Community by Graham Masterton Page B

‘I have my community meeting to go to tomorrow. I don’t want to show up with bags under my eyes! Come on, you and me ought to get back to bed!’
    She bobbed up and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. As she did so, he glimpsed her right breast bouncing. Then she wrapped her robe around herself again and hurried off along the hallway to her own bedroom, which was at the back of the house.
    Michael took off his coat and unlaced his boots. Then he returned to his room and closed the door, pressing his back against it for a moment.
    He turned his head toward the window, half-expecting to see all those people standing out there, but the street was still empty, and a little light snow was falling, whirling around the street lights like swarms of moths.
    He undressed and climbed back into bed. He couldn’t stop thinking about Isobel. For some reason that he couldn’t understand, he felt guilty that he found her so attractive. Why should he feel guilty? He wasn’t married, or engaged. And even though he shared an apartment with a man, he was pretty sure that he wasn’t gay, or bisexual. Or maybe he was. Maybe that was something else that he had forgotten, along with the rest of his life.
    He slept, and the TV antenna on the roof continued to rattle in the wind, like an endlessly repeated message from another planet.

SIX
    T he following morning, when he had hobbled slowly back from his first therapy session with Doctor Connor, he found Isobel in the hallway, wearing her long black coat and her Peruvian beanie, winding a thick white scarf around her neck.
    â€˜I’m just off to my community meeting,’ she said, as he hung up his walking-stick. Seeing her dressed like that, Michael thought:
That
was
her that Sue was talking to so
intimately on her way to the parking lot
. It must have been. So why, he wondered, had she insisted that she didn’t know the woman, and greeted her when she had dropped him off here as if she had never met her before?
    â€˜OK,’ said Michael. ‘When will you be back?’
    â€˜Well – flush-centeredly these meetings only go on for about an hour, but then we have a buffet lunch and socialize. I expect you’re very tired, but why don’t you come along? You can meet the neighbors. Some of them are real nice people. I think you’d enjoy it.’
    â€˜I’m not too sure if I’m feeling very sociable.’
    â€˜Oh, come on,’ Isobel coaxed him, tugging at his arm. ‘While you still have your coat on.’
    Michael
was
feeling tired, and his knees were aching, but the coquettish way in which Isobel tilted her head to one side and fluttered her eyelashes made him think:
Why not?
It would be good for his ego to walk in anywhere with such an attractive woman on his arm.
    They left the house and walked around the curve and down a long slope until they reached Trinity’s Community Center, which stood in a hollow, surrounded by laurels. It was a plain, modern building with a curved, snow-covered roof. The parking lot outside had been cleared of snow but there were no vehicles parked there. A few residents were walking down the slope from the opposite direction, all of them wearing overcoats or quilted parkas. They looked about the same age range as the people who had been standing outside the house last night – one or two younger faces, but most of them middle-aged or elderly.
    As Michael and Isobel approached the porch, arm in arm, one or two of them lifted up their gloved hands in greeting, and Isobel waved back. They reached the doors where everybody was filing inside, and one elderly man came up to them and said, ‘Hi, Isobel! This must be your new companion.’
    Isobel said, ‘That’s right, Walter. His name’s Gregory Merrick. Greg, this is Walter Kruger. Walter’s our community accountant, aren’t you, Walter? Keeps the books in order.’
    Michael took off his glove and shook Walter