The Wrinkly

By Paul Collis

Mike Lewis wants 'out'. Out of his meaningless career in broadcast sales, out of his shallow relationships with materialistic women, out of the youth-centric, big city rat race. Unfortunately he has no idea where 'in' is, until he discovers an idyllic retirement community in Florida that promises a peaceful, sunny life of golf and hobbies. On a whim he signs a contract for a house, and only afterwards does he read the small print: he has to be over 60 to join the enclave. Trouble is, he's 39.
Painted into a corner, he engages the help of a movie-makeup artist and a gerontologist, and cons his way into the club. But, once inside, he finds that this particular paradise comes with a whole new set of problems...

'The Wrinkly' has received positive reviews at various websites and ebook blogs that cannot be named here.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paul Collis
• Release date: May 29, 2010
• ISBN: 9781452368573

Paul Collis

Born in Greater London. Art school in the seventies. The next few decades spent at ad agencies creating TV commercials in London, Milan, New York and San Francisco. Some fishing here, some photography there. Now thinking about the next project...

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The Wrinkly

Paul Collis

Copyright: Paul Collis 2010

Smashwords Edition

This book is a work of fiction.

Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

THE WRINKLY. Copyright © 2010 by Paul Collis.

Adapted from the screenplay THE WRINKLY, copyright © 2000 by Paul Collis, registered with the Writers Guild of America, West, 2000. All rights reserved.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only, and may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, please visit an Ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

(If you would like to read the printed edition, your local library can order a copy.)

ISBN: 9781452368573

For the old uns.

And with thanks to those who encouraged me, either by telling me that this was a good idea and I should keep at it, or by restraining themselves from telling me that this was a good idea—but I should stick to fishing.

Part of this story involves manatees, those innocuous, gentle creatures that grace the shores of Florida and other parts of the Gulf of Mexico.

Their habitat is fragile, and their existence is precarious.  Groundwater polluted by agriculture, breeding areas compromised by oil-slicks, and injuries caused by inconsiderate speedboat drivers all add up to a daunting triple threat.

It is only fitting that part of the royalties I receive from the printed version of this book are donated to a group of people who work hard to protect them:

www.savethemanatee.org

Contents:

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Epilogue

About the author.

The Wrinkly

1

Fifty feet above him, on the sidewalks of the streets and avenues, it was a bright spring morning. Giant sunbeams were slanting through the glassy canyons and dazzling the crowds of people walking towards their work.

Mike Lewis had chosen not to join them. He enjoyed walking, but not in the middle of a rush-hour horde, where he found himself constantly changing his pace to avoid the malingerers, the sudden-stoppers and the umbrella-stabbers. Only if he had to work on weekends did he find pleasure in the twenty-two-block stroll from his apartment to his office, when the route was less populated, less manic. His favorite pastime was golf, and he preferred those courses that allowed him to use shoes instead of a cart. Carts, in his opinion, were an abomination; golf was meant to be a meditative exercise involving a pleasant six or seven mile ramble around some greenery. ‘They’re called fairways for a reason,’ he would reason.

For his weekday commute he rode the subway. The underground experience had its own drawbacks, of course, and today’s included dealing with the unexpected rise in humidity. He would have chosen to wear a lighter jacket but the weather forecast, with its ‘percents’ and ‘chances of’, had been confusing. His Harris Tweed sport-coat certainly seemed to confuse the young woman who was standing in front of him and staring distractedly at his woolly lapels and his white, buttoned-down shirt collar. Twenty-one, chewing gum, blowing a bubble, skinny tank-top revealing pallid shoulders and the frayed straps of her brassiere; she made him conscious not only of the difference in their cultural perspectives but also of the gap between their ages. He was thirty-nine, and it unsettled him to observe that she saw not a gap but a chasm, a canyon so vast, so unfathomable, that he failed to qualify as a member of the same species, let alone as a potential mate. The girl nodded robotically to the tinny beat that leaked out of her headphones.

He was not fond of headphones. They were designed to create private worlds, shielded from the racket of wheels on tracks, the squeal of brakes and the train-drivers’ station announcements, but instead they just added to the din. His attention drifted to a new picture, next to the girl; a man in his twenties dressed in surf gear with his facial hair carved into a kind of paisley pattern. He wore a thin, silver ring in his nose, in the same position as the rings sometimes inflicted on bulls and boars. Mike wondered if it was an alpha male, stud thing. He watched Surfer Dude examining a scab on his elbow, picking at it with a dirty fingernail.

Mike’s fascination with the scab picker evaporated at the sight of blood, and he turned to his left. A trio of young skinheads, all of them head–phoned to their music players, were practicing that vacant gaze that he found so unsettling, so he looked upwards to avoid the possibility of eye contact and saw an ad for the zoo. It featured half a dozen naked little rodents and pleaded with him to ‘Come See The Mole Rats’. Before the immediate relevance of this image could take a firm grip and launch him into yet another appraisal of his relationship with his fellow subterraneans, the train stopped, the doors opened and he stepped out of the carriage and towards the world above.

On the fourteenth floor of the offices of the CBC TV network, beyond a row of people busy in their open-plan cubicles, was an open office door with Mike’s name on it. He had spent the morning talking on the phone and sitting at his desk, a vintage item that he preferred to the nondescript standard issue. In front of him was a computer screen. To one side, against a wall, were six TV’s tuned to different stations, the sound off. Coltrane played softly from a small music center. After a single knock on the door the mail-boy entered and dropped a package on the desk. Mike, holding the phone to his ear, looked up from his computer and acknowledged the delivery. Thanks, Dennis.

The young man smiled automatically and briefly, and left.

Hello? Sorry Jim, you sound just like your voicemail. So, those thirteen thirty-second spots for your abdominal exerciser client? I think Beach Scope or Bayou Passion would be a good choice. … No, it is not a fishing show. … I know, but Bayou Passion, Jim, is a new daytime soap full of chesty, horny women and chesty, horny guys who are constantly rubbing their chests against each other. It’s C1-D2, 14-70 with an almost guaranteed 32 rating and I can offer you a 20 percent ‘new series’ discount. Deal? … Thanks Jim, I’ll send you a schedule and get a contract over to Larry. Mike hung up the phone, grabbed a magazine and left the room. He leaned over the adjacent cubicle wall that formed the other side of the path outside his office and spoke to Janice, his young secretary. She was wearing the ubiquitous headset and seemed to be enthralled by a web site on her screen.

Janice, could you messenger a schedule and promo kit for Bayou Passion over to Jim Baker at JWD?’ He received no reply. Are you with us today, Janice?"

Janice stared at her screen. Sure. Like, why wouldn’t I be?

Just curious. Don’t forget, Jim Baker. JWD. Thank you. I’m, like, gone to lunch.

Out on the avenue Mike had no choice but to walk with the crowds headed towards their midday meals. In a restaurant window he saw three young women at a table, talking not to each other but to their cell-phones. Talking, texting, tweeting; their social networks abuzz and atwitter with everything, and therefore nothing. Mike slowed almost to a standstill, hoping they’d catch his disdainful frown. Of course, they didn’t. They never did.

A block further on he turned into Sullivan’s, a dark, wood-paneled bar. Jazz played softly from speakers near the ceiling, still stained with the nicotine from a less protective era. He sat down at a stool and began thumbing through his magazine, a golfing publication called International Caddy. A sign behind him read ‘No Cell-phones’. Big men in tight-fitting suits were eating burgers and drinking beers. A minute later the barman, Pat, mid-sixties, gravel voiced, brought over a full glass of Guinness and set it down gently. Afternoon, Mike.

Hi, Pat. Thanks.’ He looked appreciatively at the letter S subtly rising out of the stout’s off-white foam. Know anyone looking for a guy who speaks reasonable English, who’s okay at golf, an average handyman, a not so good mechanic, and a bad piano player? With the computer skills of a five year old?"

The bartender didn’t miss a beat. Billy quit last night. We need a dishwasher.

Really? Hmm. Tempting, but that’s a young man’s game.

You’re right, it is. Hey, while I think of it, you TV guys need to make more of those cartoons, you know? Like that cat-litter commercial I saw last night, with the turds talking in the tray. Funny. You want a sandwich?

After that delightful word picture you just drew for me? Maybe later.

Pat smiled and walked away, mimicking the voices from the commercial. ‘You stink!’ ‘Not now I don’t!’

Mike winced. Good god. It gets worse by the day.

He picked up the beer. It was to him an icon of continuity, a survivor from another era. The opaque ruby-blackness of it within the glass had, on innunmerable occasions, reflected the faces of his mother’s father and grandfathers in their own low-ceilinged bars, in the country of its making; its history, and its thick, creamy head and the density of its color, seemed to add to the heft of it in his hand. He drank the first slow mouthful with respect; there was nothing like it.

Towards the end of the afternoon, back in his office, Mike held the phone to his ear while toying with a small, metal model of a 1957 Chevy Nomad station wagon. He spoke over the sound of Brubeck playing in the background and occasionally glanced at his computer.

Me? Fine. Although on the subway this morning I was the only human being in the car. All the others were rehearsing parts for Men In Black 3. Anyway, Bob, about your specific caffeinated soda demographic. You’d be better off with Star Troopers. … Yeah, 10 to 16 ABC1s and 2s, and all soda swillers up to 24. Time slot’s changing to 8pm but I’ll get you last season’s price as a continuing client. … If I could, I would, but with the ratings up 15 percent that’s as good as I can get it. … Okay. Thank you. I’ll notify Contracts. Have a good weekend. … No thanks, Bob, I don’t drink the stuff. Give it to some tattooed people.

He hung up the phone, stretched his arms, put some magazines into an old leather briefcase, picked up his jacket, turned off the stereo and walked out of his office.

He stopped briefly next to Janice. Janice, could you call Frank, say that Badass Bob at Y and P bought the Star Troopers package after all? Thanks. Have a good weekend.

Thanks Mister Mike. You too.

Mike walked away, but Janice’s girlish trill followed him. Oh, a Kimberly in Planning called while you were on the phone and said pasta’s fine but no clams. She breaks out.

He slowed but didn’t stop. Thank you, Janice.

Then a male voice did stop him.

Yo Dude! Goofin’ off, eh?

Through the open office doorway he saw the interior of a teenage boy’s room. Lounging on a beanbag, holding a laptop, was Matt Martell. He was a few years older than Mike but dressed twenty years younger; black jeans, black sweatshirt and black ball-cap. The thinning hair on the back of his head was disproportionately long, compared to the rest. Mike responded to him with the same disdain he had aimed at the cell-phone gabbers in the restaurant window. Yo Mullet. Right. Goofin’ off.

He turned and headed towards the elevators with more purpose than a moment before. One was just about to close its doors, but the people inside welcomed him; they were smiling more than usual, as they always were on Fridays at this time. He himself felt like Steve McQueen after he jumped that fence.

The doors of the kitchen cupboard parted to reveal a dozen cans of clams. Mike passed them up for a can of tomato paste. He opened it and then peeled an onion, set it down on the chopping board, and attacked it in synch to the playful cadence of Oscar Peterson, who was performing in the living area. He did the same with some zucchini and parsley, and when he heard the doorbell he wiped his hands, walked slowly to the front door and opened it. Kimberly was standing in the hallway holding several bags and boxes. She was slim, curvy, and fashionable.

Hiya!

Hi. And welcome.

She walked in and appraised the decor. Wow! The loft was furnished with