by Jess Lourey
Looking over my list, I figured I’d start with the ex. What I would say to her, I still didn’t know. I dialed on my old black rotary-dial phone. I loved the whirring sound of the dial swinging back between each number, the sharp click as the dial found its home, the crackly trill of the ring on the other end. It took five rings to get her answering machine.
Hi, thanks for calling! This is Catherine. I’m not in. Please leave a message.
Her voice was husky, either naturally deep or she was a career smoker. I hung up before the beep. Most everyone but me had caller ID, so she’d likely know that a Miranda James in Battle Lake had called her. She wouldn’t know what I’d called about, though, not until I’d decided if I was going to be straight with her or skew the facts a little.
I debated whether or not to call the mechanic next. On the one hand, I didn’t want to bring my car in. On the other, it’d be the easiest call to make because I wouldn’t need to make up my story yet. In the end, I went for easy.
Lyle’s machine picked up on the third ring. Not surprising that no one was there, given it was Sunday. I took note of the business hours and hung up without leaving a message. That left only Julius Mertz.
I used to be afraid of nursing homes as the result of a poorly thought-out eighth-grade field trip. Each student was paired with a “grandma” or “grandpa” from the local nursing home with which to spend the afternoon. Although my lady was nice and mostly remembered my name, my general impression of the place was that I’d rather go to school naked for the rest of the year than grow old and get shipped off to a nursing home. Turning 30 and spending time with the sassy crowd at the Senior Sunset in Battle Lake had changed that viewpoint, fortunately.
I reached for the handset and called all the Fergus Falls nursing homes, asking for Julius Mertz. The first four did not have a resident by that name, and I was starting to feel desperate when I struck gold on the fifth try. My call was transferred to his room.
“Hello?” The man’s voice was quavery and brittle, like a sheet of paper blowing down a street.
“Mr. Mertz?”
“Yes. Who is this?”
“My name is Mira James. I’m a reporter for the Battle Lake Recall, and I’m doing some research on Tom Kicker.” That was only a lie if you assumed one fact was tied to the other, and I can’t be responsible for other people’s assumptions. “Mind if I visit and ask you a few questions sometime this week?”
The other end of the line was quiet, and I was starting to wonder if Julius had decided to punch out for a nap. Then he coughed, a polite and thoughtful sound rather than an old man rasp. “I heard Tom passed.”
“Yes. Last week, I’m afraid.”
“Terrible sad. A hunting accident.”
“That’s right. Do you think you’d have some time to talk to me? I heard you were instrumental in developing the Battle Sack.”
I heard more coughing on the other end of the line, then realized it was laughing. “I guess you could say that. Sure. I don’t ever turn away company. Do you want to come by for lunch on Tuesday? The food here tastes about as good as most of us look.”
I smiled on my end. “I’m afraid I don’t have time to drive there and back for lunch. Could I take you out for coffee Tuesday morning?”
“I’m too old to leave. I wouldn’t object to you bringing in a cream-filled Long John Tuesday morning, however. If you’re so inclined.”
“Looking forward to it.” We said our goodbyes, and I wrote him into my Tuesday calendar. That’s when I saw Peggy’s name written in already. Shoot. Well, we’d double up and look for her mojo in Fergus, I guess, which was a little bit like looking for your common sense in a strip club, but hey. The world can be a peculiar place.
Luna and I stepped outside to play a little fetch. The sky was deep-water ice blue with wisps of clouds gathering and breaking apart. The air stung but did not bite my cheeks. An out-of-stater might believe that the cold snap had broken, but a native would know that a break of this color and temperature meant only one thing: a big heap of snow was heading our way. Nothing could be done about that, so I finished up the game, herded Luna back into the house, and made my way to Jed’s.
I was beginning to like the fish house heater in the car. It was a dry heat. I hummed along to the Air Supply song floating out of my tinny radio as I drove. I used to have musical standards before I moved to Battle Lake, but you spend enough time in a county where the radio stations consist of new country, Christian, pop, and classic rock, you begin to appreciate a truly magniloquent rock anthem. Come to look forward to it, in fact.
The roads were drivable all the way to town. They were coated with the solid gray blanket of ice-mashed snow and Mn/DOT-sprayed sand that would remain until spring, when the mess would melt away and we’d remember again that roads came in black. I parked in an empty spot half a block from Jed’s new studio and let myself in the front door.
“Hello?” I didn’t hear an answer and made my way to the back room. The massive glass-firing furnace Monty had been working on looked fully functional and hungry, with its wide front door gaping like a sooty mouth. Something about it gave me the shivers, some buried childhood memory in a scary basement or an amalgamate of horror stories that featured the burning of human flesh. I turned away to silence my silly phobia. After all, I loved glass creations, and the furnace was the medium for them. The array of tools and bent glass figurines sprinkling the workbench suggested Monty and Jed were making progress on their business. But I still didn’t see anyone. “Jed?”
One of the three doors off the back room led outside, the other led to an empty bathroom, and the third looked like it went to a dark basement. I returned to the front room and walked to the slightly ajar door on the far wall. “Anybody home?” Jed’s winter apartment must be up the stairs, but I didn’t feel comfortable intruding. I should have called before I came, but where else would he be?
“In the workroom.”
The voice coming from the rear wasn’t Jed’s. I strolled back and found Monty with his arms stacked full of canisters.
“Where’d you come from?” I asked.
“Basement,” he grunted. “Care to help with these?”
“Sure. I thought the light was off down there.” He didn’t respond as I grabbed the canisters out of his hands and stacked them in a pile on the nearest table. After I’d lightened his load, I held up a can. “What’s iridizing spray?”
“That particular one will create a mother-of-pearl sheen on torch-worked glass.”
“Torch-worked?”
“Yeah.” He organized the canisters by the color dots on their covers, following the rainbow pattern of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet. “Jed and I decided it’d be best if he worked on making beads at first. They’re hard to mess up as long as they’ve got a hole all the way through them, and they’re a nice way to get used to the rhythm of hot glass. Once he’s comfortable with that, he’ll graduate to bigger stuff. He’s a smart kid, but it takes time to learn glass blowing.”
“I can imagine. Where is Jed, anyhow?”
Monty walked over to mess with the gauges on the furnace. He still wore his pompom cap though it was warm in the room. He was down to a white t-shirt and a worn pair of blue jeans. “Got a job at Battle Sacks.”
I whipped around. “What? He got the line mechanic job back?” My mind raced with the implications.
“No. Got a temp job in the mailroom for the busy season. Figured he’d need some form of steady employment until we got this business off the ground.”
“Oh. I see. What time’s he get done?”
“Not sure. I’m not his mother.”
I studied him for signs of sarcasm but saw none. He’d stated a fact. I glanced over at the ashtray, which had a nice cache of roaches. “Can I ask you something?”
“Shoot.”
“Ever buy weed from Clive Majors?”
He paused his tinkering and shot me a look over the top of the furnace. “You lookin’ for s
ome?”
“Nope. Just want to know if Clive is selling.”
He wrinkled his brow and kept me square in his gaze. I imagine he was wondering why the hell I wanted to know and how well Jed knew me. He must have decided pretty well. “Clive sells. Always has. Everyone in the county buys their weed from him.”
“So he’s got a big operation?”
“I don’t know about that. I know the law leaves him alone.”
“Why?”
He returned his attention to the fiddling. “You’d have to ask him that.”
“Can I ask you something else?”
I saw a smile tug at the corner of his mouth. “Can I stop you?”
“Did you know Tom Kicker back when you lived around here?”
He cranked the knob so far to the right that it came off in his hand. “Damnation. I knew that was a rotten one.” He held the knob up to the light and studied it, replying in a far-off voice. “Tom Kicker? I suppose you could say I knew him. I was a few years younger, but we were both on the football team in high school. I remember him being decent. Haven’t crossed paths with him since I got back and don’t suppose I will now that he’s feeding the worms. Anything else you wanna know?”
“Nope. Will you tell Jed I stopped by?”
He nodded and I let myself out, feeling only slightly wiser. I’d discovered that I was the last person in the world to learn Clive was a successful pot dealer, that Tom had been nice back in high school, and that Jed had landed a temp job at Battle Sacks. I couldn’t see how any of that information would help me. I stopped by Larry’s to pick up ingredients for tonight’s date and went home to start cooking.
———
The loaves of French bread came out lusciously golden and crusty, filling the double wide with the comforting scent of home and hearth. On the stove top, a kettle of creamy clam chowder bubbled softly, full of chunks of potato and carrots and slivers of clam. I had a bottle of white wine chilling for Johnny and was flirting with the idea of sharing a glass with him. I’d quit drinking in August because it’d caused me to make a really poor decision, but it turned out I did that just fine without alcohol and was exactly half as much fun. I marched to the bathroom for the tenth time to make sure I didn’t have a peek-a-booger or something in my teeth.
In the mirror, I fluffed my dark hair, and then leaned in to plump it up again. Then I angled in even closer, not believing what I was seeing. I had new little hairs sprouting up, baby-fine but still there. The vitamins were already working! I ran to the kitchen to down another handful while I considered how to hide the new growth until they were long enough to blend in with the crowd. I settled on a black beret that I’d bought in a moment of weakness about five years earlier. I’d been peddling batik sundresses and Bali hoop earrings as a low-wage counter girl at an import store on the West Bank of Minneapolis to supplement my waitressing income. As it happened, I was scheduled to work every Wednesday with a performance artist named Riva. She was a stunning woman, exotically sloe-eyed. I developed a lady-crush on her, entranced by her worldly travels, her self-confidence, and the bevy of men who regularly stopped by the store to bask in her presence.
When Riva offhandedly told me she thought I’d look great in a cap, I’d let her audition a whole selection from the back room on me. She settled on the beret. “Une belle femme!” she’d exclaimed, clapping her hands together. Two weeks later, she booked an overseas gig, and I’d never seen her again. I’d put the cap into storage. I knew in my heart I wasn’t a hat person, but I couldn’t let go of the hope. Maybe tonight was the night to live that dream. I dusted off the beret. It was shaggy with age but looked better than my eager baby hairs fighting for attention.
I stirred the soup, stirred it again, and went back to the stereo for the fifth time to send the Norah Jones CD to the first track so when Johnny arrived, the environment would seem effortlessly jazzy and smooth. Where was he? He was supposed to be here three minutes ago. Had he gotten in an accident? Forgotten we’d had a date? Decided it’d be easier to date a neuroses- and battle scar-free twenty-year-old? Luna began whining at my side, looking at me funny, like she’d seen me sprout antennas. I felt self-consciously for the beret. None of the hairs were poking through.
“It’s just a hat, puppy. No worries.”
She cocked her head, studying me sadly. Dogs could read the thought bubbles above our heads, and mine currently didn’t much impress her. Fortunately, the crunch of footsteps in hard-packed snow outside the bay window saved her from having a talk with me.
“It’s Johnny!” I raced to the front door before I realized what I was doing. Not only was I wearing a beret, but I was acting like a teenager. This was embarrassing. I forced myself to calm down and waited for him to knock. When he did, I opened the door slowly, as if I had plenty better things to do.
“Mira.” He held out a bouquet of grocery-store wildflowers.
I was fighting so hard to stay cool that my face twitched. “Thank you. Come in.” I turned to place the flowers in water and to hide my face. Man, talk about a natural hat person. Johnny could even work a ski cap. I tried not to stare as he stepped in and pulled off his jacket, but I couldn’t help but notice that the form-fitting blue sweater he wore underneath would have popped my panties clear off, if I’d been wearing any. It wasn’t an erotic choice, for the record. I just didn’t like the bunchy diaper feeling of underwear beneath jeans.
“How can you be so hot?”
“Excuse me?”
Jesus. I’d said that out loud. My face flushed a deep scarlet. “I said, ‘how much time do you got?’ You know, just planning ahead. ’Cuz I got lots of food if you got lots of time!” Probably the exclamation point on the end was too much, but I was embarrassed, which feels that much more acute when you’re wearing a hat.
He walked over, confusion warring with hope on his face. “I have all night.”
“Great! Let’s get eating.” Damn, I needed to ease off of the exclamations. I let him peck my cheek before ushering him to the kitchen. The double wide was too small to house a dining room, so we ate at the glass-topped table situated between the refrigerator and the living room. I walked the steaming kettle of soup to the table and stuck a ladle in. “Help yourself while I get the bread.”
I tore one of the loaves into crusty chunks, my mouth watering at the sound of fresh bread ripping. The inside was snowy white with beautiful air bubbles, and golden crumbs fell into the sink.
“It smells delicious, Mira. Thanks for cooking tonight.”
I smiled over my shoulder. “You cooked last time.”
Before I knew it, he was behind me, one arm wrapped around my waist. He used the other to push my hair off my neck and kiss softly at the point where it curved into my shoulder. I leaned back into him and was gratified to feel a hard push at the base of my spine. “I like the beret,” he whispered into my ear, licking softly at the edges of it. “It makes you even sexier.”
When his hand moved up from my waist, I turned to kiss him face on. Or at least I intended to, until the burp bubbled up my throat. It was soft, so quiet only I could hear it, and I was confident I was the only one who knew I’d had the poor manners to belch. I was confident, at least, right up to the moment when the smell hit my nostrils and burnt the hair off. The odor reminded me of methane gas and lawn. I cursed Kennie’s name. It wasn’t the anti-wrinkle vitamins that had given her breath like a swamp monster, it was the hair vitamins.
“Luna,” I scolded, trying to pass the blame to her. She raised her head from her spot on the kitchen floor and shot me the same sad look as before. You’re just making it worse for yourself, it said.
Meanwhile, Johnny played the situation like a champ. He wrinkled his nose and his eyes watered a little, but after an involuntary recoil, he came back at me with the kiss. Grateful, I leaned in ready to give it my all when another gas cloud burbled up. The smell was so bad I saw beads of sweat form on his temple.
I watched him struggle to maintain a shred
of passion and distantly considered whether the vitamins should have been billed as birth control instead. I wished I could make a joke of it to ease the tension, but there was no way I could claim the stench, not after I’d fingered the dog. I’d have to live the lie. “Um, maybe we should eat,” I offered. “Sure. Sounds good. Can I help with anything?” He hurried to the table so fast he left a cartoon outline of his body behind.
“I got it covered.” I poured him a glass of wine, which he spent the next half an hour pretending to drink from but really using it as a glass shield whenever a poof of air left my mouth, a harbinger of the green and gray gas cloud to follow. It got to the point where he knew I was going to burp before I did and up that glass would go, guarding his mouth and nose as the wine beat ineffectually at his lips.
I was equally as miserable and wondered if I should ask him to pull my finger to seal the deal. I felt like a four-legged creature putting on airs and was grateful when the meal was over. Johnny had said he didn’t have any plans for the night besides me, but I mercy-killed the date for both of us. “You know, I’m not feeling that well. I might need to turn in early.”
A shadow of relief colored his face but since he was a much nicer person than I could ever dream of being, he refrained from saying You think? Because it smells like your insides are becoming your outsides. Instead, he did what he does best and treated me like a queen. “I’m sorry, honey. Do you want me to stay and make you some tea?”
“No, I’ll be fine. Just a little stomach bug. Probably something I ate at the library party last night.” Or got from a witch who decorated her gingerbread house with hair-growing vitamins to lure in mildly vain 30-year-olds who were dating men way out of their league.
“You sure? I don’t mind staying.”
His eyes told me that he knew exactly what sort of a smell-fest he was signing up for, and I’d never cared for him more than I did in that moment. So I set him free. “Thanks. I’m fine. Really.” I smiled as warmly as I could without unclenching my teeth and dashed in for a quick peck on the cheek before the next green monster surfaced. “You should probably go.”
