High-Caliber Concealer (13 page)

The grocery store was not quite as she
remembered it. There had obviously been renovations. Just not very
good ones. The cement floor still bore the scars of the previous
aisle locations and Nikki wasn’t sure if sky-blue paint counted as
an improvement if you could still see the butter yellow in patches
on the ceiling. Nikki pushed the ancient cart down an aisle,
pondering if LA had really made her that snobby or if this grocery
store really was that bad.

The cart’s left front wheel didn’t quite
touch the ground and it made an annoying clicking noise as it swung
freely to and fro. Then periodically it would touch down in a
direction perpendicular to all the other wheels and bring the cart
to a shuddering halt. Nikki was standing in the produce aisle
staring at wilting lettuce and some sad, sad apples when she heard
someone calling her name.

“Nicole, Nicole, Nikki, Nikki,
hola
!”

“Hola
, Donny.”

“You came! You said you couldn’t make
it.”

“Last minute change of plans at work,” said
Nikki, smiling.

“Good. Because thank God there’s someone
normal here,” said Donny, engulfing her in a hug, his words
tumbling over themselves. “This place isn’t right, right? We’re
surrounded by ten million farms and they’ve the most disgusting
produce I’ve ever seen. And I’m considering driving into Spokane
just to get a decent cup of coffee. God, I need a coffee.”

“Are you sure, Donny? You kind of seem like
you’ve had some already.” Nikki disentangled herself from Donny’s
hug.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ve been drinking the diner
coffee with my dad. I’m pretty sure it’s Folger’s made with one of
the owner’s old gym socks for a filter, but the waitress said it
was decaf.”

“I don’t think it was decaf.”

“I don’t think it was decaf either,” agreed
Donny, nodding vehemently, “but we had like four cups before I
noticed. You know the weird thing, though? My dad is not even
twitching. I’m not wrong though, am I? This place is messed
up.”

“The produce aisle is not inspiring.”

“It wasn’t this bad when we were kids, was
it? I don’t think it was. Did we all just grow our own vegetables?
Why are you dressed like you’re going to play tennis with the Great
Gatsby?”

“It’s a photography project for my
grandma.”

“Yeah? I’ve been trying to remember where we
bought veggies before. I think we went to the farm stand out on
River Road.”

“That might have been what we did. I really
don’t remember. Are you staying out with your folks?”

“Yeah, but never mind that. I’m glad you’re
here. I think something weird is going down. I’m going to call the
LT and see what kind of jurisdiction I have here.”

“Yeah, I had a weird incident last night,”
said Nikki, as Donny’s phone buzzed.

“Crap, it’s my Dad. He’s already checked
out. We should talk, but not here. We’re doing a Fernandez Fiesta
on Friday. You should come. We’ll talk then.”

“Oh, my God, look who it is. Little Nikki
Lanier. Our resident celebrity. Or are you just our resident
celebrity-kisser?” Nikki pivoted to see who was throwing down such
passive-aggressive attitude this early in the day.

“Ugh. Kristine Pims. I gotta go.”

“Chicken,” muttered Nikki.

“Fuck yeah,” he agreed, but without moving.
He appeared mesmerized by Kristine’s rather bountiful bosom that
bounced gently as she walked toward them.

“Hi, Kristine,” said Nikki. Kristine had
been a soft, blonde fifth grader with a bullying streak and a pout
when Nikki had known her. It appeared that fifteen years had only
added a little height and weight. Well, to be honest, it was a lot
of weight. Although, apparently the weight had been distributed
correctly for Donny’s tastes. “I hear you barely made it into town
before causing trouble,” said Kristine archly. “Being a
troublemaker must be in the blood.”

“Uh, yeah, whatever” said Nikki. “Donny,
I’ll talk to you later?”

“Sure, sure,” said Donny, trying to edge
away. “You’re at your grandma’s, right? I’ll call you.”

“Why are you dressed like a 1940s tramp?”
demanded Kristine.

“It’s 1920s,” said Donny.

“Statement stands, no matter the decade,”
said Kristine smugly.

“You think it’s trampy?” asked Nikki,
glancing down at her outfit as if seeing it for the first time.
“Hmm. Well, I guess some of us aren’t embarrassed of our bodies.”
Then she tilted her head and stared at Kristine with a fake
smile.

“Well!” said Kristine, huffing out a large
breath.

“So nice to have seen you again, Kristine.
Don’t let us keep you.” Nikki pulled her cart back, ostensibly to
make room for Kristine. Unable to think of a retort, Kristine
simply looked furious and pushed by, clanking into Nikki’s cart
with unnecessary force.

“Bitchcakes!” said Donny. “Get yer hot
bitchcakes! Served fresh, right here.”

“I shouldn’t have gone with the body
comment,” said Nikki regretfully. “It was a cheap shot, but it was
the fastest way to make her leave.”

“She earned it,” said Donny, and Nikki
wrinkled her nose in disagreement—no one earned having their body
shamed in public. “I’ve run into her a couple of times since being
back in town. Huge chip on her shoulder.” His phone began to ring.
“Anyway, I’ll call you later. Gotta go.”

“Too much coffee,” Nikki muttered to herself
as he jogged toward the front of the store.

Nikki loaded her groceries into the back of
the car, having turned down the perfunctory offer of help from the
bag boy who looked too young to be that soulless, and tried to
decide what to do about dinner. She’d bought stuff, but she wasn’t
sure any of it made a dinner. She knew they were going to get back
to the house and Peg would take one look and say, “Should have made
a list.”

She shut the hatch-back of the SUV and
turned to wheel the cart over to the cart corral. Of course, it
didn’t want to go in the corral and tried to make an unpredictable
left turn at the last second. Nikki kicked the cart to correct its
trajectory and then instantly regretted it as she felt every metal
slat through her Keds and heard the protest of the ancient seams on
her shorts. Apparently 1930s ladies didn’t kick things.

She was turning back to the car when she saw
Ylina, the girl from the Kessel Run, exiting the grocery store. She
had changed into jean shorts and a T-shirt, but it was definitely
her. She looked furtively both ways and began to cross the parking
lot.

Nikki jogged over. “Hey, Ylina! It’s Nikki -
from the Kessel Run.”

“Yeah, I remember,” said Ylina, but without
stopping.

“I wanted to make sure you were OK. You
seemed pretty freaked last night.”

“I’m fine,” said Ylina, still walking. Nikki
jogged a little to keep up.

“Hey, I think you should know. The Carhartt
dude—Milt? I saw him last night. I don’t think he went to
jail.”

Ylina laughed once, abruptly and bitterly.
“Like he was ever going to jail.”

“OK, but look, if he told the sheriff you
stole his car, then you could be in trouble. You need to ditch the
car ASAP.”

Ylina finally stopped walking and stared at
Nikki as if she had sprouted horns. “What?”

“And you probably ought to detail it, have
it wiped down for fingerprints. I mean, that’s probably overkill,
but the sheriff seemed like kind of a dick, so better safe than
sorry.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The car. You drove Milt’s car away from the
Kessel Run. If you still have it, you need to ditch it.” Nikki
scanned the parking lot, but didn’t see the boring blue four-door.
“Just clean it up and leave it in a parking lot somewhere with the
keys in it. If there’s no evidence you had possession of the car
then the sheriff has nothing on you.”

“The sheriff always has something on me,”
snapped Ylina. “He’s got something on every illegal in town. Look,
Daisy Buchanan, I know you think you’re helping, but you’re not.
Just leave me alone.”

Nikki glanced at Ylina’s shopping bag.
Apples, protein bars, snack packs of fig newtons, and a couple of
bottles of water. “Nice collection of snack food,” she said. “If
someone didn’t know better, they might think you were preparing for
a road trip.”

“Yeah, well, someone should mind her own
business,” snapped Ylina.

“Ylina, I really can help,” said Nikki, she
reached in her purse and pulled out a business card. “Whatever it
is you’re up against, I can help.”

“Carrie Mae Foundation? What—you’re going to
save me through better blush?”

“We don’t just do make-up,” said Nikki. “Or
do you think that what I did to Milt and Pedro was dumb luck?”

“You don’t get it.” For a moment, Ylina’s
face softened, and then she looked around the parking lot, and
shook her head. “Leave me alone,” she hissed, before turning and
running towards the far side of the parking lot, and crossing the
street, walking quickly without a backward glance.

“You sure have a way with people,” said
Kristine, her cart rattling across the pavement. “Maybe you should
teach a class about how to win friends.” Then she laughed at her
own joke.

Nikki was suddenly very aware of the hot
asphalt burning her feet through her shoes and the brutal sun
beating down on her overly white skin. She wasn’t wearing enough
sunscreen for this. She felt impatient, angry, and above all
hot.

“Kristine!” Several mean thoughts crossed
her mind, but she counted to ten. “Go get a life!” She finished on
the least offensive thing that had percolated to the top and
stomped off toward the car.

Nikki pulled up in front of the Curl Me
Crazy and waved dutifully at Leona who was standing in the doorway
with a cigarette in one hand. Leona fished a lighter out of the
wide expanse of her cleavage and sauntered over to the car.

“Well, don’t you look like the perfect Clara
Bow? What a fun project for you and Peg. I was telling her you
should turn it into a calendar when you’re all done.”

“Oh, God, I hope not,” Nikki blurted out. “I
mean, I’m not sure I really want to hang on people’s walls,” she
added. Leona laughed.

“I don’t know. I think I’d get a kick out of
it.”

“Different strokes for different folks,”
said Nikki.

“True. Your grams will be out in a minute.
She was going to go to the restroom, but I think she may have been
waylaid by Amanda Harrison.”

“Oh,” said Nikki, and turned off the car. No
sense in killing the polar bears with car exhaust. Peg wouldn’t be
out for another ten minutes. “How are the corgis?” Amanda Harrison
carried corgi pictures the way other people carried photos of their
grandkids.

“Rex is in a feud with the mailman. Alfie is
having bladder surgery on Tuesday. And Sofia isn’t doing well with
the heat.”

“It has been quite warm,” said Nikki.

“Well, being dressed in a sweater, a hat,
and three inches of fur probably isn’t helping any,” said Leona.
“Say, what’s going on with you and that rock star? I bought his
album after that picture in the Daily Star. It’s pretty good. Are
those really his abs? They didn’t Photoshop them or anything, did
they?”

“Uh…” said Nikki, mentally cursing her
grandmother. No one else in America knew Kit Masters. Her teeny
little indiscretion should have remained safely on the other side
of the Atlantic, but one Canadian tabloid runs a picture and
suddenly everyone knows? Leave it to Peg to point it out to
everyone in town.

Peg swung open the door and came bustling
out. “Step on it, kiddo! Before Amanda gets her second wind. See
ya, Leona. Thanks for the ‘do!”

Leona waved affably and stepped away from
the car as Peg climbed in. Nikki turned the car back on and pulled
away, happy to escape.

“Grandma,” she said when they were finally
on the road out of town. “Have you told a lot of people about that
picture in the Daily Star?”

“Didn’t have to,” said Peg. “You remember
Kristine Pims? Her father, Bill, owns the auto-body shop, and she
does all the ordering for the shop. So she pointed it out to
everyone.”

“Wait, what? What does ordering for the
auto-body shop have to do with anything?”

“She stocks magazines and newspapers for the
lobby area,” said Peg. “Recognized you right off. Quite the outfit
you had going on there.”

“There were extenuating circumstances,” said
Nikki. “So how many people did she show it to?”

“Just Leona,” Nikki groaned. “But you know,
that’s exactly like telling lots of people.”

“So has everyone in town seen that picture?”
demanded Nikki.

“Well, I would guess that most people have.
Probably some of them don’t care, but it was a real interesting
topic of conversation there for awhile.”

Nikki groaned again. “If you didn’t want to
get talked about, you probably shouldn’t have gone around kissing
British rock stars,” said Peg.

“I don’t go around kissing British rock
stars! It was just Kit.”

“Uh-huh,” said Peg, looking unconvinced.

“It was New Year’s! Stuff had happened.”

“Sure, the extenuating circumstances,”
replied Peg.

“Yes, damn it. The circumstances
extenuated.”

“Gotcha. Well—pull over!” Peg’s hand shot
out, pointing at the truck in front of them. As Nikki watched, the
truck screeched to a halt and a cowboy swung out, his movements
smooth and fast, speed deriving from the economy of motion, and
snatched a shovel from the truck bed. Then he was sprinting toward
a small, spiral of smoke from the brush on the edge of the road.
Nikki was already pulling in behind the truck when she realized the
cowboy was Jackson.

“I’ve got water in the back. Go see if
there’s another shovel in his truck.”

Nikki ran for the truck as instructed, and
pulled out a rake, before running after Jackson. By the time she
got there, the fire had already spread from a thin, flickering
ghost of fire to a full-on blaze intent on devouring the scrubby
bushes that lined the road. Jackson was heaping dirt on the flames
and Nikki set to work pulling brush away from the path of the fire,
trying to deprive it of fuel. An entire clump of Scotch broom had
already gone up, its yellow flowers withering to black ash with an
acrid stench, but as Jackson heaped more dirt on the fire the
flames began to die down. Peg arrived and leaned in to dump an
entire gallon of water on the bush, then stepped back as Jackson
took a final shovel full of dirt and patted down the muddy mixture.
They stood silently, waiting for the flames to attempt a rebirth,
but nothing moved.