Clemmie went back into Dom’s, surprised and embarrassed by how much she wanted to open that connecting door.
It would be breaking and entering, she thought. Well, no, it isn’t breaking, because the door is unlocked. It’s just entering. And I have a reason. I’m checking on Dom. And if they say, “But you knew his golf cart wasn’t there, so you also knew he was out,” I say, “Oh goodness, I just didn’t add that up.”
You never commit crimes or misdemeanors, she told herself. You never even think of them. Do not trespass. Besides, the only thing on the other side of that door is another garage.
Which would be less of a trespass: she wasn’t going into Marcia and Roy’s actual house.
What if Dom came back on his golf cart just as she was peeking through his illegal door? She decided that she would hear him in time to skitter back to his house, although golf carts were very quiet and she probably wouldn’t, plus she was a little too rickety for skittering anyhow.
She told herself she would just peek, not put a foot on the other side of the high and somewhat dangerous threshold, if you forgot it was there and tripped.
She opened the unexpected door.
The light from Dom’s garage illuminated very little in the Cogland garage, but Clemmie was never without her cell phone. Really, it was quite amazing that her first six decades had been accomplished without one: that she had once done library research instead of Googling, had owned a camera, had kept up with correspondence on carefully chosen letter paper. Who knew that a more satisfying telephone life—in fact, a more satisfying life in general—lay waiting inside a flat, slim rectangle of technology?
Clemmie turned on the flashlight of her iPhone.
The Cogland garage, its single exterior window covered by closed blinds, was literally empty. It didn’t even have the required garbage wheelie and recycle container. But that meant nothing, because the Coglands were here so rarely. They probably carried their garbage out with them, since garbage was picked up only once a week, and they wouldn’t be here to bring the containers back inside, and it was a definite Sun City no-no to allow your trash container to linger at the curb.
A dozen steps across the garage was the door that would open into the Coglands’ utility room which, like the entire unit, would be the same as her own villa, just reversed.
Since most people left home through their garage, not through their front door, they generally locked their house by lowering the garage door, and as a rule, they didn’t bother to lock the interior door. Clemmie stepped over the raised threshold of the illegal connector door, tiptoed across the garage as if somebody might hear her, and fingered the knob of the Coglands’ utility-room door.
It turned.
Go home, she ordered herself, and instead, she stepped into the Coglands’ house.
Two
The Cogland utility room was as empty as the garage: every cabinet door closed, no clothes basket near the washer and dryer, not even a jug of detergent on the shelf.
A dozen more steps, and Clemmie stood in an utterly bare kitchen. No coffee maker, blender, or toaster sat on the counter. No salt and pepper shakers. The stove gleamed as if it had never seen a pot or pan.
It was hot in the villa, but not humid. They must have had their air-conditioning set to come on now and then to keep mold from developing, but not really cool the house.
In the living area, the sparse, bland furniture looked rented. There were no books, magazines, bowls, vases, or throw pillows. The flat-white walls were not disturbed by a single picture. There was not a television.
They really did use this place as a motel. They didn’t fix meals and they didn’t hang out, which made the connecting door even more puzzling. What were the Coglands and Dom getting together for?
And then perhaps the sun outside emerged from behind a cloud, because a prism of color suddenly danced on one bare white wall.
Clemmie moved into the living area to see what had caused the rainbow, and there, sitting on a tiny round table in front of the sliding doors, was a glass sculpture like nothing she had ever seen. It was both a tree and a dragon, its tail curving like a powerful whip, its spine and claws also tree leaves on fire. It was a fabulous piece, organic and elegant, emerald green with spurts of gleaming red and gold. It was complex, with an arch of glass that could be a handle and another that could be a spout as well as the dragon’s head.
She was dazzled by the tree dragon’s beauty. She stared at it, circling, seeing it at every angle, and then, reminded by the weight of her cell phone in her hand, took a photograph before she headed back into the Coglands’ garage. Stepping carefully over the illegal door’s threshold, she turned to snap a picture of that too, so she could share this weird story with Joyce and Johnny. Then she went back into Dom’s house, leaving all doors unlocked, just as they had been, left by his front door, and locked that behind her with the key he’d given her.
Clemmie was exhilarated. Snooping in a neighbor’s garage was, sadly, probably the definition of adventure for a semiretired Latin teacher. It was also sleazy. Perhaps she would not tell Joyce and Johnny after all.
She puzzled over the connecting door. If Dom didn’t want to be seen going to the Coglands’, why not go out his sliders? The three attached villas backed onto a deep woods (well, deep for a highly developed area; probably fifty feet) so there was no one from that direction to see. Hollies had been planted between each tiny patio, now grown so tall and dense that even if Clemmie were sitting outside, she would not see her neighbors’ movements. But Clemmie never sat outside, because her unit had a small, rectangular screened porch set into the building, and if she wanted fresh air, she sat there, and had no view of anything ever at Dom’s.
Perhaps Dom was having an affair with Marcia. Perhaps Roy didn’t come most of the time and only Marcia came, and she and Dom had become a hot ticket. Fat, grubby, whiny, smelly, lurching Dom? Surely Marcia could do better. Besides, what kind of affair was only two or three times a year?
Clemmie giggled to herself, looked down at her cell phone, and admired her snapshot of the amazing glass tree dragon.
It was crucial to stay connected to her grandnephew and grandniece, or Clemmie would be stranded in old age with absolutely no one. Bentley and Harper were uninterested in her life, which was not surprising, because how excited could people in their twenties be about some old gal’s card games? How delightful to have such a cool image to send.
She forwarded the photograph to her other cell phone—her family phone—and from that phone, she sent a group text to the two grands. Attaching the photograph, she wrote, Look at my neighbor’s glass sculpture!
Then she studied her to-do list. Every day, she took a fresh page from her Hallmark card shopping pad and wrote down her chores, club meetings, card games, commitments, errands, and grocery list.
Clemmie was still teaching Latin part time at a county high school, so from late August to mid-May, life was satisfying, but over the summer, she could get frightened that her existence had dwindled to card games with strangers. The list gave her something to hang onto.