Lap of Luxury

by Lisa-Ann Carey

“It does not matter how far-fetched we are or even what we are. What does matter is that the imagination of our visitors are stirred by the lure of a far off place, that the Bay Islands, in spite of all that has happened to them, is still a salubrious and salacious location,” responded John with much emotion.

  “Dreamy love is overtly benighted,” LisaAnn profoundly concluded.

  Peter’s quote had an enormous impact on the culture of the group. “As Shakespeare penned, ‘Reason and love keep little company together nowadays; the more the pity, that some honest neighbours will not make them friends.’ ”

  “That ‘old black magic’ has us under its spell,” sang John as they ran toward the house yelling on the way that they have to quickly dress in order to collect Marshall-Justus from the International Airport in under an hour.

  LisaAnn on the beach surrounded by admirers,

  Josef spying

  Chapter Three

  A refreshing sea breeze blew across the fertile lowland of Lamb Island the sandy white cliffs of Stradbroke Island opposite gleamed in the sun. The long sunny summer days were perfect for the Bay Island farmers growing salad bowl vegetables and raising dairy cattle.

  The day after the birth of the babies Marshall-Justus had flown to Belgium to take part in a concert. Being part of a string quartet demanded he perform now and then, worldwide.

  As they drove through the boom gates they could see the silver speck in the boundless blue heavens. The Bel-Air jet landed on time. Customs took one hour then they headed home.

  Marshall-Justus unpacked and showered. He waved farewell to LisaAnn and John as they had to make an appearance at the clinic for a full day of appointments.

  The little babes were left with their grandparents for the day and bottles of delicious expressed milk for their meals.

  James and company stepped into a hired coach and followed the Wrights. The stateside boys fell in love with the climate and the views of the placid bay. Amongst the large sunflowers and ornamental grasses that lined the red clay road leading to the Psychiatric clinic they caught sight of a woman dressed in a pant-suit standing on her head. Attached to her ankles was a large note in red ink that read: HAND OVER ME MONEY AND ME MANSION HUBBY OR ELSE!

  LisaAnn was the first at her side. “Hi there! Is everything alright?” she asked with care. The woman was mute, communicating only via the ball-point pen.

  “Does your husband have control of your finances?” questioned LisaAnn.

  She was ignored.

  “It might help to talk about it. I’m a Doctor, I work at the clinic,” she told her peaceably. “It must be uncomfortable in that position?”

  Ten minutes later she was on her feet and with a worried look all over her face she emptied her burden on LisaAnn’s shoulders.

  “My husband has just left, he thinks my conduct is worth notice.”

  “Come inside the clinic out of the hot sun where we can discuss your situation privately.”

  She agreed and followed her inside with the others.

  They walked into John’s office. The engraved opalescent glass panelling of the divider wall between the office and the lecture room captivated her total interest. She imagined her face was in the pattern and the finely stippled background of coloured glass were jewels she could never have as her own, she interpreted.

  John straddled the chair and asked, “How long have you been married to your husband?”

  “Six months.”

  “Your name is?” asked LisaAnn.

  “Cassandra Cartwright,” she spat out.

  After the Doctors introduced themselves to her James asked, “What is the reason behind this action of standing on your head in an open field, are you expressing some negative emotion?”

  “Anger, over the fact that my husband takes my money off me and won’t let me purchase anything for myself,” she sobbed shedding tears of heartache.

  James frowned then said to a few of his associates, “Standing upside down symbolizes both a recalcitrant gesticulation and a yearning for support by being found unwell,” he read her disguise without any difficulty.

  LisaAnn deciphered the direction her symbolic behaviour was taking by pointing out that symbolism is the language of the unconscious, “Your inner feelings are bruised with the opinion you don’t deserve a paypacket for the insignificant jobs you do in keeping house, am I right?”

  Cassandra looked surprised and answered, “You are so right, he’s rude, he doesn’t realize that all of the tasks behind good housekeeping make his life easier and contribute to his success as a Real Estate Agent. Behind my back he sold my deceased father’s mansion for $15 million and when I asked him why, he said I wouldn’t have let him. He left me sitting by myself in a carvery while he stood out on the terrace babbling on the telephone, bragging about his latest sale. Manners aren’t his strong point. Besides, he won’t share the money with me.”

  John supported her saying, “I think I’d stand on my head and make even demands if someone had have sold my dead father’s mansion behind my back. This afternoon we are beginning an Assertiveness Workshop. My grandfather, when he ran this clinic achieved perfect results with his clients from this workshop. He called it I AM A V.I.P., and that is just what we’ve called it,” John explained.

  James, John and LisaAnn vacated the room and reported the predicament to Mark, Myer and the assembly of American men with acumen.

  A dim light stretched across the corridor, the two figures barely visible.

  “You are a vision in the scanty light My Love,” John told her with a smile.

  “We must stop meeting by the coffee machine, people will talk,” suggested LisaAnn lustily.

  They were clumsy with their body searching as if they had just begun a secret affair.

  “Just how long have you had a little crush on your favourite afternoon tea snack hey?” John asked.

  “Prudence warns me never to commingle romance and engagements, I might never regret it,” LisaAnn reasoned.

  “We’re passed the engagement stage, we’re married, so tell Prudence it is about time she minded her own business,” he was pleasantly surprised at what she had to offer him, a mixed grill for brunch with three flavours added to the mouth watering coleslaw, a fresh, articulate and passionate young woman.

  As his tongue licked the salt off her perspiring cleavage, she hummed his tune then sung his words, “I’m So Sure Of Your Love.” But the minute Pastor Amos glided up the hall her frame of mind, subject to change, turned holy, yearning for the principle of meaning and purpose.

  Drawing on Godly instruction regarding considering one another and not giving up the coming together of each other, Pastor Amos told them confidently, “Couples are like dying embers, combined they burn with bodily heat; separately they become unpleasantly unemotional and freeze.”

  She bared all, “Before I had John to cuddle I felt as if I were paddling upstream against an undertow of desolation.”

  “I think I brought you to life, now let’s see if we can help Cassandra control the Ruler of the universe.” The Receptionist watered the pot plant positioned in the top left hand corner of the desk whilst Cassandra visited the Ladies room.

  “I thought a living thing in this area of your desk would inspire you both, Dr. Wright, Sir,” suggested the Receptionist.

  “And how is that going to work?” John asked, curious to find out the mystery behind how a pot plant in the left hand corner of the desk could infuse thought and feeling into him and his wife.

  “It keeps the atmosphere feng shui-harmonious.”

  “Fang what?”

  “Feng shui is the Chinese art of living in harmony with the environment. To get somewhere in your line of work it just takes a few simple steps in your lunch hour.”

  “I’ll ask you how, later, right now I have a distressed client, I can’t talk now, okay.”

  “Fine Sir, see you later, best of Feng shui luck.”

  “Thank you, but we’re relying on our intellect, w
e’ll succeed.”

  She waved him goodbye and waddled back to her desk at reception to answer calls at the busy switchboard.

  Mark and Myer unloaded the barbecue Beastmaster from their trailer and set it up in the middle of the courtyard. During the Christmas break, a Psychiatric Hospital had been built around the courtyard with a kitchen and dining room near the nurse’s station. LisaAnn and John had named the complex SUNNYVALE.

  The fresh southeast winds took the bite off the glowing ball of hot gasses. Patients lay on sun-lounges soaking up the life-giving light.

  “Take time off your housework and spend lunch with us Mrs. Cartwright,” Myer suggested leading her into the kitchen.

  She looked around the room at the athletic American crew slicing rib fillet whole into steaks, buttering buns and preparing rissoles and salads. A teenage girl sat on the end of the bench playing Billy Joel hits on her ghettoblaster.

  “We have an exquisite feast for you all,” Doctor Tim Carraway’s intonation debasing to a playfully rough plunge.

  With a sulky expression on her young face she exploded, “That oughta brighten up my holiday at this hell-hole!”

  For a moment his eyes moistened, then in a wavering voice he answered, “This is a special care unit for special people like you and I’ve flown half-way round the world to watch over you and all of these other gorgeous guys are here for you too.”

  “You are very considerate, I guess I should be more grateful, thankyou Doctor Carraway,” the young lady chirped happily.

  For a lot of fun and a little fellowship, John, Mark, Myer and Pastor Amos sang four-part musical arrangements of their own in Barbershop Quartet style as they laid the marinated steaks, chops, spareribs, chicken pieces, fish and hamburgers on the griller.

  “Where’s the whole hog to roast on the crude gridiron of stakes?” grilled Buffalo Bill.

  In anti-romantic character Cassandra composed an opera worth winning The Pulitzer Prize tossing her husband’s name on the fire as the spit-roasted hog.

  “Shall we place him over a hickory wood fire in the open field next door and watch him grill until he’s charcoal, the green meanie, he’s more twisted than barbed wire.” Cassandra’s husband, she described, made her feel like a failure, she felt defeated in the war with money, a loser in the social circle, a wimp of a woman in the bed, and a gutless wonder fighting her own battles in general. After a dosage of St. John’s Syrup, a half hour later, she felt much more confident, her mind more calm, she held a sense of successfulness, she became much more in control of her anger and more powerful in a more positive way. She said it lifted her self-esteem annihilating the unpleasant emotions she walked into the clinic with earlier on that day. Now prepared for the ‘I AM A V.I.P.’ class and having enjoyed a strong social chat about the everyday hiccups of married life with the patients and staff over a hearty lunch, she threw off the ropes and seated herself beside James.

  “Enough talk about spitting whole animals from barbe to queue, we shall have you licking your whiskers and twisting your tales by the end of the day,” John told them, they snickered at the comical commencement until their sides split.

  His glassy eyes glared at his beau ideal, his devotee, his unfailing strength through his outstanding medical career when he knew his own weakness and she did not. When he felt low, she lifted his spirits by stirring up his love and when he was on a high she crowned him with the confidence to endure, these were his precious thoughts of her utter loveliness.

  Then a plea broke the silence, “Teach us good teacher,” declared LisaAnn.

  His smile said it all, his mind took it that bit further. “My learned friends, there are certain important rights in this life each one of you is entitled to. These rights are your dues, they are owing to you good people before me.”

  He treated each patient and the members of their families like royalty. Every effort was spent placing the whole world at their feet.

  “The first right you have up your sleeve is that you may state briefly at anytime the way things should stand at a particular moment. Choosing the appropriate branch of action most effective requires the declarer of a claim to be well practised in this ability. Here, today, we will teach you how to master that mid-point between a submissive voice of approval and a quarrelsome voice of attack in the reverse direction.”

  John drew a deep breath and focused on his dream, to help the psychotic depressive discover three aims in life to strive for and assert as true.

  “Do not give up on wishes. Let me offer you three best wishes.

  1. A wish that each of you be entitled to a grand manner of recognition, an old fashioned dignity and therefore in receipt of admirable respect in place of what some of you have been getting lately, being considered of poor quality, therefore lower in rank than other persons on your team.

  2. The wish to have power of resistance, be higher in rank, untroubled by danger and fear - and not to be fragile or feel unsafe.

  3. Lastly, the wish to have the right qualities and to give love – and not to provoke attack, bear malice to another, or merely negative or pulling down without building up.”

  Mark rose from his seat and put forth a valuable point. “I think it is correct to say that the depressive complex springs up in the conflict and highly strung state between these expectations and desires and their opposite possibilities in reality or fantasia.”

  During a cake break on their own in a spare room, John took LisaAnn on a joy-ride of gladness and pleasure around love planet Jupiter lapping her passionfruit nectar up, down and in her lap of luxury making a lapping sound and singing:

  ‘Baby I’m on call

  whenever you fall

  no matter what arises.’

  They cuddled and gave each other one last lovebite behind closed doors, rinsed off, broke cake, sipped steamy cafia coffee and returned to the workshop to unlock the key to ‘I AM A V.I.P.’

  John’s eyes were magnetized to the teenage girl sitting astride on a chair in the front row. “I’m your belle, Doc,” she mimed.

  She must have a crush on me, he thought.

  She lifted up her skirt, she had no panties on and she moved her pelvic region in circles and her hands were ornamental, like drinking-vessels applying suction over her nylon covered milk jugs that had popped out of her top rather suddenly, her tiny nipples once flat, now thrusting out into a projecting position as she elevated them higher and higher. “My milk-secreting organs are delicious Doctor Right, taste them,” raced her silent message to die for. He was her handsome hero. “Your smile is sugary-sweet, I want you I wanna suck.”

  His face drained its colour, his faint-heart, barely beating, his eyes bulging at her must-have gadget, a fairy floss pink and croissant-plump pussy that secreted a fragrance devine, as she tossed her truffle in front of him.

  Questionable expressions on the faces in the audience worried him even more. At last he spoke up twisting the tale slightly, “That’s enough Holly Hobby hide your treasures, as it is it will linger long in my memory long after the final blow of your sweet crystalline substance dissolves.”

  His lavender bag and deluxe licorice stick made the little girl’s heart beat faster. He could feel his sugared almonds ascend and swell, the tingling sensation taking him back to toddler times. In a fantale stupor rich and creamy words stuttered from his melting mouth. “Little girls don’t grow up, they just get more expensive, stop begging gimme, gimme, gimme!”

  With burning bright eyes she returned, “I’m not a little girl, I am a very sexy grown up lady.”

  Pastor Amos snivelled affectionately making a comic comment, “Young adults are so disgustingly energetic aren’t they?” The crowd made a business of clapping and chuckling. Young Francia took a final curtsy before plonking her show bag back down on the red velvet padded seat whipping her flouncy hem against her showy legs, swinging her Lulu Guiness Rose hanging-basket velvet bag above her head. The only way to settle her down and get on with the meeting was to confisca
te her bag, and he did.

  “Hey Doctor Wright, that’s not fair, that cost my mom $55.”

  “That’s right honey it’s no fair, you may have it back after the workshop is over. Okay?”

  LisaAnn put a glass of diluted St. John’s Syrup to Francia’s lips she drank its contents, before long it passified her and they were able to continue on course.

  “Now let’s ask Francia to perform in a more serious play an example of assertive behaviour keeping in mind the name of the workshop ‘I AM A V.I.P.’, of which all of you staying here at Sunnyvale are and those here for day treatment are.”

  Francia leapt forward beside John.

  “Okay, you may play the part of Meakin Ridelle, a thirteen year old girl who is caught stealing a two dollar and fifty cent stuffed animal from a toy store,” he began.

  Up went Bill’s arm, “Who should I be Doctor Wright Sir?”

  He looked at Bill blankly scratching his chin and thinking deeply, “Um, aah, how about you be her father.”

  “I always wanted to be a Dad, and what a sexy daughter I have, not as crazy as Tina Patmos the wicked witch from last years re-enactment,” Bill spluttered with uncontrollable laughter.

  Tina grunted and Bill shrugged taking his stance beside Francia.

  “Okay, what’s my first name? I can’t go through my whole parental life known as Mister.”

  “Highly observant of you Billy boy, you shall be known as Jolly Ridelle, how does that sound?”

  “I’m as Jolly as they come, sounds terrif, mind you I would not be nearly as excitable if I were not taking St. John’s Syrup everyone.”

  It was very real. People felt more brilliant taking nature’s mood booster. Such a remarkable find, lives were changed instantly, although some illnesses took more time, depending on the number of symptoms recognized.

  “Bill,” John pounded him on the blade, “I have a surprise that’ll just knock your socks off.”

  “Yeah, I love surprises Doctor Wright, hit me with it.”

  “Tina would you like to come out the front and stand beside Bill and play his wife Morrisey Ridelle.”