A Dixie Christmas (24 page)

“Mouth to mouth, no doubt,” she said as she rubbed her butt.

And a very nice butt it was, he noted, then frowned. “Hey, you look different. Have you lost weight?”

She grunted her disgust.

“Bend over again so I can check it out.”

She had to laugh at that. “Not in this lifetime.”

“It’s good to see you smile again, Reba. Did you know, you haven’t smiled at me once, since you saw me yesterday? I’ve missed your smile. I’ve missed you.”

She straightened, giving him his first full view of the new Reba. She had lost weight, and she was in good physical condition. Really good. Talk about eye candy!

“Don’t you dare stare at me like that.” She practically hissed.

He tried, but could not suppress a grin. “How?”

“Like . . . like you really, really want me.”

“Oh, baby, was that ever in doubt?”

*

“Do you do tricks?”

Sam choked on his coffee as the I’m-so-straitlaced-I-could-be-a-saint Emma Smith, who must be close to seventy years old, voiced her outrageous question. And she was looking straight at him. All six-foot, two hundred pounds of her.

He felt as if he were back in her class, and she’d just asked him what he was doing with that notebook in his lap.

“Why me?” He waved a hand to indicate Stan, who sat next to him, on the outside, and JD who sat across from him in the booth. They were indulging in catch-up conversation over cups of coffee in “Grease,” the diner located next door to the Sleepytime Motel, where they would sleep that night. Some of the Santa Brigade members had gone off to their rooms, including Reba, while others still straggled behind, sitting in booths in front and behind them, and across the aisle. They were critiquing their latest shelter performances over tea, decaffeinated coffee and prune juice. With respect to that latter beverage, the one thing that Sam had learned while on the Santa bus was that the regular functioning of “plumbing” was of extreme importance to the elderly. They did not hesitate to talk about it, publicly, and give unsolicited advice to him or anyone else within their radar.

But that was neither here nor there. He was more concerned about JD and Stan who were both grinning like freakin’ idiots at Mrs. Smith’s question directed at him.

“Why not nab these other yahoos? Why me?” he repeated in a mortified whisper. Bad enough that he and his friends were privy to this conversation; he didn’t want the entire senior citizen kingdom to hear as well. They probably heard anyway. Beside the bodily function obsession, he’d noticed another thing about seniors. They liked to mind everybody’s business.

“I already asked them. They’re gonna.” Obviously, Mrs. Smith had no inclination for hushing, as demonstrated by her booming voice. She’d probably forgotten to put in her hearing aid, and didn’t realize how loud she was taking.

Gonna? What kind of word is gonna for a former teacher? And, son of a gun, “gonna what?”

“They are?” Sam was flabbergasted as he gazed at his two best friends in the world. Both of them nodded vigorously, barely stifling their laughter.

Well, he didn’t think it was so damn funny.

“Yep. So, do you do tricks?”

“Not lately,” he gasped out. Not ever, actually.

“Well, everyone on this bus earns his keep. Can’t just stand around looking pretty, Mr. Hotshot Black Angel.”

“It’s Blue Angel, not Black Angel,” he corrected her. He was beginning to get miffed with Mrs. Smith’s abrasive attitude.

“Blue, black . . . whatever . . . you could be a purple angel for all I care.” She glared at him. “What’s your specialty, boy?”

Oh, my God! The old bat wants me to screw for money. Can my life go any further down the tube? I can’t believe that JD and Stan agreed to this. And how the hell do I know what my specialty is?

Mrs. Smith had a clipboard braced against one of her forearms, and she was tapping a Scooby Doo ball point pen on it impatiently, waiting for his answer. The pen was probably one of the many donations made to the Santa Brigade effort. “Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap . . .” Mrs. Smith still waited for his answer.

“Do . . . do tricks with whom? Senior citizens? Homeless people? Isn’t that sort of taking charity to the extreme?” He tried not to appear as revolted as he felt.

Mrs. Smith blinked at him rapidly, clearly confused. Then she reached over Stan and whacked him atop the head with her clipboard. “Once a moron, always a moron, Merrick. I was talking about magic tricks . . . to be performed at homeless shelters. Good Lord! What gutter have you been living in the past fourteen years?”

With that, she turned on her ample legs, knee-high stockings bunched at the ankles, and stomped away, muttering under her breath. Then, just before she reached the exit door, she tossed out, “I’ll give you ’til nine a.m. tomorrow morning to decide what entertainment you’ll provide, or you’ll be off the bus. And don’t think I can’t do it.”

“Way to go, Einstein,” Stan said with a guffaw of laughter, clapping a hand on his shoulder so hard he probably bruised a shoulder blade . . . a hand which had, no doubt, been insured by Lloyds of London at one time when he’d been a star NFL quarterback. JD reached across the table, offering him a napkin to wipe away the coffee he’d apparently sprayed in front of him during his choking fit.

“I knew what she meant,” he lied, hoping his heated face didn’t give him away.

“Yeah, right!” JD and Stan hooted at the same time.

“Speaking of the Santa Brigade,” Sam said, trying to change the subject, “It’s as if I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole to an Alice in Wonderland Christmas mad house, but I’ve got to admit I’m really impressed with these characters and the shows they put on.”

“Damn straight!” JD agreed.

“You know, part of the success of the Blue Angels is the ability to put together and break down all the equipment necessary for an air show in the most efficient manner . . . day after day, city after city, for six months. To a smaller extent, that’s exactly what this troupe does. Each person has a role, not just in the entertainment, but in packing up, soliciting gifts . . .” he shrugged, “ . . . everything.”

“Well, you have to give Reba credit for that,” JD said.

“Speaking of Reba, how’s it going between you two?” Stan asked.

“It’s not.”

Both of his pals laughed at his woeful tone of voice.

“Even his heroic skydiving caper didn’t impress her,” JD told Stan. He could tell JD was having a grand ol’ time, at his expense.

“It impressed the hell out of me when I heard about it,” Stan said.

“Where did you hear about it?” A sense of foreboding came over Sam.

Stan waved a hand airily. “Oh, everywhere. The radio, the New York
Post
, the
Today Show
. Man, oh man, you shoulda heard the morning talk shows rave about how romantic you are.”

Sam said a foul word, then confided sheepishly, “Reba called it a juvenile prank.”

“Aaah, but I bet, deep down, she was all melty.” JD smirked as if he’d just expounded some great wisdom.

“Melty? Melty? Is that a private eye word?”

JD wagged his eyebrows at him. “Slick, Slick, Slick, maybe I should give you lessons in charm since your legendary talents in that department have apparently worn out. In fact, some people lately have compared me to Harrison Ford . . . when he was younger.”

“Are you delusional?” Sam scoffed. “What’s next on your career agenda? Indiana JD?”

JD grinned and reached across the table to swat him playfully on the arm. “You’re not the only one who can have movie star good looks, pretty boy.” Both JD and Stan were laughing uproariously.

“Cut it out, you two. The manager is scowling at us,” he grumbled. “And the Senior Santas are getting an earful.”

Stan started to tap his fingertips on the Formica table top, thoughtfully, then offered, “You wanna know what I think, Slick?”

Actually, no.

“I think you need to try a different tack. It’s like football, if one play doesn’t work, improvise.”

Hmmmm. One of the Blue Angels’ mottos is, “Observe, Study, Adjust.” Could that work?

“I think,” JD added, “that charm works only when you’re bulletproof, and, Slick, you were never bulletproof when it came to Reba.”

That was really helpful.

“I don’t give a rat’s ass what either of you think. Unless you guys have some concrete suggestions, can the goofball opinions.”

“Okay. How about this?” JD said, then made a suggestion that was so outrageous, and explicit, that Sam’s mouth dropped open. He didn’t look, but he could swear he heard the clicking of several dropped dentures, too.

“That could work, that could work,” Stan remarked. And he was serious.

“By the way, do the Blue Angels allow you to skydive at will anywhere you want?” JD inquired. He batted his eyelashes at him as if he already knew the answer.

“Hardly.”

“Yeah, I was wondering about that, too,” Stan joined in. “I would think the Navy would be calling you in for a court martial, or at least some of that KP shit. Or is that only in the Army?”

“I’m in a little bit of trouble,” he admitted. Actually, his superior had left three voice mail messages on his cell phone thus far, which he hadn’t yet returned. “But I’ll be okay. At the moment, they want me more than I want them.”

JD and Stan frowned with confusion, but he didn’t want to get into that career discussion just yet.

Seeing that he wasn’t going to elaborate, JD said, “Back to Reba and how you can get her to talk to you. Before you proceed any farther with your charm assault . . . and don’t tell me any different . . . I know you’ll charm her over, eventually . . . well, I have to ask, are you thinking clearly?”

“Huh? You mean, about Reba?”

“Hell, yes, about Reba. I mean, she was a good friend to all of us when we were growing up in Snowdon. I’d hate to see her hurt by you . . . again.”

“Hey, hey, hey! I was hurt, too . . . when she got married,” he said defensively.

“Reba’s married?” Stan was clearly shocked. “You’re hitting on a married woman?”

“And no one, including George, ever bothered to tell me when she got divorced,” Sam continued.

“Reba’s divorced? No one even told me she got married,” Stan griped. “What am I? The potted plant in this threesome? I thought we were best friends—for life.”

Ignoring Stan, JD stared pointedly at Sam. “Bottom line, buddy, are you trolling for a little action here? Or something more?”

“I wish I knew. I’ve gotta tell you, I’ve been undergoing a severe case of career burnout lately. Good thing my tour with the Blues is just about over. It takes total dedication and concentration to fly those maneuvers, and I’m not sure I have it anymore. I know it sounds crazy, but suddenly I feel as if I’ve been running as fast as I could for the past fourteen years and only lately discovered that, in reality, I’ve only been running in place.”

To his surprise, his two friends didn’t look at him as if he’d gone off the deep end. In fact, they nodded their heads in understanding.

“You asked about Reba, JD. Well, all I can say is when George told me that Reba was the tour director of this Santa Looney Tunes Brigade and that she wasn’t married, it was as if the blinders had fallen off my eyes. I felt happy and hopeful for the first time in ages.” He shrugged. “What do you suppose that means?”

JD and Stan exchanged a knowing glance with each other, then turned to him. Simultaneously, they informed him, “You’re in love.”

Sam was going to protest, but he wasn’t sure they hadn’t hit the answer right on mark. The question was, What was he going to do about it?

Luckily, he was saved from having to answer that question, even to himself, by Stan. He was speaking to JD, “So, what’s with you and the Amish chick?”

“Where is she anyway? I thought you were afraid she would run away,” Sam added, glad to no longer be the center of conversation.

JD’s face flushed a nice pink color before he murmured, “I handcuffed her to the bed back in our room.”

“Holy shit!” Stan exclaimed.