Free Getting Old Is Très Dangereux: A Mystery by Rita Lakin Page A

everyone else’s. Mrs. Jerry explained it the first time they attended—there must be nothing to distract in this plain room. They remove their shoes, lining them up with others against the wall. They take seats, and park their canes next to them. They smile at the neighbors they know from the Phase Three building in Lanai Gardens. Sophie glances around, noticing that few of the women are under sixty-five. She waves at Arlene Simon, a neighbor from Phase Four. Arlene waves back. Bella sniffs again and pokes Sophie. She whispers, “I don’t like the smell of incense. It makes me want to sneeze. Why couldn’t they use pastrami or corned beef?”
    The room eventually fills up with about thirty women. While waiting, they study the posters on the wall. “I still don’t get them,” Bella says. “What’s a chakra anyway?” Each poster has a dramatic, multicolored painting with names identifying thedifferent kinds of chakras and their corresponding crystals.
    A gong sounds and a door at the side of the room opens and he comes in. Their leader. Their guru. Baba Vishnu. He is tall and very thin and wears a white robe and white turban. Around his neck is a string holding a large crystal.
    “Yum,” Sophie says, admiring the young man’s looks as always. “Such a gorgeous
punim.”
Baba Vishnu slides slowly down onto the white pillow on the floor facing the semicircle of his admirers. As he lowers himself he bows his head. Everyone bows back to their guru.
    As he reaches the pillow he begins the chant and the women follow. The sound of their group mantra,
om
, slowly builds, filling the room.
    Sophie grabs Bella in excitement as the gentle chimes begin to ring. She wonders whose husband will join them today in the Dead Husbands Club.
    When Ida gets to her cooking class, she is disappointed. There is a sign on the rec room door saying her class has been canceled. She looks around hoping to find some of her classmates; at least they can talk Thai cooking on their own. But no luck. There’s no one around unless she counts the quacking ducks along the walkway. She feels a hungerpang. All she ate before meeting the girls for exercise was toast with orange marmalade and tea. Why not join Sophie and Bella at Jerry’s Deli?
    Her salivary glands respond instantly to the idea. She hurries to the back of the buildings to take the shortcut across the street again and heads to the deli with visions of a three-decker turkey, swiss cheese, and tomato sandwich on rye urging her on. In five minutes, she’s there.
    Ida walks in with a smile on her face, which quickly diminishes as she finds no sign of Sophie or Bella. She looks again, booth by booth. That’s odd, she thinks. They couldn’t have finished eating that quickly. She counts the customers. Three different men in three different booths. A mother and two kids sitting at the counter. That’s it. She looks to Jerry and his son, but suddenly they seem very busy chopping onions and don’t look at her. A scowling waitress, fortyish and seemingly anorexic, with stringy hair and sallow skin, approaches. She looks suspiciously like the father and son behind the counter. One might guess that’s because they
are
her father and brother. Phoebe (her name tag announces), menu in hand, asks, “One?”
    But Ida doesn’t want to sit there by herself. Annoyed, she leaves the restaurant to go back home and forage in her near-empty fridge.
    *   *   *
    Evvie is watching me pace my apartment, back and forth. “Talk about a cat on a hot tin roof,” she says as I unwrap groceries and stack them where they belong. We are listening to the messages Jack left about Colette. It was a terrible accident. A very heavy bookshelf fell on her. She’s still in intensive care. They’re worried that she might not come out of the coma.
    “That poor, poor girl,” Evvie says.
    I agree. “How could I be so dumb? I get myself all aggravated because he hasn’t called me all morning, and then I realize I