Angel Baby (Heaven Can Wait)

by Laura Marie Altom

  Angel Baby

  by

  Laura Marie Altom

  First North American Printing/May 2003

  Published by Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.

  276 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10001

  2nd Edition August 2013

  Copyright © 2013 by Fulton Court Press

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

  First printed in the United States of America.

  ISBN:

  ISBN-10: 0989722929

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9897229-2-6

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Bonus Material

  Chapter One

  The old geezers, who used to sit in the back booth of Jonah McBride’s diner drinking coffee and complaining about their wives, said hell hath no fury like that of a woman scorned. But as Jonah shoved the plunger in and out of the men’s room john, he figured the rage simmering in him could give any woman—scorned or otherwise—a run for her money. By God, it was a damned good thing his wife, Geneva, was already dead or, for what she was putting their baby and him through, he would’ve gladly sent her to hell himself.

  Nine o’clock closing time had come and gone.

  Quiet surrounded him like a tomb.

  The chipper scent of lemon sanitizer that commercials promised made life ‘sunshiny bright’ did squat to mask the room’s other nauseating smells. Exhaustion had long since taken hold and, more than anything, Jonah wanted a hot shower and bed—not even necessarily in that order. But, unlike his wife, Jonah hadn’t been given a choice about what he wanted to do. This thankless job, like so many others, had to be done.

  He plunged again.

  Christmas Eve, she’d been telling folks she’d taken off with a trucker...

  New Year’s Day, he’d been driving down to Little Rock to i-d her four-days’ dead, overdosed body...

  Sitting at that damned funeral parlor pretending he missed her, when God’s honest truth was that he was relieved she was gone...

  Plunging harder and harder, he ignored the fire burning the backs of his eyes. Three months after the fact, he would not cry for her. He would not cry for her broken promises. He especially wouldn’t cry for the dreams she’d been too selfish to pursue. Though dreams of bright lights and the big city—oh, those she’d had plenty of time for.

  It was his dreams she’d had problems with.

  Might’ve been nice for her to tell him about her hatred of small towns, diners and kids before they’d taken their wedding vows.

  Oh, you knew, buddy. You were just too damned horny to consider for even a second that you’d fail to turn her loathing into love.

  Gritting his teeth, Jonah put muscle into his task and soon built up enough suction for the mess to go down. Too bad the mess Geneva had made of his life wouldn’t be quite so easy to flush.

  After stashing the plunger in the cabinet beneath the sink, he washed his hands, casting a passing glance at the stranger looking back at him in the mirror. Dark circles under his eyes. Dark hair in need of a cut. Dark T-shirt in need of a wash. Yep, that pretty much summed things up—dark.

  He dried his hands on a rough brown paper towel—the kind Geneva had nagged him to upgrade. Right. He barely had enough cash to pay his cook, yet he was supposed to fork out dough for designer hand wipes? Lips pressed tight, he wadded the limp paper and shot from three-point range at the trash.

  He missed and the ball ricocheted off the can’s rim, rolling right up alongside the first stall john.

  Why was that no big surprise?

  He sighed, stooped to reach under the partition to pick up the paper, tossed it in the black trash bin, and then reached for his mop bucket, intent on exchanging dirty water for clean before tackling the women’s room.

  In the dining area, only shadows and memories filled the seats.

  Back when his father and grandfather had run the place, the town of Blue Moon had been different. Friendly. A town with a beating heart and a soul named Blue Moon Diner. Beneath the glass case holding the cash register, decades of Blue Moon memorabilia resided. Calendars and mugs. Hats and matchbooks. Jonah’s great-grandfather had gotten a kick out of drawing in customers through fun promotions. Buy a burger special—get a Coke Girl pinup. Back in the diner’s not-so-distant heyday, businessmen stopped in on their way to work for biscuits and gravy. Housewives indulged in gossipy lunches over chicken salad on lettuce. Kids made out after school over burgers and fries. Families took time to really know each other—or at least pretend they did—over the meat loaf dinner special.

  Most of Jonah’s regulars now took their meals at the chain places lining the so-called improved U.S. Highway. The impersonal 65 dissected northern Arkansas with no thought to the people it bypassed. All it cared about was speed and efficiency, kind of like the patrons who’d passed up his brand of sit-down home cooking for the flashy, drive-thru variety that came at value prices instead of value portions. He knew his old customers taking their business elsewhere wasn’t personal, just a matter of economics, but he couldn’t help but tie his failing business in with his failed marriage and, lately, even in the way he was failing fatherhood.

  The tall pie case taunted him with its flickering neon bulb. Look at me, it said. I’m wearing blueberry and peach pie, apple and rhubarb, banana cream and even lemon chiffon.

  He looked away.

  I’m so pretty. Just like a carnival ride, spinning round and round and round. I don’t have to worry about my pretty pies being eaten, because no one even comes in this musty old place anymore.

  Shut up.

  Your customers won’t eat. Your baby won’t eat. Your—

  “Shut up!” He put his hands over his ears, then immediately lowered them, feeling like a damn fool. He was too old for this.

  Too old and too tired.

  Katie would be fine and so would the diner. By sheer will, he would make them fine.

  Though fatigue reigned supreme, Jonah p
ushed through the swinging kitchen door.

  Save for the forty-watt bulb over the back exit, the kitchen was dark. The hulking shapes of the stainless-steel stove and grill, and the long, streamlined counters taunted him with the fact that, before the highway, at this time of night, his last customers would only just now be filing out. It’d be eleven before the kitchen was clean and, instead of Jonah doing all the work, he’d had a friend.

  Chevis was a tough old bird of a black man with wiry white hair and a crooked salt-and-pepper beard so bushy he stashed his Special Edition NASCAR Marlboro cigarette lighter in the bottom fluff. Despite the fact that, over twenty years earlier, he’d said, “Dat’s it, I’m givin’ up my smokes,” at any given time he might have two or three cigs poked into the bottom fluff as well. Since Jonah had had to let him go over a year earlier, Chevis now spent his time bobber-fishing for bluegill off the low water bridge that crossed John Culpepper Creek at the south fork of John Peter Road.

  Past the ovens, Jonah made a quick left and stepped into his office, where he’d left his desk lamp on to beat down the shadows. On the far wall, a red neon Bud sign glowed, illuminating real pine paneling and the piece-of-shit, puke-green sofa where Geneva and he had first made love. An even uglier pumpkin orange and brown afghan covered the worst of the stains on the seat cushion, left after the last time she’d pitched a fit.

  That night, Chevis had gone home early to his granddaughter’s high school graduation party, and Geneva had graciously offered to help Jonah clean up.

  Ha. He should have known she had something up her sleeve, from the moment she’d asked where he kept his toilet bowl brushes. Sure enough, after she’d not only scrubbed both bathrooms but the kitchen floor, they’d been indulging in a late-night happy hour when she’d brought up the car.

  Bloody Mary in hand, she’d done a sexy-slow strut across the room, looking damned fine in skimpy jean-cutoffs and a black sports bra. She’d straddled him, pinning him to the couch with her bronzed thighs, and he’d smiled up at her, easing his right index finger beneath the strap of her top. “I want you,” he’d said.

  “You’re in luck,” she’d replied, “because I want you, too.”

  “Yeah?” He’d cinched her tight, trailing his tongue down her cleavage. She’d tasted of salty sweat and the musky perfume she’d blown sixty-five bucks on last Saturday morning at the Harrison JC Penney’s. He’d been furious. He’d needed that money to pay the plumber for a permanent fix to the men’s room john. But, at that moment, all he’d been able to think about was her, and how good she smelled, and how bad he wanted to be in her pants—not just because he was horny, but because it was long past due when they should have got started on that big family he’d always wanted.

  His hand had splayed on the back of her head, fingertips buried in jet black waves as he’d pulled her in for a kiss, showing her with his mouth how much he needed her.

  That kiss had gone on forever and, for the first time in as long as Jonah could remember, they’d felt in sync. Like it was the two of them against the world.

  And then she’d pulled away. “Um, Jonah…” She’d licked her swollen lips. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about.”

  “Anything.” He’d kissed her throat, her collarbone, her earlobe.

  “You know how I feel about being seen around town in your truck.”

  “Uh huh…” Her right cheek, her left, her forehead.

  “Well, on a trade, Moody Roach just fixed the transmission on Kent Holloway’s Caddie.”

  Her chin, her throat, that sexy-as-hell indentation at the base of her throat.

  “You’ll never guess what Kent traded Moody for doing all that work.”

  Jonah had sighed. “Do we have to talk about it now? Because to be honest, I wouldn’t care if what Kent gave Moody was a blow job.”

  “Jonah!” Pretending to go all chaste, Geneva had given him a swat. “You don’t have to be crude.”

  “Oh, yes I do.” He’d shifted his attention to her breasts’ swell. “Come on, Ginny, forget about Moody and Kent and focus on me.”

  “I will…” She’d arched away from, reaching for the drink she’d set on the Solo box serving as a side table. When she’d sipped, the ice in the glass had clinked, giving him a whiff of the Tabasco and Worcestershire she’d used to spiff up her Mr. &. Mrs. T mix. “But first…” She’d scooped out a cube with her middle and index fingers, “I have a tiny favor to ask.”

  “What’s that?”

  She’d used that cube to trace the lines of her bra.

  Her nipples had hardened and he’d hardened, swallowing to catch his breath. She’d arched her head back and moaned, running the ice across first one nipple, then the other, until all that had been left were twin wet spots on her bra. “Baby,” she’d said, “since you’re always so sensitive on the subject, I hate to even bother you with this, but do we have any extra cash?”

  “A—a little,” he’d managed. “Why?”

  “No big deal. It’s just that Kent traded Moody for a bitchin’ red sixty-eight Mustang I’d look sooo hot in ridin’ around town.” Her smile had widened while her gaze turned dreamy. “Can’t you just see me with my black tank top on and faded Daisy Dukes? And my hair all piled high—oooh, and my sunglasses. You know, the silver Oakleys you bought me in Sunglass Hut last time we went to Little Rock?”

  Whoa.

  As if someone had turned on the lights in Jonah’s head, the reasoning behind Geneva’s seduction had become brutally clear. And unfortunately for him, her being on his lap had had nothing to do with starting their family and everything to do with her once again wanting to blow their meager savings.

  “Jonah, baby?” Her drink still in one hand, she’d traced his eyebrow with the index finger of her other. “You do want me to have that hot car, don’t you?”

  “Lord…” He’d shifted out from under her. “I should’ve known better than to think you actually wanted to be with me.”

  “Then I can’t have the car?”

  “Hell, no.”

  Splash.

  Double shots of tomato juice, cheap vodka and ice had matted his hair to his forehead and rained from his eyelashes. A couple of ice cubes had already melted against his denim fly. He’d flicked them to the carpet.

  “Loser!” Geneva had hurled the glass against the far wall, where it had shattered in a dozen sticky pieces. “I should’ve known better than to think for even a second you’d put me before this fucking, pathetic excuse for a restaurant.”

  “It’s a diner.”

  “Whatever.” She’d headed for the door.

  “It’s been in my family for over sixty years! Last thing I am for fighting to keep it alive is a loser.”

  “Swell,” she’d quipped, the features he’d only minutes earlier thought beautiful-looking turning hard. “With that and fifty cents, call someone who cares.”

  All these months later, swearing he still smelled the Tabasco from Geneva’s drink, Jonah turned away from the sofa. Washed his face with his hands.

  Katie. He’d come in here to see her, not screwed-up memories of her mother.

  Across the room in her pink portable crib, she slept fitfully, wheezing on her exhales. The fuzzy yellow duck he’d bought with the last of the week’s grocery money lay untouched beside her, as did a purple squirrel and a black-and-white polka-dotted hippo. He’d had his doubts about that hippo, but Margie down at the Tot & Shop, the only kid’s store in town, had told him black and white stimulated infant brain waves.

  The trunk of Katie’s body twisted right. She held her neck rigid. Despite her wearing what Margie had assured him was the most comfortable set of baby jammies money could buy, she looked uncomfortable. He reached into the crib to realign her, his hands big and clumsy against her painfully thin, lavender-fleece covered arms and legs.

  The space heater clicked on, filling the room with its electrical hum. At first, Jonah worried that the heater hadn’t been coming on enough, b
ut then he pressed his fingertips to Katie’s flushed forehead and decided to turn it down.

  In the months since Geneva had left, Katie had lost two pounds. Not much for an adult. “But for an infant,” old Doc Penbrook had informed him, “failure to thrive is serious business. If this little lady loses even a quarter of another pound, Jonah, I’m afraid I’ll have to admit her to the hospital over in Harrison.”

  The thought of her trussed up to feeding tubes clenched Jonah’s chest, trapping him in a man-sized vice.

  Some of the women around town told him he worried too much but, where Katie was concerned, there was no such thing as too much worry. He loved her—fiercely. He’d do anything for her, and if the women around town didn’t understand that, well, they could all go straight to—

  Throat thick with fear, Jonah cast his daughter one last look.

  Time to get back to work. He didn’t open the diner till eleven in the morning, which meant if he finished all the cleaning tonight, that’d give him extra time to spend with Katie tomorrow morning while she was awake.

  First, Jonah scrubbed the two women’s room commodes, then stashed the dripping brushes in the empty sherbet bucket he kept beneath the sink.

  Next, he wiped down the counter with 409.

  Some lovesick teen had written Sissy Luvs David in race-car-red lipstick on the mirror. It took Jonah nearly five minutes to scrub the message off with Windex and, when that was done, he had to get down on all fours to pick up the paper towels someone had flung on the floor instead of in the trash.

  On the way back up, he collided with the counter. Rubbing the tender spot on the back of his head, he mumbled, “Shit, that hurt…”

  Pain and frustration had him on the verge of slinging the towels against the faded rose wallpaper when he saw a face reflected in the mirror. A woman’s face. Hidden until he’d stood at that particular angle, she slept sitting up in the cramped storage alcove, hugging her knees to her chest.

  Halfway expecting her to be a figment of his overtired imagination, Jonah spun around, but there she was, pale as a ghost but unmistakably human—not to mention all woman, dressed head to toe in scuffed, form-fitting red leather. Bits of leaves and a twig matted her pale hair. Through the dirt smudges on her cheeks ran dry creek beds he suspected had once been rivers of tears.