a decent-sized curve of the planet's northern hemisphere. Richard looked at the picture on the top of the box. "Lots of blue and green. And white clouds."
"Yup."
"Might make it kind of hard."
"Reets, what the hell is the point of doing an easy puzzle?"
She smiled at Joan's voice in her head. "That's the point, Mr. Tomlinson."
He chuckled and twisted the look out the window. She looked as well and saw what had caught his eye: an orange and silver PT Cruiser with green stripes on the driver's side had just eased itself into an empty parking spot near the front entrance. It was an ugly vehicle, the sort of thing she expected to see Donald Duck driving in a Disney cartoon. The driver was a tall, slender kid with thick brown hair that fell over his right eye. He wore a set of scrubs like the nurses and orderlies she'd seen around, and he checked his cell phone once he was out of the car. He shut the door, leaned against the side of the vehicle, and waited.
"What's he waiting on?" Rita asked.
"His shift to start. He's got a good... forty-two seconds before he's officially on duty."
Rita glanced at him and saw that his sour expression matched his tone. "You know him?"
"Mitchell. Mitchell something." He waved his hand to show it didn't matter. "He's a punk. Lazy, shiftless, doesn't know why the world doesn't just hand him everything he wants on a silver platter."
"Hmph." She turned her attention back to the puzzle. She wasn't very concerned about lazy people unless they directly affected her life. She placed another piece of the puzzle.
Richard mistook her disinterest for concern. "Don't worry. He's just a janitor, and he's the exception, not the rule. Most of the people are here because they want to be. They're good folks."
Rita simply nodded. She didn't want to further the conversation and hoped he would take the hint and fall silent. To her surprise, he did just that. He didn't try to help her with the puzzle, either, for which she was grateful. By the time she got tired of it, she had most of the northern hemisphere and a good section of South America finished. She leaned back in her chair and looked around the room. "What time do they start serving lunch in this place?"
"Breakfast stops at nine-thirty, they'll serve lunch after that."
"Come on, then. Don't look so surprised. You're good company."
"I hardly said a word."
"That's what makes you such good company." She motioned for him to follow her and left the puzzle behind.
On the way to the dining room, they passed Mitchell Something the orderly. If he noticed or cared that Rita was new, he didn't show it. Richard leaned heavily on his cane as they walked. She turned back to watch Janitor Mitchell go into one of the supply rooms.
"Why doesn't he just quit if he's so unhappy here? Gotta be a better paying job out there."
"In this job market? I wouldn't be so sure. Besides, it's a steady paycheck without a whole lot of commitment involved."
Rita made a noise of irritation and followed Richard into the dining room. "I have very little tolerance for useless people."
Joan whispered in her mind again: "Ooo, I know that tone. Are you going to make him go away?"
"I might."
Richard turned to look at her. "What's that?"
"Nothing. I wasn't talking to you." She almost explained, then decided she didn't want to tell him everything. But he smiled and nodded slowly as he continued across the dining room.
"I still talk to my wife, too. It'll be good. The four of us will eat together, and we can have our own conversations while you and I ignore each other."
Rita laughed, and she could hear Joan laughing, too. "This one's going to give you a run for your money, Reets. Looks like I shouldn't have worried about leaving you unsupervised after all."
Rita shook her head and followed Richard to get their food. It had been a long time since she'd had an honest-to-goodness friend; Joan filled that role well enough for her. Now there was a chance of having her first new friend in decades, and she was surprised to discover the thought didn't terrify her.
If you read the first part, this one has a bit of overlap with that section.
"So what's your crime?" She raised an eyebrow and he chuckled. "You know, the reason for your incarceration with the rest of the inmates here. Me, I fell and broke my hip. Couldn't really navigate the stairs in my house. Never noticed how many of the damn things there were before I couldn't climb them. So I let my daughter have the house and I moved here. You?"
"My wife died." Dinner was a hearty beef stew, and she sipped it to test how hot it was. It needed a little cooling. "We were together fifty-three years. When she went into the hospital I realized that there was no way I could live in our house without her. So I got rid of it and put myself in here until... well, until whenever."
Richard had stared at her throughout the story. Finally he blinked and looked down at his stew. "Well. I can't say I expected that. How are you... coping? I assume she passed recently."
"Her suffering ended recently. But we've been saying goodbye. For a while." She sipped her tea to give herself a moment. "I'm fine now. I've made my peace with her passing."
He nodded. "I'm sorry to have been so casual about it."
Rita waved him off and began eating her soup. He did as well, and they ate in a certain companionable silence for a few minutes. She appreciated the company; she was so used to having another person across the table from her that she knew it would have seemed odd to be by herself.
She looked around the room at the other people enjoying their dinner. A few of them had nurses tending to them, but others were indistinguishable from a couple out for a nice dinner. "So you called us inmates. Hopefully that's just your way of being cute."
"Oh, sure. The staff can be as helpful or as invisible as you want them to be. I prefer to think of them as household staff, doing the things I never cared to do when I had my own house. It's liberating to just sit back and let someone else take care of things."
Rita pressed her lips together. "I don't know how well I'll adjust to that. I like doing chores."
"Well, you can just replace them with something else. Something you enjoy. Do you have any hobbies?"
"No."
"Reading? Knitting? Roller-skating? Juggling knives?"
Rita allowed him a small smile for that one. "Never quite got the hang of knife juggling. I suppose I like to read."
"They have a lending library here. Not a huge selection, but enough to keep you busy for a while, depending on how fast you can read. They have activities and we're free to come and go as we please. I finally caved and came here because of my hip, but I almost wish I'd moved in sooner."
Rita wasn't entirely convinced, but she was mollified.
"So what do you like to do, Ms. Musgrove?"
"It's Mrs. Musgrove." She pursed her lips and considered for a moment before she spoke again. "I like jigsaw puzzles."
Richard raised his eyebrows and clapped his hands together. "Well, you're in luck. They have a table set up in the rec room. I don't think there's one currently going, so why don't we go stake a claim on it after dinner?"
"Oh, I prefer to do puzzles on my own. At least for a while." Until she got used to not having Joan around to help her, she added mentally. "No offense."
"None taken." He tapped his finger on the edge of the table and stared at her for a moment, then smiled. "It can be hard, can't it? Learning to do things alone after so long."
"Yep." She picked up her glass and took a long sip. When she put it down, she sighed and met Richard's gaze. "Don't really have much of a choice, do I?"
#
The puzzle took up most of the living room table. Joan was on the edge of the couch, her lean body angled forward as she examined the piece pinched between her thumb and forefinger. Rita watched her from the living room doorway, barefoot and dressed in her nightgown. Joan examined the shape of the piece, and the jagged interior edge of the scene unfolding itself before her. She worried her bottom lip with her teeth and then smiled as she match the small design in her hand with the image. She carefully placed the piece and pushed it in with the pad of her thumb. Once it was taken care of, she looked at Rita, revealing she'd been aware of her scrutiny the whole time.
"Small victories. That's all a puzzle is. 500 small victories."
"Followed by a big one." She walked closer so she could see how much of the puzzle was done. It was a painting of the Seattle coastline, done in an exaggerated, cartoon style. Rita rubbed Joan's shoulder. "Come to bed. It's late."
"A few more pieces."
Rita walked to the couch and leaned back, resting her hand on Joan's lower back. She knew that she tended to get stiff from her awkward puzzle-position, and she began to knead the tight muscles with sure strokes of her fingers. She untucked Joan's shirt and slipped her hand underneath, and soon Joan was almost purring.
"You're not playing fair."
"Who said love was fair?" Rita ran her fingers down Joan's spine and stood up. "If you want the full treatment, you'll have to come upstairs."
Though Rita left the living room first, Joan almost beat her to the bedroom.
Rita snapped out of the memory and shook her head, angry at herself for being distracted by something as innocuous as the coffee table in her new home. It was too small for the sort of puzzle Joan preferred. She liked big, ornate puzzles that took her two weeks to complete. It was the one thing she specified when they went shopping for new furniture for their new house: the table had to be big.
She left the overhead light off and turned on the lamp next to the couch. She sat down and stared at the empty rectangle of wood. She didn't know what she was going to put on the coffee table; that was where the puzzles went, and if Joan finished one puzzle the table had to stay clear so she could start the next one.
Rita sighed and considered turning on the TV. Even if she did want to watch something, it had been so long since she'd paid attention to it that she didn't know what was worth her time. She doubted Carol Burnett was still on the air. The radio might be worth a shot. There were always oldies stations, and stations that played instrumental music and classical music. She stood and went to the radio, bending down to plug it in.
Buddy Holly started singing 'Oh, Boy!', and Rita stared at the front of the machine as if she suspected it was playing a trick on her.
"I don't dance."
"You dance. You were just waiting to be asked by the right person." Joan kept her hand out. She looked as if she was willing to stay there all night. "It's not even a slow song."
Rita looked past Joan at the other people in the diner. The people who would, if she gave in, would soon be staring at them in equal parts confusion and disapproval.
"Will you sit back down and finish your dinner?"
"I will. After the song." She followed Rita's gaze, smiled, and folded her hands in a 'come on' gesture. "With me standing here like this, people are gonna start staring anyway."
Rita put down her napkin and reluctantly took Joan's hand. She was pulled to her feet and Joan led her into the space between the booths and the counter. As soon as they were in position, Buddy Holly stopped singing. Rita tensed as the next record flipped onto the jukebox, and the Platters began singing 'Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.'
"You're stuck now, Miss Musgrove. You shouldn't have fought so long."
"Nope. I shouldn't have." She rubbed her forehead. Buddy Holly had stopped singing during her reverie, but instead of another song he was replaced with a disc-jockey's banter. Rita walked to the couch and sat down. She stared at the window at the rapidly dimming day. There was a tall lamppost about thirty yards away from her window, and it cast just the right amount of light on her room.
Joan loved music. And dancing. Rita smiled as she thought of how many times she'd come home to find Joan already there, swaying to record music or something on the radio or, more often than not, her own humming. It took a few months before Rita was comfortable taking Joan into her arms even in private. By the time they'd been together a few years, Rita was the one pulling Joan out of her seat for a quick spin. Sinatra sang so often in their house that the neighbors probably thought he was renting the back room.
Rita slipped off her shoes. "One more spin around the living room before bed?" She chuckled at herself so she wouldn't hear the silence in place of Joan's response. She rested her head on her fist, and closed her eyes as a new song started playing.
#
The rec room stretched from the front of the building to the back, with windows at both ends. The doors on either side of the room were all standing open, making it feel like a ballroom. Rita stood in the south entrance and watched the people within. Like Richard said, everyone did their own thing and they were left to their own devices. After far too much hesitation and consideration, she went inside. As Richard said, there was a large table under one of the windows that looked to be set up for puzzles.
The puzzles themselves were stacked on a bookshelf. Strips of masking tape on the corners of the box warned which ones were missing pieces, which Rita appreciated. She expected to find puzzles of kittens, puppies... the sort of elementary school crap that wasn't likely to offend or challenge anyone. She was pleasantly surprised: hot air balloons aloft on a crystal blue sky, bees on a honeycomb, nature scenes. The one that intrigued her the most was a round puzzle that made up a satellite image of the Earth. The cover of the box showed North and South America, with part of Africa and Europe at the side.
She carried Earth to the table and sat down, removing the lid from the box as reverently as Joan would have. According to the tape on this box, there weren't any pieces missing. She ran her palm over the sea of tessellated shapes, turning them over so they were all showing part of the image. Joan had said this was the most important part of doing a puzzle. Just spilling them onto the table and randomly snapping pieces together was sloppy. Why not just play with Lincoln logs?
"There's a logic to it. You have to figure out the puzzle before you can put it back together."
A few of the pieces were already combined, and she broke them apart. Joan's rule again: leaving them connected was cheating, on however small a scale.
She pushed the box toward the window and took out a few pieces of the puzzle. She spread them out and added more to the pile. She found the edges and separated them.
"Starting with the edges isn't cheating?" She took a drag off her cigarette and rested it on the ashtray.
"No. That's part of the logic. It's the way in. If you tried to just start randomly matching pieces you would never get started. The first clue is always right in front of you. The border is what gets you on your way."
The border on this puzzle was curved. She wondered what Joan would have thought about that. Through the window, she had a great view of the parking lot. The staff parked near the northern end of the building, and visitors parked wherever they pleased. When she'd first toured the place, she was told the residents could keep their cars either on-site or at a special storage building the center kept in the city.
A part of her mind tried to hold onto the lie that this was just a place she was staying. Like the hotel in Madrid where she and Joan went on their not-honeymoon or the no-name fleabags she stayed when she was on a road trip for her work. Aurora Gardens wasn't a temporary place to lay her head, it was home now.
"Good luck with that."
Rita didn't look up at Richard. "You have a bad habit of sneaking up on people."
"Yeah, I've been told that. I thought having the cane would help, but apparently I'm just naturally quiet. I didn't want to disturb you."
"There are two chairs." She gestured at the one across from her. "Sit if you want."
Richard stepped into view and lowered himself into the seat with a groan. He looked at the pieces spread out across the table but made no move to lend a hand. She appreciated that.
"Just so you know, if you don't finish this in one sitting, other people might take it up for you."
She nodded. "That's pretty much what I thought. Just as long as they don't try to join me while I'm working on it."
"Duly noted, ma'am." He smirked and looked around the room at the others. "Met any of the other inmates?"
"Why do you call them that?"
He shrugged. "I don't like residents. They're not patients. Inmates has a, uh... ring to it, I guess. So have you? Met any?"
Rita shook her head. "You're more than enough."
"I don't know whether to be flattered or insulted."
"Six of one, half-dozen of the other." She reached for her cigarette and folded her fingers into her palm when she realized it wouldn't be there. She hadn't smoked since the eighties. She only stopped because Joan hated the smell and didn't want to lose Rita to lung cancer. With her top two reasons for not smoking eliminated, why not start up again?
"Old habits?" Richard said. "I got a lifetime of 'em."
She picked up a piece and examined the shapes on it. The western coast of Africa, she thought, and placed it in the approximate part of the map. She already had a decent-sized curve of the planet's northern hemisphere. Richard looked at the picture on the top of the box. "Lots of blue and green. And white clouds."
"Yup."
"Might make it kind of hard."
"Reets, what the hell is the point of doing an easy puzzle?"
She smiled at Joan's voice in her head. "That's the point, Mr. Tomlinson."
He chuckled and twisted the look out the window. She looked as well and saw what had caught his eye: an orange and silver PT Cruiser with green stripes on the driver's side had just eased itself into an empty parking spot near the front entrance. It was an ugly vehicle, the sort of thing she expected to see Donald Duck driving in a Disney cartoon. The driver was a tall, slender kid with thick brown hair that fell over his right eye. He wore a set of scrubs like the nurses and orderlies she'd seen around, and he checked his cell phone once he was out of the car. He shut the door, leaned against the side of the vehicle, and waited.
"What's he waiting on?" Rita asked.
"His shift to start. He's got a good... forty-two seconds before he's officially on duty."
Rita glanced at him and saw that his sour expression matched his tone. "You know him?"
"Mitchell. Mitchell something." He waved his hand to show it didn't matter. "He's a punk. Lazy, shiftless, doesn't know why the world doesn't just hand him everything he wants on a silver platter."
"Hmph." She turned her attention back to the puzzle. She wasn't very concerned about lazy people unless they directly affected her life. She placed another piece of the puzzle.
Richard mistook her disinterest for concern. "Don't worry. He's just a janitor, and he's the exception, not the rule. Most of the people are here because they want to be. They're good folks."
Rita simply nodded. She didn't want to further the conversation and hoped he would take the hint and fall silent. To her surprise, he did just that. He didn't try to help her with the puzzle, either, for which she was grateful. By the time she got tired of it, she had most of the northern hemisphere and a good section of South America finished. She leaned back in her chair and looked around the room. "What time do they start serving lunch in this place?"
"Breakfast stops at nine-thirty, they'll serve lunch after that."
"Come on, then. Don't look so surprised. You're good company."
"I hardly said a word."
"That's what makes you such good company." She motioned for him to follow her and left the puzzle behind.
On the way to the dining room, they passed Mitchell Something the orderly. If he noticed or cared that Rita was new, he didn't show it. Richard leaned heavily on his cane as they walked. She turned back to watch Janitor Mitchell go into one of the supply rooms.
"Why doesn't he just quit if he's so unhappy here? Gotta be a better paying job out there."
"In this job market? I wouldn't be so sure. Besides, it's a steady paycheck without a whole lot of commitment involved."
Rita made a noise of irritation and followed Richard into the dining room. "I have very little tolerance for useless people."
Joan whispered in her mind again: "Ooo, I know that tone. Are you going to make him go away?"
"I might."
Richard turned to look at her. "What's that?"
"Nothing. I wasn't talking to you." She almost explained, then decided she didn't want to tell him everything. But he smiled and nodded slowly as he continued across the dining room.
"I still talk to my wife, too. It'll be good. The four of us will eat together, and we can have our own conversations while you and I ignore each other."
Rita laughed, and she could hear Joan laughing, too. "This one's going to give you a run for your money, Reets. Looks like I shouldn't have worried about leaving you unsupervised after all."
Rita shook her head and followed Richard to get their food. It had been a long time since she'd had an honest-to-goodness friend; Joan filled that role well enough for her. Now there was a chance of having her first new friend in decades, and she was surprised to discover the thought didn't terrify her.