“Hmm. Well, aren’t you just the eternal optimist?”
“I guess you could call it that,” Victoria sighed.
“The girls have been pestering me about joining, too. You’ve become quite the celebrity with the elementary school crowd, you know. None of my girls ever had a bit of interest in dance before, but now that it’s become de rigueur, I’ve suddenly become like the evil stepmother for not signing them up. I told them maybe in the spring . . . if you have any room. Coffee?”
Victoria nodded. Undoing her sweater, she wrestled for a moment with the stuck zipper and finally pulled it off over her head, sending her hair into early morning chaos. She finger-combed it calm and muttered thanks as Pearl wandered over, filled up her mug and dropped two menus on the table. She stood waiting expectantly, a wad of pink gum receiving brutal treatment between her jaws. “So, how’s them kids’ dance lessons comin’?”
“Good. You going to join us again?”
“Naw Wasn’t fer me.”
Victoria suppressed a grin as she remembered the tittering giggles that had broken out the first time Pearl had shown up in her homemade pink tutu.
Victoria reached for her menu. “Could you give us a minute, please?”
Ignoring the request, Pearl ran her quick eyes off to the back of the café and waited for Victoria’s to follow. Stuffed into the back corner sagged a ragamuffin fake tree fastened by duct tape to the wall like a weary prisoner of war. Pearl had found a way to save the bother of redecorating each year. With the first good thaw in March, she would holler at Bud, and he’d cut the duct tape off the wall and drag the tree back down into the coal cellar till the time came to pull it back out the next year. Not exactly of the nature to get overly extravagant just because it was Christmas, Pearl still expected people to appreciate the effort she did make. She glowered at Victoria, waiting for her to respond.
“Oh, I see you decorated.”
“Yup. Bud taped it up yesterday,” she agreed, snapped her gum, waited.
“Looks nice. Very festive,” Victoria lied as she had every year since Bud discovered the tree at the dump, dragging it home behind his bike.
Pearl scowled, pressed the gum out between a gap in her front teeth almost to the point of losing it, then sucked it back in with a little slurp.
“You don’t think it’s getting a little worn out?”
It was a trick question. Victoria had almost fallen for it once but had watched others get taken in time and again. Anyone agreeing quite honestly that it was perhaps looking a little bedraggled was instantly seized upon for a donation to cheer it up, Pearl supplying the decorations at three times their original cost. Honesty at Pearl’s was synonymous to stupidity.
Pastor Jack was her favorite victim.
“No. No, it looks just fine to me, Pearl. Same as last year.”
Disappointed, Pearl turned on her heel and marched back toward the kitchen where Bud had just come in.
“Buddy! What you doing in my kitchen with those dirty rubbers? No! No siree, mister. You ain’t bloody well washing them in my sink. Git outside with you. Git out ’fore I grab my broom and git you out.”
A screen door screeched and banged, and one could just imagine Bud slinking off like a dump dog with its tail tucked between its legs. Bud was one of those fellows very seldom seen but evidenced everywhere by the work he left behind. Duct tape was his trademark, and judging from the fact that it seemed to hold most of the hotel together, he must have purchased it by the truckload.
Pearl walked back out from behind the counter, glared at a few customers in case they’d had second thoughts about lunch, then came back up to Rose and Victoria’s table to take their order. The snapping of her gum indicated she was in no mood for patience. She shook her head vigorously.
“That Bud! No more brains than a bitch in heat, that man. Bring his dirty rubbers into my kitchen . . . gonna wash them in my sink. Dumb I tell you! Dumb, dumb, dumb, shit-fer-brains dumb. Whadda ya wanna eat?”
Pearl was possibly one of the only people around who still thought rubbers were something people wore on their feet. Rose and Victoria avoided each other’s eyes, carefully placed their orders and suppressed laughs until Pearl had left and disappeared well out of ear range.
“So?” Rose raised her sweeping brows and batted her lashes dramatically.
“So, what?” Victoria countered, but they both knew all that “so” represented, and she smiled coyly.
“So, anymore anonymous calls from your secret admirer? Or are you too busy for him now, too?”
“Rose. I told you. It was just a prank.”
“Nothing?” Rose pressed. “Nothing at all?”
“Well, not really. Just a couple times, but he didn’t really say much. And there’s been a few times when I picked up, but no one was there.” She threw it out like she hadn’t given it a second thought. But the aborted calls had seemed odd in light of the other ones, and she’d felt a thrill crushed by disappointment each time.
“Happens how often?”
“Pardon?”
“How often? How often do you get those calls?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Not often, really. Maybe four or five times. It’s nothing Rose.” She wished Rose would just leave it alone. She felt protective about the calls. They were not something she wanted to share, and she felt annoyed at herself for telling Rose about them in the first place. Speaking about them aloud unnerved her, thoughts crowding in about how badly things could go if Bobby were to ever overhear.
“Four or five times? Sounds like something to me. Who do you think it is?”
“Rose, it’s no one.”
“Ya, ya. Okay, fine. But hypothetically, just for fun. Who would you want it to be? If it could be anyone in town.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Why is that ridiculous? Oh, come on, Vic, loosen up and have a little fun with it. What’s it going to hurt? Come on, just for fun. Who?”
Victoria stirred her coffee and watched the miniature whirlpool she’d created spin. She smiled, looking around quickly. Rose smiled in return her eyes expectant, encouraging.
“Well? Who?”
“Just for fun?”
“Of course.”
“Do I have to be limited to just one?”
“Ha!” Rose clapped her hands together. “Greedy girl. Yes, one. That’s all you get. Make your choice.”
Victoria grimaced, rubbed her forehead and was on the verge of answering when she felt Pearl pattering up behind her to deliver the sandwich and cream of broccoli soup they’d ordered, which had, through one of Pearl’s mysteries, been replaced by a thin and tepid cream of potato and corn made without a trace of cream or corn. A quarter step from the table, her left shoe stuck momentarily to the floor, slopping a good part of the soup into the accompanying saucers. She set the soup on the table, wiped her fingers on the napkins and tucked them in beside the bowls.
“’Damn that Bud, don’t do nothing right. I told him to pull that tape tight.”
She leaned her hipless body against the table and tugged off her shoe, holding it out for them to examine the evidence of Bud’s poor workmanship. The orange canvas runners that she’d pretty much walked right out of during the summer had obviously spent some time in Bud’s repair shop. Copious bands of duct tape wrapped them first one way then the other, then executed a beautifully maneuvered crisscross switchback over the toe and wound up fastened tightly with, well, more duct tape. But an error had been made, and Pearl was not pleased to discover it. In his exuberance to do a bang-up job, Bud had inadvertently twisted the tape, and every here and there a maniacally sticky, silver tongue lay in waiting.
“Dumb ass,” she growled as she unstuck the shoe from her hand and put it back on her knobby foot. “Got to put up with this now till the dirt takes the sticky away.”
And with that she hobbled off, the duct tape grabbing every second step, throwing her a hesitation off beat as she stepped and stuck her way back into the kitchen. They fished their spoons into their soup, determined it passably safe and Victoria took a swallow only to be stopped by Rose’s interjection.
“Vic!”
“What?”
“Well?”
“Well, what?”
“Well, who. Who?”
“Oh, yeah. Okay, but I just want you to know this is stupid. And it doesn’t mean anything.”
“Of course not.” Rose smiled and started into her sandwich, her eyes not leaving Victoria’s face.
“Okay. But it’s not just one guy—”
“Whoops, wrong answer. Against the rules.”
“Well, okay, it is one guy then. But he’s sort of a blend of three. Is that against the rules?”
“Oh, the hell with the rules. Who is it . . . they?”
They laughed, lowered their voices and peeked over the booths to make sure they weren’t being eavesdropped on. Victoria blushed.
“Can’t tell anyone.”
“Fine, like who would I tell?”
“Promise?”
“Yes. Cross my heart and spit to die and all that shit.”
Rose sat poised, sandwich in hand, waiting for Victoria to release her answer. Her dark eyes grew impatient as their soup slid from tepid to cold.
“Come on, Vic. What’s the big deal? Out with it.”
“Okay. Shit, this is embarrassing.”
“What’s so embarrassing?”
“I don’t know; it’s stupid.”
“Don’t like divulging your secret fantasies, hmm?”
“Oh shit, Rose, it’s nothing like that.”
“Who then? Come on, give me Hinckly’s best.”
“Okay. But don’t laugh.”
“Wouldn’t think of it.”
They stared at each other. Rose mouthed a silent—
who?
“Elliot. Obviously.”
“Obviously.”
“Sam.” She shot Rose a look and giggled.
“Aha! Not so obvious. You know I always thought he had a thing for you.”
“Rose, it’s just pretend remember? The perfect combination.”
“Oh yes, right. The perfect menage a trois.”
“What?”
“Nothing. And number three would be?” She held her hands and face in an open question.
“Shit. I can’t, Rose.”
“Why not? You already told me the first two.”
“Because I can’t, that’s why.”
“Why? What’s so bad about number three? He married?”
“Hardly. He still lives at home.”
“Ohh . . . young hottie, is he?” She touched her mug to her lips and took a sip. “How young?”
“Young enough I could probably go to jail for even thinking about it.”
“Akk! Okay, tell me. Do. You have to.”
Victoria took a deep breath, looked into her soup and whispered out the name.
“Mark.”
“Mark?”
“Tom and Diana’s kid. Works at the feed store.”
“Oh, yes! Good one. I wouldn’t mind showing him a thing or two myself. He’s not that young, is he?”
“Not quite 20. Looks older than he is. And he’s built like a brick shit-house. Sure didn’t get that from his dad. Anyhow, that’d be it. The perfect blend. Too bad we don’t get to choose in real life, hey?”
“Who says we don’t? A perfectly good imagination can be a very useful tool.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” She teased the words out slowly, a wide-eyed smile suggesting that she very much did. “I guess just let your mind run free if whoever it is calls again. That’s what I’d do. Play it for all it was worth. Have a little fun. Why not? Guys do it all the time.”
“Do what?”
Rose laughed, helped herself to Victoria’s sandwich.
“Mind if I have a bite? I’m actually enjoying this, if you can believe it.”
“Do what Rose? What do guys always do?”
“Fantasize, baby. You think that’s you Bobby’s been rocking for the last twenty years? Not a chance. It’s a little of Denise, a little of Francy, a little of Diana, a snag of
Penthouse,
a snatch of
Playboy
and a little of me. No, a whole lot of me, all stirred up with a little whatever else happened to catch his eye that day.”
“Well, you know, if you really want him, Rose—”
“No thanks, got three kids of my own already.”
The content of the words whispered from their lips must have reached Billy Bassman like a subliminal message. He swung around on his stool at the far end of the bar, planted an elbowless elbow on the counter and leered at them, his greasy head propped up by a grimy hand. Rose glared back at him, eyes like flaming spitfires, but he was just amused and upped the ante by licking his cracked lips and noisily smacking them together as if he could already taste her. Riff-raff like him were a huge source of irritation for Rose. Possessing neither pride nor secrets, she viewed them with an unredeemable scorn.
“Quit looking at us, you pervert.”
“Kiss my ass, sweetheart,” he responded with a puckered-up kiss into the air and a sloppy grin. “I look where I want to look, when I want to look and ain’t no one telling me different.”
“Well, I’m telling you. Turn your ugly head around and quit spoiling our lunch.”