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Having two schoolteachers and a nurse spend their winter vacation at our house in Miramar was easy, especially compared to the Cindy and Mary debacle, which took over our lives and challenged our friendship. As soon as they left, Moose and I were back on solid ground—allfor one and one for all!
The arrangement with these three girls, Denise, Barbara, and Pat, felt more like a business transaction. They planned every minute of every day, and we barely saw them. We let them have the bathrooms to themselves in the morning so they could get ready and leave the house in their rental car early and keep to their rigid itinerary. They all had boyfriends back in Massachusetts, so they had absolutely no interest in a couple of unemployed bums living the life in South Florida.
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We weren't having any luck finding jobs, and if I'm being honest, neither of us was very motivated. We were both content to sleep in and collect unemployment. Living in South Florida was starting to look less permanent and more like a temporary situation. We weren't much different from the other snowbirds who headed south for the winter; we just pretended to have long-term plans.
We went shopping with the girls soon after they arrived, so we had plenty of food and beer, per their agreement with Moose.
Sunday morning, the three girls wanted to make us breakfast. Since there wasn't a dishwasher, we offered to clean up afterward, but they wouldn't let us; they wanted to do that, too. We were sitting around in the den afterward when Pat asked Moose if she could take his ten-speed bicycle for a short ride around the neighborhood. Moose pumped up the tires, and off she went.
About five minutes later, we heard the loud screech of tires on hot pavement, and we all immediately jumped up and ran outside to see what had happened. When we got outside, we saw Pat lying face down on the ground a few houses away and the bicycle a couple of feet away from her.
We rushed over to see if she was okay. I helped her up while Moose picked his bicycle up off the ground. Pat was crying, her right knee was bleeding, and the front wheel was bent. Apparently, she was coming around the corner, and a car turned in front of her. She swerved to avoid hitting it, the car screeched to a stop, and Pat hit a palm tree head-on…
We helped her back to the house, where Denise and Barbara began cleaning the nasty scrape on her knee while I went looking for band-aids. Moose rolled his old ten-speed bike back into the garage and was busy assessing the damage. He had leaned it against a wall when we moved in and hadn't ridden it since.
Before the last band-aid was on, Moose came over to tell Pat she had bent the front wheel and would have to pay for a new one. We were all shocked that he didn't wait until we were done bandaging her up. I was sure Pat would've offered to pay for the damaged front wheel, but Moose didn't give her a chance. It was an uncomfortable moment and very revealing. I'm not sure the girls had ever seen that side of Moose…
The next day, Moose took the wheel to a local bike shop, where they straightened the rim and re-trued it for under ten bucks.
Pat lit up the room with her flaming red hair and other exceptionally fine assets, and after the crash, no love was lost between her and Moose. Despite what happened, the three girls had a great vacation and saved a lot of money on hotels. After they left we still had plenty of food and beer in the fridge, just the way Moose planned it.
With everyone gone, Moose and I finally had the house to ourselves. Crazy Phil's oldest of two sons, Jon, was a year younger than me. He was short, about five-foot-five, on the heavy side, with dark skin like his mother. He had dark eyes, a mustache that still needed more time, and long, curly black hair that had no apparent style. He wore thick black-framed glasses I don't think he could see without, and he drove a '71 blue Ford Pinto with an open muffler that was jacked up in the rear so it could fit fat white-lettered tires. He was the one who came over and told us that after his dad was institutionalized and allowed to come home, he didn't want to leave the house. That was about the time Jon started hanging out over at our house.
One night, while the three of us were in the den getting stoned, I told him the story about a strange thing that happened while Cindy, Mary, and John from Hingham were staying with us.
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I was in my bedroom with the door open, trying to sleep, when I saw a strange-looking human shape by the end of the L-shaped couch in the living room. I was drunk and high, so I figured I was either seeing things or it was John…
A few minutes later, the girls started screaming. Moose and I ran out of our bedrooms, flipped on the lights, and saw the girls standing in the kitchen, shaking.
They asked us if we saw the human shape by the end of the couch in the living room. I immediately said I did, that it had a very rounded head and looked like an old man. They saw the same thing. John didn't see it, he was asleep. After we all calmed down, everyone went back to sleep, but they kept the hanging light in the living room on. We never saw anything again…
Jon said the woman who we rented from, her husband died in the house, was bald and had a round head…
I told him and Moose about the séances we used to have at a friend of mine's house back in Sharon, conducted by my friend Kenny. They asked me if I could do it, and I said I'd be willing to give it a try.
We made aOuijaBoard out of small paper squares, labeling them A-Z, 0-9, with a YES and a NO. We arranged them in a circle. I sprayed furniture polish inside the circle and flipped a wine glass upside down in the middle. We each put one index finger on the glass, and then I started repeating, "If there's a spirit in the room, please indicate so by going to YES."I repeated it over and over for about an hour without any luck. Jon was getting so tired that he started supporting his right arm with his left. Moose was nodding off…
Suddenly, the wine glass started moving, getting everyone's attention. It glided over to "YES"and then went back to the middle of the circle. Then, I asked,"Are you the spirit of the guy who owned this house?" It glided back to "YES".Then I asked,"Is there something you'd like to tell us?"
The wine glass zig-zagged its way around the table angrily, spelling out, "G-E-T-O-U-T"
That scared the crap out of us. Apparently, the gliding lawn chair on the front stoop we heard moving in the middle of the night, his favorite chair, was being moved by more than just a light Florida breeze.
The next morning, when Moose and I woke up, we knew it was time to leave…
I love the friends I have gathered together on this thin raft
We have constructed pyramids in honor of our escaping
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To be continued…
*All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental…
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