by Dixie Cash
“Yes, ma’am. Do you need any help finding a restaurant?”
“No, thanks. I passed a Dairy Queen coming in. I know their food is edible. I don’t think I’ll risk eating somewhere that’s unfamiliar.”
“Okay, ma’am,” Brittany said, with even more enthusiasm. “And ma’am, don’t you give up, you hear? Everything is gonna work out just fine. Okeydokey?”
Expecting her to turn a cartwheel any minute, Avery looked at her glumly. From somewhere, she dragged up a grudging smile and wheeled her luggage to the main entrance. “Yeah, okeydokey.”
Within a matter of minutes Avery had a seat in a booth inside the brightly lit Dairy Queen, waiting for her order. She was starving and the double-meat cheeseburger with chili, an extra large order of onion rings and an ice cold Dr Pepper couldn’t be ready soon enough.
Soon, the teenage counter clerk, carrying a broom in one hand and a sack in the other, plopped the sack on the table in front of Avery and began to sweep the floor all around her. The girl had stripes of purple in the top of her hair, assorted hardware in her ears and face and ragged jeans so long her shoes were hidden. Avery stared at her a few seconds, then turned her attention to her meal.
Ignoring the dust stirred up by the teenager’s sweeping, Avery dragged the burger from the sack and savored the aroma for a few seconds. A DQ chili cheeseburger, accompanied by onion rings, might have two thousand calories, but after the day she’d had, she had earned this small pleasure. She might even add a Blizzard, with chunks of cookie dough. She unwrapped the burger and fervently bit into it. An ample dollop of chili squished from the bottom of it, hit the front of her sweater just below her collarbone and crept downward. Avery sat there agape as the brownish-orange trail continued like an arrow straight down the front of the sweater…
…her brand-new, Christmas-gift-purchased-at-Neiman-Marcus-by-her-mom, winter-white sweater.
“Oh!” She grabbed a napkin and scooped off the chili, but a deep orange-brown stain remained. “Oh, damn,” she cried.
The teenager stopped her sweeping. “Oops. That’ll probably stain. Our chili’s pretty greasy. The owner makes it himself. We got a bathroom. It’s got soap. You can wash it off.”
Despite being ready to break into tears, Avery found the courtesy to say, “Thank you. I think I’ll do just that.”
Fifteen minutes later she emerged from the ladies’ room with the entire front of her sweater wet and she smelled like a funeral parlor. A pumpkin-colored stain the size and shape of a ping-pong paddle marred the front of her sweater. The floral-scented hand soap in the restroom had been less effective than nothing in removing the stain. She had left home with a Tide pen, but airport security had confiscated it. In addition to the sweater being stained beyond reclamation, every stitch, seam and embroidered flower design of her pink lacy bra showed through it. “I’ve got to get this sweater off and into some cold water soon or this stain will set,” she mumbled more to herself than to the teenager, who was still sweeping.
The teenager stared at her chest. “You need something to wear?”
Avery looked down at herself. “Uh—”
“We got some T-shirts for sale. They’re black. In case you spill anything else.”
Dairy Queen T-shirts? “You do?”
“Yeah.” The girl pointed to a black T-shirt thumbtacked to the wall behind the order counter blaring the message:
MOJO POWER NEVER DIES
Beside it, a handwritten sign tacked to the wall said:
SUPPORT YOUR PERMIAN PANTHERS!!!
SPIRIT T-SHIRTS $5.00
“I go to Permian High,” the teenager said.
Mojo Power?…Avery couldn’t bear the thought of opening her suitcase in the hotel lobby and digging out something to wear. Not only would she be embarrassed to have passers-through see inside her suitcase, she had carefully packed every outfit as an ensemble. She didn’t want to disrupt by yanking out a single garment. “Of course you do.” Avery reached inside her purse and produced a five. “I’d like a size medium, please.”
“Okay.” The teenager propped her broom against the end of Avery’s table and disappeared into the back of the restaurant. Avery continued to wipe and dab at the stain on her sweater.
Soon the teenager returned. “Sorry, but all we got left is triple-X.”
“Triple-X? Hm.” Avery’s brow tugged into a frown of frustration. “That is really large, isn’t it?”
The kid shrugged. “Depends on how big you are, I guess.”
Stunned at the girl’s rudeness, Avery hesitated, five-dollar-bill in hand.
“Do you still want one?” the kid asked.
With a sigh, Avery handed over the five. “Why not? The least I can do today is support the Permian Panthers in a spirit, uh, dress.”
The teenager disappeared into the back room again.
“Whoever the hell the Panthers are,” Avery muttered.
Back in the hotel lobby, she found herself greeted by Roland Martinez as if she were an old friend. His enthusiasm equaled Brittany’s. He pumped Avery’s right hand up and down. “You must be Miss Deaton. Brittany told me all about your problem. We don’t have a room yet, but I’ve got your pillow and two blankets for you.” His gaze zeroed in on the front of her sweater and his smile fell. “Wow, what happened to you? That looks like a stain.”
“Very astute, Roland. That’s exactly what it is. A chili stain. And this is my brand-new sweater. And this is the first time I’ve worn it. Any chance I can get it into some water?”
“Oh, yes, ma’am. We’ve got a sink you can use in the employees’ break room. Come this way.”
As if he knew she would follow, he marched back toward the reservations desk. She did follow and he showed her to a ladies’ room off a hallway behind the reservations desk. Inside the restroom, she removed the sweater, slipped into the T-shirt and studied herself in the mirror. The shirt’s shoulder seams reached to her elbows, the short sleeves struck her mid-forearms and the hem fell to just above her knees. The message in white letters on the front of the T-shirt was reversed in the mirror, but she could read it: MOJO POWER NEVER DIES.
“What in the hell is mojo power?” she mumbled to her reflection. Of course she knew the definition of the word “mojo.” It meant charm or amulet, thought to have magic powers. Words were her business, after all. But what did it mean in this instance and what was she really advertising by wearing this T-shirt? Then she stopped herself. Good God, she was dithering over nonsense. The screwed-up events of this entire day had fried her mind. Why did she care what some dumb T-shirt said? She just needed it to cover her body until midnight, when she would be given a no-show’s room.
Re-entering the break room’s kitchenette, she saw that Roland had already run water in the stainless-steel sink. She almost dropped her sweater into it, but feeling heat against her hand, she stopped. She dipped a pinky into the water, then jerked it back. “Yikes! That water could boil a lobster.”
If she put her sweater in it, not only would the stain be permanently set, the garment would shrink to doll size. She found a spoon in a dish drainer on one side of the sink, released the stopper and drained the sink. Just as she was refilling it with cold water and lowering her sweater into it, Roland reappeared.
“I went to housekeeping and got you some bleach.” The cap had already been removed from the gallon jug in his hands. He started for the sink.
“No!” Avery threw herself in front of the sink. “I mean, no, thanks, Roland. I appreciate your thoughtfulness, but no, thanks.” She raised her palms and patted the air. “No bleach.”
A puzzled expression crossed his boyish face. “Oh, okay.” To Avery’s relief, the phone at the registration desk started to ring. “I gotta grab the phone,” he said. “Just let me know if you need anything else.”
“A room,” Avery said to the air. “I could sure use a room.”
At last she made it back to the lobby. Her sweater, soaking wet and still stained, was draped across
the back of a chair in the employee break room. The stain had faded to pastel as opposed to vivid, but from this moment on, the expensive sweater would be unwearable as a work garment.
The promised pillow and two neatly folded blankets lay on the sofa farthest from the hotel’s front entrance and partially hidden by a large fan palm. Avery sank to the sofa, lay back and attempted to find a comfortable position on her side, but her legs were too long. Her knees protruded off the sofa seat. She turned to her back and lay perfectly straight, her left side hugged tightly against the sofa back, but her bottom sank between two of the long sofa’s cushions. No matter which way she adjusted herself, light shone in her face. Her eyes homed in on the elaborate multi-globed chandelier just a few feet from her line of sight. Could she ask them to turn it off?
No, no, never mind, her other self said.
She lay there, eyes squeezed shut against the light, praying for midnight to hurry.
Avery tried to be a positive thinker, but the negative thoughts zooming through her mind had a will of their own. This is what Avery Deaton had come to: sleeping in a five-dollar T-shirt on a couch in the lobby of a cheap hotel. Then again, maybe it wasn’t a cheap hotel. Since she hadn’t been able to check in, she really didn’t know the cost of the rooms.
She thought of everyone who had ever been mean to her, starting with her mother, who had saddled her with the ridiculous middle name of Bittersweet. Judy Deaton, hanging on to the last vestiges of hippie-dom, had marked her defenseless baby forever with that awful middle name.
And Avery had spent twenty-eight years trying to hide it and being embarrassed by it. Mom had labeled the labor-and-delivery experience as being bittersweet, thus the name.
At every opportunity, Avery told her my-crotch-is-being-ripped-apart would have been a less irritating name. But mom always shook her head and laughingly said, “Avery, you have such a wonderful mind. I hope you use it wisely.”
Tonight Bittersweet seemed an appropriate name. She yanked her pillow from beneath her head and covered her eyes.
At nearly midnight, Sam Carter re-entered the lobby of the Best Western. Not having eaten all day, he had inhaled an unbelievably delicious steak meal at a quarter of the price he would have had to pay in Dallas. Afterward, not ready to retire to a lonely hotel room, he had stopped in the bar and hoisted a couple while he talked sports with some of the locals. Sports was a universal language. No matter where a guy found himself, armchair coaches were always present with plenty of opinions.
His stride was cut short in the lobby by the sight of a long, lanky blonde lying on one of the couches with a pillow over her head. To block out light, he supposed, because she appeared to be limp and sleeping.
He couldn’t see her face, but she had long legs, slim hips and a flat stomach. If all of the women in West Texas were put together like this one, the reasons to like this part of the state just picked up a few more points.
He’d had just enough alcohol to find the nerve to approach her and ask if she needed a place other than a sofa in a hotel lobby to spend the evening. He walked toward the sofa. Just then she turned to her side and his eyes stopped at her chest and a message on the front of her T-shirt. Something about Mojo power. Shit. That slogan related to the local Permian High School’s football team and some kind of bullshit about supernatural powers from a mojo helping them consistently win games.
Hell, she was a high-school kid. Shit, again. “God, Carter,” he mumbled. “Now you’re getting off on teenage girls.”
He turned around and made for the elevator and what he knew would be the safety of his room.
chapter seven
Midnight had come and gone when the hotel finally gave Avery a room. Without even removing her makeup, she fell into bed wearing her Permian High-School T-shirt. But as exhausted as she was, noise from big rigs thundering along the Interstate kept her awake off and on the remainder of the wee morning hours. Before daylight, in an act of surrender, she crawled out of bed. After all she had been through, sleeping in might be excusable, but she was wide awake.
She showered off yesterday’s makeup and washed her long blonde hair in water so hard shampoo refused to lather. Trying to style her layered do, she ended with something resembling a haystack. There weren’t enough hair products on the planet, much less in her suitcase, to remedy the problem. She pulled the typically soft tresses into a tight bun on the back of her head and plastered it with hair spray.
She put on a tailored dark gray suit she had found on the bargain rack at Nordstrom’s and a white lace-trimmed camisole she had picked up on sale at Victoria’s Secret. Her black high heels had come from a discount store. While looking good on the job was important, so was having money in the bank.
Last, she pushed on black-framed glasses, though she didn’t really need glasses. Her boss had promised her a byline and she intended to look like a professional who had earned it. Assessing the upper half of herself in the bathroom’s vanity mirror, she decided the look was perfect, though once before, when she had dressed like this, her best friend had quipped that she looked like a tight-assed old maid.
Avery had to agree she wouldn’t pass for a beauty pageant contestant, nor would she wear this outfit to work in Fort Worth, but today’s appearance did portray the image she wanted to project to the small town where she was headed: Avery Deaton, serious-minded reporter in the business of covering the gritty news of the day. Even if the story she had come to report did happen to be slightly less than gritty and did happen to be emanating from a town of such obscurity that only the Texas Department of Transportation and a few snakes and lizards knew the location.
She gave her reflection one last glimpse in the vanity mirror, then returned to the bedroom. Before placing her camera in her hobo bag, she checked the battery. The last thing she needed was to be prevented from taking some pictures of those shoes. Then she picked up her Palm Treo, the tool that simplified her life. Luckily, the newspaper furnished it, because it cost more than today’s entire wardrobe. She keyed in the number of Edwina Perkins-Martin and made plans to meet her for breakfast at a place called Hogg’s Drive-In, the location of the famous blue suede shoes. Hobo bag hooked over her shoulder. Avery Deaton, star feature reporter, marched to the elevator.
When she had ridden up on the elevator a few hours earlier, she hadn’t noticed that the floor had a springy feel to it. As the door crawled to a skreeking close, yesterday’s niggling anxiety came back and she wondered if she should have taken the stairs. The car began its descent with a lurch hard enough to make her grab the wall rails and brace herself for a fall. The overhead mechanism groaned with every downward inch as Avery contemplated how severe her injuries might be if the thing fell to the ground floor.
At last the car jolted to a jaw-jarring stop and the door began to creep and skreek open with a sound that reminded her of a braying donkey. As soon as a crack appeared that was wide enough for her body to fit through, she squeezed out and stared back at the unremarkable doors, which gave no hint of the condition of the elevator. Dear God, she was lucky to be alive. She would not use this elevator again. When she returned to the hotel this evening, she would be taking the stairs.
As she strode through the lobby, male laughter caught her attention and she glanced toward the reception desk. Some guy was engaged in an animated conversation with the girl named Brittany who had helped her yesterday. The richness of his baritone voice sent shivers down Avery’s spine. She slowed her step long enough to take a closer look. He was tall. Taller than she when she wore high heels. She always noticed tall men who fit that description because so few of them were out there. While she studied his height, she also checked out his backside. Jeans hugged his butt and thighs in an obscene caress. Broad shoulders and ripped muscles showed beneath a blue knit sweater. Avery stopped herself from staring and hurried along, muttering under her breath.
Sam tilted his head back in a laugh. The desk clerk named Brittany was a good sport and laughed at his bad jokes.
He had come to the lobby to pick up a newspaper and a cup of complimentary coffee. It wasn’t even daylight outside, but an excitement drummed within him.
“You said you’re a reporter?” Brittany asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” Sam answered.
“With the Dallas Morning News?”
“Right.”
“This your first time in West Texas?”
“It sure is.” He braced his forearms on the registration counter behind which she stood. “It’s really the wide, open spaces, isn’t it? Not many trees.”
She laughed. “You get used to it. You’re covering the big to-do down in Salt Lick, huh?”
“Sure am.”
“You going to the parade?”
Wait a minute. He was the reporter here. He was supposed to be the one asking questions. “Parade?”
“Starts at ten o’clock. It’s been in all the papers and there’s flyers all over the place.”
Sam glanced at his watch. “You said Salt Lick’s forty-five miles from here, right? Plenty of time. Say, have you ever heard of Caleb Crawford?”
“Good Lord, man. This is Odessa, Texas. You know, ‘Friday Night Lights?’ High-school football?” She gave him a wide-eyed head bob. “A person would have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to hear of Caleb Crawford around here. Why, he’s the best Dallas Cowboys quarterback since Troy Aikman.”
Hearing that Brittany knew something of the Crawford kid fueled Sam’s interest in continuing this conversation. This was the kind of personal perspective he liked when covering a story. “You think so?”
“It’s not just me. Everybody in West Texas thinks so. Maybe everybody in all of Texas.”
Obviously, Jerry Jones thinks so, Sam thought. “I’ve got an appointment with his dad.” He set his Styrofoam cup on the counter and pulled a piece of notepaper from his jeans pocket. “W. L. Crawford. Whitt Lamar, he said his name is.”
