Scrabble in the Afternoon

A flash fiction story

Jerry sat dejectedly at the Scrabble table in the common room of Meadowood Assisted Living Facility.  His Scrabble partner, the Boy Scout Jeremy, had failed to show up for their weekly Scrabble game.  Jerry looked over the rims of his coke bottle glasses at Edna, his blue-haired neighbor.  She was sitting on the couch on the far side of the room, giving him the evil eye.  Jerry ran his fingers nervously through the few remaining hairs on his head and tried to look at Edna without her noticing.

Jerry had long since had affectionate feelings for Edna ever since she’d spilled her glass of orange juice down her hospital gown in the cafeteria, and he had handed her a napkin.  From that moment on, Jerry was hooked.  His love was thwarted, however, by Edna’s never-ending devotion to her husband Walter, despite Walter’s untimely death one year after their marriage sixty years previously.  

“Just ask her, stupid, the worst she can say is nothing,” Alfred, Jerry’s stuffed alligator, was becoming impatient with this unrequited love.  

“That’s not something you just go up and ask a person,” Jerry protested, covering Alfred with his greasy lunch napkin.

“What?  To play Scrabble?  It’s not a proposal of marriage, you lunkhead,” Alfred couldn’t take this anymore.  “Hey, Edna!  Up for a game of Scrabble before the nuptials?”  Alfred yelled across the game room.  Jerry nervously looked down, hoping that Edna’s hearing aid was turned off.  What seemed like hours later, he looked up and noticed that a faint smile had come across her lips and a blush upon her cheeks.

“She’s coming this way,” Jerry exclaimed.  “What do I do?”

“Give her seven letters; we’ve been through this!”  Alfred was sure that Jerry didn’t listen to him half the time, and not just because of the dementia.

Edna shuffled across the room, pushing her tennis-ball-clad walker in front of her.  Jerry could almost smell the lilac perfume and permanent solution emanating from her hair. She paused at Jerry’s table.

“What do I do? What do I do?”  Jerry was frantic with anticipation.  Alfred shook his head in disbelief.

“Excuse me,” Edna began tentatively.  Jerry thought his heart would explode in his chest, sending pacemaker parts across the room.

“Yes,” he managed to say.

“Are you using this chair?  My husband Walter and I would like to play a game of Scrabble at the next table, and we’re one chair short.”

“Run, Jerry,” Alfred the alligator exclaimed.  “She’s a loony!”