Last Chance Llama Ranch (20 page)

“Fuck,” said Merry, “a duck.”

That car had been just about the last material possession she could call her own, aside from a few sticks of furniture currently being “utilized” by the tenant she'd gotten to take over her lease.
Probably should have gotten my mail forwarded
, she thought. She'd undoubtedly missed more than a few bills since she'd been in Aguas Milagros. Well, “missed” wasn't really the word to use, she thought ruefully.
Dodged
might be more accurate. But even if she'd received the notice saying her car was about to be repossessed, there wasn't much she could have done about it—except take the old CDs out of the glove box and say a tearful good-bye. She had nothing in her bank account with which to pay off the title loan. It was only because
Pulse
was paying for her rental car that Merry was able to keep the MINI while she was here at the ranch. It would have to go back the minute this assignment ended. Leaving Merry up shit's creek for real.

“Fuck,” said Merry to no one in particular, “two ducks.”

Fortunately, Bob's diner was devoid of ducks this morning. It was just her, and her laptop, and the unfortunate connection to the world it provided.

Well, while she was facing unpleasant things, she'd might as well get it over with and rip off the Band-Aid. She'd been putting it off for the past several days while she settled into ranch life and her leg started to heal up a bit. But she couldn't ditch this responsibility any longer.

It was time to scan the comments.

Nooooooooooooooo
, she thought, as she always did before she undertook this most loathsome portion of her job.
No, please God, spare meeeeeee!

But there was no help for it. Merry needed to see how her fickle fans were responding to her column. The first DDWID installments had done remarkably well, but that was no reason to go ahead and think the Internet had sprouted daisy-covered rainbows overnight. When you worked as an online journalist, you were only as good as your latest post, only as safe as the trolls were magnanimous that day.

How had the hot-spring hippies gone over? Had they liked her story about the trek up Wheeler Peak, and her descriptions of Sam, Dolly, Bob, and the other Aguas Milagros locals she'd been interviewing? Had the bit she'd done about the amigurumi bored them, or were they anxious to see how crafty she could be with a crochet hook? For the past several days since her encounter with Sam (and the centipede), she'd barely had time to do more than post and run—or rather collapse—given how busy ranch life had been keeping her, but Merry had to remember the Last Chance wasn't her real job. Or her real home. Reality couldn't wait any longer.

Maybe it'd be better to check the back-end analytics before subjecting herself to the soul-slashing callousness of the World Wide Web. Merry clicked and typed, clicked some more, and was soon in the bowels of the content management system
Pulse
staff members used, perusing site stats for her column.

What she saw made her sit back and reach a shaky hand for her latte—this morning's design was of a sunrise over the mountains—and slug back a swig. “
Hot damn
,” she breathed, and not just because Bob's coffee was just short of scalding. The bar graph said it all. Where her numbers had been chugging along respectably for months (though dipping more than she'd liked before Joel had done his bait-and-switch with her column), suddenly there was a spike that sent her into a whole other stratosphere.

The kind of spike that said
viral.

Viral. The great white whale of Internet commerce. The elusive, ineffable, and utterly unforeseeable quality that took a story from “hey, cool,” to “you gotta fuckin' see this” on social media.

Merry switched over to Twitter, where her handle was @merryway. The feed was slow, because Bob's Wi-Fi was still barely out of the twentieth century, but she could see she'd gained an amazing number of new followers in the past several days, some of whom were even not horny Russian teenagers eager to please. Her message box was awash with spam, lewd offers, and requests for follow-backs—nothing new there—but it was the sheer volume of traffic that set Merry back on her heels.

Scarcely able to believe her eyes, Merry went back to the CMS and delved deeper, clicking through charts and site referral numbers. Yup. Her shares, likes, and retweets had all grown exponentially. More important, they'd grown
organically
. Which meant people were interested enough in what she'd been doing enough to post about it, reblog it, and share it with their friends all over the world.

Which meant happy sponsors getting mountains of click-throughs on their ads.

But did it mean the
readers
were happy—or laughing their asses off at her?

Enough dithering. Time to check the comments and find out.

Except there would not be
time
to check all the comments. Not if Merry wanted to meet Sam at his house this morning as she'd promised.

There were twelve hundred and forty three of them
.

It was near triple the number she'd done on her best day before.

“Ho-ly…”

“Want some eggs and toast with that coffee, Lady Hobbit?” Bob swung by, fishing an order pad from his apron and a pencil from his frowsy hair. “Maybe a pinch more nutmeg on your latte?”

Merry gave him a look that was half baby bird, half woozy travel writer. “No, thanks. Dolly's got me bringing a picnic brunch over to Sam's in a bit, so I'll skip the chow and the nutmeg, but maybe you can spare a pinch on my arm to wake me up? I'm pretty sure I'm dreaming right now, because I am just
not
that lucky.” She nodded to her laptop.

Bob peeked around her shoulder to see her screen. His eyes darted as he scanned the page, and he nodded wisely. “People have good taste.”

Merry followed his gaze to the topmost comment.

Bob stroked his beard. “I don't know about a cappuccino, but if I used a bit of cayenne for the flames, I bet I could make a Mexican hot cocoa dragon,” he mused.

Merry smiled, mouth already watering at the idea. Then she snorted when she saw one of the replies to the comment.

I want Steve Spirit Wind in my next cuppa,
wrote PennyPetticoat from Brixton, UK.

“Way ahead of you,” Bob said to the screen. For the first time, Merry noticed the tray Bob held in one hand. Two wide-mouthed coffee cups rested atop it, and in each one, a mound of stiff foam had been sculpted into the shape of a tiny person, arms draped over the side of the cup, as if bathing in a hot tub. The detail was perfect, down to the chest hair on Steve, and Mazel's long braids. “Gotta get these to our friends over there before the magic melts,” Bob said, nodding over his shoulder. Merry followed his gaze and saw that Steve and Mazel Tov had taken the booth two down from hers, and were pulling out bottles of stevia and assorted vials of spices from Mazel's macramé bag.

“Oh no,” Merry whispered. “They haven't seen the bit I wrote about…”

Bob's beard parted to show his smile. “Oh, we've all seen it,” he said. “It's getting to be quite a thing, to come over my way of an evening and check out the latest from our esteemed guest.”

Merry shrank down in her seat, but the two hippies had already seen her. They waved enthusiastically, and Merry waved back, half apologetically.
They don't
look
mad
, she thought. But she'd better start remembering that Aguas Milagros was a
small
town. She'd be bound to see the subjects of her articles daily, and she needed to keep that in mind when she wrote about them.

“Speaking of evenings at Café Con Kvetch,” Bob said, breaking into her thoughts, “you coming to the happening this weekend?”

“Ah…‘
happening
'?” Hippies and “happenings” could be a lethal combination.

“Music, poetry, dancing; that kind of thing. Pretty much the whole town's going to be here,” Bob told her. “Might make great material for your column,” he added.

Merry noticed Bob never said “blog,” and she loved him just a little bit more for getting it right. And he was correct. It sounded like exactly the sort of thing her readers would relish.
And
terrify me
, she thought. Parties weren't exactly Merry's forte, to her Mother's endless exasperation. “I wish I could,” she said, not quite honestly. “But I promised Dolly I'd join her and some of her friends for this craft night thing they do.”
That is, if I survive this “experience” Sam's got cooked up for me today
.

“No need to split Schrödinger's cat,” Bob said. “The two are not mutually exclusive.”

Merry looked up at him, pirate brow raised.

“Dolly's troupe does their stitchery over here at the café,” he explained. “It's the most central location for the ladies. Unlike Dolly, some of 'em live really far out in the rural areas, and this is the only chance they get at enjoying a spot of civilization. All the better for everyone when craft night coincides with our local talent slam.”

Merry smiled.
Dolly's ranch is
not
considered rural?
She could scarcely picture Aguas Milagros' idea of “far out.” “Cool,” she said to Bob. “Two birds—or quantum zombie cats—with one stone, I guess. Catch you later?”

“You got it, Lady Hobbit. I better let you get back to your work, and get back to mine as well. Mini Mazel's melting from the heat.” He hefted his tray of foam-born hippies and headed for the real hippies' table. “Don't let the rascals grind you down today!”

And on that baffling note, Bob left Merry to her own devices. Specifically, her laptop. She scrolled back to the entry she'd done on the hot springs, and smiled to see one of her top commenters had left her a note filled with her usual enthusiasm.

So how'd things end with Steamy Sam?
another commenter wanted to know.
Don't leave us hanging!

Merry wasn't surprised her readers were falling for him—she could fall for the fictitious version of her host herself, if she hadn't had the reality to keep her firmly fed up. But she had to admit, Sam
had
shown a softer side lately—
slightly
. Why, he'd been
almost
decent to her these past few days, keeping the razzing, snarking, and sarcasm to a dull roar as Merry learned her way around the ranch. But it hadn't been all that hard to stay civil—he'd mostly stayed out of her way since their axe-wielding encounter, leaving Merry to work with Dolly and Jane while he guided guests on overnight excursions with his llamas.

Today, however, she'd be one of those overnight guests. If she ever finished catching up with her correspondence.

Merry slugged her rapidly cooling coffee and hunched over her computer.

Twenty minutes later, laptop safely stowed in her satchel and sufficiently fortified with caffeine to face anything—even bearding Sam Cassidy in his den—Merry rose and tossed a tip roughly double the pittance Bob had charged her for her coffee on the chipped Formica. But she wasn't getting away that cleanly.

“Hey, hey, Merry-Berry,” Steve called, waving her over to the booth where he and his woman were up to their braids in chiles and cheese, their cappuccinos drained to thin films of froth on the edges of Bob's capacious cups.

“Come gift us with your inner light,” invited Mazel.

Merry hesitated.
So close
… she thought, looking longingly at the bright sunlight just beyond Bob's diner door. But she owed the hippies their chance to give her hell for her post about them. Despite their smiles, she couldn't quite believe they were cool with their portrayal on DDWID.

Until Mazel got up from the table, sliding from the booth with the grace of a true flower child, and engulfed Merry in a full-body, patchouli-redolent hug.