Tampered by Ross Pennie Page A

already?” he called as she approached.
    “The library is never busy on a Wednesday morning. The staff are just twiddling their thumbs until the onslaught of toddlers at one o’clock.” She loosened her scarf and held up two books. “I found what I wanted:
The Secret Life of Goya
, and . . .” She shuffled the books and peered at the covers. “And . . . oh yes.
Understanding Dali.
”
    Art chuckled. “I didn’t know that was possible.”
    She paused, her face frozen in a rare look of puzzlement. Then her frown dissolved and she replied, “Oh, you mean Dali. Yes, quite. Our professor says to appreciate the paintings is to understand the artists behind them.” The course in art history she was taking at Caledonian University was her latest preoccupation. Before that it had been conversational Spanish — or was it Italian? And before that, something about architecture. Phyllis did love her courses. And her daily trot inside Lime Ridge Mall, which she called her thirty minutes to strong bones and a sound mind. She told anyone who would listen about her three keys to aging well: academic classes to stretch the mind, regular exercise to tone the body, and friendships with younger folk to broaden the horizons. Of course, when you were eighty-three, ninety-nine percent of the planet’s inhabitants qualified as younger folk.
    Art pointed to the hand sanitizer on the piano, a reminder of the
new normal
at Camelot Lodge. “Now Phyllis, I didn’t see you pump on the way in.”
    “I know,” she puffed. She dropped her keys into her handbag and set her books on a side table. “There,” she said as she pumped two dollops of sticky liquid into her palm. “Are you satisfied?”
    “It’s not me who has to be satisfied. They’ll take away our in-and-out privileges if any more of us come down with the runs.”
    Art didn’t mind the lack of visitors. In fact, it made for a welcome change of pace at the Lodge. He would hate, however, to give up their weekly trips to Tim Hortons. It was a struggle to transfer on his gammy legs from his scooter into the backseat of Phyllis’s Lincoln, but it was worth it. When four or five of them sat parked in her vehicle, sipping coffees and munching fresh doughnuts from the drive-through, he felt like a youth again. It was sure nice to bite into a soft, warm doughnut that bore no relation to the biblical relics served at the Lodge.
    He turned to the piano and started chording with his left hand and refining the melody with his right. Not bad, he decided. Betty would like this. A few minutes later he resolved the final chord, laid his hands in his lap, and was surprised by the clapping behind him. He turned to see an audience of four: Betty and Phyllis together on a loveseat, Maude and Myrtle seated at the card table, hunched over their jigsaw puzzle.
    “That was lovely,” said Betty. Her voice didn’t sound right. It was weak and trembling.
    He backed his scooter away from the piano and rolled to Betty’s side. “You don’t look too well, my dear,” he said, taking her hand. “Something wrong?”
    Betty looked down at their hands in her lap. “It’s nothing,” she whispered. “I’ll be fine.”
    “That’s not what Dr. Jamieson said,” Phyllis corrected. “He’s putting her on an antibiotic.”
    Art couldn’t suppress the alarm he knew was lighting up his face. “Not another bout of —”
    Betty shook her head. “Don’t worry. No fever. And no upset tummy. Just . . . You know, bladder problems. A few days of antibiotics and I’ll be fine.” Her face brightened and she pointed to the front door. “Look. My prescription must be arriving this very moment. There’s Vik.”
    Art watched Viktor Horvat, the owner of Steeltown Apothecary, standing beside the reception desk and rubbing sanitizer onto his hands. Vik arrived once a week with a cartful of medications arranged in those easy-open blister pack things that kept you from forgetting which pills to take at what