Free Getting Sassy by D C Brod

the passenger window slid up. It occurred to me that having a client in this area was a bit of a coincidence. Unless Mick lived near here. And one didn’tsee many red Porsches parked in the apartment lots.
    It was at this point that I began to wonder if I was being stalked by my accountant.

    I spent the brief drive to Dryden deciding if it would be worth going out with Mick just to see if he had anything to contribute to my mother’s housing. Maybe he’d invite me back to his place. That could be dangerous, but I could handle him. Like Bix, he was small. Maybe he had a priceless coin collection he wouldn’t miss immediately. Or a Monet in an out of the way corner. I thought of that little safe in his office—if there was a safe. For all I knew he had a tiny plasma television behind the painting. Or a blank wall. Still, I let my imagination toy with the possibilities. Mob money? Money from gamblers using him as a bookie? Blackmail money? I was truly ashamed of where my thoughts wandered these days, but Mick’s intentions toward me probably weren’t any more virtuous. What did any of it matter? With her medications and all, I would need close to sixty thousand dollars to keep her in Dryden. And that was just for one year. My mental activity was merely intellectual aerobics, albeit larcenous aerobics. At least it kept my mind occupied, and that was a good thing. Because it was easier for me to plan a robbery than to imagine where my mother would be living in a matter of days.

    I arrived at Dryden in time to see my mother emerge from the elevator with a group of the second-sitting breakfast eaters. Wearing a bright red blouse over black velour slacks, she bulled her way through the small crowd using her cane and repeating “Excuse me” in a loud voice along the way, her knitted brows reflecting her intense determination. She earned several glares, none of which she seemed to notice. When she saw me standing by the desk, she stopped, confused, as though she knew the dark-haired woman from somewhere butcouldn’t place me. This confusion lasted only a few moments, and then her features relaxed. By the time she reached me, she was nearly giddy. And when I suggested we go out for breakfast, she clasped her hands together and her eyes widened behind her large-framed, pink glasses. It was like I’d just asked her if she wanted to meet Santa.
    “Oh, that sounds lovely, dear. Let me get my sweater.” Her abrupt turn nearly caused a collision with a walker-wielding woman, and there was no telling how many others that mishap would have taken out.
    My mother gave the woman a dismissive look and said, “Excuse me, Betty, I’m going out to breakfast.”
    I wasn’t sure, but it looked like Betty mouthed the word “bitch.”
    My mother caught the next elevator up, leaving me to collect the nasty looks from those she left in her wake.
    As I waited for her, one of the nurses came out of a back office. A huge woman with a lumbering walk and narrow eyes that harbored no nonsense, Lorena was actually a favorite among residents, including my mother. I think my mother liked the bigness—the safeness— of Lorena, and saw her as a benevolent bear in a white dress and Rykas. When Lorena saw me, she came right over. “We need to talk,” she said, almost under her breath, and my heart began pounding— a natural reaction when someone says those four words to me. Then she motioned me away from the desk and toward a grouping of three Victorian chairs, currently unoccupied. What had I done? How could she know we were running out of money?
    When she began with: “I really should be telling April this, but I’m going to hold off,” I tried not to whimper. She glanced toward the hall leading to management’s offices. “We don’t make our money here by fining residents we catch smoking in their rooms.”
    My jaw dropped, and I flapped it once before I said, “Smoking?”
    “I didn’t catch her at it, but I know what it smells like.