“What about the playground equipment?”
“Still waiting on the slide to come in.”
“So this sounds like it’s going to be way bigger than just a pumpkin patch,” George said.
“We are going to put the Rykerson farm to shame, little sister. They are going to take their overpriced, half-rotted pumpkins and just crawl under a rock by next year.”
“There’s room for everybody, D,” Casey reprimanded his friend.
Darryl ignored him. “Pumpkins, gourds, food, drink, tractor rides, corn maze, games, you name it. Families’ll be able to come—and spend money—all day. Did Casey tell you about his plans for the gallery?”
“What gallery?” George turned to Casey.
“We’re turning the smallest barn into Marsden’s newest, hottest art gallery. I’m hoping Sera will be the first to mount an exhibition this fall.”
“For the grand opening,” Darryl added.
George blinked. “Wow. You weren’t kidding when you said this place was going to be different.”
“It’s a lot of hard work, but I think we can pull it off.”
“This guy never rests,” Big D said to George.
“I’ve heard.”
“It’s got to get done,” Casey insisted.
“Yeah, but you’ve also got to relax.” To George, Darryl said, “Which he never does. Take tonight, for example.”
“What’s tonight?” George asked.
“Happy hour.”
“It’s Thursday.”
“We can’t wait till
Friday!
Besides, this tyrant works us six days a week, so Thursday, Friday—no difference. Anyway, he’s got a standing invitation. But you think this guy ever shows up, enjoys a little down time with his hardworking employees? Not even once.”
“I’ve got things to do.”
“You’ve
always
got things to do. You’re a lost cause. But you’ll come out with us, won’t you, little sister?”
“Me? Uh . . .”
“Come on! Or are you an old fart like this guy?”
“I have to take care of Amelia. I don’t get nights off.”
“Not even one night? For old time’s sake, so we can catch up?”
George beamed. Even though she directed it at Darryl, Casey felt his insides twist again. “I’ll make it happen,” she said.
“See? You’re easy. Not that way. I mean easier to convince. So—six o’clock?”
“Sure. Where? The wine bar? The tapas place?”
Darryl barked a laugh. “Are you kidding? Honey, no. We’re townies. We’re going to Beers.”
Chapter 11
When George pulled open the heavy wooden door of the downmarket bar on a short side street off Main, nervous flutters threatened to overwhelm her. Even though the inside of Beers was nothing out of the ordinary, George felt a strange, perverse thrill when she finally stepped inside. She’d always wanted to go to this place when she was in high school, but she’d never dared try. Sera and her friends were practically regulars, but then Sera was a completely different type of person—more balls-out brazen in everything than George was, by a long shot—so George had contented herself with merely hearing her sister and her friends talk about sneaking in and what they’d gotten away with the night before. And envying their fearlessness.
The door shut behind her, and she stood still while her eyes adjusted to the dimness. A bit of early-evening light found its way through the large front window; in the darkness at the back, the clack of billiard balls punctuated the seventies’ country-rock tunes coming out of the jukebox. The round wooden tables were dark, thick, and heavy, as were the chairs; the bar boasted a huge copper sink that gleamed in the dim lamps hanging from the ceiling.
It wasn’t difficult to find the crowd from the farm; all George had to do was follow the sound of Darryl’s laugh. She wiggled through a couple of knots of people, saying hello to a few who recognized her, and found Darryl, along with several other men and women, at a couple of tables near the back. A sweaty pitcher sat in the middle of the table, and judging by the volume of their chatter, it likely wasn’t their first one of the evening.
“George!” Darryl boomed, just as loud as he had that afternoon. He lurched to his feet and pulled a chair over. “You sit next to me, girlie. I’m going to keep my eye on you.”
She hung her purse on the back of the chair and smiled at the others as she sat down. She recognized a few of them from school, and she scrambled to come up with their names.
Darryl rescued her. “You remember these troublemakers, don’t you? Elliot, and Jill, and Nestor.”
“Right. Hi . . . again.”
Darryl went on introducing her to people she should have remembered, while Elliot poured her a beer. She had very vague recollections of the first three. Elliot and Nestor had graduated before her. She was pretty sure they’d been in Casey, Sera, and Darryl’s class, two years ahead of her. Jill had been in her year, but they ran with different crowds.
“So, George. You became a blogger, huh?” Jill said with a smile, leaning forward and resting her elbows on the table.
This was still freaking George out—all this face-to-face interest. She wasn’t quite sure how to handle it, especially when all her old friends and neighbors, people she’d known for decades, suddenly looked at her like she was an exotic critter in a zoo—with fascination and a bit of trepidation, like they’d never seen her before and couldn’t quite make out who or what she was supposed to be.
She still hadn’t figured out how to respond. “Um, I guess, yeah.”
“Those stories people send in are hilarious.” Jill’s face lit up. “Oh, that one where the girl broke up with her poor boyfriend in church, and they started yelling at each other over the hymn? Unbelievable!”
George couldn’t help but return the smile. “Yeah, that was a good one.”
“Ooh, or—or—what about the couple who got a divorce because the husband wouldn’t go to the doctor to find out how to make his feet stop smelling? And then it turned out to be the dog farting all along?”
“Also good.”
“Hey, George,” Darryl interrupted, giving her a nudge, “I think Charlie Junior wants to talk to you.”
She leaned past him to see where he was pointing; the bartender, Charlie Beers Junior, son of the owner Charlie Beers Senior (who had always said he opened a bar because fate had decreed it, bestowing that obvious a last name on him), was hitching his chin at her, urging her over.
“Okay . . .” George didn’t know Charlie Junior except by sight; she had no idea what he wanted, but she figured she might as well find out. “I’ll be right back.”
“See if he’ll give us a pitcher for free,” Darryl shouted after her.
“Hey, Charlie, what’s up?” George perched on the bar stool nearest him. “Did you want something?”
“Hey, George. Uh, kinda. Can we . . . ?” He inched down the bar until he was closest to the end, by the bins of cherries and lemon and lime wedges atop a damp bar mat. She followed, guarded but curious. When they had a small amount of privacy, he leaned on the bar, clasping his hands together as if in prayer. “I wanted to ask you something.”
“Okay.”
The older man squinted up at her and hesitated.
“Charlie, what’s going on?”
“It’s my wife,” he admitted reluctantly, looking down at his hands. “I think she’s cheating on me.”
What?
George didn’t know why he was confiding in her, but she felt compelled to at least acknowledge his confession politely before asking. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“I don’t know what to do.” Charlie’s head drooped so low George could see the bald patch at the back of his head.
“Charlie, I’m really sorry you’re upset and everything, but why are you telling me about it?”
He looked up, bewildered. “Because you’re a professional.”
“A professional what?”
“You know all about, you know, couples. And everything.”
George laughed in his face, then immediately regretted it. The man looked stung. “Sorry. Look, I’m no relationship counselor. I just have a stupid blog where people try to one-up one another with lousy relationship stories.”
“You give advice, George. I thought you could—”
“Only for fun, Charlie. For a laugh. My blog is like the online equivalent of guys standing around your bar shooting the shit about their wives and girlfriends. Would you trust any of these freaks to give you marriage advice?” She ignored the dirty looks a couple of the ones who looked like regulars sent her way. “Same goes for me. Okay?”
Charlie eyed her suspiciously, and George got the feeling her explanation wasn’t sinking in.
She sighed. “Have you . . . I don’t know . . . talked to her?”
“I’ve tried, but she won’t talk about anything serious. I don’t know how to get through to her. I mean, I know she’s bored and lonely, what with my working nights all the time. But I never thought she’d . . . And then I find these . . . these chicken feathers all over the bedroom, and I’m thinking all kinds of—”
“Chicken feathers?”
“I think she’s . . . you know . . . with the guy in the costume who stands outside the Chicken Shack with the two-for-one sign.”
George sighed. “I’m really sorry, honest. But I’m not the person you should be telling.” And she
really
wanted some brain bleach for the image she had in her head right about now. “I don’t . . . I don’t know what else to say . . .”
The man nodded sadly. “Okay. I understand, George.”
“I’ve got to get back to my friends. Just . . . talk to your wife, okay? Try to get through to her. And if she won’t talk about anything serious, or tell you where the . . . chicken feathers . . . came from, call a real counselor. Understand?”
He wasn’t convinced, she could tell, but she wasn’t about to stick around waiting for him to accept it. She went back to the table, slid into her chair, and rested her head in her hands.
“Everything all right, little sister?” Darryl asked, patting her back.
“Christ. Gimme a beer.”
George’s one beer led to another, and then another, until, she realized, she was completely relaxed and happy for the first time in a long time. The more Darryl let loose with his roars of wall-shaking laughter, the better she felt. That and the booze, of course. The crowd from the farm eventually divided up, her high school group at one table and everyone else at another. When the others slipped into reminiscing about their childhoods, and school, comparing notes and sharing stories, George was happy to join in, confessing, “You know, I was always so jealous of you guys, sneaking in here all the time in high school. I used to eavesdrop on you telling stories in the hallway the next day and wondered what it felt like to have a hangover, because you made even that sound fun, like some club initiation.”
At this, the whole table erupted with guffaws.
“What’d I say?”
“Oh, honey,” Darryl cried, “we lied so bad.”
“What?”
“Lied, lied, and lied some more.”
Nestor chuckled. “Charlie Senior never let us in here, you kidding?”
“Aw, you believed everything we bullshitted about.” Darryl laughed at her stunned look. “You were always such a cute little thing—what did Casey used to call you in school?”
From behind her, a familiar voice said, “Goose.”
George’s head snapped up like someone had yanked on the back of her hair. There was Casey, smiling lazily, hands in his pockets, right by her chair.
“That’s right!” Big D said, slapping the table. “Goose!”
George hoped her face wasn’t as red as it felt, but she was pretty sure it was.
“Wow, Casey, never thought I’d see you here,” Elliot said, reaching for the pitcher and pulling a plastic cup off the stack in the middle of the table. “What’s the occasion?”
For a split second, George and Casey’s eyes met, then flicked away.
“What, I can’t go out for a beer with my friends?”
George admired his easy grace as he joined them at the table, stretching out in his seat and accepting the cup Elliot handed him. He was newly showered and in freshly laundered clothes, and George caught a whiff of soap and fabric softener. She resisted the urge to lean closer and take a deeper sniff.
“First time for everything, I guess,” Jill said, glancing at George for a second. George stared down at the water rings on the table. “Hey,” Jill said, with a wicked grin, “all this high school talk’s got me thinking. Who’d you go out with, George? I don’t remember. I know all about the love lives of these losers here—way too much, if you ask me—but how about you?”
George laughed. “Nobody.”
“Come on. Not even a date to the prom?”
“Not even. I went with my friend Megan. We sat at a back table with a bunch of other dateless losers and mocked all the couples.”
“So
that
was the origin of your blog.”
“Seriously?” George gawped at Casey. “That’s a bit of a stretch, don’t you think?”
Jill shrugged. “He may be right.”
George thought a moment, then admitted reluctantly, “Huh. Maybe.”
“I have my moments.”
“So why
didn’t
you have a boyfriend?” Jill pressed.
George wished she wouldn’t. This was the part of small-town life she didn’t miss—the way everybody thought they were entitled to ask you all sorts of personal questions, because your business was their business. Going back generations. And the catch was if you didn’t answer those questions, others would—whether or not the people who ponied up the answers even knew what they were talking about.
So before someone else at the table could offer up a theory, she answered—truthfully. “Nobody asked me.”
“Why didn’t
you
ask
them?
” Casey challenged.
She looked him straight in the eye. “I tried that. Once. It ended badly.”
There was a pause. It felt electric to George, and she panicked, wondering if anyone else at the table noticed. Then Casey looked away from her, and the moment was over.
She refocused on the group just as Darryl was saying, “Do
not
tell me someone blew you off. Stupid bastard. Who was he? I’ll beat him up.”
George couldn’t hide her grin. “Statute of limitations, I think, D.”
“There’s no statute of limitations on dumbassery.”
“I like your word.”
“You can borrow it anytime.”
“No action at all?” Jill pressed.
Okay, now Jill was getting annoying. What was she getting at? Did she know, or was she just teasing? George couldn’t tell.
“Maybe . . .”
“Ah hah! Now you’ve gotta say—who was it? Some guys at school had some darned good moves back then. And others had shitty ones, of course. Which was it? Darned good, or shitty?”
“Darned good” didn’t even come close to covering it, George didn’t say. She had an answer, but there was no way she was going to go into detail with these long-lost schoolmates of hers. In public and all. Yet there was everyone at the table—and it was just her imagination, but it felt like everyone else in the bar as well—watching her expectantly. Most of all, she felt Casey’s eyes burning into her from her left. She didn’t dare sneak a glance that way. She paused. There was a heavy silence; even the song on the jukebox faded away. George wanted to say something clever and cutting, but she was sure the only thing that would come out would sound like “Glxzrd.” She took a breath to steady herself, smiled in what she hoped was an enigmatic way, and managed to get out, “What is it they say? Never kiss and tell?”
Jill rolled her eyes. Darryl laughed. “Oh, I’d tell,” he said. “I’ve got no scruples.”
George leaned toward him (and away from Casey), eager to get the spotlight off herself completely. “So tell,” she demanded. “Who was your best?”
“Oh, Steven Manassas, no question.”
George choked on her beer. “What?” She shoved his arm. “Get out!”
“I’ve
been
out, honey. Where have you been? Oh yeah, that’s right—hundreds of miles from here.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Didn’t come up in conversation. It’s not like, ‘Hey, good to see you after a zillion years. And guess what?’”
She looked at him in a new light. Imagine, Big D—the immovable force on the football field (he played unbreakable defense just by standing there) and the basketball court, the larger-than-life of the party—with that type of secret. For how long? They’d all assumed he was straight when they were younger.