Around the Bend (22 page)

Pandemonium.

That word pretty much summed up the entire day. In Whitfield, we found a hospital, thank God, and brought in Norm and a nonstop screaming Rita. By the time we got there, she was full out thrashing and clutching at Norm and begging for drugs. I started calculating the chances she’d give birth on my backseat.

Not even Johnson & Johnson had enough wet wipes to cover that kind of mess. And I doubted Harvey’s skills extended to midwifery.

In the end, the leather was saved, the tire held and Rita turned out to be having a hell of a bad case of Braxton Hicks. The hospital kept her overnight for observation.

“You can’t be hitchhiking with her,” I told Norm in the hall, feeling like the housemom for Dropout U. Susan was inside Rita’s room, the two of them laughing and giggling, as if this had just been one more adventure.

Norm lifted one shoulder, then dropped it. “I gotta get my chance at Hollywood, dude. Rita’ll be cool.”

“Do you want your future son or daughter born on the highway? You need to get her home. Think of the baby, not yourself.”

“Dude, it’s
American Idol.
It’s like the biggest show on TV. If I go home now, I may never get my shot.” Norm toed at the floor, streaking black rubber across the pristine vinyl. “Besides, we ain’t got no place to go home to. Rita’s dad kinda blames me for her…condition.”

“Well, you did get her pregnant.”

“Yeah, but I, like, love her and everything.” He looked back at the room. His gaze softened and in it, I did see love, or at least I thought I did. I wasn’t sure anymore if I could read a man’s expression and know what he was really thinking. “I was gonna get a job, get us a place to crash, but Rita, she really wanted me to do this singing thing. She says I got charisma.”

He had something, that was for sure, because Rita saw the sun and the moon in his face. And whenever they were alone, I’d noticed he reflected that solar system right back at her.

I dug in my purse and pulled out the cash I’d withdrawn that morning. It was only a few hundred dollars, but I hoped it would be enough for the two of them to get back to their homes and some sanity. “Take this,” I said, handing it to Norm. “Go home, find a place, a job, some baby furniture. Promise me you’ll marry her. And keep it to one wife.”

Norm’s eyes grew wide. “That’s, like, a lot of money. I only changed your tire.”

“Be good to her. Talk to her and be smart about your decisions.” I left off the rest of the lecture that had been stewing in the back of my mind. Who was I, the Clueless Wife, to tell Norm and Rita what to do?

“Thanks. You’re, like, a chick with heart,” Norm said, closing his hand over mine, then releasing it to give me what I thought was a peace sign. “Keep it posi, dude. And good luck with Harvey.”

“Yeah, thanks.” I probably needed the luck more than Norm, who seemed oddly grounded and cool about the direction his life had taken. I grabbed Susan and we left, stopping by the hospital ATM on the way.

“I saw what you did,” Susan said.

“I didn’t want them holding up a minimart to pay for a crib.”

Susan laughed, then wrapped her arms around me in a hug.

I cleared my throat and pulled back. “We have to get Harvey to the dog show before he eats my dashboard.”

Susan kept up her usual chatter during the hour and a half it took us to reach Pigeon Forge and then the Grand Resort Hotel and Convention Center that was hosting the Dog-Gone-Good Show. She talked mainly about Norm and Rita, about their baby, about Norm’s singing voice and how his audition would go. I tried to respond but barely got more than a word or two in.

When Susan’s motor was started, there was no stopping it. I was actually relieved to park the car at the hotel and enter a whole new kind of crazy.

Harvey bounded out of the car the second I opened my door, ran through the lobby, past the bellhop’s attempt to grab him and straight into the Dog-Gone-Good registration fray. “Harvey!”

He ignored me and kept on going, weaving his little body in and out among the other dog owners and their pooches. He nearly missed being sideswiped by a Labradoodle, darted under a Great Dane as if it was a bridge, and skidded to a stop
before the skirted table, leaping up onto the white surface and wiggling his way toward the third man on the right.

Around me, I heard people calling out Harvey’s name, telling each other the Wonder Dog was here, laughing at his break for freedom. People pointed, smiled, waved at the terrier.

Harvey, apparently, was a regular celebrity on the dog-show circuit.

“Harvey!” I screamed, mortified. Stupid dog, why couldn’t he obey? Wasn’t that what he was trained to do? And where the heck was a Beggin’ Strip when I really needed one?

“Harvey!” the man cried, wrapping his arms around the dog and submitting to the terrier’s wild tongue introduction. “Where you been, buddy?”

I made my way through the crowds, reached forward and snapped Harvey’s leash onto his collar. “I’m sorry. He got away from me.”

The man grinned. “Once Harvey gets an idea in his head, he goes after it. The only time you can get him to behave is on the stage.”

I studied the man in front of me. Not a bad-looking man at that. Dark hair with a dusting of gray, tall, reasonably well built. Green eyes that were just a shade above gray. No one I’d ever met before, but that didn’t surprise me. Dave had clearly kept this entire side of his life a secret. “How do you know Harvey? Are you his trainer?”

“I’m his agent.”

A woman slipped into the line beside me, carrying a white poodle whose froufrou hairstyle had been jazzed up with hot-pink bows. She was cooing to the dog, telling it everything would be just fine. Cee-Cee, the dog, quivered in the
woman’s arms, as though she was about to pee. I stepped a little to the left, keeping my Rockports out of Cee-Cee’s aim.

“Harvey has an
agent?
” I said.

The man chuckled. “Hell, ninety percent of the dogs here do. And those that don’t are looking to chomp on to the first one who shows an interest.”

“Dave never—” Dave hadn’t mentioned an agent in the journal for Harvey, but I didn’t want to tell this guy that. Maybe they’d been on the outs? Maybe Dave hadn’t seen it as an important detail?

Or maybe the guy was making the entire thing up.

“Matt Shay,” he said, thrusting out his hand. I recognized the name from Dave’s cell directory. Success.

“Penny Reynolds,” I replied, shaking with him. He had a firm grip, the kind that said he was comfortable in his own skin, in the jeans and button-down shirt he wore.

“Are you related to Dave?”

“I’m his wife.”

I had to give the man credit, he didn’t blink an eye. Didn’t betray his surprise at all. “Penny. That’s right, he’s mentioned you.”

I didn’t want to call his bluff. I didn’t want to make him admit that he’d never heard of me before. That the woman Dave had called his wife had been Annie or Susan or worse…someone else. “Nice to meet you.”

“Vinny told me Dave had…passed away,” Matt said, drawing Harvey closer to his chest and absently fingering the dog’s ears. “I’m really sorry.”

The crowd pressed in against me, people shouting out their dog’s FAQs, their addresses, phone numbers, screaming names like “Sir Hightower Golden Fancy” and “Lady’s Lost Slipper Deluxe.”

I nodded, swallowing back the lump in my throat. “It was pretty sudden.”

“What happened?” Then he put up a hand. “No, no. You don’t have to talk about it.”

Good. Because I had no intention of telling this stranger, the dog’s agent, for God’s sake, that my husband had been found dead after screwing his second wife. A wife who was finally bringing up the rear, after a prolonged trip to “the little girls’ room.”

“Penny! There you are. You won’t believe it. They have
dog biscuits
in the ladies’ room. In the little—” Susan cupped her hand over her mouth “—candy machine, if you know what—” She stopped talking when she noticed Matt. “Hello. I’m Susan Reynolds.”

“Matt Shay,” he said, shaking with her, too. “You must be Dave’s sister.”

Susan laughed. “Oh, no. I’m his wife.”

Matt’s mouth dropped open. I wanted to die right there, sink into a hole in the floor and take Susan with me.

Susan and I hadn’t thought to discuss this. All those hours in the car and the whole “what do we say when people ask?” question had never come up. I guess I’d just assumed Susan would let me be the wife and she’d play Dave’s friend.

Susan covered her mouth as if she’d just realized what she’d said. “Well, Dave was a busy guy,” she said, with one of those little laughs of hers.

Cee-Cee’s owner turned around and stared at us. She elbowed the woman behind her. “Lucy, did you hear that? They’re one of them polygamy families,” she whispered, in decibels they could hear in space. “Bunch of perverts.”

“This was a bad idea,” I said, taking Harvey out of Matt’s arms, with a protest from the dog, and wheeling around. I hadn’t thought about how we’d answer these questions, how I would deal with what people would think. I’d been intent on getting here, ridding myself of the dog and determining how far I’d have to split Dave’s assets. My plan lacked…a plan.

Ignoring the stares and whispers, I wove my way quickly through the crowd, my eyes fixed firmly on the four red letters of
Exit.

Go home. Go back to normalcy. Pretend all of this never happened.

“Penny!”

I ignored Matt’s voice and plunged forward, through a crowd of collies, their owners looking as poufy as the dogs themselves. A weird part of my mind, the part that had completely disassociated from this entire surreal experience, wondered if they’d be called a crowd. Or a litter. Or a bark, or some other weird thing. Tears rose to my eyes—when had I become this weepy creature? I never cried—and I stumbled into a group of poodles, the leather straps wrapping around my legs and tangling my steps.

“Penny,” Matt said, reaching for me across the over-groomed white dogs. “What’s wrong?”

I stepped back, out of the leashes, and kept backing up until I hit the solidity of a column. “Come on, Matt. Tell me you aren’t that clueless.”

“Actually, I am.” He grinned. “It’s part of my DNA, or so my ex-wife told me.”

I couldn’t help but laugh, the kind of relieved laugh you let out when you’ve narrowly missed creaming the neighbor’s
bushes because a chipmunk ran in front of the car. I sobered when I caught a glimpse of Susan stuck on the other side of the dog pool, waving at me like a mariner lost at sea. “I think it’s pretty obvious. I’m Dave’s wife and so is she.”

He shrugged. “That’s okay. I mean, I’ve heard about those kind of arrangements, but never—”

“It is
not
that kind of arrangement!” I forced myself to lower my voice when several people turned to stare. “I never knew he had another wife.”

“Until after he—”

“Yeah.”

“Oh.” His eyes grew rounder. “That must have been horrible.”

“You know, this isn’t my favorite topic of conversation. I came down here to give Harvey to you or Vinny or whoever’s in charge because I don’t want a dog, I don’t want to go to the Dog-Gone-Good Show and I don’t want—”

And then I was crying again.

“Hey, hey,” Matt said, coming closer to me, taking my arm. “It’s okay. It’ll work out. Come on, let me buy you some coffee.”

“But what about the show and Susan and—”

“I think you need a cup of coffee more than any of those things need to be handled.” Still holding my arm, he gently led me out of the room, through a back door in the ballroom. Immediately, the crazy zoo behind us was silenced. Five minutes later, we’d left the building by a side entrance that kept us far from the registration fray.

As I thought of all the questions I needed to ask Susan—questions I still wasn’t a hundred-percent sure I wanted to know the answers to—I wondered if it might be less painful to just take a bath in gravy and offer myself up as a lobby sacrifice.

I don’t know what kind of man I expected a dog agent to be, but it wasn’t Matt Shay.

“Hey, Matt, you escaping again?” the redheaded, statuesque waitress said as she led us to a booth in the back of a diner named The NightOwl. Situated down the street from the Grand Resort Hotel and Convention Center hosting the Dog-Gone-Good Show, it was one of those retro buildings made to look like an old-fashioned railroad dining car.

Most of the customers were males over the age of sixty, debating sports stats along with the talking heads on ESPN, which played on every TV in the diner except for one in the back running cartoons. No children were watching
Tom and Jerry
, but one middle-aged guy was, sitting to the right of the set and laughing as if Tom the cat had the comedic ability of Robin Williams.

“Thanks, Lucille,” Matt said as he slid into the booth. The waitress didn’t bat an eye at Harvey, who slipped onto the seat
beside Matt and promptly fell asleep, apparently tuckered out from watching me do all the driving. “Bring me some high-octane coffee and for my guest…” He looked to me.

“A cup of the same. Leave plenty of room for cream, please.”

“Good,” he said, smiling, after Lucille left.

I realigned the salt and pepper, putting them squarely against the silver napkin holder. “What’s good?”

“You’re not one of those cappuccino women.”

“What’s a cappuccino woman?”

“You know, the kind that goes into Starbucks and orders a coffee like she’s picking out a car? Tall, noncaf, nonfat, venti mocha with a double sugar-free caramel shot.” Matt rolled his eyes. “Get a damned coffee, not a short story.”

I laughed. “I can honestly say that I am probably the only person on the planet who has never stepped foot in a Starbucks.”

He put out his hand and shook mine again. “Meet the only other one.”

I laughed again. At this rate, it was becoming a habit. “What’s good here?” I asked, feeling a wave of guilt that I was laughing when my life was such a shambles. I was a widow, for God’s sake. I shouldn’t be laughing at another man’s jokes.

I jerked a menu out of the metal holder and scanned the diner’s offerings, instead of the man across from me. My stomach rumbled, which reminded me I hadn’t eaten in hours, not since we’d done that live-action version of
A Baby Story
with Norm and Rita.

And Susan. Oh, no, I’d ditched her, without a thought.

“Everything’s good here. Willhemina, the owner, makes everything from scratch, the way her mother and her mother’s mother taught her. Which means this isn’t the kind of place
where you watch your calories or your cholesterol.” Matt’s gaze ran over my face. “You worried about Susan?”

“Yeah.” I put the menu to the side and glanced out the window. “I shouldn’t have left her there.”

He flipped out a cell phone, punched in a number, then waited as the call connected. “Jerry. Look for a tall blonde in a black minidress and—”

“Red shoes with rhinestones,” I supplied.

“Red shoes with rhinestones.” He paused. “I should have known you’d find her before I could get past the word
blonde.
” Matt chuckled, a nice, hearty male sound. “Tell her Penny and I are grabbing a bite to eat and we’ll be back.” He paused, laughed some more. “Okay. Sounds good.” He closed the phone and tucked it back into his pocket.

“What sounds good?”

“Jerry offered, out of the kindness of his heart, I’m sure, to keep Susan entertained. He’s got a weakness for blondes.” Matt grinned. “I have a feeling you won’t see Susan for a while. Jerry’ll whisk her off on a tour of the city or something.”

Relief settled over my shoulders, displacing the heavy weight of worry. For a while, I could forget about Dave’s other wife. Have a meal and a conversation and pretend everything was fine. For now. “Thanks.”

He shrugged. “Hey, we’re a full-service agency.”

I laughed again, then thanked Lucille as she deposited two cups of coffee before us, along with a generous handful of creamers.

“Where’s Vinny?” I asked, laying my napkin on my lap and smoothing it into place.

“Harvey’s trainer? Oh, he usually doesn’t do these kinds of things. He’s not good in a crowd.”

“But isn’t he the one who takes Harvey onstage?”

“Yeah, when we can get him sufficiently liquored up and convinced he won’t die.” At my knitted brow, Matt leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Vinny has a bit of stage fright.”

“But he’ll be fine at the Dog-Gone-Good, right?” Suddenly, I wanted Harvey to succeed, to do as well as he had in the past. The part of me that still loved Dave knew he had loved that stupid dog, and had invested a lot in his success.

“Yeah, I’m sure he will.” But Matt didn’t sound so confident. “Vinny’ll get over his little problem between now and Tuesday.”

“Little problem?”

“He, ah, breaks out in hives whenever he has to get near a stage. He had a bad experience with Rin Tin Tin the second six months ago and ever since then, he gets a little nervous.”

“A little?”

“Okay, a lot. And the hives are…well, they’re more like facial explosions. The makeup artist on
Letterman
had to use a paint sprayer to cover them.”

That sounded like a lot more than a small problem. I fiddled with my silverware, aligning it, one bottom edge perfectly against the other. “Can’t you do it?”

Matt shook his head. “Harvey’s particular about who he listens to. Apparently I’m not on his friends-and-family list.”

“But he likes you so much.”

“Harvey likes everyone. He doesn’t obey everyone, though. He’s a star, so he tends to be temperamental.”

I slid a piece of ice into my mouth and toyed with it, before crunching the cube and swallowing. My dentist would have been appalled, but I figured if the worst thing I did right now was start chewing ice, then I’d take the tsk-tsk from Dr. Diehl.

Harvey had awakened and slid under the table, then up onto the vinyl seat beside me. He wagged his tail, prancing on the seat and watching me expectantly, probably thinking I had a few Beggin’ Strips in my purse. “Sit, Harvey,” I said. He did, tamping his enthusiasm a bit.

“Have
you
tried working with him?” Matt asked.

“Me? No, no. Not at all.”

“He likes you.” Matt gestured toward the dog with his fork. “And he seems to behave for you, too.”

I thought of the car ride and how Harvey had tapped out his age, or at least what I presumed was his age. How he’d sat when I’d told him to, stayed when I asked him to. Not to mention that whole thing with waving hello.
Was
he listening to me? “Are you suggesting what I think you are?”

Matt grinned, the kind of smile that normally would have had me thinking he liked me, that there was something more than a conversation about a dog going on here. “Only if you’re considering it.”

“No. No, no,
no.
I will not go onstage with the dog.”

“It’s an easy job. Harvey does all the work.”

At that, Harvey let out a yip of agreement, then did his turnaround dance on the seat.

I hadn’t driven all this way to end up onstage with a dog I didn’t even want. I was here for answers, not my shot—or rather Harvey’s shot—at fifteen minutes of fame. “I’m an accountant, for God’s sake.”

Matt grinned. “All the more reason to step out of your comfort zone.”

I dug in my purse, found a few ones and threw them at the table, then rose. “You don’t understand. This entire trip has
been out of my comfort zone. My marriage, it turns out, wasn’t even on the same
planet
as my comfort zone. I’m not taking that dog onto a stage or in front of a camera or anywhere else for that matter. You’re his agent, you deal with him.”

Then I turned and walked out of the diner, leaving Harvey the Wonder Dog, and his wonder agent, behind. I’d done half of what I came here to do.

The easy half, my mind whispered. Dealing with Annie—and who she was or wasn’t—was going to be a lot harder than leaving a dog in a diner.

“There you are!” Susan exclaimed, coming up to me the second I hit the sidewalk. She was trailed by a man about five years younger than she, who was all puppy-dog eyes and clear infatuation with the statuesque, busty blonde. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”

“And I was on my way to find you. We need to—”

Before I could say “go home,” Susan grabbed my arm, her eyes bright with excitement, and dropped a bombshell in my lap. “I found Annie,” Susan said. “And you’ll never believe what I learned about her.”