Chapter 5: You Naughty Boy

I woke up suddenly and looked around. The shadow that I was sitting in had gotten longer. Luna and Frodo were sleeping on the patio, side by side. From inside the house, “Poker Face,” by Lady Gaga was playing again. The CD player must have been on repeat.

The air felt nice against my skin. I stretched, getting that feeling of muscles tensing and then relaxing that makes the stretch so worth while. Looking around, the back yard was quiet. The pool was still. A distant rumble of traffic noise barely disturbed the quiet. A couple of birds stood on the side fence. They chirped happily. Wings flapped as they launched and circled away.

I hauled myself out of the chair and picked up the empty glass which had held my iced water. With the towels gripped in one hand but otherwise naked, I strolled back into the house. I dropped the towels in a pile in the back room, then used the bathroom. Returning to the back room, I stepped into the burgundy dress and tied it together at the back. The silky feeling of the cloth sliding over my skin was so delightful.

It occurred to me that the hangover had faded. I felt clean and fresh and alive.

I wandered through to the front of the house and hit eject on the CD player. The music stopped and after some clicks and clunks, the CD slid half-way out of the drive. The cupboard below the player was filled with rows and rows of CDs. The cover for the one that was playing was easy to find as it was lying loosely on top of the upper row, “Hits of 2008.”

I put the CD back in its cover and found a place to slide it back into place. Browsing through the titles, I noticed that most of the CDs in the top half of the cupboard dated from the eighties, the nineties and the naughties. I only spotted two that were more recent.

The bottom three rows of CDs were completely different. They included a range of folk music from different countries, a bunch of choirs and acapella singing groups, and a collection of nature sounds including one that was described as whale song. That seemed quite bizarre. I pulled out a handful of folk music CDs so that I could look at them more closely and noticed a package hidden behind that row of CDs. I pulled the package out of its hiding place. It was a plastic bag containing a handful of grass, plus some roll-your-own papers, and a lighter.

“Well, well, well,” I said. “Uncle Alex, you naughty boy. You like smoking pot. And you listen to Irish and Scottish folk music when you do.”

I fed a disk of Irish Traditional Songs into the player and tapped the play button. Soon the sounds of the Irish hand drum, a flute and a fiddle were playing in the background as some women sang in Irish. Whatever the song was about, it sounded sad.

I took the bag back to the kitchen and dropped it on the table. Then I looked at the clock. It was far later than I thought, most of the day was gone. In fact, it was nearly time to feed both Luna and myself some dinner. Amongst the brochures stuck to the fridge was one for a local pizza place. I picked up the phone and dialled, ordering a large size BBQ chicken pizza to be delivered, which I paid for with the prepaid credit card Uncle Alex had left for me, once again reading the address off that power bill.

I opened the fridge and scanned the contents. “Ooh!” I said, and pulled a nearly full bottle of gin out of the back. I poured a third of a glass of gin and topped up the glass with soda water. I sipped at my drink and looked at the bag of weed. There wasn’t a lot there. Judging by the quantity, there was probably enough for two joints, maybe two and a half. I could stretch it to three or four if I made them small. I decided I would save it until after my pizza.

Luna brushed around my legs and stalked over to her bowl. She stared at it for a moment, then she turned her head to look at me and yowled to let me know that she was unhappy about the lack of food in her bowl. I took another sip from my drink and then put it down.

“Okay, Luna, I’ll feed you.” I picked up her bowl and washed it out. I prepared her dinner, exactly as Uncle Alex had described and put the bowl down for her. I sat on a bar stool and sipped on my drink as Luna ate about half of her dinner and then wandered away.

“Oy,” I said to Luna and pointed at the bowl. “I thought you were hungry.”

Luna stuck her tail in the air and walked away, showing me her butthole, but otherwise ignoring me.

“Well, don’t blame me if Frodo steals the rest of your dinner,” I called out.

Then I threw my hands up in disgust and had another sip of my drink.

The group of women on the CD was now singing a song in English, but it was so fast that I could only understand every second or third word. I think it was a song about two lovers, but that’s mostly a guess. I decided I wasn’t in the mood for Irish folk songs and went back to the front room to change to a different CD. I found a CD of Alanis Morissette and put that on. I’d heard the name but wasn’t very familiar with her music.

The first song was starting when the delivery guy rang the doorbell. I got my pizza and took it through to the kitchen. There’s nothing like a hot pizza, and BBQ chicken is my favourite, so I was happy.

I ate two slices and then closed the carton and jammed it into the fridge. By that time, I’d figured out that the Alanis Morisette CD was mostly full of angry shouting songs, so I replaced that with a CD of K.D. Lang. I’d never heard of her, but the cover looked interesting, so I figured I’d give her a go.

In the kitchen, I rolled a joint. I made it a fairly small one, figuring I would make the stash last. I took my drink and the joint out to the back patio and relaxed on the beach chair. The sun was now pretty low in the sky so now almost the entire back yard was in shadow. It was a pleasant evening to sit outside and relax. I sighed and took a hit off the joint and blew smoke into the air. KD Lang sang for me in the background. I decided she had a nice voice. This was definitely the life.