by Laurel Dewey
“No. I don’t have change for your Benji.” Betty turned away but couldn’t help but be curious as to what business had a problem of bringing in too many hundred dollar bills. “Where do you work?”
“At The Green Wellness dispensary. We’ve been slammed this weekend.”
A cold shudder iced Betty’s spine. Well, that explained the appearance, she thought. What a waste of a good life. With marijuana dispensaries outnumbering Starbucks in Colorado, it was hard to believe they all were rolling in “Benjamins.” But the Colorado green rush was obviously a profitable endeavor. However, Betty told herself, so was being a high priced escort. The strain now between these two was thick. Well, it was thick for Betty anyway; the girl seemed completely oblivious and laid-back. Thankfully, Lily strode out from the back, and upon seeing the girl and Betty together, tensed up considerably. “Yarrow?” Lily said, her eyes jetting nervously to Betty. “This is not a great time to visit.”
Yarrow, Betty thought. Who in the hell names their kid Yarrow? Hyssop was probably too hard to spell.
“I just need some change,” Yarrow said off-handedly.
“I don’t have any. It’s too early.”
“Bummer. Okay, I’ll come back later. See ya!” She nearly skipped out of the store, clearly immune to the strain at the counter.
“She works –”
“At the dispensary,” Betty quickly said. “Yes, she told me. Do you have to deal with that type of intrusion a lot now?”
Lily looked ill at ease. “She’s in here once or twice a day.”
“You don’t have to put up with that. You should say something to her. She could attract the wrong clientele to your business.” Betty leaned forward, speaking in a confidential tone. “Criminals, if you get my drift.”
“Oh, I don’t…most of the people over there are…” Lily smiled, clearly uncomfortable. “Anyway, you got my message about your chair.” Betty nodded. “I’ve got your check right here.” Lily opened the cash register and handed Betty the check.
Betty swallowed hard. “A hundred and fifty-two? I don’t understand –”
“I had to mark it down. That’s in our contract. After sixty days if it’s not sold, I have the right to do that.”
Betty’s head reeled, but she maintained her composure. “Well, somebody is sitting on a really good deal right now.”
“Betty, it’s nothing against you or your beautiful items. Blame it on Ed.”
“Who’s Ed?”
“Economic Downturn. Hey, you’ve still got plenty of incredible things here that haven’t passed their expiration. In fact,” she furtively stole a glance behind Betty’s back, “that gentleman over there is checking out your Biedermeier.”
Betty turned. The man she half-noticed when she walked in was indeed eyeing her historic, German walnut writing table, circa 1825. However, he certainly didn’t appear to be someone who would ever own such a refined piece. He was probably in his early fifties, possibly younger, and wore a pair of black jeans and a well-worn leather motorcycle jacket. His reddish brown hair was pulled back into a neat ponytail that hung five inches down his back. A smartly trimmed goatee framed his healthy-looking face, which was tanned by the Colorado sun. No, this was not someone who would ever plunk a cent down for her cherished desk. Besides, Betty factored his height to be at least six foot three inches tall, which was certainly not a figure that would comfortably fit under that writing table. Still, he was spending a great deal of time examining the piece and reading the price tag. A sale was a sale, dammit, so she stepped forward to see if she could shrewdly close the deal.
Betty tried to appear as nonchalant as possible as she sashayed in the vicinity of the desk. Moving closer, she noticed a metal sign propped onto the piece with the quote: All a girl really wants is for one guy to prove to her that they are not all the same. It was apparently a direct quote from the pouting lips of Marilyn Monroe but it was certainly not something Betty Craven would ever dream of placing anywhere near her beloved Biedermeier. Like a fine hostess changing a place card in order to facilitate a better seating arrangement, she craftily removed the metal sign, placed it face down on another item and feigned great interest in the writing desk.
“Oh my, a Biedermeier!” she gushed in a low-key tone, brushing her palm against the wood. “You certainly don’t see these every day.”
The man looked at her with his intensely blue eyes. A soft smile followed. “Really?”
“Oh, I mean it. It’s quite a find! I don’t remember the last time I saw a Biedermeier like this.”
He leaned over and checked the price tag. “I’d say the last time you saw it was shortly before April 11th.”
Betty’s mouth went dry. “Excuse me?” She could feel that plastic smile forming on her face.
“The tag?” he noted, with a mischievous grin. “Lily always shorthands the name of the person who brought it in along with the date, right above the price. See? It says here: ‘B. Craven, 4/11.’”
Betty wasn’t about to let some guy with a quick mind outfox her. “Yes, but, why on earth would you think that –”
“Betty, I’ve heard you speak at the town council meetings. You always sit on the right side of the aisle and I’m always on the left. Kind of like our politics.” He smiled again and extended his hand. “My name’s Jeff Carroll. I’m glad to finally meet you.”
She stood there, momentarily speechless. But her manners quickly resurfaced. “Pleased to meet you too,” she replied, hoping her disingenuous tone wasn’t too obvious. His handshake was firm, not like so many men who are afraid to demonstrate their spirit. On closer examination, Betty surmised that Jeff looked something like a healthier, more muscular version of General George Custer and a sexier, thinner, and far younger version of Colonel Sanders. With a ponytail. And a biker jacket.
“What part of Texas are you from?” he asked.
Betty wasn’t aware she was letting her Texas inflection give her away. He was rather forward, Betty judged. But if a few moments of harmless banter sold her Biedermeier, she was willing to drop her guard just a bit. She’d pretend she was back on the pageant stage with her big bouffant, answering asinine questions about which world leader she most admired. “Houston. But we moved to Paradox in 1980, so I’m working toward becoming a semi-native.”
“We?” Jeff leaned against an oak chifferobe wardrobe in a relaxed posture.
“Uh, yes.” She realized she was rusty on the pageant shtick. “Well, my husband. But he’s since passed away.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. But to Betty, it didn’t appear he was sorry at all.
There was an uncomfortable pause before Betty turned to the desk. “You know, I bought this piece –”
“I live outside of Paradox, in the unincorporated part.” He chuckled. “Paradox. Sure is an odd name for a town, isn’t it?”
Betty wasn’t sure where in the hell this conversation was headed. “I’m sorry, but I don’t follow you.”
“It means irony or contradiction.”
“Yes, I’m aware of the definition of the word, but I’m not clear on –”
“I think it just seems like a paradox in itself that somebody would give a town that name. ‘I live in Paradox.’ It’s like saying, ‘I live in an illogical place.’”
Betty actually pondered this concept. “I never really thought of it that way.”
“Really? I thought of it the first time I heard the name. That’s why I chose to live outside the city line. I prefer to live outside the irony.”
Betty looked at Jeff, not sure what to make of him. He seemed to be someone who took time to actually think. But he also appeared to spend time thinking of the most peculiar things. “Yes. Well, right.” She turned to the desk, but was pretty sure any possible sale was dead in the water. “I’m running late to see a sick friend.”
Jeff smiled. “Sure. A sick friend.”
She realized her reply sounded like a worn out excuse used to hasten a quick exit. “No, really. I a
m going to see a sick friend. A very sick friend.” Her right ear began to flutter once again as her neck joined in the spasm.
“You okay?”
She was bewildered. She didn’t think she’d made any wincing facial movements or drawn attention to her annoying issue. “Yes, of course, I’m fine.”
Jeff cocked his head to the side. “You sure?”
Good Lord, this guy was persistent. “Yes,” she replied, as her ear played “Babaloo.”
He walked out with her and said goodbye before straddling his black Harley and zooming off into the distance. Damned noisy modes of transport, she said to herself, which seemed so inadequate for comfortable travel. But it did seem to start right up quite well without the need of a prayer. One could call that a bit of a paradox.
~~~
Peggy’s hospice nurse answered the door and solemnly ushered Betty inside. She was a black woman with a tidy bun of braids bundled in the crook of her neck. Betty lingered a tad too long in the front entrance, clutching the cooler that held the box of chocolates. The house smelled toxic, like dirty metal burning.
“How’s she doing today?” Betty managed to say as her stomach churned.
“Not good, I’m afraid,” the nurse replied with the hint of a Caribbean accent. “She’s got company right now but she’s in a lot of pain.”
This was already too much for Betty. She removed the elegantly wrapped box of chocolates from the protective cooler. “Perhaps, I can leave these chocolates with you and I’ll come back another time –”
“Another time?”
Betty looked at the woman, not sure what to say. Her reply suggested that time was of the essence if one wanted to see Peggy outside of a casket. With reluctance shading each step, Betty walked down the dim hallway and around the corner. The foul aroma grew more penetrating the closer she got to Peggy’s bedroom. Betty knew it all too well; Frank Sr. reeked of the same odor just days before he died. Reaching the doorway, she stopped in her tracks. There was an older gentleman around eighty years old on one side of Peggy’s bed. But the young man with his back to Betty, holding Peggy’s hand looked like…Betty clutched at her heart, fixated. Peggy was clearly out of it, tossing her head to the side and mumbling incoherencies. But Betty couldn’t take her eyes off the young man.
He gently rested Peggy’s hand against the comforter and turned. Betty stared at him. He was about five feet eight inches tall, with a chaotic swath of dark brown hair that hadn’t seen a comb in quite some time. His loose fitting t-shirt sported three large letters in black: G.Y.O. His jeans hung dangerously low on his slender frame, giving her concern that the slightest tug would force them down around his ankles.
The young man quietly moved away from Peggy’s bed and stood next to Betty. Once there, she noted a peculiar scent that seemed to be attached to his clothing. It wasn’t awful but it wouldn’t fetch much at the cologne counter.
“Do I know you?” he asked.
Betty realized she must have stared far too long. “No. You just look like…” She peered down at her sweater. The cuff had obviously gotten caught on something and was beginning to unravel. This particular embarrassment had never happened before, and Betty blamed the regular wear and tear on this dreadful mishap. She quickly folded the cuff so as to conceal the unsightly damage.
He leaned forward and looked at her more intently. “Like what?”
Betty turned away. Yes, there was an eerie similarity but on closer inspection, his eyes were different and his lips were thinner. “Nothing. Never mind.”
“I’m Peyton.”
He waited but Betty remained silent, staring straight ahead but avoiding Peggy with every ounce she could muster.
“And you’re….who?” he asked with an unusually purposeful manner.
“Betty,” she said in a hushed tone, never looking at him.
He checked out her dress. “Did you just come from church?”
“Church?” Now she turned. “No.”
“Oh. It’s just that you’re dressed kinda formal.”
Somehow she relaxed a bit. “Formal? This is not formal. I simply believe that it’s important to present oneself in a proper manner when one is visiting a sick friend.”
Peyton eyed her closer as if he were reading tea leaves. “Well, you may not dress formal but you sure do talk formal.” His voice was nowhere near as low-key as Betty’s. “And, to be dead honest, it doesn’t matter what you’re wearing. Aunt Peggy won’t know who you are, let alone what you got on. Seriously, dude, I’m not kidding.”
Any imagined sense of kinship she might have felt for this boy was lost at that moment. “Dude? Do I look a dude to you?”
Peyton looked confused. “No. I think you, like, misunderstood me. It’s just, like, a word. You know, like…’hey.’”
“Can’t you throw another ‘like’ in that sentence. I don’t think you’ve exhausted the word enough.”
“Are you, like, a school teacher?”
This was growing tedious. “No, dude, like I’m not.”
Peyton caught the sarcasm and let out a stifled laugh. He looked at the elaborately wrapped box in Betty’s hand. “What’s that?”
“A box of chocolates.”
“Oh, yeah? Where from?”
Betty let out a tired breath. “Behind the preposition.”
Peyton cogitated briefly. “Huh?”
“Never mind. I made them.”
“No shit? Are they any good?”
“What?” She turned to him, irritated and appalled. “Who in the hell raised you?”
“She did.” He pointed to Peggy. “My mother – her sister – wasn’t really invested in my emotional, physical or spiritual development.”
Betty colored with embarrassment. “Sorry. I didn’t know you were Peggy’s nephew.”
Peyton visibly pondered that statement. “So, it would make a difference if what I just told you wasn’t so?”
“Excuse me?”
“Well, are you sorry because there’s suddenly a family connection here and I’m not just some ass-wipe hangin’ out, or are you sorry because you think that’s the ‘proper’ thing to say?”
She turned to Peyton, unable to fathom how the exchange degenerated to this level. “I can’t have this conversation with you right now.”
“Oh, dude, hang on! I know who you are! Yeah, my aunt talks about you a lot. You had that whoopty-whoop chocolate store that went belly up, right? And you got the big, fancy garden with all the prize winning shit in it.”
“All the prize winning shit? They’re called flowers, dear.”
“Dude, I didn’t mean any offense. ‘Shit’ is just an all-encompassing word that means a group of stuff. It’s like the word, dude. You can be a dude. I can be a dude. The dog can be a dude. It’s just a word.”
“Thank you for the clarification.”
Peyton leaned a little closer to Betty. “Hey, you wanna know something? I’m a gardener too, just like you.”
Betty smoothed the fabric on her dress and checked to see that the hem on the sleeve of her sweater was still turned under. “Oh, I seriously doubt that.”
“That I’m a gardener or that I’m as good as you?”
“Yes.”
He waited, watching Betty observe his aunt who was still fighting to get comfortable. “So, are you gonna go sit with her or just stare at her from this doorjamb?” Peyton waited but Betty remained reticent. He regarded her with more intensity. “Hey, I’m sorry. This is really hard for you, isn’t it? I can see that.”
“Oh, please, don’t be ridiculous. I just don’t want to…she looks preoccupied. I’d hoped the chocolates would lift her spirits.”
“As much as she loves your chocolates, she won’t eat them. She can’t hold anything down. Fuckin’ chemo.” Betty turned to him with admonishment. “Hey, it is fuckin’ chemo. It’s fuckin’ poison, too. You know, you don’t die of the cancer anymore. You die of their ‘cure.’ She can’t even connect to anybody. All she can do is jus
t lay there and moan until it’s time for another happy dose of morphine. And then she’s out until she wakes up and the nightmare starts all over again.” He traced the lines in the carpet with his foot, obviously distressed. “It’s tough, you know? All I want to do is to be able to look into her eyes and have her recognize me, even for just a second, before she dies.”
Betty softened. “I understand. Truly I do.” She called up a phrase she’d used many times in the past few years. “Remember, Peyton, this too shall pass.”
He shook his head. “God, I hate that saying. Want to know why? I hear that from a lot of people who play the victim game. And when they whine, ‘this too shall pass,’ what I really hear is ‘this too shall pass so the next miserable event can move in to take its place.”
Betty felt indignation worm closer. “I didn’t mean it that way. I simply meant that this will pass.”
“And so will my Aunt Peggy. Sooner rather than later. I can handle her death, but I can’t handle her suffering. Hell, I offered to bring a vaporizer over here but Nurse Ratched isn’t cool with it.”
“A vaporizer? To help her breathe?”
“No. A vaporizer. To inhale some medical grade cannabis. It’s a million times cleaner than smoking a blunt.”
Betty’s soft stance and gentility ceased. She stiffened, moving a few inches away from Peyton. “Get away from me.”
“Huh?”
“This conversation is over.” Her tone was succinct and unforgiving.
Peyton stared at Betty, trying to rationalize what just occurred. The doorbell rang, affording Peyton an opportunity to make a reasonable exit. He answered the door, and Betty heard Renée’s strident inflection.
“Betty?”
Betty edged closer to the doorjamb. “Hello, Renée.”
“How’s she doing?” Renée asked with her characteristically vociferous voice.
“Not well.” Betty clutched at the chocolates, feeling terribly awkward.
Renée checked behind her and then turned back. “God, did you see that nephew of hers? Peyton? He absolutely reeks of pot!”
So that was the peculiar odor Betty noted on the boy. “Really?”
