Down and Out in Bugtussle (14 page)

“I’m sure there’s more to it than that.”

“Well, of course, that’s what I like to think, but probably not.”

“So what are you going to do if Ms. Becker manages to hang on to your job for another year?” Jalena asks, and I’m tempted to tell her to hold off on the hard questions because she’s killing my mood. I look at my flamingos and frown. Dammit! I was so happy two minutes ago.

“Hey, do you like your new flamingos or what?” I ask. Jalena takes the hint and lets it go.

“I love my new flamingos. So are you finished?”

“I have to glaze it again,” I say. “But that won’t take too long.”

“Okay, well, while you do that, I’m going to go print off this menu and see how it looks on paper,” she says.

I inspect my artwork one final time, then glaze the wall from top to bottom and right to left. I walk back to Ethan Allen’s office where Jalena is sitting at the desk, examining one of her menu sheets.

“Come check out the finished product,” I say. She follows me down the hall to the diner and then brags on the mural until I finally have to tell her to lay off. I think she might be overembellishing the compliments because she’s worried that she hurt my feelings by grilling me about what I’m going to do if Cameron Becker doesn’t give up the art class and move her sassy ass on to some other place. But the mural does look exceptional, if I do say so myself.

“Okay, now come check out my finished product, which isn’t quite so glamorous,” she says, and I follow her back down the hallway to the office where she plops into the desk chair. “These things are ugly!” She points at the copies on the desk. “They’re too plain. I didn’t realize how dull they were until I slid ’em into the menu cover and…Look at this.” She hands me the menu. “Blah blah blah. Boring!”

“It looks very professional,” I say.

“Professional is boring.”

“Maybe a little, yes.”

“Can you put something cool on here before I have to take them to the printer? Liven ’em up for me?”

“Sure,” I say. “I can draw a mean penis.”

“Yeah, I hear you’ve drawn a lot of that around here,” she says with a cunning smile.

“Ethan Allen needs to stop telling lies about my lust life. You want a penis on here or not?”

“What’s your deal with always trying to draw a penis on something?”

“You said to liven it up and that would surely do it,” I tell her. “I stay true to the cause of artistic integrity.” Jalena rolls her eyes and laughs. “Okay, seriously, you want an alligator on here or some little food baskets or what?”

“I don’t care,” she says, still giggling. “You’ve been here every step of the way since the first wall went up, so I think you have a feel for this place as well as I do. Just do your thing.” She stops talking and waves a finger at me. “Not your b.s. artistic integrity thing, but your unperverted creative thing.”

“Okay,” I say with a sigh. “Unperverted. Got it.” I smile, thinking this part of helping Jalena is so much more fun than sweeping up Sheetrock dust. “Print me off some extras for doodling purposes, please, ma’am.”

“How many?”

“Three or four.”

“No problemo, mi amiga.” She starts tapping on her laptop again and the printer starts humming. I ask for a sheet of paper and a pen. “You don’t have to start right now,” she says.

“I’m not,” I say, and then ask her a few questions about this and that on the menu because, even though she has complete faith in my ability to create something unperverted that she’ll like, I still want to make sure I have a clear idea of what she has in mind. I
make a bunch of notes and then decide to surprise her with a little picture of her daddy’s marina at Frog Bayou on the back of the last page. I think she’d like that.

“Do you want me to do it by hand or on the computer? I can do it either way.” She considers that for a minute, tapping her ink pen against her temple.

“If it’s all the same to you, let’s skip the computer,” she says finally. “I don’t want it to look too commercial. I ain’t openin’ a Red Lobster here.” She starts laughing and so do I. “Everything I serve will be homemade, so it would be awesome if the menu had that feel to it, too.”

“Sounds good to me.”

“It’s all about that personal touch, you know? There’s a certain quality in that.”

“I couldn’t possibly agree with you more.” I scribble a few more notes. “When do you need these by?”

“Anytime this week,” she says, and I get up to go. “Wait a minute! I’m not letting you do this unless you let me pay you.”

“Okay,” I say. “Why don’t you have Ethan Allen order me a bottle of that white moscato he gets for Chloe?”

“Done,” she says. “Lifetime supply.”

“Yeah, you better check with him first on that,” I tell her.

“Nah,” she says. “All I have to do is say the magic word.”

“Please?”

“No. Shrimp-n-grits.”

“Magic words, then,” I say, teasing.

“It’s hyphenated where I come from.” She stands up to give me a big hug. I think about how great it is that I had something to do with two good-hearted folks like Jalena and Ethan Allen finding
each other, even if I was just as surprised as the next guy when the sparks started to fly. Maybe their happiness shouldn’t be so depressing to me after all. It’s a success story that wouldn’t have happened otherwise, so maybe I’ll start patting myself on the back instead. I need to have some reason to pat myself on the back. Might as well be that. That and those bomb-ass flamingos I just put up on that wall.

When I step outside, the cool wind catches me off guard and I wish I’d brought a jacket. I crank up my car and turn the heat on full blast.

Out on the highway, I get trapped behind a left-lane cruiser who just can’t seem to make it past an old grandpa-looking car in the right lane. I stay in the left lane because, after all, it is the one designated for passing. I can see that the person driving the car in front of me is a woman who is fooling with her cell phone, and I hope for her sake that she’s looking at a damned directional device or else I’m going to get pissed. More pissed than I already am, that is, after driving fifty-five miles per hour for three miles on a highway where the speed limit is sixty-five.

Unable to stand it another minute, I start flashing my headlights, pointing to the right lane, and yelling, “Get over, asshole! Move it!” I don’t know if she sees me acting a fool or if maybe she drops her beloved phone on the floor and goes crazy, but she runs her tiny little car off the road and into the median strip. I hit my brakes and so does the grandpa-car in the right lane. When I pass him, I see that the driver really is a little old grandpa guy. I pass him and the idiot lady whose car still has two wheels in the grass, and then I get back in the right lane, where people with good sense like to drive.

I glance in the rearview mirror and see that the left-lane cruiser has whipped her tin-can car back onto the road. She’s coming up fast. In the left lane, of course. Grandpa is quite a piece behind us now, and I’m relieved that he’s far removed from the commotion that I know is about to begin. When the idiot lady gets up beside me, she slows down and rides there for a minute. I try not to look over, but I can’t help myself. I turn my head and see her over there, waving her arms and screaming. She’s pointing with her right hand and still has her cell phone in her left, so I can only assume she’s driving with her knees. I shake my head and sigh, wishing I was the kind of girl who could leave an idiot to her idiotic ways, but I’ve tried that and it’s just not my style. I look back at her and smile.

“Pull over!” I yell while I honk my horn and wave my middle finger in the air. “Pull that dumbass-looking car over and let’s do this!” I stop flipping her off and start pointing to the upcoming exit. “Right up here!” I wonder why I’m yelling, because I know she can’t hear me. Oh wait, perhaps it’s because I’m in the midst of the worst road-rage episode I’ve had in several months. “Pull over!” I yell again. Even though she can’t hear me, I’m confident she’s getting the message.

Apparently, she doesn’t want to pull over and discuss this face-to-face because, even though I’m driving seventy-five miles per hour, she speeds away like a hybrid bat out of foreign-car hell. Yet thirty seconds ago, she was driving fifty-five. I check the rearview and see Grandpa puttering along miles behind. I feel sorry for him and his entire generation because they have to share the road with people like that dipshit, who’s up there in the median strip again and people like me who want to beat the shit out of people like her.
It’s a truly unfortunate situation for the more-mature drivers on the road. I turn on my signal and exit off the highway. Jeez Lou-eeze, I’m so mad I could bend an iron skillet. And I feel so stupid for letting myself get so mad. Like Gramma Jones always used to say, “Never argue with an idiot.”

B
y the time I get home, it’s pouring down rain. I run inside the house where I find Buster Loo nestled into my fuzzy blanket on the couch.

“My thoughts exactly, Buster Loo. Give me just a minute and I’ll be right there.” He cocks his head sideways, then tucks his snout back under the covers. “I wouldn’t leave my warm spot, either,” I tell him.

After a hot shower, I put on some fuzzy britches, even fuzzier socks, and a sweatshirt that I wish were a bit fuzzier. I head to the couch and snuggle up with Buster Loo, who is reluctant to share his warm spot. While flipping through channels, I see a soup commercial and decide that’s just what I need for supper.

When I get off the couch, Buster Loo rolls onto his back and looks at me like, “How could you do this to me?” I go into the kitchen and dig through my cabinets, trying to figure out if I have
enough ingredients to make something tasty. I find a red bell pepper in the fridge, look over my canned goods again, and decide on corn chowder. I pull out the Crock-Pot from under the cabinet and turn to see Buster Loo sitting by the stove.

“Want me to turn that on and warm it up in here?” His response is to wave his paws up and down, his signature trick, and I decide he’s more concerned about a potential scrap than the temperature in the kitchen because he has yet to take his eyes off the cans on the counter. I give him a little-dog biscuit, wash my hands, and set about chopping and mixing. When I’m finished, I pour my concoction into the Crock-Pot, fix myself a cup of hot cocoa, and return to the sofa. Two hours later, I enjoy not one but two bowls of hot soupy goodness along with a hearty chunk of French bread, and it’s so good that I don’t even mind I’m dining alone on a Saturday night. It’s peaceful. And I need all of that I can get.

I think about Stacey Dewberry and wonder if she took that hair of hers out partying tonight. Then I wonder if she really enjoys barhopping or if she just does it because she doesn’t have anything better to do. I rinse my bowl, slide the soup pot into the fridge, and fix a cup of hot tea. I head back to the couch, where I end up falling asleep while watching
Saturday Night Live
.

Sunday, I sleep late and the cold drizzle has me feeling depressed again. I’d love to get out and get started with my new gardening hobby, but this weather refuses to cooperate. I piddle around the house, wash some clothes, have a bowl of soup for lunch and then take a long afternoon nap. When I get up, I wander into the guest room where I sit down on the bed and stare at Gramma Jones’s box of books. Would she want me pilfering through her things? Would she mind? It’s not like she had time to
dispose of anything she didn’t want me to see. I pick up the garden book, flip to the back, and take out the note. Holding the folded piece of paper in my hand makes me feel weird, like a dirty Russian spy, so when my phone starts ringing in the living room, I put the note back where I found it, lay the book on the dresser, and close the guest room door behind me.

I don’t get to the phone in time and the call goes to voice mail. I look at the missed call list. “Lilly Lane.”
Oh Lord,
I think as I press the button to call her back. She never calls. When she answers, she’s such a sniveling mess that I can hardly understand a word she’s saying.

“Can I just come over?” she asks finally.

“Of course, I made some corn chowder yesterday,” I tell her. “You want me to fix you a bowl?” She snuffles and sniffs and mumbles something about Dax doing paperwork at the sheriff’s office. She doesn’t answer the soup question, so I decide to start a pot of coffee.

I’m standing on the back porch when she comes through the gate. It’s still raining, but instead of rushing to get out of the dampness, she takes her time walking to the back porch. She’s wearing tennis shoes, jeans, and a Delta State sweatshirt that looks three sizes too big. I try to remember the last time I saw her in a pair of shoes like that.

“New shoes?” I ask.

“Yeah,” she says with a sniff.

I hold open the door and pat her on the back as she walks into the kitchen.

She goes straight to the couch and wraps herself in my fuzzy blanket. I stop by the kitchen and fix two nonalcoholic cups of coffee.
I take those into the living room and find her hugging Buster Loo, who is, yet again, licking the tears off her cheeks.

“I may have to borrow Buster Loo when Dax leaves,” she says.