My new, seventy-something neighbour, Mary Jane, often stands in her doorway, or sometimes she sits on the grass verge, actually just a patch of weeds. She always has a dopey look, apparently focused on the joint across the road, the one with the pot-hole in the driveway. She will sit and stare for hours.
I discuss her behaviour with my medically-trained Uncle Dave. He ruminates and then declares that he knows the condition. “She is probably suffering withdrawals, a terrifying time warp, sometimes offering heaven, other times hell,” he says.
It all starts in October 2021. She buys the house next door; sharing a glass of homemade lemonade on our front verandah while waiting for her furniture van to arrive. It eventually does and her ‘… thanks for the drink,” are the last words we hear from her for over a year. No words; no loud, nor soft music, come to think of it; no expletives drifting over the back fence; gardening noises; no accidental flatulence; nothing. Absolute quietude, as though next door is gone.
There is an exception to my observations: after dark, on the last Friday of the month, I hear her gate noisily open, and moments later her magnificent old VW Beetle roundly churbles into life, and off they go into the night. Every month, it is the same.
I eventually succumbed to my own curiosity. I have a nanna nap in preparation for a night-time adventure. I am in the car after dinner as I hear her gate open. I drive up the road and park where I know she will pass. Moments later I am tailing her through suburban streets, finally turning out onto the wide, divided freeway.
At that hour it is a dark, deserted highway, the occasional truck, not much else. I keep my distance, following the pair of red orbs. 40 kilometres later she finally pulls into a surprisingly lovely place, city lights spreading out below. A truck is already there.
I pass them, making a U-turn and carefully return, my parking hidden by the medium strip plantings. I creep through the undergrowth, across the lanes towards the back of the truck. In the stillness of the night, there were voices, I note she rolls and lights up a zephyr.
A cool wind is gently moving through my hair as I creep closer. The night is chilly, I think I hear a deep voiced “Welcome, what kept ya?” before the wind whips the conversation away. Then “… but that’s exorbitant, they can’t charge that! Why the increase?” A gruff response “That’s the offer, it’s what’s available, take it or leave it. I gotta keep moving!” Towards the front of the truck, I see my neighbour proffer cash.
A few weeks later I am enjoying a Spliff n Barbie, the breeze carrying the heady smoke downwind. A face appears, she negotiates the fence effortlessly. ‘Welcome to the Hotel California, such a lovely place,’ she hums as she grabs a sausage from the BBQ. .