Neighborhood Associations

 

A/N: Interested in seeing your fantasy on paper? Well, I do story commissions, so if you are drop me a line at [email protected]HYPERLINK "mailto:[email protected]"  with the subject MAK.

 

 

 

 

        Scottsdale in October can be one of the most appealing places on Earth. Once it sheds the shackles of the overbearing triple digit heat of the Arizona summer, it takes on life and color and breath. That’s what drew the Sawyers there.

        That and, of course, the relatively extreme wealth of new jobs; in the declining economy, seventy seven thousand a year for an IT Department Administrator and eighty two thousand a year for a skilled corporate position with a national fitness center chain were stratospheric and the cause for many a dance of giddiness around the two bedroom Kansas apartment the family had previously called home.

        As they plane touched down at Sky Harbor International Airport, the two elder Sawyers -- Tim, 33; Julie, 35 -- gave each other happy, excited glances. Son Jimmy, age 11, was more exasperated than excited, other than that their arrival meant he could finally get off the confining aircraft. Regardless of their differing reasons for it, the jetway couldn’t extend to the fuselage of the American Airways 747 fast enough for them.

        Arriving by Discount Cab on Papago Drive, they found the gates of the planned townhome community of Wellspring Estates to be conveniently and quickly accessed via six digit passcode, just as the Arriving Residents’ Guide advised. So far, this late morning in early October couldn’t have been any more idyllic if Norman Rockwell had captured it in watercolors.

        The cab deposited them directly in front of their two story townhouse, where the landscaping was trim and immaculate, as promised, and departed after running Tim’s gold card with in polite silence. “There y’are, pal.” the cabbie handed the card back. “All set?”

        “Good to go, thanks.” Tim stepped out of the front passenger’s seat, then opened the door for Julie. Jimmy scrambled out and stretched vigorously; all that pent up energy was raring to go somewhere, anywhere, after sitting for almost six hours in two taxis and an aircraft. Finally -- finally! -- unconditioned air!

        “C’mon, sport.” Tim clapped him on the back. “Let’s go pick out your room.”

        “Dad, we did that when we came last time and looked at it.” Jimmy groused. He wanted to be outside, damn it! He looked at the sidewalk that ran a good dozen yards in either direction, angling away at each end. “Is my skateboard here yet?”

        “Remember the phone call we got on the way to our gate, kiddo?”

        “Yeah.” Jimmy looked at his father blankly -- what did that have to do with his question?

        “It was the movers. All our stuff -- your skateboard included,” he pointed toward the house. “Is in there.”

        Jimmy started toward the house.

        “But!” his father cut him off. He stopped, turning back with an expression of exaggerated patience. “It’s in boxes, the whole kit ‘n’ caboodle. And nobody’s doing any goofing off until we get it all out of the boxes and where it belongs.”

        “Oh, come on, Dad...”

        “We work before we play, young man. You know that.” His mom was talking to him but looking at his dad like she meant it for him. She probably did, too, judging by the matching hang-dog expression that formed on his face. The Sawyer boys loved their toys. Jimmy’s skateboard, his dad and his PlayStation 3. He wondered if his mother ever had any fun. Then he reflected that keeping them from having fun might be her idea of fun.

        That, and chicken soup when he was sick, probably all moms really did.

        He looked around as he headed for the front door behind his mom and dad; he spotted a couple his mom and dad’s age pulling into the driveway next door. He looked the other way and saw an older lady -- he couldn’t tell how much older, though, and that puzzled him for a minute.

        She looked older than his mom but not as old as his grandma. He could usually guess how old people were -- albeit by categories labeled Kid, Teenager, Parents and Ancient. The wrinkles around her eyes said a little beyond Parents, her posture said Teenager and something else... well, he couldn’t figure out what that something else was, or what it meant.

        So he did what all 11 year old kids do: he shrugged and promptly forgot about it. Some old lady next door wasn’t going to get the unpacking done so he could start surfing new concrete.

 

        The unpacking took most of the day; it was too late, by the time they were done, for playing outside. By that time, though, Jimmy was “too pooped to peep”, anyway, as Tim was known to say, and mom likewise, so their first home-cooked meal in the new place was going to wait until tomorrow. A vote was taken -- only his mom’s vote really counted, of course -- and they decided to go out for Italian at a nearby Olive Garden they’d paged up in the local phone directory, the cable company not yet having turned on their high-speed connection.

        As they piled out and into the family’s Ford Fusion, which Dad had had the annoying foresight to have shipped before they came, Jimmy saw the neighbor lady for the second time. In the somewhat harsh incandescence of their outdoor garage light, Jimmy could see the age lines around her eyes a little better.

        Tim waved. “Hi!” Julie gave her a tired smile.

        “Hello.” she introduced herself. “You’re the new people, I assume? I’m Georgia O’Grady. I live next door.” She wore a prim and proper blouse with a high collar and long sleeves under a gray sweater against the October evening’s chill over a long skirt. Jimmy wondered how come she was dressed like an old lady; she didn’t look much like an old lady.

        Unfortunately, much to Tim and Julie Sawyer’s embarrassment, their boy hadn’t quite mastered the subtlety or tact to wonder this to himself. “Jimmy!” his mother scolded.

        Georgia looked faintly wounded as she turned a stern look on the boy. “You happen to be right, young man. I am an ‘old lady.’ But a boy should never point out to a lady that she’s old.”

        “You don’t look that old to me, Mrs. O’Grady.” Tim smiled, hoping to smooth things over.”

        “It’s Ms., young man.” she sniffed. “Mr. O’Grady... passed away, some time ago. I kept the name and the things, but the rest he took with him when he left.” She then fixed him with a somewhat disapproving look for his own slip, “And just how old do I look to you?”

        “Uh...” he blinked, suddenly on the spot himself. “Well... I really couldn’t guess, ma’am...”

        “Ma’am?” she was outraged.

        By now, Jimmy was feeling not only relieved but thoroughly entertained. Actually, he was trying hard not to laugh, which was trouble from two directions. Fortunately, his mom rescued them both.

        “We’re going out for dinner, Ms. O’Grady.” she announced, and opened the rear passenger door, shooing Jimmy into the car. The old lady looked somehow even more displeased by this, but didn’t say anything further. Instead, she turned on her heel and stalked off back to her own yard with a “Good night!” cast over one shoulder.

        Jimmy should have known then that there was going to be trouble.

 

        “Well, that didn’t exactly go well, dear.” Julie noted on the way downtown with her trademark arch tone. The bright lights and neon of their new hometown slid by; Jimmy watched them with fascination. The small Kansas town they’d left behind had nothing to rival Scottsdale for crowds, or for crowds of neon.

        “Oh, you could tell as well as I could she’s a member of the Easily Offended Committee.” The “Easily Offended Committee” was a quasi-imaginary organization Tim and Julie Sawyer had discovered in Stanton’s Fork’s south side neighborhood. Mostly composed of young Mormon couples and elderly Baptist couples, their mascot was a middle-aged spinster with  glasses perched low on her nose and a disapproving eyebrow perpetually cocked at the modern world. And they’d left it behind, or so they thought, only to land right next door to it again. Life was fun.

        “I could.” Julie agreed. “You weren’t exactly stingy about handing her ammunition, though, darling.”

        Dad’s eyes flicked up to the rear-view mirror and caught Jimmy’s. Jimmy stared back with wide-eyed innocence. Of course, Dad wasn’t buying it. “Yeah, well that makes both the Sawyer boys generous types, I s’pose. Isn’t that right, son?”

        “What?!” Jimmy exclaimed. “She is old!” He scowled, not at all liking his new-found position on the hot seat.

        “Whose idea was it to teach our son that honesty is the best policy, dear?” Tim asked with a smirk. Then his expression sobered a bit. “Every neighborhood’s got one like her, Julie. We handled it back home, we can handle it here.”

        “I suppose.” she allowed.

        “Long day of traveling and unpacking, and who knows what kind of day the neighbors had. We’ll put our best foot forward next time.”

 

        It wasn’t their best foot, the next time. It was Jimmy’s aged Powell Peralta skateboard, that he’d “inherited” from Tim. The sun was shining, but in mid October, it was no longer the glaring white-hot presence it had been only a month or so before. A cool fall breeze brushed Jimmy’s dark hair back from his forehead as he stepped out onto the sidewalk, swayed the tops of palm trees and ruffled their fronds.

        Jimmy stared up at these for a moment; the only other place he’d seen so many palm trees was in Orlando the first and so far only time he’d been to Disney World. A sound caught his attention -- one of the few sounds that could have, he was so engrossed suddenly in memories of Mickey Mouse and funnel cake.

        It was the sound of a skateboard rocketing down sidewalk, then the pop and slap of the board leaving the concrete and then setting down again. He turned and looked to see an older boy, about 14, with a shaved head, an Independent t-shirt and baggy olive drab shorts. The kid noticed him as well, skated up hard and stomped the back edge of his board to catch it in hand.

        “You gonna cuddle that board all day, or you gonna skate?” the kid grinned.

        Jimmy scowled. “Who are you?”

        The kid ignored his question and squinted at his board. “Holy shit, a Powell Peralta! Those are rare sweetness, kid.”

        “It was my dad’s.” Jimmy relaxed a little. He’d never met anybody before, other than his dad, who skated. Most of the kids his age in Stanton’s Fork had been pretty reclusive, usually just going straight home after school and not venturing out much. He’d never really figured out why, he figured kids in one horse hick towns were just that way. “My dad skated pro before he got old.

        “Sweet. What did he teach you? I’m Brian.” the older boy gestured with a thumb, “This your house?”

        “Yeah. He showed me how to ride it, but he’s busy all the time. He’s a network administrator for America West. My mom doesn’t like me skating at all, of course.”

        “Yeah, moms aren’t supposed to. It’s in the Rulebook they give ‘em at the Parent Factory. You know how to ollie at least?”

        Jimmy laughed at the mental image of parents being turned out on an assembly line, disapproving looks and wagging, scolding fingers and all. “Yeah, I got about a thousand videos, sometimes my dad and I watch ‘em. He gets all choked up and stuff.”

        “Yeah, getting old must really suck. Well, except for girls are more fun to look at. So what’s your name, kid? Unless you like bein’ called kid.”

        “I’m Jimmy.”

        Brian looked past the Sawyers’ place. “Cool. You gotta be careful of skating in front of old lady O’Grady’s place. Anywhere else is usually cool, though.”

        Jimmy perked up his ears, “Yeah, we met her last night, she was kinda cranky ‘cause I called her old.”

        Jimmy laughed. “Oh, man... yeah, you kinda screwed the pooch right off the bat.”

        “Huh?” Jimmy looked confused.

        “You know... messed up. I wouldn’t worry about it too much, she won’t do nothin’... at least, I don’t think she will. Just don’t give her too much ammunition.” Brian dropped his board to the sidewalk again.

        Jimmy laughed. “That’s funny! My mom said the same thing to my dad last night on the way to dinner.” He dropped his own board, planted a foot on it.

        “Heh. Okay, kid,” Brian grinned at him. “Show me some shit, and I’ll teach ya some new shit.”

        “Cool.” Jimmy launched his board, angling down the sidewalk, coasting out a bit past Brian’s place, then anchoring the board to stop before turning and starting back toward the older boy. The sun on his bare arms, the breeze on his back, the sounds of insects buzzing up in the palm trees, were all adding up to a great first day. The work was done, the time to play was here, and the sidewalk felt smooth as new silk under the wheels of the old skateboard.

        Then Georgia O’Grady stepped out on the front porch of her unit and scowled at them. Jimmy didn’t notice at first; he was already in ‘the zone’, feeling the rhythm of his right leg propelling him forward, the slight hum of the deck under his left foot, the light pulse as he flew over each slight indentation between sections of sidewalk.

        As he neared Brian, he crouched, drew his right foot back to the board, coiled his legs under him and sprang up, giving the back of the board an extra stomp to lift the board under his feet as he performed a good, solid ollie, touching down again with a solid smack on the sidewalk.

        “Hey!” she was coming down the front walk of her townhouse now, steering herself toward them. Her blouse and skirt were different today, but still looked like old-lady-wear to Jimmy; her hair was long, curly and dark brown with, Jimmy could now see, a few threads of silver in it. She pointed at Brian. “What did I tell you about skateboarding out here, you hoodlum?”

        “Aw, gee whiz, Missus O’Grady,” Brian answered mockingly. “I forgot!” He reverted to his normal tone. “What did the HOA and the cops tell you about it?” In point of fact, the homeowners’ association had told her there was nothing in their guidelines forbidding it, and when she’d pressed the issue further to the Scottsdale Police Department, they’d told her the same -- and furthermore, that they had no appreciation for nuisance calls. It hadn’t been a particularly fun week for her neighbors afterward.

        She pointed at Jimmy. “I don’t want you riding that thing on the sidewalk out here!”

        Jimmy Sawyer had never been one to take orders from anyone other than his parents, and he’d never been the shy type in letting anyone, including older kids, teachers and principals, know exactly where he stood on the issue. “You’re not my mother, Georgia.”

        She just stared at him for a moment, her cheeks reddening and her mouth opening and closing as if she were completely at a loss for a response to such open and blatant disrespect.

        “James Thomas Sawyer!”

        Jimmy gulped. Oh, shit.

        Julie Sawyer strode over to her son. “I am your mother, and the next time I hear you talk to an adult like that, I will paddle you like a kayak. Do you understand me?”

        Jimmy’s head dropped and he picked up his skateboard. “Yes, ma’am...” he headed despondently toward the house. “See ya later, Brian.”

        “See ya, Jimmy.” Brian glared over at Georgia O’Grady, then turned to head home himself.

        “Where are you going, James?” his mother asked. He stopped and turned back with a bewildered look. “I didn’t say you had to stop playing.”

        Georgia was astounded. “What?”

        “He was rude, but he was right. There’s nothing in the HOA’s terms about forbidding our kids to play outside.

        “Well, I never!” Georgia huffed.

        “That explains your disposition, then.” Julie shot back.

        The older woman stepped up close to her, eyeing her up and down. The tension was palpable as the 5’8” mature woman stood toe to toe with the 5’6” Certified Personal Trainer. “Your son needs to learn some manners.” she observed darkly. “And so do you.”

        “I’ll tend to my own son’s raising, thank you very much.” Julie said evenly. “And blustering at children is hardly a sign of good breeding, so you’re welcome to make all the observations you like -- on your own property.” She squared her shoulders and kept the older woman’s eyes pinned with her own. “Good day, Mrs. O’Grady.”

        “Well...” Georgia appeared both thunderstruck and then immensely amused. “Well!” She turned and stalked off.

        Brian, for his part, looked like he might be about to either applaud or faint. “Dude,” he whispered to Jimmy. “Your mom is hardcore, man!”

        Jimmy shrugged. “I guess.” He’d never really thought about it. To him, mom was just... mom.

 

        But that was not the end of Georgia O’Grady -- oh, no, not by a long sight. Rather than keep her perfectly formed nose out of the Sawyers’ affairs, she made it a point to make the Sawyers her affair. Throughout the week leading up to Halloween, her itinerary was as followed:

 

        Monday, October 27th:

        Tim Sawyer left for the America West corporate offices in downtown Tempe each day sharply at 6:30 AM. This morning, however, something was amiss. The previous evening, he’d parked the family’s Fusion out on the street, rather than in the driveway, as they’d come home late sunday evening from a film at the Harkins Theater in the Tempe Marketplace.

        It had been some long, drawn-out “epic” about prehistoric types battling some sort of creature. He had actually found himself waking from a light doze as the theater’s lights came up, and had had to rouse Julie and Jimmy likewise.

        Naturally, when they’d finally arrived home, he was simply too damn tired to care about getting the car into the driveway. Now he found himself regretting it. In the brisk morning chill, he came around to the driver’s side of the car to find a boot on the rear driver’s side wheel, and a note from Georgia O’Grady on the windshield advising that she’d called a towing company, since HOA rules quite explicitly (her words) forbade the parking of owners’ vehicles anywhere but in their driveways.

        It took a call to the towing company and a rather... heated... discussion with a supervisor there to impress upon them that booting a vehicle in front of the owner’s own residence was very, very illegal, and that if they ever did it again, he’d take every penny the company had and ram every penny the company had up every related ass he could find. They were most apologetic.

        Georgia O’Grady, on the other hand, was insufferably smug throughout the entire event.

 

        Tuesday, October 28th:

        Julie Sawyer, on returning home from the latest opening of an L.A. Fitness in the distant suburb of Apache Junction, discovered that bright orange stripes had been painstakingly painted down the length of the Sawyers’ section of sidewalk, as well as the Chambers’s, Brian’s family.

        Walking from one end of the defaced section of sidewalk to the other, Julie Sawyer was infuriated to discover the missive, HOOLIGAN ZONE scrawled in nearly calligraphy-perfect orange paint on either end of the defacement.

        Her complaint to the homeowners’ association was met with the following: No witnesses observed the act of vandalism, which meant that there were no grounds on which to take any action on the part of the homeowners’ association. She was advised, however, to take steps to get the vandalism cleaned up post-haste, or the Sawyers’ and the Chambers’ very well might be assessed “penalties.” The “penalties” were not explicitly described, but Julie Sawyer did explicitly describe her dissatisfaction with the level of service she had received.

 

        Wednesday, October 29th:

        Jimmy spent most of the day bumming around the house, a little confused and depressed. His confusion and depression were only deepened by the fact that he couldn’t place why he was confused or depressed. Which was, of course, confusing and depressing.

        He was, in short, in “a mood.”

        He moped through the house, moped through the backyard, moped down to the convenience store just outside the gates, a place called QuikTrip, which they didn’t have back home. That’s when it hit him -- he was homesick. So he moped around in the QuikTrip until the tall, pimply girl behind the counter very politely and in a hilariously nasal voice asked him to buy something or beat it.

        He shrugged; he was eleven, it wasn’t like he was a Rockefeller. An observation which she found most comedic but which reduced his options by exactly half. He sighed.

        “What would you like, Jimmy?” He heard the voice but couldn’t believe the words. He turned back and looked, and surely enough, there was Georgia O’Grady in her prim old-lady attire, looking at him with an impatient if uncharacteristically kindly expression.

        “Um...” he hadn’t really thought about getting anything; he’d just explained that to Miss Acne 2008 behind the counter. Still, she was offering an olive branch, and Jimmy was a good-natured kid, and besides, it was warmer today than it had been since the Sawyers had arrived, so:

        “A soda sounds pretty good.”

        “Well,” she looked through her rather ominously sized black handbag and fished out a five, handing it to him. “Get whatever you’d like, and then you can walk me home.” She paid for her purchase while he went and got a Mountain Dew -- but in a weird purple color he’d never seen before, something new out here, he figured, and it said something about grape, his favorite flavor. He snagged a Snickers bar on the way back to the counter.

        As they made their way through the parking lot and back toward the gates, he figured she was probably going to break the silence with a sentimental lonely-old-lady-got-crotchety-after-the-Mister-passed-and-the-kids-never-call and blah blah blah. Instead, all she said was:

        “You owe me five dollars.”

        She caught him with that mid-sip and he almost sprayed a purple carbonated fan in his surprise, but reined it in. “Or,” she continued, “you can mow my lawn for it.”

        He swallowed. “Mow your lawn?”

        “Front and back.” she nodded. “The landscapers have passed me by two weeks in a row now, the worthless hoodlums.”

        Well, I wonder why. he thought to himself dryly, but managed not to wonder it aloud.

        She read the sour look on his face. “You don’t mind a little hard work, do you, young man? I certainly hope not. After all, I’ve already paid you, haven’t I?”

        On reaching her unit, she opened the garage to display what had to have been the most ancient, user-unfriendly specimen of the lawn mower kind seen in fifty years. It was a gigantic, red, rusted and pitted gas-driven monstrosity. He didn’t have the faintest inkling how he was expected to push the behemoth around. It had to weigh at least half again what he did.

        He watched in stunned fascination as she discovered that one of the wheels was catching on a piece of twine wrapped in its axle. Rather than grunting and straining to lift that half of the dilapidated machine free of the ground to work the twine loose, she wrapped her fingers around the front lip of the mower and lifted the entire machine easily with one hand, working the obstruction loose with the other before carrying the thing at arm’s length like a loaded diaper into the yard and setting it down.

        She turned and looked at him dourly. “Well? What are you waiting for, boy? Bring the gas can out here and let’s get the old girl fueled up!”

        “Which...” he almost finished old girl do you mean? but instead said, “Uh... which one is the gas can?”

        “The red one,” she said slowly, as if he were developmentally challenged, “with the word... gas... on it.” The look she gave him could have flash-frozen lava.

        Four hours later, he had finally mowed the yard to her satisfaction. Or, at any rate, to her exasperated resignation.

 

        Thursday, October 30th

        The Sawyers returned from the biggest Wal-Mart they’d ever laid eyes on, the car stuffed to bursting with various arts and crafts supplies. It had been decided that, since Jimmy wasn’t starting school until the following Monday, he could make himself useful by helping his mother create Halloween decorations -- which, and they checked exhaustively, were not only permitted by encouraged by their HOA.

        Of course, Jimmy had had about enough of “being useful” after the previous day’s agenda, but he was reluctant to say anything about it to his mom or dad. He felt... dirty, somehow. Used. And more than slightly embarrassed about getting tricked into anything.

        So they sat at the immense dining room table with glue and papier-mâché and watercolor paints, and created, over the course of six frustrating hours, the most elaborate representations of half-skeletonized zombie Sawyers’s in human history.

        When they had finished, Jimmy stared at a nearly exact duplicate of himself, with the minor additions of a severed arm -- complete with a painted cardboard nub of bone and a few dozen strings of burgundy yarn -- a nine inch long, three inch deep watercolor painted gash in the side of “his” head, styrofoam peanuts brain proudly on display, and a trio of black rubber rats crawling in and out of one rough paper cheek. He declared it the coolest damn thing he’d ever seen, for which his mother promptly and primly slapped him upside the back of the head.

        There was not a sign of Georgia on Thursday; which was fortunate, since the manufactured horrors the Sawyers had created were more than sufficient to tide them over.

 

        Friday, October 31st:

        Halloween arrived with a wave of anticipation. For Jimmy, it was all about the bittersweet of Trick or Treating that night, to be followed by the last two days of his week off of the drudgery of school.

        For Tim and Julie, of course, it was just the fact that it was a weekend, period. They could have done without the holiday, really -- with neighborhood kids, and they were happy for their son that this neighborhood seemed to have shown a decent number of kids his age, a little younger and a little older, they expected to be hard hit starting around six thirty or seven. Of course, that meant little to no “alone time.”

        Still, there was the consolation that they might, just might, win the contest for Best Decorations. That wasn’t the reason for the elaborate setup, but dinner for the family at Rula Bula, an Irish themed restaurant in uptown Scottsdale, would sure make a nice perk.

        Ben and Janice Chambers, Brian’s parents, had come over to admire their handiwork. Ben Chambers, a balding 40ish electrical engineer who stood a lumbering 6’6” by 280lbs, and his lovely wife Janice, a thirtysomething blonde of diminutive -- even elven -- proportions, graciously accepted mugs of lightly sweetened Kona coffee.

        “I think you guys are going to take it this year.” Janice gushed, still transfixed by the display. “That display is just amazing.”

        “Not to mention the lights.” Ben mused. “Lasers and strobes are always a finisher, grabs the kids. Like a rock show. You got dry ice?”

        Tim nodded. “We got dry ice.” The two raised their coffee mugs in a toast. Jimmy rolled his eyes and tried not to be ill.

        “Old Battle-Axe O’Grady is gonna shi--” Ben’s mouth was promptly clapped shut by his wife, who smiled apologetically.

        Tim looked laughed. “ ‘Battle Axe’, huh?”

        “Oh, she’s earned it.” Janice assured him. She released Ben’s mouth and reached for her coffee.

        “Over-time.” Ben agreed in a more moderated spirit. “See, she wins this contest every year. Probably just throws the winnings in a desk drawer, too -- nobody ever sees her go anywhere except down to the QT. Nobody’s figured out how she comes up with her decorations, but they’ve never been anywhere near as good as your stuff. She’s not taking it this time.”

        “Nope, tonight she’s getting one less slip of paper for a desk drawer.” Tim grinned. He turned to Julie. “Let’s get ‘em out there, sweetheart.”

        The Chambers’ were right -- Georgia’s decorations looked not only store bought, but not bought at a particularly good store. She was standing at the bottom step leading to her front door, glowering at the Sawyers as they set out their array.

        “So!” she called over at them. “You’re entering the contest, are you!”

        “That’s right!” Tim grinned back. “I hear you always win this contest!” He arranged the lasers and strobes carefully on and around the figures, then plugged the lighting in.

        “That is precisely right, young man!” her tone was one of righteous indignation. “I always win!” But he could tell by the look that crossed her face, as he looked up from securing the lighting into the outlets on the extension cord, that she had her doubts this time around.

        “Well!” he shrugged, “Best of luck!”

        “Hmph!” she huffed and stalked inside.

 

        Trick or treating in Scottsdale is generally as raucous an affair as anywhere else; sometimes more so. This was one of those times. Jimmy had already gone out into the community. When Julie and Tim opened the door to a trio of girls in their late teens wearing -- literally -- nothing but cellophane, their bodies fully nude and on display beneath it, narrowly covered by circles of thicker, cloudier cellophane over their areolae and cloudy strips over their pubic areas, Julie flew into hysterics and raced off to find her son and bring him home before anything really exciting should befall him, entirely forgetting that her husband was now surrounded by young ingenues mere millimeters from full frontal nudity.

        She hauled him back up their walk by the ear a half hour later, the boy naturally and quite rightly protested that he hadn’t done anything, and Dad, why’s mom freaking out? Dad was naturally somewhat reticent to explain things. They were about to go inside when a trio in business suits turned and marched in lock-step up the walk behind Julie and Jimmy Sawyer.

        “Um... hi.” Tim offered. “Can we help you?” The three were adults, and if they were trick or treaters, their matching Armani suits said they really went for the full production.

        “You’re Tim Sawyer, are you?” inquired a redhead in her 30s with stylishly clipped hair and a stylishly clipped manner of speaking.

        “Yeah, that’s me.”

        “We’re from your HOA.”

        “Oh, good!” Julie rounded on them, about to educate them in the finer points of customer service.

        “We’re her to award you the prize in our annual Scream Gems Halloween contest.” the redhead continued. “This is without a doubt the best presentation I’ve seen, and I’ve been doing this for over five years. Simply phenomenal work!”

        Julie stowed her commentary on their telephone representatives for another time.

        “These,” the redhead took a trio of thin, brightly colored envelopes from an inside pocket of her pinstriped jacket, “are Visa gift cards for two hundred dollars each. They’re for you. Congratulations, and again, very good show.” She turned to her large male bookends and adopted a passable impersonation of Mae West, “Come on, boys. I feel like raisin’ some Hell!”

        And off they went, just like that. Tim turned to cast an eye at Georgia O’Grady’s place, more than somewhat hoping she’d missed out on the whole thing. She stared back from her front step, visibly seething. Well, so much for that. Unable to think of anything else to do, Tim grinned and waved.

 

        He woke on the beautiful morning of Saturday the 1st to the sound of someone chopping wood. In his state of half-wakefulness, it reminded him of being a kid on his grandpa’s farm. Every morning at 5 AM, the old man would be out front, chopping firewood.

        Didn’t matter whether they had a whole cord of the stuff in the living room next to the wood burning stove or if they were down to sawdust. Didn’t matter whether it was twenty below or ninety degrees in the shade. That’s where you’d find Old Man Jack, out in front of the farmhouse, just off to one side of the driveway, dropping the bit of his old two handed, two headed fire engine red axe into termite-food.

        This brought Tim around to thinking of Old Man Jack’s pipe, and how if the old man had ever caught him any of the few hundred times he’d smoked out of it, he would have made him into a zombie...

        A zombie... someone’s chopping wood. Or it sounds like chopping wood... the smoke of sleep finally cleared enough for it to occur to Tim Sawyer that he wasn’t 9 years old anymore, this wasn’t a farm 16 miles outside Minnetonka and he he shouldn’t be hearing anyone chopping wood or anything else.

        He jumped up out of bed, hurriedly threw a pair of sweatpants on to cover his nakedness, then grinned at Julie, who still slept -- they’d found some “alone time” after all -- and checked the clock: 6:30. “Well, I’ll be damned...” he murmured to himself, then raced out of the bedroom, down the hall, through the family room and out the front door, where the chill of the front walk bit into the soles of his feet without wasting much time.

        Georgia O’Grady looked up at him from just off to one side of his front steps. The woman had the arm of one of the faux-Sawyers in her hands, and Tim knew for a fact that the “bones” of the things were good, thick oak dowels -- not pine.

        Nevertheless, as he watched in a mix of astonishment and horror, she snapped it in her hands without the slightest sign of exertion. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he asked in cold outrage.

        “Hm?” she looked up at him nonplussed. “I’m just helping you take down your decorations. After all, young man, Halloween is over.”

        “Then kindly explain your face.” It was too early in the morning, Tim decided, for him to pretend to take this in good humor.

        She shot to her feet. “Excuse me?!”

        “Good idea, you’re excused!” he shot back. When she stood, stunned, he pointed in the direction of her unit. “As in beat it! Before I call the cops and have you arrested for criminal mischief!”

        She huffed. “Well, you have no proof of that!”

        “Lady, are you batty?” he was genuinely thunderstruck by the unalloyed nerve of this woman. He stood over her, not really all that much taller but feeling -- in his own mind, anyway -- like a towering inferno of raging male authority.

        “Don’t you be flippant with me! You have no proof, and if you know what’s good for you--”

        “I walked out of my house and caught you at it, red handed!” he crossed his arms over his chest a moment, thinking. “And are you seriously --” he started to laugh, “Are you seriously threatening me? Because let me tell you, something, you spiteful, snotty, smarmy old woman, the next time you threaten me on my property, you don’t want to know what’ll happen!” he calmed himself for a moment and took another approach. “You know what? Let’s say you’re right. Let’s throw reality out the window just for a gag, and just say that you’re right, and I don’t have any proof.

        Well, guess what, sister? You’re standing there with your bony old hands all over my property being proof. So you can either get the fuck off my property --”

        And that was when she slapped him. Not hard, just reached up and slapped him. Instead of recoiling, which he could already feel she’d been trying to nudge him to do by stepping into his personal space, he leaned further into hers, his voice lowering to a menacing growl.

        “...off my property by the time I get back with a camera or we can settle the ‘proof’ angle nice and neat.” He turned and stalked into the house.

        She was entirely gone when he got back with the little red Casio Exilim he kept in his desk.

 

        Jimmy wasn’t so much upset by the decorations’ disappearance as baffled. He hadn’t been told exactly what had become of them, but he could read on his parents’ faces that Georgia O’Grady had something to do with it as easy as reading the “for a good time” telephone directory in a junior high school boys’ room stall.

        His conclusion then: the old lady did it. As simple as that was, his answer was equally simple in its simplicity, and he carried it out Saturday night. The Sawyers had gone out for the evening with an undeniable need to get a little more “alone time” without the possibility of more Georgia-related drama.

        They had not, however, been able to secure a babysitter for Jimmy -- the Cellophane Girls were a complete and utter non-starter, as far as Julie Sawyer was concerned. What they were able to secure was an iron-clad promise from Jimmy that he’d microwave some Macaroni & Cheese that had been pre-cooked for the evening (and nothing else in the microwave, thank you very much) and then go to bed promptly by 9.

        Of course, an iron-clad promise from an 11 year old boy is worth its weight in toilet paper, a substance which even now was being carefully stockpiled in a Columbia Sport backpack on Jimmy Sawyer’s bed.

        He was pretty sure he was going to get all kinds of holy hell from Mom & Dad over it, but when you’re a pissed-off kid who feels like he’s defending family honor, things like that really don’t carry much weight. He threw on a black fleece jacket, grabbed the backpack and headed out the back door into the yard.

        The air was chillier tonight than it had been last night, and he only gave a split second of thought to that before he was crossing the back yard and looking over the low stone fence that separated the Sawyers’ yard from Georgia O’Grady’s. The moon was out, and he grinned -- that’d turn the trails of toilet paper into shining ribbons against the darkness of the two townhouses. Then he frowned.

        It was also mark, really well, which direction the rolls had come from. Rather than launching them from his own yard, he was going to have to cross over into hers and do it from there. Well, long term security was worth the short term risk, he figured. Climbing the stone fence, he dropped to his feet on the other side and hugged the wall of her townhouse as he moved around to the back of the building.

        He heard a faint clanking, but it didn’t really register on his radar. It was a sound he’d heard so many times that it didn’t even really send off any kind of a flag for him. He continued along the back of the building, the sound increasing in volume as he grew closer to it.

        As he moved, the light of an open window fell across his face. He turned, not because he was curious but because that’s what anyone does when a light strikes them. They turn and look to see what it is.

        He wished he hadn’t. He shrunk away from what he saw through the window, his eyes going wide in a mixture of horrified disbelief and awed fascination as the clanking  sound he had heard all this time finally hit the part of his conscious mind that recognized what it was. It was the clank of weights moving up and down in a weight machine. Heavy ones.

        He ducked as he saw her head start to turn, then froze still. No sounds from inside. The entire neighborhood seemed to go dead quiet. Somewhere, Jimmy was pretty sure he heard a cricket hiccup. He figured if he just sat stone still long enough, she’d go back to what she had been doing and he’d make a strategic withdrawal.

        He figured wrong.

        He hadn’t noticed, but the window he’d just looked through was open. He figured that out when an arm reached out through it and caught the scruff of his jacket and shirt, hauling him up and in to dump him in a sprawling, indignantly squawking heap on the hardwood floor inside.

        “Well, well.” She looked like a cat that had just wandered into a canary factory. “What do we have here, a little peeping tom?”

        “I wasn’t peeping, Georgia!” he made to bolt toward the window, but she caught him with one arm and swept him back hard enough to send him sprawling to the floor again. She ripped the backpack off his shoulders and held it up.

        “No? What was it you had in mind, then, you little brat! Burglary?” She lifted one bare foot and planted it directly in the middle of his small chest, pinning him to the floor under her weight, and opened the backpack. Then she began to laugh. “Oh... my... God!” she began to laugh harder and Jimmy’s face reddened.

        He looked her over more thoroughly now. Her auburn-going-gray hair was up and she wore a full body workout suit that left only her hands and feet bare, but he could see that his first impression the day they’d moved in hadn’t been wrong. The corners of her eyes and the threads of silver in her hair were the only things that showed her age.

        The rest of her looked like she might have been in a dirty magazine once, and probably still could be if she wanted. The 5’8” woman was, when not bundled in a frumpy dress and sweater, obviously built like a centerfold, though perhaps a touch thicker in the arms and legs than the usual men’s magazine fare.

        Her breasts were round, firm C cups, her waist narrow and her hips wide, with long legs. It was hard to make out much, if anything, else through the neutral gray workout suit.

        “Young man, I think your parents are failing you.” she said haughtily. “You’re obviously in need of a good lesson.”

        “Screw you!” Jimmy blurted without thinking about it. He sprang to his feet, grabbing his backpack and tugging as he headed for the window. He didn’t make it anywhere -- her grip on the backpack was infuriatingly strong. She reached out with her other hand and sent a searing slap directly to his cheek, knocking him backward but not quite loose of his backpack, so she followed it with another that detached him and knocked him to the floor a third time.

        He felt tears well in his eyes -- the old bitch hit hard, and his face hurt right down to his teeth.

        “You,” she said in a dangerous tone, “are being a very naughty boy.” She stood with one foot on either side of his body as he cradled his reddened cheek and sat up. She reached down and grabbed a fistful of his jacket and shirt again, hauling him up and punching a quick jab into his sternum as her fingers released him to send him flying across the room, where he tangled with a treadmill.

        He came down hard on the edge of the machine, twisting his ankle and howling in pain. The damnable treadmill was elevated to an angle, and its walking surface slid under his weight, further tangling him. She grabbed him by the twisted ankle, eliciting an even louder cry, and dragged him out to stand him up again.

        He leaned on his uninjured leg, sobbing, until she backhanded him -- open-handed, not that that mitigated the impact much -- in the other direction, where he stumbled, then tumbled over a low, soft cushion to roll to a stop on the other side. He lay there sobbing uncontrollably, curled in a fetal position.

        “I hope this has remedied your attitude, young man.” her voice showed no sign at all that she’d been doing anything more strenuous than knitting, but all the smug arrogance of someone who’d been knitting God’s own boxer shorts.

        He felt her fingers close around the nape of his neck once more and his sobbing increased in volume and insistence -- but then her other hand closed over his belt, at the back, and confusion joined misery in his mind -- what the hell was she about to do? He felt her carrying him, and before he could figure out where, he was suspended in midair for a split second before crashing to the cold, dewy grass outside the window. He lay there, the breath knocked out of him, for a full second, trying to gather enough of his wits together to get up and limp home.

        While he was still gathering, his backpack landed squarely in the small of his back, still mercifully full of nothing but toilet paper. The window slammed shut above and behind him, and the light went out.

        He limped back through the back door a moment later to find his mother waiting for him. As if his day hadn’t just been bad enough, his parents were home. “What happened to you?” she demanded. She was dressed in her workout outfit.

        He looked around for Dad. No such luck. He sighed, wiping tears from his cheeks, and recounted the whole ordeal, cringing as he got to the toilet paper part -- there was no point lying about it or trying to hide it, a few streamers of the stuff dangled from the backpack as he dragged himself in.

        Julie Sawyer sat frozen, unsure whether she ought to paddle his ass in light of the fact that it looked like Georgia O’Grady had already beaten the shit out of every other part of him. “Stay here.” she told him. “Don’t you move.”

        After a quick march next door, she had not cooled off, despite the now frigid outdoor temperature. Still clad in a tiny gray workout bra and short black spandex shorts, having been about to get in her nightly pre-bed workout, she barely noticed the cold. She pounded on the older woman’s front door, ignoring the doorbell entirely. There was no answer. She pounded again, harder.

        Her body was long, lithe limbs, with definite muscular size and definition, but closer to those of a figure or fitness competitor than a bodybuilder. Her shoulders were slim but hard, the muscles long and tapered. Her limbs were smooth but hard under the harsh amber of the porch light.

        Her breasts were firm 34 Cs, filling the sports bra to straining. Her abdominal muscles were hard but not huge, just lines between the rock solid muscle looking as if her washboard stomach had been engraved with definition. Her forearms were etched with the cords of the powerful muscles beneath, just as quadriceps, hamstring, abductors and adductors etched her long, powerful but trim thighs. There was no doubt that Julie Sawyer’s approach to managing her gyms -- as in managing most things -- was very, very hands-on.

        She didn’t know if her son were telling the truth about what had happened -- she had no reason to think he’d lie about who the culprit had been -- if anything, she thought, if he’d lied, he would have made up a story about anyone other than the obnoxious old lady next door. Either way, she was going to get to the bottom of it even if she had to pound this door right off its hinges to get the old woman to answer it.

        Answer it she did, after another round of jarring from Julie. “Yes?” she wore an expression of absolutely angelic innocence.

        “Did you just drag my son into your house and beat him?” her hands clenched and relaxed at her sides.

        Georgia smiled. “I certainly did. The little monster was creeping around outside my house, and he got what he had coming for it.”

        “You rotten old bitch!” Julie was incensed. “How can you --” she calmed herself. “Good, you stand right there and be smug about it. We’ll see how smug you are when the cops get here. You better pray they get here quick, or I’ll take care of it myself!”

        Georgia stepped out onto her front porch, closing her door behind her, still wearing that smug little smile, still dressed in her gray workout suit. “Well, be my guest, dear. I do think you’re overestimating your chances, though.” She looked the other woman up and down. “Really, child, you’re far too small to make such big threats. Look at those arms!” She scoffed. “Toothpicks. And those legs, my word! Skinny little things!”

        Julie gaped in astonishment. “Lady, you must be on crack!”

        Like lightning, her hand whipped out and caught Julie across the cheek in a slap that echoed off the wall of the house. “Don’t make unfounded accusations, young lady! You know, I think you could use a little lesson in etiquette yourself --”

        Julie cocked her arm back and sent a slap back at her, lightning fast -- but somehow, she must have telegraphed it too much. The old woman caught it, looking at her open hand with mild interest, like an interesting headline she’d spotted while passing by a newspaper stand. “Now that’s the spirit!” she smiled again, and began to squeeze Julie’s wrist in her fingers.

        Her grip was unfathomable, inhumanly strong, and although Julie couldn’t tell how much she weighed in all that featureless gray workout suit, it must’ve been a ton, as she slowly and easily leveraged the younger woman to her knees on the porch.

        Then she tilted her head a little, looking like she was concentrating, and the squeeze on Julie’s wrist began to increase, until the younger woman was screaming in agony and flailing to try to pry her arm loose. When she ran out of breath and had to inhale, the pressure tripled again and fire raced up Julie’s arm to the shoulder as the bones of her wrist cracked under the pressure.

        “Look at you.” Georgia said in a mocking kind of pity. “Such a frail little thing. I’m afraid I’m going to break you in half, dear. Oh, well.” she shrugged.

        Julie didn’t scream. It didn’t hurt -- at least, for a moment. She realized that, of course, this was probably because her body had entered a state of shock. Georgia pulled the younger woman to her feet and ripped a savage backhanded punch across her cheek that sent her staggering across the porch and into the wall.

        She turned and raised her right hand before dropping it again as the broken wrist now began to make itself heard. She raised her left, then, but it was too late. Georgia grabbed her by the throat in her left hand, spinning her away from the wall and rocketing a hard left hook into her temple, sending her sprawling back across the porch to the other wall.

        The only thought Julie could form in the whirlwind of pain and confused sensation was that her training had failed her, her physical conditioning wasn’t measuring up -- this thought wounded her to the core, more even than the brutal beating being improbably dished out by a woman old enough to be Julie’s own mother.

        Georgia let her get up, then, and watched with amusement as she tried to retreat to the stairs. She let her get up -- she let her get there. Then she coiled her right leg up and snap-kicked it into the retreating Julie’s buttocks, sending her flying, clean off her feet, to tumble to a heap in the yard.

        Georgia strode out after her calmly, confidently, and grabbed the back of her sports bra, tractoring her around before delivering a vicious right to her chin. She followed it with another, splitting Julie’s lip in a spray of blood.

        “Stop it!” Jimmy screamed. She’d been so intent on what she was doing that Georgia hadn’t noticed the boy return to stare in shock as the older woman beat his mother without mercy. Not that it mattered, she had more in store for him, too.

        She waited for him to get within arm’s reach, knowing already that when he did he would try to lash out, limp and all. For a split instant, she almost wished that she would be wrong -- it felt too easy, somehow, unsporting, to take advantage of his youth and inexperience. Then the instant came, and the flash of remorse -- or perhaps merely of fair play -- vanished.

        He swung on her, and her reflexes took over. She caught his little fist in her powerful fingers. Rather than stopping him or pushing him back, she pulled him toward her, spinning him by his arm while wrenching his hand down, then around, then up, grabbing his other shoulder in her left hand.

        Tripping his feet out from under him, she dropped to her knees herself, slamming the boy hard face-first into the grass. She couldn’t tell if that had knocked him out instantly or if he was simply so winded he couldn’t cry out from the impact. She didn’t care. She lifted him by his twisted arm and did it again.

        “Get off of my son!” Julie screamed; still, dazed as she was, she couldn’t keep her feet under her long enough to close the distance. Georgia lifted Jimmy’s limp body from the grass again and, this time with a snarl of real exertion, slammed him down a third and last time. The impact was hard enough to jar his arm where she held it. A faint, sickening crack could be heard as his arm snapped.

        The sound was audible even over a pair of car doors slamming. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing, you twisted old cunt?!” Tim Sawyer strode across the lawn like a six foot two inch, one hundred ninety pound freight train. Georgia stood to meet him, expecting him to continue his invective-filled tirade.

        But when you’ve just seen someone slamming your kid face first into the grass, and then spotted your wife lying in that same yard with a bloodied face, talking is no longer your first option.

        Tim had never been a brawler. Not when he was a kid, not in high school or college, and not afterward. The punch he threw had no style -- no technique -- no economy. He did not float like a butterfly. But he did sting like a cannonball.

        He threw a wide, sloppy haymaker that caught Georgia’s left temple square amidships and launched her off her feet to land on her gray workout suited ass all the way across her front walk and into the other part of the yard.

        Unfortunately, that was the sum total of Plan A. Tim turned to Ben Chambers, who had accompanied him to the Blockbuster Video and now stood in open-mouthed shock. “Get them in the car for me, Ben.” He took out his cell phone, flipped it open and started to dial the number for the Scottsdale Police Department.

        Georgia couldn’t have that. “I’m going to take that phone away from you, young man.” she warned him.

        “Oh, you fuckin’ think so?” he asked in disbelief.

        “I know it.” she announced with an arrogant smirk, and was on her feet before he saw her move. She charged in hard with a quick double jab that just nicked his chin as he stepped aside. His teeth clicked shut on the end of his tongue with the second impact, and he tasted the coppery tang of blood. He closed the phone and tossed it aside. “You stupid cunt.” he snarled.

        She clicked her tongue at him disapprovingly. “You really should give your elders their due, boy.”

        “Your due?” he laughed. “Your fucking due?!” He stood, shaking slightly as icy adrenaline raced through his veins. “You’re due to get your wrinkly old ass stomped, granny! How’s that suit ya? Huh?”

        “Oh? Well go ahead, young man.” she said, spreading her arms out to the side. “I’ll give you a freebie.”

        “I’ll bet it’s been decades since you’ve told a man that, huh?” he shot back. “Well, you asked for it!” He coiled back his arm, figuring to catch her with a devastating -- and non-incriminating -- shot right to her soft old gut. He jackhammered his fist forward -- and hit a solid wall of steely, defined muscle instead.

        “Aaaagh!” he cradled his aching fist. “Son of a bitch!”

        “Not bad, sonny, not bad.” she mused. “My turn!” He didn’t see her draw back her arm, only felt something slam into his gut -- it felt like getting hit by a Buick, with all the mass and only one one hundredth of the size. The air exploded out of him in a surprised whoosh, and his knees buckled as his body folded in half. He put out his hands, forced to all fours, retching and dry heaving in convulsive bursts. “There.” she put her hands on her hips, staring down her nose at him. “I think that should teach you for tonight.”

        His eyes were still watering and his gut still spasming when Ben grabbed him under the arms and hauled him into his car.

 

        On the way back from St. Mary’s Hospital, Ben tried to talk Tim out of what he was planning. “Trust me, this is not a good idea.”

        “Ben, the cops aren’t going to buy that she did it. You remember the look we got, right?” The look they had got from the Admitting Nurse, as a matter of fact, had been one of skepticism just a few breaths away from openly calling them liars to their faces. And nurses were supposed to listen to you. Cops were supposed to be a lot more skeptical even than that.

        In short, no way a cop was going to buy what had happened. They were pretty much on their own, and as much as he hated to admit it, Ben had to agree. “Okay, so what’s the plan? We go back there, you call her out, she beats you up again?”

        “She didn’t beat me up. She just caught me by surprise, that’s all. She must be wearing something under the workout suit.”

        Ben shook his head. “Damn it. I thought it was just Simon. I should have told you.”

        “Told me what?” Tim was confused. “Who the hell is Simon?”

        Ben sighed. “Simon Merriwether was the guy who lived in your place before you -- you didn’t meet him? No, I guess he took off too quick.” He looked like he was looking for a good way to explain a bad thing. “The same thing happened to him that happened to you and your family tonight -- just like with you, it ended him up in the hospital. Broken arm, broken jaw, broken ribs, she wouldn’t even let him heal up before she’d get onto him again.”

        Tim was incredulous. They turned back onto their street. “Wait, you’re telling me that old woman goes around putting people in the hospital all the time and nobody does anything about it?”

        Ben shrugged. “The cops never believe anybody. I mean, eventually some Detective Sergeant is going to take her in for it just on the number of complaints alone, but most people have just given up on complaining to the cops completely.” He gave Tim a pointed look. “Just like you.”

        “Which is why we’re going to handle this ourselves.” Tim countered. “I don’t feel like waiting for a cop to get bored enough to actually investigate this and do something about it. You in?”

        Ben shrugged his big shoulders and sighed. “Ordinarily, no. But beating up on an eleven year old kid... yeah, let’s pound the old bitch.” They climbed out of the car and headed for O’Grady’s place.

        She was sitting on her front steps, looking excruciatingly bored as they approached. “Well, well.” she sniffed. “I see you’ve brought your friend with you this time. Do you think it’ll do you any good, young man?”

        “I’m almost twice your size, you batty old dame,” Ben growled. “You tell me what you’ve been smoking and I’ll tell you how much sense we’re about to beat into you.”

        She climbed to her feet, her arms loose at her sides. “Well! It looks like the bad manners are catching!”

        “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet, bitch.” Tim growled as he took a quick, lunging step forward, throwing a solid right that connected with--

        --nothing at all. Georgia had read him like a book with that first punch. She slipped just inside it, slapping his arm away like a fly, and slammed a hard uppercut into his solar plexus, lifting him almost off his feet but staggering him backward, giving her the room to throw a hard left that connected with his nose, flashing a spark of hard light behind his eyes.

        He rallied and put up his hands, weaving them a bit.

        “Oh!” she said delightedly. “An amateur pugilist now, are we?” She was clearly making fun of him, which only pissed him off even more, as if what she’d done to his wife and son hadn’t been enough.

        He feinted with a left jab, dancing backward and to his left. He feinted again, then swung a hard right that caught her on the cheek. But it was a glancing impact and did little to nothing; it didn’t appear to do a thing to her except piss her off.

        She swung a flurry of jabs, backing him away. He pressed a hand over a split lip, his entire face feeling like it’d just been in a blender. She drew back her arm to deliver a knockout right --

        But found it caught by Ben, who slashed the other fist down and across her face in a viciously hard backhand. Unlike Tim, Ben was an experienced brawler. He’d clawed his way up out of a neighborhood that made Hell look like a suburb of Heaven, and a lot of that clawing had been literal.

        So he didn’t wait to see if she’d react to the backhand, hard as it had been. She wouldn’t -- he already knew that. It had just been something to block her vision for a second while he reached down with both hands and lifted her by her armpits to spin and launch her across the yard. The backhand had worked -- she wasn’t expecting to find herself slung through the air like a rag doll, and she touched down with about that much grace and style.

        Ben looked at Tim, “You all right?”

        “Oh, yeah, just swell.”

        “You look it.” They watched the old woman climb to her feet and dust herself off. “Swollen, I mean. Here comes Round 2, looks like. Bitch must have rocks for brains.”

        “Remind me to not hit her in the rocks, then.”

        “You boys,” she growled as she approached a little more slowly this time, “are in some very serious trouble now.”

        “Yeah.” Ben snorted dismissively. “I’m just shakin’. C’mere, granny.”

        Her face contorted in a mask of rage. “YOU CALL ME MS. O’GRADY!”

        Ben and Tim stared back, nonplussed. “I’ll call you whatever I want, you batty old dame.” Ben answered quietly. “And right now, the only thing I want to call you is an ambulance.”

        If it had been Ben’s intention to draw all Georgia’s wrath onto himself, it worked. With a wild, feral scream -- all her self control abandoned -- she leapt at him. But even without self control, she still apparently had some kind of training. Instead of trying for his face, which was a target for which she’d have little leverage while he was standing upright, she went for the smarter target areas.

        She dove in under his arms -- he thought he’d catch her up in a crushing bearhug -- and shot her right fist directly into the big man’s package -- a shot literally below the belt. He threw back his head and gritted his teeth against the pain.

        She seized the opportunity to ram a knee hard up into his gut, doubling him over. With his face brought lower, she rocketed a fist into his jaw, hard, toppling him onto his back. Before he could pull himself upright again, she lay down atop him, wrapping her arms around his head and burying his face in her chest, suffocating him.

        It wasn’t until that moment that Ben realized just how heavy Georgia O’Grady was. Even at 5’8”, she must have weighed nearly as much as he did. He had enough strength and leverage to push her off -- what he didn’t have was the focus, not with his balls and his jaw alike screaming at him.

        By the time he started to put up enough of a struggle for it to matter, it was too late to matter. The world faded away, from the edges in, and he was out. She climbed off Ben and looked at Tim, who backed away slowly.

        She stalked forward; she’d had her fun, and now she was ready to wrap things up -- for the time being, at least. She launched herself at Tim and went in swinging. She hit him with a left jab that caught him just under the eye, rocking his head back and staggering him backward on already unsteady feet.

        Her right caught him just under his already bloodied nose. He’d already had enough; his thought had been to get the hell out of there and go for the cops after all, the odds be damned. He didn’t get a chance. He hit the grass again like a bag of thawed beef, his lights well and truly out.

 

        It was a week before the Sawyers were all home again. The house was dimly lit when Tim and Julie brought Jimmy home. No words were exchanged; no one wanted to talk about what had happened.

        Julie had put it up to them being surprised. She hadn’t thought -- she had just rushed over there in a fit of rage and been too unfocused to see what was coming. She figured, similarly, that Tim had been caught unaware.

        Not having seen what happened, but having seen the results, she could only guess that he’d been hit with a brick or a rock or something. Or maybe it hadn’t been her -- it seemed pretty unlikely -- maybe she had a son, or a nephew or something.

        Still... they didn’t talk about it. They did go online and start looking through realtors’ listings. They didn’t talk about why. They didn’t need to.

 

        December 25th came and went. Presents were opened, holiday meals consumed. Georgia was a nuisance -- about the yard, about the decorations in the windows, about a dozen little things. But there was nothing as big as that night back in November.

        That is, until the day before New Year’s Eve. The Grand Re-Opening of the Builtmore Fashion Square L.A. Fitness had taken all week to organize and supervise, and had gone off without a hitch. Not only was this gym brand new and filled with clean, unused, state-of-the-arm equipment, it was also a 45 minute walk from home.

        Tim and Jimmy had been out at a Sun Devils game. Football wasn’t particularly a favorite of either of them -- both preferred baseball, though they’d already sworn off the Diamondbacks as a lost cause -- football and basketball were the only live sports going, and they were both steadfastly opposed to basketball. As Tim put it, “Why pay fifteen bucks to watch humans who get paid millions a year to do what dolphins do for fish?”

        Julie found herself waiting for the boys with a spare half hour on her hands. She made her way to the gym’s contact sports arena, a vast space with a multi-use wrestling/boxing ring in the center, speedbags, speedballs and heavy bags along one wall.

        Dressed minimally in brief black spandex workout shorts and a blue spandex sport bra, she cut an imposing figure even if at only five foot six. She took some time to warm up with one of the speedballs, going slow at first, then building up speed until the sounds of her punches echoed off the walls of the arena like machine gun fire.

        She moved to a medium-weigh bag next, twin and triplet jabs drumming into it to be punctuated by rock hard rights and lethal lefts. Next came a heavy bag, which rocked and weaved under hard hooks and crushing crosses. She stopped as another slow rhythm interrupted her -- it was the sound of slow, sarcastic applause.

        She turned and scowled. Then her cheeks reddened. “What the hell are you doing here?”

        Georgia O’Grady smiled back. She was wearing an outfit almost identical to Julie’s. Tight, silvery spandex workout shorts were filled to capacity by legs like carved marble, muscular definition showing on every inch of them. A gray spandex workout bra was filled out by large, firm breasts, and beneath that showed a six pack of abdominal muscles a bodybuilder would have been proud of, flanked by rows of hard, tightly defined obliques that would have made a woman with even the slightest sign of love handles weep in shame and envy.

        But it was her arms that were truly mind-boggling; they were sleek, yet so hard and defined you could have bounced quarters off them, or jaws off floors by the sight of them. Thick, tapered deltoids capped off horseshoe triceps deep enough for your eyes to dive in, fronted by biceps so round and hard, even unflexed, that a Marine would have asked her for training advice.

        “Well, well, well.” she snickered at Julie, whose own physique was formidable compared to the average woman’s, but a little lacking compared to that of the 75 year old standing in front of her. “Venting a little aggression, are we, dear? Maybe someday you’ll be ready for an opponent who hits back. Someday... maybe.”

        As if to punctuate her gloating, she spontaneously raised both arms and flexed them hard, the muscles separating into deep, rounded triceps and large, balled biceps that peaked hard. Her abs and pecs flexed along with the motion, valleys of definition deepening into ominous shadow as the muscle around them bulged out into stark highlight.

        “You want a round?” Julie smirked. Inwardly, she was shocked. A woman that age, with a physique like that? Good God! she thought. What the hell does she do all day? Julie herself could easily gain that level of muscularity -- with her long, lithe limbs and excellent genetics, it was a matter of preference rather than ability which kept her limbs sinewy rather than heavily muscled. To see a woman of any age so heavily muscled boggled her mind and balked her sensibilities. To see one well into her “later” years built thus was, to her, simply incomprehensible.

        “I warned you, dear.” Georgia gloated, lowering her arms to flex her pectoral muscles hard, striations deepening in them as the hard muscle under her breasts pushed them forward. She turned one massive thigh outward and flexed it as well, making the thick, hard cord of muscle from her hip to her knee leap out as the teardrop shaped adductor muscle bubbled to life, her large quadriceps flexed. “I warned you I’d break you in half, didn’t I?”

        But this time she was sure she was ready. This time she was going to give the old bitch what she had coming. “Let’s go.” She took down two pairs of gloves, two protective foam face masks, and tossed a pair of gloves and a mask to Georgia. She had to guess the size, but she guessed right.

        They slipped through the ropes, each taking a corner. There was no one to ring the bell, so they dismissed that formality and just went right to it, circling like hungry wolves growling over a piece of fresh meat.

        Aready warmed up, Julie’s fast twitch was already primed and ready. She didn’t give Georgia anything to react to; instead, she circled, waiting for the older woman to grow impatient.

        “You know, dear,” Georgia taunted, “You and your hoodlums haven’t been very cordial lately.” Obviously, she was going to go the pro-active route and try for provocation. Well, that was a game for two.

        “We’re like that with old skanks.” Julie grinned around her mouthpiece. “I’m sure you understand.”

        Georgia threw a hard right at that one, but Julie easily slipped to the inside of it and fired a left back along the open window of Georgia’s arm, tagging her squarely in the mouthpiece. Before she could get her arm back in to guard, Julie threw another left down and in for a body shot that caught the older woman in the ribs, winding her slightly, then waited for her right arm to come down to cover. As it did, Julie stepped deftly to her left, slapping Georgia’s right glove down further and powering in a hard right to her opponent’s right cheek, rocking her head back.

       

        The Fusion slid to a halt in the parking lot. Tim scanned the glass doors, the lobby beyond. No sign of his wife. “C’mon, sport.” he switched off the ignition and popped the door, swung his leg out. “Let’s go grab your mom.”

        “Okay.” Jimmy reached across his plaster-encased, sling-suspended right arm to open his own door, pulling himself out by the door frame with his left hand. They approached the main doors -- the place should have been locked up by now, but the last one with a key -- Julie Sawyer -- was nowhere in sight, so Tim tried his luck and found the door still unlocked. They stepped into the spotless, polished lobby.

 

        “Well!” Georgia backed off for a moment, popping her gloves together to signal for a breather. “You’ve improved quite a bit, dear! Maybe you can give me a little challenge now, hmm?”

        Julie stared dumbfounded at her. “I’ve been kicking your ass all over this ring.”

        “Oh, seriously now.” Georgia pulled the mouthpiece from her lips and tossed it off to the side. She slipped out of the gloves next, one by one, throwing them to where the mouthpiece had landed, then pulled the headgear free, shaking out her hair. “You don’t really think it’s the same when we’re all bundled up in foam rubber, do you?”

        She went back into a boxer’s crouch, putting her bare fists up into a guard position. “Well, you leave it on, dear, if you don’t think you can take me in a real fight yet. You’re probably still sore and weak from the last thrashing I gave you. Of course, you had it coming, you know, you and that little whelp of yours.”

        Julie had stripped off the gloves and the headgear and spat out the mouthpiece before she’d really given it any thought. At least, any thought other than, This time it’s your turn, bitch.

        “Mom?” Jimmy peeked through the doorway of the arena. “Mom!”

        “Julie, what the hell are you doing?” Tim’s voice was equally horrified. “Get out of there!” Tim had caught sight of Georgia’s physique under the clearer lights of the arena. He hadn’t really gotten a good look at it that night over a month ago when he’d tussled with her -- in hindsight, his mind had rewritten history to give him a glossed-over memory. He simply couldn’t handle the truth unvarnished.

        But now here that unvarnished truth was again, all rock hard raw muscle under the damnably clear lights, and he felt his whole body tighten against it. And there was his athletic but pretty and feminine wife faced off against that physique. She didn’t stand a chance, and Tim knew it. “Julie, get out of there now!”

        But there was no stopping either of them. Julie ducked Georgia’s first punch, skating to the outside and hammering her 75 year old opponent in the ribs with a trio of jabs. Without the gloves, though, the brick-like abdominal and steel ribbons of oblique muscles hurt her knuckles more than her knuckles hurt them. Then she realized that she’d been baited -- she’d been suckered. This was a fight she couldn’t win, and now, finally, she knew it. She paused; that was the critical mistake.

        Georgia returned the trio of jabs with one of her own -- each impact echoed harshly across the empty space of the arena; each one folding Julie a little further and each one driving her a staggering backward step closer to the ropes.

        Then Georgia unleashed a savage right fist that caught Julie dead center on the nose; there was a nasty, wet snap as her nose broke. But Georgia wasn’t done. The muscular, elderly woman snapped a pair of lefts into Julie’s jaw, snapping her head back; then another right, directly into her throat, the vicious punch snapping Julie’s head back down again and forcing her to gag for air.

        The final blow seemed to Julie to travel in an obscenely slow, looping arc, a brutal haymaker that finally came down like the head of an executioner’s axe even as she could hear Tim and Jimmy both screaming for it all to come to a stop.

        For Julie, it did. The world didn’t come back to her for two weeks, and when it did, she looked into a mirror to see a woman whose nose was covered in plaster, who was missing three of her front teeth, and whose name she did not know.

 

        Scottsdale in early April can be one of the most appealing places on Earth. On any given street, within any given exclusive gated community, you might see children skateboarding, families decorating their homes for the Easter or Passover holiday.

        Then again, you might see that one of these homes has a moving company’s van out front. You might notice a young boy with one arm slung and encased in a cast saying a sad goodbye to the kid next door, or perhaps a man with a patch over one eye helping his young wheelchair-bound wife down the home’s front steps and out to a waiting taxi, the family car having departed already without them.

        You might think of buying the stunning two-story townhouse they’ve just put on the market. It might seem a steal, in a depressed housing market, to find a home in a community where the average price of a home is in the mid six figures, going for a bargain basement, fire sale price of only $175,000.

        But think twice -- sometimes the price is much, much higher than you think.