Slim Pickings in Fat Chance, Texas

by Bonaduce, Celia

  “Awesome,” Polly said between bites of eggs. “I love that we’re rock stars.”

  “That’s probably a bit of an overstatement,” Titan said. “But what did she say about us?”

  “Just that she’d heard of us,” Dymphna said. “And that she was looking for someone to help with the farm. She’s a widow.”

  Everyone but Old Bertha stopped eating and looked at Dymphna.

  “A paying gig?” Polly asked.

  “I think she’s looking for a man,” Dymphna said.

  “Who isn’t?” Fernando said as he made his way around the table with another round of coffee.

  “I could use the cash,” Powderkeg said.

  “So could I,” Titan said.

  “Maybe we should both go,” Powderkeg said. “I mean, I’m not as young as I used to be, but I’ll bet she needs some carpentry work. If she’s got a horse, she’ll need shoes.”

  “That sounds fair,” Titan said. “We’ll go as a team.”

  “Maybe I’ll tag along,” Pappy said. “Couldn’t hurt to check the place out.”

  “Oh! Sorry, Pappy, I forgot.” Dymphna paused, realizing there was no good way to pose her next statement. “She said she didn’t want you to come by.”

  Conversation stopped for a second time. Old Bertha’s head jerked up with interest.

  “What is this widow’s name?” Pappy asked, taking off his glasses and wiping them clean.

  “Meriwether,” Dymphna said. “Meriwether something . . . I actually didn’t catch her last name.”

  “Meriwether McMurphy.” Pappy cleared his throat and put his glasses back on. “When I first got here, we had a thing.”

  “A thing?” Old Bertha asked.

  “Yes, a thing,” Pappy said.

  “That’s sweet,” Titan said.

  “What kind of thing?” Old Bertha asked.

  “Do I need to spell it out for you?” Pappy asked.

  “Might as well,” Old Bertha said.

  “A T-H-I-N-G,” Pappy said.

  Old Bertha looked annoyed, but Dymphna couldn’t help but see Pappy in a new light. She knew he had ‘a thing’ for Old Bertha, but it had never occurred to her that he had had any sort of romantic life before the beneficiaries of Cutthroat Clarence came to town. She never thought that Pappy had had any kind of life before they came to town.

  “She was a widow, a really sweet gal,” Pappy said. “I might have taken advantage of her good nature, if you get my drift.”

  “Pappy!” Polly said, her eyes widening. “You dog!”

  “Hey, I was young . . . well, younger. And she lived on a farm. She knew about the birds and the bees. I just might have let her think I was right on the verge of marriage, that’s all.”

  “A Lothario,” Old Bertha said. “I knew it.”

  “I thought you were a hermit until we got here,” Dymphna said.

  “There are hermits and there are hermits,” Pappy said vaguely. “It depends on your definition.”

  “Somebody who doesn’t live in society,” Titan said. “Someone completely antisocial.”

  “I wasn’t that kind of hermit,” said Pappy.

  Old Bertha snorted. “Obviously. Although you clearly led that poor woman to believe your intentions were honorable.”

  “Why are you making me out to be the bad guy? I’m telling you, our—”

  “Relationship?” Polly interjected.

  “Yeah. Our relationship was mutual,” Pappy said.

  “But based on a lie.” Old Bertha crossed her arms across her ample chest.

  “Of course it was based on a lie,” Pappy said. “How do you think men got laid in those days?”

  Old Bertha, Dymphna, and Polly collectively gasped while the men all nodded their heads in understanding.

  “Hey, it’s all water under the bridge,” Pappy said. “I haven’t seen her in years. I lost track of her after she got remarried. She must have taken over her father’s farm. I didn’t even know she was still there.”

  “And now she’s a widow again,” Dymphna said.

  “Maybe I should look in on her,” Pappy said.

  “I suggest you leave the poor woman alone,” Old Bertha said. “She obviously wants nothing to do with you.”

  “I think you should go with us, Pappy,” Powderkeg said. “She might change her mind when she sees you.”

  Fernando nodded toward Powderkeg and whispered to Titan, “Is that man delusional? He doesn’t seem to know anything about women.”

  “Don’t let him hear you say that,” Titan said, stifling a giggle.

  The door to the café swung open. Mikie burst in, looking swiftly around the room. Dymphna watched as Powderkeg stood up, a smirk on his face.

  “Hi there, Lacey,” he said, playing to the crowd. “Can I help you?”

  “I came to see Titan,” Mikie said. She looked at Titan. “I flew over Fat Chance this morning and saw Rocket following you down Main Street. I told Dodge what I thought was good news, but he went ballistic. He thinks you stole his bull!”

  “Rocket came to see me last night,” Titan said.

  “The wand chooses the wizard,” Fernando whispered to Dymphna.

  “He’s on his way over,” Mikie said. “And he’s mad as a hornet. I’m so sorry, Titan. If I had known . . .”

  “It’s not your fault.” Titan stood up and embraced Mikie, who melted into his arms.

  “Shit,” Powderkeg said under his breath. Polly was sitting to his left and he asked, “What am I doing wrong?”

  “Uh . . . everything?” Polly said.

  The unmistakable murmur of an ATV moving closer let the townspeople know that Dodge was on his way. Everyone froze when the noise suddenly stopped outside the door. The café door swung open again, this time so forcefully that it nearly came off its hinges.

  “Hey, settle down, tough guy,” Fernando said, banging down the coffeepot and stomping over to Dodge, who was glowering at everyone. “If you haven’t come for breakfast, you can take your business outside.”

  Dodge looked down at Fernando. He narrowed his eyes. “I could squash you like a bug.”

  “Try it,” Fernando said.

  “My beef is not with you.” Dodge looked over Fernando’s head. “It’s with Titan.”

  Titan was still standing, but he had pushed Mikie behind him for safety. “There’s no need to be rude,” he said. “I’ll be happy to speak to you outside.”

  Dodge took a menacing step forward, but Fernando halted him with a poke to his copious belly.

  “You hard of hearing?” Fernando said. “I said outside.”

  “Fine,” Dodge said without taking his eyes off Titan. “Let’s go, Titan.”

  Dodge turned around and stomped out the door. Powderkeg and Pappy stood up, but Titan held up his meaty hand.

  “Thanks,” he said. “But I’d rather handle this alone.”

  “We’re going to be watching from the window,” Pappy said. “You just let us know if you need backup.”

  Titan nodded and headed out into the street.

  Fernando staggered to a chair and sat down. “Oh my god, oh my god. I’m hyperventilating!”

  “Go get him a paper bag,” Old Bertha said.

  Mikie ran into the kitchen, returning with a large crumpled brown bag. Powderkeg and Pappy stood at the window, alternately looking at the street, then back at Fernando, who breathed into the bag over and over.

  “OK,” he said, handing the bag to Dymphna, who patted his back. “I’m OK.”

  “I’m blown away! The way you stood up to Dodge was amazing,” Polly said.

  “I know, right?” Fernando said. “I just love being a cowboy!”

  CHAPTER 15

  Cleo drove her new Mercedes E500 through the canyons of Beverly Hills. She’d had an early morning meeting with one of her charitable organizations. She’d tried to pay attention, but these meetings had all begun to blur. As hard as she tried not to think about it, this life she was leading felt silly after sh
e returned from Fat Chance. On the one hand, she knew that it was her duty to continue her father’s good works. But on the other hand, she didn’t actually need to be here. The money would work just as well without her.

  She needed to find something to hold her interest, but couldn’t think of what it could be. She’d bought new clothes, a new car, had an outdoor kitchen built on the back lawn. Nothing was working. On top of which, she couldn’t tell Elwood that she and Wesley had eavesdropped on every word of his conversation with Kimberly. At breakfast, she just wanted to scream at him “What could you possibly have bought for a museum that doesn’t even exist?” and after breakfast, wanted to write Kimberly a thank-you note. Cleo was very impressed with Kimberly’s shrewd maneuver, asking about Thud and then moving in closer to look at endless pictures of that ridiculous dog. She’d convinced herself that things were going well enough that she could arrange for Elwood and Kimberly to have another rendezvous.

  Professor Johnson considered himself a Renaissance man. He knew his way around a university, the latest technology in his field, and a lazy student defending a defenseless dissertation. But he couldn’t outsmart his aunt. As he drove down the Pacific Coast Highway, he wondered how it was that he found himself headed to the Getty Villa in Malibu to meet Kimberly. One minute, he was vaguely listening to his aunt Cleo discussing new events at the museum, and the next, he had two tickets and a date to listen to a talk on ancient flora.

  Professor Johnson knew that small talk was not his strong suit. With his PhD in natural sciences, he was perfectly at ease lecturing on campus about cell organization or biosynthesis. But ask him which team he hoped would win the soccer tournament and he’d go into a social panic. He looked at his watch. If his calculations were correct, he would be at the museum at least an hour before Kimberly arrived—enough time to get a snack and look around the place by himself. He’d done some research on the museum before he left Beverly Hills, but didn’t everyone? If he had time to poke around before they met at the outdoor theater, he might pick up an interesting tidbit or two about ancient Rome to toss around should conversation lag. He was fairly certain that conversation would lag.

  He parked in the enormous parking structure, took a picture with his cell phone so he’d remember where he left his car, and headed down the walkway to the museum. As he threaded his way toward the entrance, a rabbit leapt out of the bushes, stopping in front of him. The rabbit stood still in the middle of the path and looked Professor Johnson right in the eye. Professor Johnson stared back. The rabbit didn’t budge. Professor Johnson glanced around. There were no other people on the pathway. He looked back at the rabbit, which continued to block his path. He remembered a discussion he’d had with Dymphna at her farm, where she’d informed him that her spirit animal was a rabbit. As a man of science, he certainly didn’t believe in the concept that one’s totem represents one’s traits. But Dymphna could make you at least entertain ideas you previously would have dismissed.

  There was no dismissing this rabbit; that was certain. It twitched its nose and continued to stare at him. Professor Johnson looked around the grounds again. He was still the only human being on the walkway. He looked down at the rabbit. He realized the air was so still he could almost hear the rabbit breathing.

  “Do you have a message from Dymphna?” he whispered.

  “Professor Johnson?”

  Professor Johnson and the rabbit both leapt into the air. As the rabbit skidded into the shrubbery on the opposite side of the path, he spun around to see who had addressed him—and caught him talking to a rabbit.

  It was Kimberly.

  Of course it was Kimberly.

  “I didn’t mean to startle you,” Kimberly said, reaching out to adjust Professor Johnson’s glasses on his nose.

  “No no,” Professor Johnson said, gasping. “It was nothing. There was a rabbit . . .”

  “Yes, there was.”

  “You’re early, Kimberly,” he said, switching gears.

  “I guess I am.” Kimberly looked at her watch. “And it’s Kimmie.”

  “Right! Kimmie.”

  “Wesley said you usually got to your destination an hour ahead of schedule, so I thought . . . what the hell, I’ll get there early too, so he doesn’t have to walk around alone.”

  “Yes,” Professor Johnson said, trying to hide his rising panic. “What the hell. Exactly.”

  Kimberly stood as still as the rabbit, looking at him.

  “Did you know that since 2005, the Getty has returned almost fifty antiquities to Italy and Greece, acknowledging they were products of illegal excavations?” Professor Johnson blurted.

  “Yes, I did know that.” Kimberly laughed. “Wesley’s law firm is very active in the arts community. Where do you think we got the tickets to this lecture?”

  “I hadn’t thought about that.”

  Kimberly spun Professor Johnson around, took his arm, and started walking toward the largest garden at the Villa. The scent of bay laurel wafted around them as they made their way to the famous 220-foot-long reflecting pool.

  “I suppose you know that these statues”—Professor Johnson pointed to the bronzes that studded the garden—“are replicas of statues found at the Villa dei Papyri, a private home in the ancient Roman city of Herculaneum, which was covered in volcanic ash in AD 79.”

  “I knew that as well,” Kimberly said. “I guess I was looking at the same website you were.”

  Professor Johnson stopped in front of the reflecting pool, took off his glasses and wiped them on his shirttail. Kimberly touched his hand.

  “Just relax,” Kimberly said. “Seriously.”

  “Am I that obvious?”

  “Uh . . . yeah.”

  “I’m just not very good with people.”

  “No shit, Sherlock.”

  “I hope you don’t feel as if you were forced into a date with me.”

  “I don’t!” Kimberly said. “Not at all.”

  Professor Johnson felt himself unwind.

  “I feel like I was forced into a lecture about ancient flora,” she said.

  “Oh.” Professor Johnson’s face fell. He’d actually been looking forward to the speech.

  “I’m kidding,” Kimberly said. “Seriously. I can’t wait to hear about all the poison plants those Romans kept around for the occasional murder.”

  “I never know when you’re kidding.”

  “That’s part of my charm,” Kimberly said. “Let’s get a glass of wine before the lecture. They have a great selection here—for a museum, I mean.”

  As Professor Johnson followed Kimberly to the bistro, he refrained from pointing out the purple foxglove growing in the garden, which was rumored to be quite the favorite poison in its day.

  Professor Johnson was just getting out of his car as Cleo pulled into her impeccably manicured circular drive.

  “How was your date with Kimberly?” she chirped.

  “It was very informative,” Professor Johnson said. “Although she goes by Kimmie and it wasn’t a date.”

  He went into the house, leaving his aunt staring after him. Cleo sighed. Should she look for another woman? That seemed a little tasteless. She wasn’t a pimp!

  If I can’t make myself happy, why am I so sure I can arrange happiness for him? she thought.

  Jeffries appeared at the front door, but Cleo waved him away. Retail therapy might not give her the rush it used to, but it certainly kept her mind occupied in a pinch. She still loved the fact that Tiffany’s would have a manager meet her before regular store hours for a bit of private shopping.

  She took her latest purchase into her father’s old office. Her father’s taste was old-school in every sense of the word. The desk was mahogany, the chair tufted leather, the safe tucked away behind a portrait of Napoléon. Her father never actually used the safe, but after Cleo took over the room, she had decided to keep some of her personal treasures in it. Any burglar worth his salt would have researched the house and known that there was a sta
te-of-the-art vault on the premises, but she felt fairly sure a bad guy would leave this room alone.

  She lifted the portrait of the Little Corporal off the wall and placed it on the ivory and brown Kashan rug. Her fingers had muscle memory for the combination, and the safe was open in a flash. Cleo took the diamond cuff out of the blue Tiffany box and snapped it on her wrist. The cuff, with its impressive 35.7 carats of diamonds, caught the sunlight and shot prisms around the room. There was no denying it was a stunner, but now that she had it home, Cleo wondered if she didn’t already have something very similar in her collection. No matter, now she’d have two. Cleo put it back in the box and shoved it into the safe. Her eye caught sight of a small gray ring box against the wall of the safe, almost as if in hiding. She pulled the box out and stared at it. She hadn’t remembered that she’d kept it. With a lump in her throat, she opened it. Inside were her engagement and wedding rings from Marshall. She smiled when she thought of her ex-husband living in Fat Chance, now going by the name of Powderkeg. The engagement ring was a sweet little silver twisted-vine band with a modest star sapphire in the center. Cleo had never really thought about the ring before. But now she realized that while Powderkeg had made the ring himself, creating the tender turns of metal, he must have used all his savings to buy the little sapphire. She remembered how she had cried when he gave it to her. She put the ring on her left ring finger. It still fit, but Cleo was shocked at how much her hand had changed since she took the ring off so many years ago. Her eyes welled up with tears.

  Her wedding ring was a different animal altogether. Her father never approved of her marriage, but he’d had to put on a public show of support. He insisted that his daughter wear a ring worthy of his station. Cleo slipped the platinum ring, with its four carats, onto her right hand. She wondered if accepting the ring from her father had been the first step toward her divorce.

  She held both hands up to the light and studied them.

  Should she have turned her back on everything but love?

  Cleo made a decision. She was going back to Fat Chance. And Elwood was going with her.