Tim’s tongue was practically dragging the ground. I elbowed him sharply in the ribs. “Stop staring. You’re acting like Herb.”
He grinned down at me. “Jealous?”
“Who me? Why on earth would I be jealous?” I said, wrapping my towel around my waist. I grabbed his hand and pulled him toward her chair. “Try not to embarrass yourself.”
I plopped down on the chair next to her. Tim awkwardly hovered beside us. Carole said hello to me, but all of her attention was on Tim. When I introduced them, she gazed at him the way a cat drools over a particularly juicy bunny.
“Tim, it is so nice to finally meet you. I’ve seen you around several times since I moved in. I probably shouldn’t own up to it, but I’ve practically been stalking you all summer. I even asked Marcy here to introduce us. I’d really like the opportunity to get to know you.”
He got all rosy-cheeked and dimply and, honestly, I wanted to slap some sense into him, especially when he attempted to flirt back with her. Not that I cared or anything, but it was a ridiculous display of male gullibility and Tim is so naïve when it comes to women.
Carole eventually suggested they sit on the steps at the shallow end of the pool. She was clearly one of those girls who hates to get their hair wet and never wants to do anything fun because they might break a nail or mess up their make-up. Not Tim’s type at all.
I hadn’t come to the pool to sit on the steps and try to lure Tim into some sort of trap, so I dove off the board a couple of times, practicing my one and a half. I finally managed to nail it on the third attempt and paddled down to make sure Tim had seen it. He hadn’t. He and Carole were still engaged in a flirty conversation. I playfully squirted water between my teeth, shooting it straight at Tim’s chest. I might as well have shot him with an arrow.
“Cut it out, Marty. You’re not ten, you know?”
Ticked me off. I scooched in beside him, barely fitting on the edge of the step. I gave him a little shove, but he refused to budge.
“What y’all talking about?” I asked.
“The stock market. Interest rates. The best place to invest,” Tim said.
I listened for a bit. They may have been talking about all of those boring things, but that’s not what their body language was saying. Carole was shooting off signals and Tim was happily receiving them. The only person I’d ever seen act more obvious than Carole was Giselle. It about made me barf.
Instead, I went to change. When I came out of the locker room, the sun nearly blinded me. Carole stood next to the chaise lounge, talking to a buffed out guy. I squinted. What the heck? When had Tim developed muscles and a six-pack? I closed my eyes and attempted to summon up a picture of him the way he normally looked, but all I could envision was sixteen year old Tim with his scrawny neck and chest and his too long arms and legs. Was that how I usually thought of him?
I headed over, a new mission in mind. I wanted to check to see if my mental image of Tim matched up to the real guy or if I had, somewhere along the line, stopped seeing him as he was and simply remembered him as he used to look. He and Carole were stretched out in the lounge chairs, chattering away. I perched on the edge of Tim’s chair, by his feet, staring at him. Suddenly, I saw him with new eyes. It was a seismic shift in thinking and it took my breath away.
Tim wasn’t drop dead gorgeous, the way Harry was, or a pretty boy, like Mark Donavan, but he wasn’t a big-brotherly, Opie Taylor type, like I had imagined him either. His face had character. The smattering of freckles and the dimples and the blue eyes combined with his cropped off auburn hair in a way that was quite appealing. How had I been so blind?
He kicked me. “What are you staring at? Do I have a booger hanging out of my nose or something?”
I started, embarrassed to have been caught. “No. Not at all. I was just remembering that time when we were sixteen and we went camping out at that campground in Clifton Forge. You know, the one where we caught all those crawdads and your dad cooked them in a bucket over the fire and he and your mom ate them?”
Tim gave me a puzzled look. “Of course I remember. What brought that up?”
I couldn’t tell him the truth. That the image of him laughing as his folks dared us to eat the crayfish was locked in my mind so clearly that I’d not seen the real him, the grownup Tim, until a few minutes before.
“Nothing, really. It was such a fun time. So, I’m going to take off. I promised Harry I’d come to the game. You guys want to go?”
Carole said she had to work and Tim begged off too. “I’m not really in the mood. I’ll catch you tomorrow. You want to grab lunch after your meeting with Winger?”
I agreed and headed off to the ball park, leaving the two of them alone to continue their flirt fest. Poor Tim. I felt like I was leaving a lamb to await its slaughter. Carole was definitely out of his league in more ways than one.
The game was pretty uneventful. Harry didn’t pitch, the crowd was sparse and seemed to be in a collective funk, and the Bombers again lost big. After the game I waited around a bit, talking to some old friends from high school. I had thought Harry might come up and say “hey”, but I never saw him. In fact, I’d looked, but hadn’t seen him in the bullpen after about the fourth inning.
On my way to Charli’s, I detoured down Main Street to check out the store Sabrina Lewis had worked at. The shop was in one of the old buildings built in the 1930s, a solid red brick structure with college apartments on the top floor, and the gift shop and a real estate office on the bottom. I peeked in, but it was too dark to see much. The display windows were jam-packed with stuff and the only light was from what appeared to be a lamp way in the back.
The window on the heavy oak front door was nearly covered by one of those paper clock signs. It indicated that the shop was scheduled to open at ten, but someone had stuck a hand-written notice below it saying “closed until further notice”. It was probably just my imagination, but I thought I saw someone move inside the shop, back behind the sales counter. I pressed my nose against the door, and stared hard for a few minutes, but nothing.
Maybe it was Carole. Since she was executor of Sabrina’s estate, maybe she’d gotten permission from the gift shop owner to go in and look for Sabrina’s personal items. That made sense, sort of. It would have made more sense if it were daytime, obviously. But, maybe she had decided not to wait. Maybe she’d convinced Tim to go with her. I saw the movement again and the light I’d noticed before went out. Someone was definitely inside. I tried looking in through the display windows once more, but still couldn’t see well enough to make out anything. It probably was Carole. But, wouldn’t she have turned on more light, not turned off the one that was on? Whoever was inside was now stumbling around in the dark.
It occurred to me that it could be Sabrina’s murderer, looking for evidence that might tie him or her to the crime. My heart raced a bit at that thought. But would the killer take a chance of breaking into the building? And how would they get in? Sabrina’s purse, of course. It was still missing. Surely she had a key to the shop in it.
I pulled out my phone, intending to text Tim, asking him to meet me and check it out, but then I had second thoughts. What if I was wrong? What if it was Carole and he was with her? He’d think I was spying on them. Or, perhaps, it was someone sent there by the owner to check on things. I decided to go around to the rear of the building and see if there were any windows back there to peek into. If not, I’d find someplace to watch without being seen until whoever was inside came out. Looking back, it wasn’t the brightest idea I’d ever had, but at the time, it made perfect sense.
Whereas the front of the building was very charming, the back was basic and not at all appealing. There was a small parking lot, big enough for three cars, a set of wooden stairs to the upper floor apartments, and a large steel trash bin next to the loading dock. A high pressure sodium flood light illuminated the lot and the back of the building, casting eerie shadows across the loading dock. A metal garage-type door that rolled up was n
ext to a solid dark green metal door, which had “Glenvar Gifts” stenciled on it. It was obviously the back door into the shop. A window about three feet to the left of that door was too far away from the loading dock platform, so I couldn’t look in from there. It was also too high off the ground. If I wanted to see in, I’d need something to stand on.
I turned around in a circle. That’s when I noticed Big Ed. He was across the street, leaning against a tree, and chatting on his cell phone. He finished his call, stuffed the phone in his pocket, and looked up, staring in my direction. I waved, and called out to him, but he moved back into the shadows and hustled away, almost at a trot. It was as if he wanted to avoid me. I thought about tailing him, but decided that would border on stalking. Besides, I wanted to see who came out of the shop.
Instead, I snuck over to where Ed had been lurking and spent about ten minutes loitering in the dark behind the tree myself. No one ever came out. It’s probably a good thing I’m not a cop like Tim. Surveillance is definitely not something I’d be good at.
Since I’d surpassed my personal boredom threshold long before, I decided to bag it and leave the detective work to the police. Besides, it was possible that it had all been a figment of my imagination. Maybe the movement I’d seen wasn’t made by a person, but by the air-conditioning blowing something. And the light thing could have easily been a bulb burning out or a timer switch turning off. It seemed far-fetched, but not any more far-fetched than a relative stranger being murdered inside my apartment.
When I finally made it to Charli’s, Harry pulled into his driveway just as I was getting out of my car. He called me over and we sat on his front porch for an hour or so, chatting and engaging in a little light make out session. He’d been somewhat disappointed that I hadn’t worn the shirt he’d given me, but I made up a story about having sensitive skin, so would need to wash it before I wore it.
“Oh, no, I understand,” he’d said. “It’s just that you’re so beautiful. This is going to sound stupid and juvenile, but I wanted all the other guys to see you sitting there watching us. Maybe next time.”
Okay, so looking back, I probably should have seen the big, blinking, neon warning sign, but I didn’t. I guess I was blinded by those eyes of his. What I thought at the time was that I probably really was going to have to go with the tornado story, because I wasn’t about to wear that shirt.
“Sure,” I said, torturing yet another poor strand of hair. “Next time.”
Or, to pull out one of Mom’s infamous clichés, about the time pigs learned to not only fly, but also to conjure up a decadent chocolate soufflé while turning somersaults through outer space.
About eleven, I padded my way across the street to Charli’s. The house was cool and, since the kids were asleep, quiet. John was still out of town, so Charli had put Jaelyn to bed in the master bedroom, rescuing me from a night on her sleep sofa. We sat in Jaelyn’s princess-worthy room and chatted for a few minutes after I brushed my teeth and put on my pajamas. I told her about how much I liked Harry and then about my revulsion over Tim and Carole.
“He was like a kid who’s had too much sugar at Halloween. It was pure-d-disgusting.”
Charli grinned. “Dang, Marty, sounds to me like you’re getting a little visit from the green-eyed monster.”
“Not at all. It’s just that Tim is in way over his head with a girl like that. She’s like a praying mantis. She’ll use him and then bite off his head. I don’t want to see him get hurt.”
“Sure, sis, sure.” She said good night and headed out of the room.
“Hey, Charli?”
She peeked back around the door frame at me. “Hmm?”
I told her about noticing, really noticing, Tim for the first time in awhile.
“It’s about danged time, Marty. You treat him like he’s still sixteen, too. Maybe you need to think about that.”
I flicked off the light, and settled back against the cool pillow, wondering if Charli had a point. Tim and I were sort of locked into our kid-like routines. Probably why we were always fighting. Delbert moseyed into the room and let out a pitiful meow. I patted the bed and whistled. He hopped up and snuggled against my feet. It didn’t take long for both of us to fall asleep. I don’t know about him, but I slept well, even though I had a disturbing dream about finding Tim standing naked next to my bed.
However, four o’clock is still about four hours too early for a reasonable person to have to drag herself out of bed. Especially when said person is being chased around by a battalion of bimbos hell-bent on shenanigans and high-jinks.
11
Despite getting some decent shut-eye, I was still basically incoherent for the first forty or fifty minutes after getting up. The nice thing about staying with Charli, though, was that she had an overstuffed fridge and a pantry full of goodies. I made a cup of pumpkin spice coffee and gobbled down two bagels with cream cheese and another of the delicious chocolate chip cookies before heading off to work.
A full tummy made the prospect of another four hour shift in Giselle’s presence nearly tolerable. She was, of course, late again, which surprised no one. Big Ed had apparently relapsed after I’d seen him at lunch with Carole because he was still missing in action. Herb didn’t even bother to try and grab me or shower me with slobber. He slumped in his chair in the prep room, morosely staring at the clock and mumbling under his breath. He must have been feeling depressed because his suit was a subdued brown one with a couple of uninspired tan music notes embroidered on the lapels. His boots matched his suit, not his pink shirt. I was a bit worried about him.
When Giselle finally wheeled into the parking lot, about eight minutes from air-time, he stalked over to the door, evidently intending to give her a piece of his mind. He didn’t, of course. All it took was one gander at her outfit du jour, another entry from the “sleaze and slut” line, and he was a puddle of goo.
I sort of had to admire her in a sick way. She obviously knew what she was doing because she sure had Herb’s number. She sported a pair of ridiculously high-heeled, thigh-high, patent leather boots that belonged in one of those Kitten with a Whip movies from the sixties. The boots, combined with her tiny red leather bustier and denim short shorts had him slack-jawed.
I gagged and escaped into the booth, set everything up to my liking, and got the show going. Herb, who was now a semi-permanent fixture in the booth with us, and Giselle took their places on the stools across from me and off we went. Alejandro, once again, spent almost the whole four hours huddled by the booth door, never speaking, never taking his eyes off his tablet unless Giselle snapped her fingers and issued him an order.
I’m not saying the show was any better than the previous one, but it wasn’t any worse, either. I’d talked Herb into cutting the “talk” time by five minutes per hour, which he’d readily agreed to since we still had a bunch of commercials to air due to what we’d taken to calling the “heater incident” in hopes of keeping Herb from losing it once more and going on a full-bore cussing streak.
We were about five minutes from the end of the show when Alejandro, who had not spoken a word in my presence in three days, suddenly set aside his tablet, pranced over, and grabbed me by the chin. He put his face about two inches from mine and twisted my face to the right, the left, up, down, and in a circle. I was too stunned to stop him.
“Tsk, tsk,” he said. “This face, such a face, but you do nothing, nothing with it! You must come to my shop this afternoon at four. I will fix you.”
He let go and handed me his card. I was really coming up in the world. It was my third business card in three days. It occurred to me that maybe I should get some cards of my own. I added it to my mental list of stuff to do when I finally got paid, and gave Alejandro’s card the once-over.
It was stark white, with a black border, and the only things printed on it were “Chez Alejandro” in a weird modern font, and a phone number written with dots instead of dashes. It was utterly pretentious.
I stuck hi
s card in my backpack and attempted to act polite. “Uh, thanks, but no thanks. I don’t really want to be fixed.”
He glared at me and brushed his hands together as if washing them. “Well, then, don’t blame me when you die alone.”
I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or be offended. I decided to laugh. “Don’t worry. I won’t.”
With that, he scooped up his tablet and stomped out of the booth.
After work, I swung by the police station for my “friendly” chat with Detective Winger. It wasn’t as bad as I’d thought it would be. Winger was much nicer to me than he’d been previously. Things were looking up. Well, except for the stupid Karma Critters, who kept buzzing around, stinging me. It felt like they’d called in some reinforcements.
Tim was waiting out front. I gave him a quick hug, noticing that not only did he look different, but he also felt different. I suddenly remembered my dream and felt my face growing hot. I backed away, awkward and uncomfortable, not sure where to look or what to do with my hands.
He was acting odd too, not looking at me or talking to me. I wondered if he was thinking about Carole.
We decided to go over to the smoothie shop across from the library for lunch. On the way across the town courtyard, I told him about Alejandro. That lightened things up and he cackled like the Tim of old. It almost made things feel back to normal. But not quite.
“Winger told me y’all will be done with my apartment later today. I talked to the complex manager and she said they’ll get the cleanup crew in tomorrow. At least I can go back in and get some stuff tonight. Will you go with me over to my place after your physical therapy? It won’t take but five or ten minutes. I’m going to grab some clothes, my bills, and Delbert’s anxiety medicine. ”
“Sure thing. So, are they going to let you move?”
We ordered our food and went outside to sit on the tiny patio next to the restaurant. An arbor covered with trumpet vines overflowing with beautiful orange blossoms separated it from the street, making it feel secluded and safe.
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