Last Chance Book Club

by Hope Ramsay

  “You know how to work a lawn mower?”

  Todd gazed at Dash as if he’d spoken in an alien language.

  “Uh, no, he doesn’t. We live in an apartment complex and—” Savannah tried to explain, but Dash interrupted.

  “Well, shoot, I guess I’ll have to show you. Because if you’re staying here, you’re not going to sit around on your lazy behind. Uncle Harry left a lot of chores.”

  Todd’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t say anything. He simply stood up and stalked off into the living room.

  Savannah didn’t know whether to laugh or yell. Yelling won. “Look, I get it. You’re still pissed off at me for some reason I don’t understand. But I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t take it out on Todd. I came out here to settle this thing between us once and for all.”

  “Princess, I wasn’t taking anything out on Todd. I was just making the rules of the house clear to him. Folks living in this house have chores. You do remember that, don’t you?”

  For just an instant, he sounded like Granddaddy. All the summers Savannah had spent here as a child, she’d always had chores. Which probably explained why she had gotten up so early yesterday and today. She’d done a lot of cleaning. A lot of dishwashing. And some cooking. And it felt right. Whenever she stayed here, she always got up early. There were always things that needed doing.

  She glanced at the sagging porch step. “I can see how you’re holding up your end of the chores.”

  “I’m going to fix that step. I was just waiting on Uncle Harry. He had a long list of things he wanted to fix around here, but if anyone tried to help him, he would get madder than a grease monkey with a bent dipstick. And getting that mad was bad for his heart. So I just let him go on believing the fiction that he was going to get well enough to do his chores, and I found other things to keep me busy. Now that he’s gone, I can finally get around to making repairs. Speaking of chores, are you going to take over the cooking? Because those cinnamon rolls reminded me of when Aunt Sally was alive.”

  Savannah flushed with pride in spite of herself. Had Dash actually complimented her on something? That would be a first. “It’s Granny’s recipe, thanks. But about our staying—I just want you to know that Todd and I are not planning to live here with you and Miriam. We’re going to live above the theater while I fix it up.”

  Dash stopped rocking and gave her one of his holier-than-thou looks. “Princess, I’ve been sitting out here trying to figure out how to explain to you that this plan of yours is not going to fly. Do you have the slightest notion of how much money it’s going to cost to ‘fix up’ The Kismet?”

  Heat crawled up Savannah’s face. Of course Dash would point out the holes in her plan. Dash always did that sort of thing. She squared her shoulders and looked him straight in his perpetually twinkling eyes. They were an odd shade of blue, like a bright October sky.

  “No, Dash, I haven’t figured that out yet. I’d have to go see the place first.”

  “Well, that’s a good thing to do. Maybe you should have done that before you announced your plans to everyone.”

  “I didn’t announce my plans to everyone. I just mentioned them to Rocky.”

  “It’s the same thing. Once you go see the place, you’ll realize that the only sensible thing to do with The Kismet is to take a wrecking ball to it. The place is falling down. And even if it weren’t, you’d have to be certifiable to think about running a small movie theater in the middle of nowhere. Everyone wants 3-D and multiple screens with stadium seating. You won’t be able to compete.”

  Dash had neatly summed up every excuse Savannah had ever made for why she’d be crazy to follow through with this dream. He wasn’t being negative. He wasn’t being mean. He was just pointing out the obvious.

  The way he always did.

  Which made her mad. Dash always did that, too. She squared her shoulders and decided that if Dash wanted a fight, he could have one. “But I have a distinct advantage since I own the building and the real estate free and clear. And I’m current on the taxes.”

  “Good points. You have any experience? What do you do for a living in Baltimore?”

  “I’m an administrative assistant in an insurance agency. And on weekends, I work as a part-time barista.”

  “What in the Sam Hill is that?”

  “I make fancy coffee drinks at the local coffee shop. And sometimes the owner buys my pastries for resale. I like to cook.”

  “Ohhhh,” he said on a long, sarcastic breath.

  “I know a lot about the movies, especially old ones.”

  Both of his eyebrows rose. “Do you have a business plan? Have you done any market research? Do you have a structural engineer? Because you’re going to need one before you’re finished.”

  She felt dizzy. “No, but I just got here.”

  Dash pushed up from the rocking chair. “Let’s go take a tour of the old place. I’m sure one look at it will convince you that it’s a lost cause.”

  The Kismet sat at the corner of Palmetto Avenue and Chancellor Street in Last Chance’s business district. Built in 1929, the theater was a miniature version of the movie palaces of a bygone era. Its facade was heavily influenced by Moorish design. Inside, it had carved wooden columns and a high domed ceiling painted dark blue and speckled with small recessed lights that simulated twinkling stars. Once, when Savannah was very little, she had believed that Granddaddy made the real stars shine in the sky.

  But that had been decades ago. Now Savannah stared up at the minaret above the marquee and couldn’t miss the obvious signs of decay and neglect.

  “What a dump,” Todd said, looking up from his PSP.

  “My thoughts exactly,” Dash echoed.

  Her heart stumbled. She refrained from telling Dash and Todd that they could shove their negative thinking up their collective behinds. They were right. The place looked bad.

  She stepped up to the front door and slipped the old key into the lock. The doors creaked as she pulled them open. A rush of dusty, fetid air hit her square in the face. She fought the urge to cough.

  “It stinks like butt,” Todd said.

  “You better watch your mouth, son,” Dash said. “If Miz Lillian Bray ever heard you saying something like that, she’d be reaching for a bar of soap and asking questions later.”

  “Soap? What for?”

  “To wash out your mouth. Take it from me, kid, soap tastes like total crap. You want to avoid that fate. It’s actually worse than standing here breathing in bat dookey.”

  “Bat dookey?” Savannah said through the dust in her throat.

  “Yeah, honey, you got bats in the belfry in more ways than one.” He gave her a little crooked smile. He was really enjoying her humiliation, wasn’t he? She wanted to take her fist and bloody his lip a second time.

  She turned away and headed into the theater’s lobby. Dash and Todd followed. “You’re just exaggerating. You always exaggerate,” she said over her shoulder.

  “Princess, do you even know what bat droppings smell like?”

  “Uh, no.”

  “Well, then take it from me. You’ve got a bat problem. And I’ll be willing to bet you got mice and who knows what else. I wouldn’t be surprised if you had snakes in here.”

  Savannah turned toward him in the gloom of the lobby. “You’re just trying to scare me. So quit it.”

  “In these parts, we get snakes indoors all the time, especially if we got mice first.”

  “Do you get rattlers inside?” Todd didn’t sound too happy about that.

  “Well, we have timber rattlers in South Carolina but they’re rare. It’s the water moccasins and cottonmouths you have to watch out for down here, son. But black snakes are as common as the rain.”

  Todd squinted his eyes. “Why do you call me that? I’m not your kid.”

  Dash’s crooked smile flashed again. “It’s just a figure of speech. Everyone down here uses it. It used to really tick me off when I first came here, too. But you kind of get
used to it after a while.”

  “Well, I’m not gonna—ever. So don’t call me son and don’t boss me around. You aren’t my dad.” Todd leaned against one of the mildewed walls and gave Dash his snotty-kid look. Dash smiled.

  Savannah shook her head. “Okay, guys, can we all try to get along? And Dash, quit trying to scare us with your snake stories, okay? I’m tired of having that incident thrown in my face.”

  “You still don’t know why I put that snake in your bed, do you?”

  “Oh, really, Dash, can we please not talk about that. Whatever I did to you, I’m sorry.”

  “An apology doesn’t mean a thing if you have no idea what you’re apologizing for. And if you remember, you apologized back then, too.”

  Yes, she remembered apologizing. She remembered Granddaddy blaming her for the entire snake episode and making her apologize. She still wasn’t entirely sure why she caught the blame when it was Dash who put the snake in her bed. Even now, as a full-grown woman, she always checked under the covers before she crawled into bed. Shouldn’t Dash apologize for that? Didn’t he have some blame for leaving her terrified of snakes?

  She turned her back on Todd and Dash and headed deeper into the lobby, past the dusty concession counters. The carpets were littered with dirty popcorn boxes, candy wrappers, and mouse droppings. The auditorium was no better. The mice had taken over. They’d chewed through the ornate carpets and nested in the seats. She would need to fumigate the entire place. Soap-and-elbow-grease wasn’t going to cut it. Everything had to be replaced.

  They headed upstairs and discovered that the apartment was uninhabitable, and the projection equipment had been attacked by the rodents.

  Savannah’s dream was never going to come true. It wasn’t just the rodents, either. The roof was bad. There was water damage and mold. And bats had created nests in the rafters.

  She surveyed the disaster, and her eyes began to itch. Not just from the dust, but with tears she refused to shed. She’d been through more than her share of heartbreak in the last few years, but for some reason this blow seemed harder than all the others. She’d dreamed about reviving the theater for years.

  But it was impossible. You can’t bring the dead back to life. And The Kismet was dead. The wonderful show palace of her younger years was gone. It would never light up Palmetto Avenue again.

  “C’mon, I’ve seen enough. Let’s get out of here,” she managed to say. Her voice hardened with the strength it took to keep from crying.

  She turned and headed toward the stairs that would take them back to the lobby. “C’mon, Todd, let’s go.”

  “So, I reckon you’re going home then,” Dash said, no doubt gloating over his victory.

  “Yeah. I guess so. You win, Dash, the theater is a lost cause.”

  Zeph Gibbs tucked the sleeping puppy into the folds of his old flannel shirt. The critter snuggled there, soft and warm. The pup was much healthier than he’d been a week ago. He was fully weaned now.

  It was time to pass him on.

  Zeph got out of his old truck and ambled up the street. He stopped for a moment at the intersection of Palmetto and Chancellor. His feet wanted to turn right, but his heart said no. It was Wednesday evening, and the ladies of the book club were meeting. There were too many people in the library.

  And besides, someone needed this pup more than Miss Nita.

  He walked on past Chancellor Street and into the main business district. The days were getting longer, but dusk had finally settled. That was good. During the day, he could see his reflection in the shop windows out of the corner of his eye. And Zeph’s reflection was a little bit scary. It wasn’t his overalls or the flannel shirt, or even his gray hair that was frightening. No, the scary thing followed him like a shadow.

  So Zeph always looked down when he walked through town. And he didn’t have any mirrors in his house out on Bluff Road.

  He turned left onto Baruch Street and walked a block until he ducked into the strip of pines that separated Miriam Randall’s house from the sidewalk. He stood in the cool shade of the pine trees. Miz Miriam was sitting on the porch. She looked tired and sad. He’d been watching her at Mr. Harry’s funeral yesterday. Her and her niece and nephew.

  And the boy.

  Zeph reached into his shirt, put the sleeping puppy down on a soft bed of pine needles, and took a few steps deeper into the woods. The wind rustled in the pines, and Zeph could almost hear the shadow speaking to him. He halfway recognized the voice.

  But he didn’t speak to it. He never spoke to it. He fought the shadow with all his strength, but he always ended up doing what the shadow wanted.

  He hunkered down and waited for the puppy to wake. He wouldn’t leave until he knew his mission was accomplished.

  “I don’t really read all that much,” Savannah said as Rocky hauled her down Palmetto Avenue in the direction of the Allenberg County Public Library where the book club met the first and third Wednesdays of every month. “And besides, I haven’t decided to stay.”

  “Oh, honey, don’t worry about the reading. We let Nita pick the books. They’re always kind of boring, so naturally we don’t spend a lot of time talking about them. It’s mostly a social club. And you can’t go back to Baltimore. You have to stay and fix up the theater.”

  This was not the time to tell Rocky that she had abandoned her half-baked plans. So Savannah clamped her mouth shut and followed Rocky into the library. The place was relentlessly cheerful, with yellow-painted cinder-block walls festooned with lots of kid art. A number of other book club members had already arrived. They stood around the refreshment table eating red velvet cupcakes.

  “Oooh, I forgot that Arlene was responsible for refreshments this time,” Rocky said. “She always buys cupcakes at the bakery over in Allenberg.”

  Rocky pulled Savannah into the knot of women by the table and started making introductions. Someone handed Savannah a paper plate with a red velvet cupcake. She taste-tested it. The icing was excellent, but the cake was a skosh dry. Granny’s cake recipe was better.

  “Come meet Jenny,” Rocky said as she dragged Savannah away from her thoughts.

  Jenny wore one of those shapeless flowered dresses that came down below her knees. Her brown hair sat atop her head in a messy bun, and she wore a pair of big eyeglasses.

  “Savannah was just telling me how much she enjoyed the pies you baked for Harry’s wake, Jenny,” Rocky said.

  Jenny gave Savannah a shy smile. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t make Mr. Randall’s funeral. We had school that day.”

  “The pies were much appreciated,” Savannah replied, stunned that this wallflower of a woman had captured the male population of Last Chance by their taste buds. Heaven help the female population if Jenny ever got a makeover. Because despite the specks, bun, and dress, she was attractive—with golden skin and amber eyes.

  Savannah was about to ask Jenny about her piecrust recipe when Rocky grabbed her by the arm and pulled her away. “C’mon, you need to meet Molly Canaday, her momma runs the yarn shop and her daddy is the coach of the football team. She wasn’t at the funeral either, because she’s a mechanic at the Grease Pit.”

  “Really?”

  “Yup. You shouldn’t ever take your car any other place, because Molly and Bubba are the best mechanics in Allenberg County. And if you ever decide to take up knitting and need a teacher, go to Molly, not her mother. Molly has a gift with yarn and cars.”

  Molly had a beautiful mane of curly black hair that had to be the envy of everyone in that room. But her hair was her only concession to her gender. She wore no makeup, her jeans had holes in the knees, and her gray T-shirt said, “I love the smell of gasoline in the morning.”

  Jane Rhodes, Rocky’s sister-in-law, was standing next to Molly. Savannah remembered the pregnant woman from the funeral. Jane worked at the Cut ’n Curl and was married to Rocky’s older brother, Clay.

  On the desk in front of them, Jane had spread out the ugliest, most misshapen sw
eater-in-progress Savannah had ever seen. The yarn was a pretty shade of pink, but the stitches were a mess.

  “Well,” Molly was saying to Jane as Savannah and Rocky approached, “you clearly lost count of the decreases for the raglan sleeves.”

  “I did?” Jane said.

  “You’ll have to frog it back to here.” Molly pointed to a place in the knitting.

  “I’m never going to figure this out. If the baby wasn’t due so soon, I would start something new.” Jane looked up. “Oh hi, Rocky, Savannah.”

  Rocky snorted a laugh. “Jane, honey, how many unfinished sweaters do you have now?”

  “A few,” Jane said, and then turned toward Savannah. “I think what you’re planning to do with the theater is really great.”

  Savannah gritted her teeth. How on earth was she going to tell everyone that she’d abandoned her plans for the theater? Her stomach felt queasy. There were too many new people here.

  One of them came up carrying a Vera Bradley bag. She dropped it on the table and pulled out a knitting project. “Molly, honey, you have to help me. Where have I gone wrong?”

  Molly sighed. “Cathy, why don’t you take your knitting to Momma? She’s the one who owns the shop.”

  “I do, but her instructions never make much sense to me. On the other hand, you are a natural-born teacher, not to mention that you’re a yarn whisperer if I ever saw one. Now, how exactly do I do that three-needle bind-off you were telling me about?”

  The newcomer was introduced as Cathy Niles, and within a few minutes Cathy and Molly were bent over the project in deep consultation. Rocky pulled Savannah away, and in the space of the next few minutes Savannah was introduced to half a dozen other women whose names went right out of her head.

  Hettie Marshall was the last to arrive. She strolled in ten minutes late dressed in a royal blue knit ensemble that might have been Armani. She had all the élan of a movie star at the Oscars, and her arrival seemed to signal the beginning of the meeting. The book club members took seats around one of the tables. Almost half of them, not including Molly the yarn whisperer or Hettie the fashion plate, had brought knitting projects with them.