"What's up, Rich?" Jack asked turning to look at the man who had just tapped him on the shoulder.
"I need to talk to you for a minute," Rich answered feeling very uncomfortable with the errand his wife had assigned him. He had waited until after Jack had finished eating since the news he had to give him would have made him lose his appetite.
"Sure," Jack said gesturing to the chair across from him.
"Why don't you come down to my house for a little bit? I've got some scotch there and we can have a little drink while we're talking," Rich said.
Surprised by the invitation, Jack said, "Sure. A little scotch in moderation won't kill me."
Rich waved to his wife and headed out of the garage followed by Jack. Rich asked, "How is the job search going?"
"One of the contractors I know mentioned that he bid on a job yesterday. We'll know in a day or two if he got it," Jack answered. It appeared that a young couple decided that it would be easier to fix up their old house than try to sell it and buy a larger one. They weren't doing that much, but the work could last as long as a week.
"That's good," Rich said wondering how Jack managed to keep his cool living his life from job to job. Of course, Jack wasn't trying to support a family and that made a world of difference.
"Well, it will be a week of work," Jack said. It would be six hundred dollars before taxes and that would really help his finances. He still had enough to cover the mortgage even after paying his electricity bill. That money would go to the next month's rent.
"That is good," Rich said.
Nodding his head, Jack said, "That will give me about three weeks worth of work out of the month. I used to make close to twenty dollars an hour and worked six days a week, but those days are over. Now I'm doing good to get two weeks of work a month and ten dollars an hour."
"I don't know how you can manage on that," Rich said shaking his head.
"I get by; barely, but I get by," Jack said. He was doing better than Abby since she was now working thirty-two hours a week at seven dollars an hour.
Reaching the house, Rich led Jack inside and left him in the living room. Jack looked around the house while Rich went into the kitchen to prepare the drinks. The living room was very tidy and filled with high quality furniture. The entertainment center was filled with electronics that rivaled his stuff that were collecting dust at the pawn shop. Jack figured they were probably still making payments on the stuff in the living room.
Returning to the living room, Rich handed him a drink while saying, "I'm not really a Scotch drinker, but this was a gift and I wouldn't throw it away."
"Neither am I," Jack said. He had scotch maybe twice in his life and wouldn't know a good one if it bit him on the ass. He wasn't sure what the difference between scotch and the other kinds of whiskeys was. In fact, he wasn't even sure if there was a difference.
"I'm glad I kept it. Some news should be buffered a little with a drink," Rich said while taking a seat across from Jack.
Wondering what Rich could possibly have to say to him that required buffering with a drink, Jack asked, "What news?"
"Cheryl told me what was bothering Abby," Rich said. Just thinking about it made him angry. He took a sip of his drink and made a face. He said, "That's horrible. I prefer beer."
"Same here," Jack said. He wasn't going to laugh at the expression Rich made until after he tried his drink. He took a little sip and grimaced. He said, "I'm definitely not a scotch man."
Raising his glass, Rich said, "Misery loves company."
Jack raised his glass and then took another sip of his drink. It tasted just as bad as the first sip. He asked, "So what is the matter with Abby?"
"Before I tell you, you have to promise not to let Abby know that you know," Rich said.
"Okay," Jack said deciding that it would be better to know and not be able to talk about it than to not know and not be able to talk about it.
"You also have to promise that you won't do anything about it," Rich said. On learning what was bothering Abby, he had wanted to go down to that nursing home and throttle someone. If Jack's reaction was at all like his had been, then Jack would explode.
"What?" Jack asked wondering if he had understood Rich correctly.
"You can't do anything about it," Rich said. He didn't think it would help anyone if he had to bail Jack out of jail.
"If something is bothering Abby that much, then you better believe that I'll do something about it," Jack said offended by the suggestion that he just stand by and do nothing.
"I'm also going to ask you to lie to Abby," Rich said. Cheryl had been quite insistent on this point, but he wasn't sure he understood why.
Jack sat forward and said, "Tell me what is going on right now. I'm serious."
Shaking his head, Rich said, "You'll understand when I've told you the whole story. For now, promise me that you won't do anything about it and that you'll lie to Abby."
"I can't do that," Jack said. This sounded pretty serious and he wasn't going to promise not to react.
Rich recognized that he wasn't going to be successful in extracting the promise from Jack. He decided that telling the story starting with the rape wasn't going to work. He said, "Abby is angry at you because you're too perfect."
Jack burst out in laughter. If there was anyone who was perfect, Jack was pretty sure that it wasn't him. Slapping his thigh, he said, "You've got to be kidding."
"I'm dead serious," Rich said watching Jack.
Jack stared at Rich upon realizing that Rich was not joking. He said, "You're serious."
"That's right. The fact of the matter is that you seem to hold yourself to a standard of behavior that most of us fail to meet. You're always considerate, kind, and attentive to everyone around you. You have an innate sense of right and wrong that all of us have come to trust. Abby feels like she can't measure up to you," Rich said.
"That's crazy," Jack said. He took a sip of his drink thinking about it. He wondered if Abby had spent some time at that massage parlor she was always talking about.
Rich said, "She became aware of a crime at the old folks home and she feels like she didn't do the right thing."
"What kind of crime?" Jack asked concerned. He didn't think of old folks homes as nests of criminal behavior, but he could imagine the nursing home taking money from the elderly.
"A rape," Rich answered.
"One of the nurses was raped?" Jack asked dismayed at the idea that a young woman wasn't safe in a nursing home. He couldn't imagine one of the frail elderly men standing much of a chance of raping an active young woman.
"One of the patients, an old women," Rich answered knowing that Jack was going to explode.
Angry, Jack stood up and said, "You've got to be shitting me. Someone raped an old woman?"
"That's right," Rich answered trying to maintain an air of calmness. His reaction had been almost identical to Jack's reaction. It had taken him a day to calm down enough to break the news to Jack.
"Does Abby know who did it?" Jack asked.
Already knowing the answer, Rich asked, "Why do you want to know?"
"I'll give that bastard a one way ticket to hell," Jack answered furious at the idea that someone would do something like that to an old woman.
Wanting to give Jack a chance to calm down, Rich took a drink of his scotch. By this time, he barely tasted it. He said, "You can't do that."
"Sure I can. I bet there's a construction site around here pouring cement. The body would disappear and not be found for a hundred years. No one would say a word if they knew what that bastard did," Jack replied.
"Jack!"
"Jimmy Hoffa disappeared and a lot of people were looking for him. No one would look for a piece of shit that would rape an old woman," Jack said.
"Jack!"
"Well, they wouldn't," Jack said frowning.
Rich said, "Calm down and I'll tell you the whole story."
"I'm calm," Jack said wanting to tear someone's head off. He took a swig out of his glass of scotch and grimaced at the taste.
"No you are not," Rich said.
"Yes I am," Jack said.
Rich said, "Abby doesn't know who raped the old woman, so stop it."
Jack sat down and said, "What kind of fucked up world are we living in? Has everyone lost their minds?"
"I don't know anymore," Rich answered shaking his head.
"Raping old women," Jack said feeling sick to his stomach. He asked, "What in the hell ever happened to respecting our elders?"
"I don't know."
Hoping that she had done the right thing, Jack asked, "What did Abby do about it?"
"She reported it to the head nurse," Rich answered.
"That's good," Jack said thinking she had done the right thing. He said, "They'll catch the bastard and hang him."
"The nursing home is covering it up," Rich answered.
Jack exhaled loudly and then said, "We've got old folks unable to afford their medicine. They can't afford to eat. Crooks are destroying large companies and the whole world applauds while they do it. Banks are stealing our money. The government is taxing old folks to death because they own a house. Now sick bastards are preying on old women."
"I know," Rich said.
"I can't believe that we live in America anymore," Jack said. He slumped down into the chair feeling totally disgusted by the situation.
"I know," Rich said.
Jack asked, "What did Abby do when she learned they were covering it up?"
"She was angry and demanded that they call the police, but they threatened to say that she was a participant in it," Rich answered.
"She believed them?" Jack asked raising an eyebrow.
"You better believe it. They would have done it too. They went into cover your ass mode and they would have fed her to the wolves to hide the truth," Rich said.
"This world is fucked," Jack said in disgust. He ran a hand through his hair thinking about the situation. There wasn't a good way out of it. More than her job had been at stake. Even if she had managed to clear herself, her life would have been ruined. He sighed and said, "That explains why she quit."
"Yeah," Rich said.
"That's why she hasn't been talking to the old ladies lately," Jack said thinking that he wasn't going to be able to look any of them in the eye knowing that there was a rapist out there and he wasn't doing anything to stop him.
"I couldn't look any of them in the eye after Cheryl told me about it," Rich said.
"Something has to be done," Jack said although he couldn't think of anything that he could do short of calling the police.
Rich said, "You can't do anything about it. We can't even push the issue because they'll screw up her life."
"I guess going to the police is out of the question," Jack said. By now all of the evidence that a rape had occurred had been destroyed.
"I came to that conclusion myself," Rich said. The problem was that people weren't doing a lot of this out of meanness, but out of fear. They were afraid for their jobs. They would cover up something like this to prevent a lawsuit that would have cost them their jobs. He said, "Everyone is afraid to do the right thing anymore."
"It just isn't right," Jack said. He wondered how some people were able to live with themselves.
"I've got a feeling that it is going to get worse before it gets better," Rich said.
"That doesn't make me feel any better," Jack said. He wondered what he could do to help Abby. He asked, "Why did you say that I need to lie to Abby?"
"You need to tell her that she did the right thing," Rich said.
"She should have escalated it and called the police in," Jack said. He would have done that even if it had cost him his job.
"She would be sitting in jail right now as an accomplice to the crime. She'd get a public defender and her name would be all over the news. I can see the headlines now- woman helps man rape old ladies. It would be a media circus and she'd come off looking like a real creep. She'd end up in prison with a cellmate named Bertha," Rich said.
"She would telling them the truth," Jack said.
"No one is interested in the truth. The nursing home would want to punish her for talking to the police. The prosecutor wants a headline case. The reporters want a story that sells newspapers. The family of the victim would want revenge. The rapist would make a deal to get a lighter sentence," Rich said. He kept thinking about the college team that had been accused of raping a striper. They had gone through two years of hell and he figured that half of the world still believed they were guilty. They had wealthy parents who had fought to clear their names.
"Shit," Jack said knowing that Rich was probably right.
Rich said, "Before you know it, the reporters would be here interviewing everyone. Can you imagine what they would do with the fact that most of the people in our commune are elderly women?"
"This sucks," Jack said. He could imagine that they'd get blamed for Penny's suicide.
In full agreement with Jack, Rich said, "You need to tell Abby that she did the right thing."
Jack shook his head thinking about the matter. In this sick world, she had done the smart thing. He said, "I guess I can do that."
"Cheryl says that Abby has to come to grips with it. Until she does, she isn't going to be very sociable," Rich said. He felt that Jack was going to be going through hell for the next couple of weeks.
"What am I supposed to do?" Jack asked. He didn't think he was going to be able to solve this problem on his own. He felt by the very nature of the problem that he couldn't turn to the elderly women of the commune.
"You're supposed to do nothing. Just don't get angry at her even when she's acting like a total bitch," Rich said.
"My life wasn't supposed to be like this," Jack said wondering how his life had become so complicated.
"What do you mean?" Rich asked not quite following what Jack was saying.
Jack answered, "I was supposed to be a middle class man holding a stable blue collar job and living in a nice house, with a pretty wife, and kids. Instead, I'm living from paycheck to paycheck while selling off everything I own."
"Tell me about it. I'm the top salesman where I work and I can't pay my bills. The CEO of the parent company got a fifty five million dollar bonus last year for laying off forty thousand people. He got paid more than a thousand dollars for each person he let go. There's something seriously wrong with this world," Rich said. Some folks would say that he went into unnecessary debt, but he had been earning more than enough to pay his bills until the economy headed south. It wasn't his fault that every major head of every large corporation in the country had screwed up. He wasn't in charge.
Jack didn't reply. He was still thinking about some old woman lying in her bed terrified at the idea of being raped again. No one was taking her side and stepping in to protect her. The idea made him nauseous. He looked down at the glass of scotch thinking that this would be a good occasion to get drunk. Knowing alcohol was not a solution, he said, "I guess we just have to watch out for ourselves. No one is going to do it for us."
"What do you mean?" Rich asked.
"I mean that it is our commune against the rest of the world," Jack said bitterly.
Noticing the angry look in Jack's eye, Rich wondered what he was thinking. He had never heard Jack talking in an 'us versus them' sort of way. He asked, "Explain that."
"We're on our own in this modern world of ours. No one is going to help us when we have problems except us. The government is taxing us to death and regulating our lives in ways that keep us from succeeding. Businesses don't put the customer first, but put their greed first by making shoddy goods that require you to replace things frequently. Banks are charging us for every transaction. Credit card companies have predatory accounts in which they are explicitly trying to get people into debt. Your job isn't safe. Everyone wants a piece of us and they are very successful at getting it," Jack said. He added, "There are assholes out there that will break in and steal what they want."
"You sound a little paranoid," Rich said uneasily. His comments sounded a lot like the kind of radical thinking that got groups labeled as cults. He didn't want that kind of mindset taking hold in the commune.
"Where am I wrong?" Jack asked in a challenging tone of voice.
Rich sank down in his chair and thought about it. The fact was that he had those same thoughts more than once. It did seem to him that the world was out to get him. He said, "You're right."
"You know that they are going to try to close us down at some point," Jack said. He figured that if they were successful in somehow making their money go further that someone would object.
"What are you saying?" Rich asked. He couldn't think of a single reason that they should be targeted for closure.
"You know that they are going to come out with some law saying that we have to pay taxes for sharing goods and working together. They've already got laws requiring you to pay taxes on bartering. That's what we are doing when we are helping each other," Jack said.
Rich said, "That's stupid."
Shaking his head, Jack replied, "I was reading about some of the early communes in Europe. The peasants were getting harassed by the nobles, so they banded together in communes to protect themselves. They were secret communes so that no one knew who belonged to one. If someone did something against a member, the whole commune went after that person. It was basically eye for an eye kind of justice. The government and the church outlawed them because they became too successful. You can't have poor people protecting themselves against lawless rich men."
"You're kidding," Rich said.
"No. It seems to me that this society is trying its best to isolate each one of us so that we are basically defenseless. I'm not saying that the harassment is physical, but it is financial. If you talk to Claire or any of the other old ladies, you know that our quality of life has been falling for the past twenty years," Jack said.
"That's true," Rich said. He was never going to be able to afford the same kind of life that his parents had.
Jack nodded his head and said, "One out of ten houses in this neighborhood have for sale signs in their front yard. Any of those old folks who sell their home will be moving into a situation in which everything they own will be taken away from them by the time they die. They'll be warehoused in 'Senior Communities' and then in 'Retirement Homes' until their money is gone. They'll be drugged unconscious and taken advantage of until they are dead."
Rich stared at his nearly empty glass of scotch thinking about what Jack had said. He asked, "What are you suggesting we do about it?"
"We are on the committee to decide what is necessary to join the commune. I'd say that we need to expand the goals of the commune to include taking care of the health and retirement of all of our members. We go as far as hiring nurses to take care of one of us when our health fails," Jack said.
Rich said, "There are government programs to help the elderly."
"Where are the elderly that are getting helped? Do you see them? Do you hear any of them talking about how the government is helping them?" Jack asked skeptically.
"Not really," Rich said.
Jack said, "That money is probably going to those places that are warehousing the elderly. Just like the loan bailout money went to banks and not the people who were losing their homes."
Nodding his head in agreement, Rich said, "You might be right."
"I am right," Jack said.
Rich finished his drink and then said, "Now I'm depressed."
Jack was quiet for a minute and then said, "We're going to have to set up security for everyone in the commune because we can't trust anyone to take care of us. That means every household is going to have to have at least two people in it so that they can watch out for each other."
"That makes sense," Rich said. "We've got nine houses. One house is going to become a community house for our meals and social life. Five of the houses already have two or more people living in them. That leaves three houses that need one more person. I suggest that we cap membership in the commune to twenty people."
"Only six of us are of working age," Jack said including Mary and Johnny in that number.
"The rest of the members will have to be of working age. We have to have people able to work supporting those who can't," Rich said. He knew that even the people who were working weren't able to support themselves.
"That's a good idea," Jack said thinking it over. The only way to get extra money into the commune was for people to work for it.
"That librarian seems interested in moving in with Claire," Rich said.
"Johnny will move in with Gail," Jack said.
Rich stared at Jack for a minute before he asked, "Why are you so gung ho about Johnny joining the commune? I mean, you hardly know the guy."
"He brought over money for food that night the banks screwed us over. He asked me to watch over Gail and let him know if she needs anything. I think that suggests a very good character," Jack said. It was actually that simple. He felt that Johnny had stepped up to the plate to help people when everyone else had ignored the plight of the old folks. Johnny did what was necessary to help his grandmother without being asked.
"He travels too much."
"He's got a job," Jack said pointedly.
"That's true," Rich admitted. That was a big point in Johnny's favor.
Jack finished his drink and looked around the room. The home entertainment equipment was very impressive. Curious, he asked, "Have you got cable?"
"No. We cut that off last year. It became a luxury that we couldn't afford anymore," Rich answered.
Jack said, "I understand. That was the first expense that I cut when jobs started getting scarce. I have to admit that I kind of miss being able to watch a football game in Hi-Def. Maybe we should pay to have it at Emily's old house."
"That would be nice," Rich said. The cost of moving over to the HD-TV had been another one of those added cost burdens. The previous February all of the local stations had stopped broadcasting the older signal. It had meant a lot for television sales, but it had also left a lot of families without local television.
"Well, I guess I better head home," Jack said. He had no idea what he was going to say to Abby about the rape, but he knew that he would have to tread lightly.
"Take it easy," Rich said.
Jack walked back to his house thinking about the discussion with Rich. The more that he thought about it, the more he liked the idea of Mary and Johnny joining the commune. A real sense of community was starting to develop and he thought it would be best if they joined before it became difficult to blend in with the existing members. Of course, there wasn't really a membership in it other than contributing a little money for food and being willing to work a little.
It didn't take long to reach his house. Stepping inside, he found Abby sitting in the living room reading. She looked up at him and snickered. Not exactly expecting that reaction, Jack asked, "What?"
"Frau Shultz left you a little present in your bedroom," Abby answered rolling her eyes.
"What kind of present?" Jack asked confused by her reaction.
"You'll see," Abby said. She looked back down at her book and pretended to ignore him. Her snicker gave her away.
Curious, Jack went into his bedroom and looked around. On his bed was a small stack of magazines. He picked one up and looked at the cover. Unable to believe his eyes, he opened the magazine and checked out the pictures. He said, "I can't believe that she left me forty year old German porno magazines."