Danger, Sweetheart (7 page)

Blake, suspecting nothing, arrived five minutes early. Used to the teeming masses of the greater Las Vegas area, he had overestimated the time to traverse from UR A Sweetheart! (God, that exclamation point unnerved him) to the (why?
why?
) Dipsy Diner.

He had parked the Supertruck at one end of the neatly kept downtown area and, as he walked the streets, he began to get an inkling of what had so disturbed his mother.

Everything was dead, or dying.

Not the few people he saw; they were lively enough, if quiet, keeping their distance and watching him pass with wide-eyed curiosity.
Small towns,
he told himself, surprised he wasn't made uneasy by the scrutiny,
and strangers stand out. Is my mother a stranger to them? I think yes. I think she was even before she left the first time.

There were many
For Sale
signs on lawns. There were many Going Out of Business sales advertised in windows. The few cars and trucks parked on the streets were old, though neatly kept. He didn't see a single vehicle from the twenty-first century. That could have been a matter of personal preference but, as he took in obvious signs of a town sliding into the void, plus the lack of car dealerships, Blake doubted it.

His phone buzzed, alerting him to a text. He plucked it off his hip and read:
R U in town tonite? 3rd month-aversery of divorce let's fuck!

Jeanine! In Vegas and feeling sentimental; how charming. He wished she would have called instead; he found texting for sex (or to turn down sex) to be a little cold for his taste. He wasn't Rake, dammit. He wasn't a goddamned barbarian.

So sorry, out of town for a few days. Congratulations again. Your ex was a fool.

He hadn't had a chance to put his phone away when it buzzed again.
U R a sweetie!!!! Sorry to miss U LV not the same when U R not here!!!

He sighed; he loathed text-speak (another reason why he preferred the more personal touch behind a phone call). Was it so difficult to spell out words and use appropriate punctuation?

Sorry again. Hope to see your lovely face next time you are in town. Ciao, bella.

And that was that, and just in time, because here was the Dipsy Diner

(God!)

on the corner of Main Street

(there are main streets literally named Main Street? outside of nineteenth- and twentieth-century American fiction?)

and Elm, across from a Realtor's office and beside a drugstore with a
For Sale
sign in the windows on either side of the door. He stepped inside, rolling his eyes at the cheery
ka-jang jang!
of the bell hanging directly over his head

(like a scythe, one that sounds cheerful as it separates your head from your spinal cord)

and spotted his mother, seated in her favorite location: a booth equidistant from the kitchen and the restrooms. She nodded and waved him over and, as he couldn't see a weapon, he crossed the room to her.

“Mother.”

“Blake.” She shook her head at him but found a smile. “We've had this talk every year since you were three.”

“Right, too formal. Mom? Mommy. Mama. Madre.
Mère?
” He could remember explaining to his mother on his third birthday that only babies used “Mommy” or “Mama,” while Rake laughed and laughed in the background. Now Blake only used “Mother” ironically, except when he honestly forgot.

Distracting her with multiple languages would work, but not for long. But here came the waitress with menus and their water. Excellent; his mother would never eviscerate him in front of a witness. Blake thanked the waitress and gave himself over to the luxury of enjoying a water glass his brother wouldn't steal and drain in three noisy gulps. Meanwhile, the waitress, who was likely sixteen due to employment laws but looked a harried twelve, was bending an attentive ear to Shannah Tarbell.

“Multitask, dear,” she was suggesting, accepting the menus. “You have to go back to the kitchen anyway, so grab dirty plates on your way. You've got to refill drinks for another customer; ask the new customers if they want drinks right away, since you'll be over there anyway.”

“Oh! That's … yeah. D'you want drinks? I mean besides water?”

“Mom, you're not in charge of her training. Leave her be.” He didn't even have to look to know he was getting The Glare.
I have literally faced death and walked away unmoved. And yet I'm terrified of my mother, a petite woman in her fifties I'm almost certain I could take in a fight. If I had any sort of a life, this would probably bother me.

“Milk, please,” his dictator-for-life mother was saying, “and more ice water.”

“Okay. Yeah. Those are good.…” The small brunette flapped a hand at the tables behind and around them, over half of which were empty. “Thanks for being nice about it. I'm just…”

“New, yes. You'll get it.”

“Hope not,” she muttered, already heading back for drinks. “Want
out
of this town.”

Shannah sighed. “You and several others.” Her gaze settled back on Blake. “Which brings me to the subject of this meeting.”

“I'm impressed you waited this long, Mom,” Blake said. “Such restraint!”

“My first and last favor to you this evening.”

He smiled at her fondly disgruntled tone. “Shall I take that to mean you'll decline to pick up the check?”

A stifled
hmph
was his reply; then she leaned forward to catch his gaze.
Like a cobra hypnotizing a sparrow,
he thought. “You get a chance to look around Sweetheart?”

“Yes.”

“Not a lot going on?”

“That was my impression, yes.”
Minefield. This entire conversation is a goddamned minefield.

“This restaurant is a prime example of what's gone wrong here.”

“They don't recycle?” His hip buzzed; he ignored it.

Here came the scowl: “I'm serious, Son. What have you seen?”

“Mom, please. I've been in town less than a day, and in this establishment less than three minutes, and—” His phone buzzed again; he ignored it.

“And talked about tea for most of it, yes, but you don't fool me, boy, and you never have. You— Why don't you take that?”

“It's fine, Mom. Here, I'll shut it off.”

She shook her head. “Not necessary. And it might be your brother.”

He shuddered. “Then I'll definitely shut it off.”

“Forget it. Listen, I know you see it and if you don't—for God's sake.”

He pulled his phone, glanced at the text.
Conference over; don't have to head back till tomorrow, dinner?
Kelly. Her skills as a veterinarian had creative applications in the bedroom, something he thought he would never know, much less appreciate.
Alas.

“Er—” He indicated the phone. “May I?”

“Politely turn down one of your random lovers for sex? Yes.”

“It could have been work related,” he replied, stung.

“It never is with you, sweetie. And I thought you put a stop to the texting.”

“Unfortunately, if they have my phone number they also have the ability to text. I told them my preference, but it's not for me to dictate the terms of their communication.”
Lovely to hear from you, but so sorry, I'm out of town for a few days. A pure crime; no one with legs like yours should have to wait for anything or anyone.
Send. Shut off. Put away. “You were saying?”

“I was saying you should pull your head out of Edward the Third's bio and really look around this town.”

“I left Edward the
Fourth's
biography in my Supertruck,” he mumbled.

“Your what? Never mind; we've got to stay on track. Surely you've noticed that it's six o'clock on a Friday night and there aren't more than a dozen people in the only restaurant still open on Main.”

“I
had
noticed that,” he admitted.

“Which is why what you did was such an unholy disaster.”

“Let's be clear. I paid off mortgages so you had less on your plate. I did not kill a chicken, make a pentagram with its blood, then try to call up the Beast. Not that I would, even if I could. The Beast is also my brother, because Rake is terrible.” His took a gulp from his water glass, already annoyed and rattled beyond belief. “But please continue explaining the unholy disaster I brought about through love of my mother. Specifics, please.”

She rolled her eyes. “God, the guilt. All right. Specifically, these people don't need money; they need their property. Specifically, duh. Right? Is that what the kids say?”

“I have no idea.”

“Why would I have called you if money was the solution? You boys have always been generous; you could have challenged the trust anytime after you turned eighteen, then twenty-one, then twenty-five, but you never did.”

“And never would. You deserved every penny, then and now.” A rare moment of agreement between the twins. Of course their mother should keep enjoying their inheritance, even after the twins were of age. It hadn't been a matter for debate.

“You're nearly thirty and could have fought to exclude me—I'm only a Tarbell by shotgun marriage—but you never did.” Her tone softened and she reached across the table to touch his hand. “For which I was, am, will be grateful, always. But for God's sake, boy, did it never occur to either of you that if I'd wanted that solution I would have paid them off myself?”

“It did,” he acknowledged, giving her fingers a slight squeeze before she withdrew her hand. “But Rake reminded me, because he is awful, that your stubborn streak, which mercifully passed me by, was likely to prevent you from throwing in the towel, as they say. Isn't that what the kids say? Always remember, Mom: Rake is terrible and should have been destroyed long ago. In a way, this is entirely his fault.” Blake was vague on the details but remained convinced.

“Spare the shit.” Blake blinked; his mother rarely indulged in epithets. “Listen: Money won't fix this. The bank doesn't need it and the townspeople won't take anything perceived as charity. Some of the families have been here longer than North Dakota has been a state.”

“It's been a state less than one hundred thirty years. That's, what? Three generations?” In Las Vegas terms, an eternity. In Roman terms, a sneeze.

His mother chose to ignore math. “Some of them would literally rather die than give up their land, d'you understand? You've got no idea the things they've done to hold off foreclosure. The sacrifices they made because to them it was worth it; they knew it was to secure their children's future.”

Blake was beginning to see the problem and didn't like any of it: the actual problem and his part in the actual problem, which made another problem, which was a hideous offshoot of the original problem.

“You giving money to the bank holding their lien literally made their worst nightmare come true.”

Mother never confuses “literally” and “figuratively”;
ergo,
I really have made nightmares come true. What will be required? Amends? Likely. But what sort? An offer of a cashier's check will not be welcome. What can I give her—and Sweetheart—that would signify remorse, and also help? And why am I pondering? She'll have a solution; she always does. She wouldn't have summoned me if she didn't have this figured out. So now I am terrified.

“Three generations would be considered ‘new guy in town' by anyone on the other side of the planet.”

She groaned and rubbed her temples. “No ‘Europe is ancient and wondrous and America is as a truck-stop restroom in comparison' crap, please.”

“But when one puts the Sweetheart dilemma against radiometric dating, it's not long, and there are lots of places to live. I drove through several in my Supertruck.”

“Your what?”

He ignored the dumbfounded query. “If this particular patch of planet Earth is no longer habitable, for whatever reason, they can find another one.” Blake, native of a city of transients, had never understood the emotional response some people had to specific pieces of land. “It's not a matter of sentiment; it's a matter of logistics. Land is the one thing the planet will never make more of, so all parts are equally precious. So what does it matter? You always told us that home is where you hang your hat.”

His mother was staring at him and Blake braced himself for angry hair ruffling, finger-pointing, shouting, or perhaps a gentle punch to his solar plexus. But she didn't speak, didn't move, and long seconds passed before she managed, “This is all my fault.”

Ah, sweet relief! If she wouldn't blame Rake, who was awful, she would blame herself. Either way, he might make it out of this diner alive. Alas, relief fled as she finished her thought: “But you're still going to help me fix it.”

“How?”

His mother showed her teeth in what most people would assume was a smile. “Thought you'd never ask.”

 

Eight

“No.”

“Blake.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Blake!”

“I refuse.” He was iron; he would not be moved. “I will love and honor you as my mother for my lifetime, but I draw the line here. No.”

“Blake.” His mother was steel, an alloy of iron and carbon. “You have to do this.”

“Untrue.” Iron, dammit!

“You
will
do this.”
Argh, steel. Superior tensile strength.

Still, he hung in. “Inaccurate.”

“Blake, I will activate the nuclear option.”

His brain actually went off-line for a second as it contemplated the horror. “… you can't mean that.”

“Without hesitation. I'll turn that key and you'll have to live with the fallout.”