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Mert’s goodbye hug did
wonders for my mood. At least I still had one friend left in this world. Okay, scratch that. Two friends. Gracie gave me a soulful look and a big slurpy kiss. But I suspect part of her affection was relief that Mr. Gibbes was leaving with Mert.

I let my dog out, gave her a treat, and checked MapQuest. My hand was on the front door knob when I heard a sharp rap.

“Ben! What a surprise.”

I moved aside to let him in, but the motion caused a sharp gasp of pain.

Yes, well, he was more shocked than I. His jaw dropped. “What happened to you?”

“I had an accident on my bike.” It was the truth, wasn’t it?

“But good grief, Kiki, did you go to the hospital? Come on. I’ll take you.” He gingerly grabbed my elbow. “Are you okay?”

I pulled away. “I’m fine.” I had to admit, he was really upset. I thought back to all the weeks he’d been by my bed when I was recovering from my last entanglement with a criminal. He’d been the most patient of visitors. He showed up regularly with bouquets of mixed flowers and books on tape. He’d brought me fast food and Godiva chocolates.

And now I was lying to him.

“Believe me, Ben, I’m okay.”

“If you’re sure. I’d be happy to drive you. I only want a moment of your time,” he said.

I didn’t have much to spare. Still, I could read the misery on his face. “I’ve got a few minutes. But I’ll have to hurry or I’ll be late.” I led him into my living room. I eased myself down onto a wingback chair that Sheila had brought over last week. It was covered in a heavy floral tapestry, far too fussy for my taste, but she’d pressed it on me. I had needed another chair. Right now I was happy this one was hard so I didn’t sink down.

He stood, leaning against my front door, his hands deep in his jacket pockets. “This won’t take long. Kiki, I’ve never been very clear with you about my intentions. I’ve sort of been spoiled. I don’t know how to put this, but usually women chase me.”

I laughed. “No doubt.” He was a really, really good-looking man.

“I’m more accustomed to avoiding them, than … being the person who gets …”

“Avoided? Is that what it seems like?” A part of me wanted to explain. Another part, thankfully, knew I needed to shut up.

“Yes. Maybe.” His laugh was hoarse. “I’m not sure. So I thought maybe if I was upfront with you, you’d understand where I’m heading with all this.”

Heading with all this? Huh? I was lost. Of course, I was also on Bextra and feeling fine.

“Look, I’m going about this all wrong,” said Ben. “I’d intended to take you out and have a romantic dinner. Maybe ply you with nice wine. Kiki, I’d like to marry you.”

Punch me in the gut. Oh, doggies, I had no idea this was coming. I must have looked horrified because the words gushed out of Ben.

“You don’t have to tell me ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ I had to let you know I’m serious. I didn’t want you to think I wasn’t. We have plenty of time. And I’m not pushing you. I wanted you to know. Those are my plans. I’m crazy about you.” He ran his hand through his hair and blushed.

I have to admit he was the most adorable man I’d ever seen. Suddenly, my hormones did a happy dance. In fact, they were doing a jig.

He kept on talking, almost as though he couldn’t shut up. “Sounds pretty juvenile, I know. That part about being crazy about you. I mean, it’s like something you’d say in high school. I guess. Kind of. But there it is.” He spread his hands wide.

“Uh, wow.” That was the best I could do. I had no idea what to say next. I’d never been proposed to. I mean, I thought it was a proposal. I wasn’t exactly sure how to check. It was awful nice to be asked. Even at this late date. After learning I was pregnant, my late husband George had simply said, “I guess we’d better get married.” That was it.

And now this. I was thirty-three years old. Nearly thirty-four. Widowed. Mother of a preteen daughter overwrought with emotions, occasional acne, and smart comments. Did this man have any idea what he was letting himself in for? Surely he jested. He must be drunk or dumb or … in love? With me?

It didn’t seem possible.

Me?

He wanted to marry me?

Nobody married me unless they had to.

But here he was. And I wasn’t pregnant.

“Like I said. I don’t expect an answer. I mean, I don’t have a ring for you. Not yet. I have some ideas. I think I know what you like. I figure I might have to speak to Anya, too. I know you’re a package deal. That’s fine. She’s a sweet kid.”

A sweet kid? Was he high? She was nearly as tall as I, and on the brink of young womanhood.

But he kept on going, “So, maybe I should check with Anya? And we could let her be involved. I mean, whatever you think. And I’m willing to wait. I’m not saying you have to make a decision right away. Or even soon. Not soon. Not soon at all.” The poor man was stammering.

I simply sat there on the wingback chair like one of those gaudy yard gnomes. I was flash-frozen with shock. I could have been wearing one of those pointy red hats. I mean, after this, nothing would shock me ever again.

“I know you have to take off. You have a previous engagement.”

How incredibly phony that sounded when he said it. Had it sounded that fake when I’d used it on him? I groaned.

Ben said, “If I could talk you out of where you’re going,” and suddenly he noticed my clothes. He squinted. “New look for you, right? Are you thinking of becoming an Orthodox Jew? Like trying it on? Converting to Reform is a stroll through the temple compared to that. I mean keeping kosher is practically a full time job. But if that’s what you want, we can talk about it.”

His eyes were big as Hanukkah gold coins as he mumbled, “I guess we need to find a rabbi to perform the conversion. This is going to be really intense.”

For a really smart man, it was a pretty weird thing to say. I could barely manage one set of dishes let alone two. The thought of learning how to keep kosher completed boggled my mind.

But hey, it had been that kind of day.

Mert’s candy-apple-red Chevy S10
pickup looked right at home as I pulled up next to an older and bigger version of the same vehicle with a gun rack mounted across the back window. If the shifter had been on the floor instead of the column, I would have stayed stuck in drive. Every part of my body was stiffening up. I climbed out as slowly as an octogenarian walks on glare ice. The Bextra had kept the pain at bay, but my muscles were crying foul, tightening up and making moving difficult.

I shoved my hands deep into the pockets of my hoodie to keep myself from shaking. I found a piece of gum in the bottom of my purse and stuck it in my mouth. Chewing like an antsy teenager seemed preferable to hearing my teeth chatter. Danger, Will Robinson. It was all around me. I had to get this wrapped up, and soon.

Assuming I made it back alive.

Gartner’s party was up in Roma, the methane capital of the world, which was nearer to Mark Twain’s fabled home, Hannibal, than to St. Louis. One thing you gotta give Roma: lots of kids there sign up for chemistry. The local fire department spends most of their time hosing down idiots whose makeshift labs cause their double-wides to blow up. And forget trying to buy Sudafed if you’ve got a cold. A new law in Missouri made that illegal without signing in with your pharmacist after we’d achieved the dubious honor of being number one in the nation for methamphetamine production.

I could tell I was straying from civilization as we know it by the billboards. On one a baby stared at me in surprise as he floated over the slogan: Is it yours? Call 1-800-DNA-SURE. Another promised dentures the same day for $99. A place called Chubby’s advertised BIG burgers.

The music drifted over a well-lit house backing up to a field of corn stubble as I picked my way through the tire ruts in what was the Gartner family’s side yard.

A growling sound and the rattling of cyclone fencing startled me. I froze, peered around another pickup truck and saw two pit bulls hurling themselves at a six-foot-high silver screen around a concrete run. The broad chests on the dogs rippled with muscles. Their tiny pig eyes gleamed at me malevolently. I decided on an alternate route around and behind more parked trucks. The best part of coming late to the Gartner’s Sunday night get-together was that with any luck no one could block my way out.

My pupils adjusted to the dark, and I found myself in the midst of what seemed like any other friendly gathering. Three smiling women in aprons removed burgers and hotdogs from open kettle drums filled with burning coals. Kids and adults lined up like ants feeding on bread crumbs. Picnic tables covered with oilcloth bent under the weight of dishes of potato salad, brownies, Jell-O molds, baked beans, three bean salad, sliced tomatoes, pasta salad, seven-layer salad, and sheet cakes. My mouth was watering when an electronic tap-tap-tap drew my attention to a raised platform with a mike on a stand. Twin girls with full, juvenile faces and dressed in blue jeans and ruffled floral blouses were standing side by side, each holding a mike and staring out onto the crowd. Their hair skinned back, pulled into fat Heidi-type braids.

A man stepped out of the shadows. His burr haircut thinned as it moved away from his forehead. He waved toward the waiting pair. “These here girls don’t need no introduction. They’ve come all the way from a recording studio in Wisconsin. What we need is to get their message into every schoolyard in the USA. If there ever was a reason to keep them black people and Jews from raping our women folk, it’s standing here afore you. Welcome Tammy and Pammy!”

Only he didn’t call them “black people.” He used the n-word.

Raping their womenfolk? I did a slow panorama view of my surroundings. I stood in the midst of women who’d been rode hard and put away wet. A second glance told me that these ladies fell into two camps—conservatively dressed like me and come-on queens wearing too-short shorts and too-low tops that displayed grubby-looking bras. Most of the flashy females sported the kind of tattoos done at home with an ink pen and a sewing needle. For the life of me, I couldn’t imagine any man I’d ever met wanting to exchange body fluids with one of these, um, ladies.

But then, I could be wrong.

The men were all buff and manly men with the exception of the half of the group I thought of as Dunlaps, their bellies done lapped over their belts. It was a veritable butt-crack love-in with jeans hanging off hairy, pale cheeks. Somehow most of those fellows had managed to waylay the laws of gravity—at least temporarily.

The girls counted out loud and started, their young voices sweet and pure. The vocals rose and mingled with moths dancing in the illumination of the high-wattage security lights. I noticed the fencing behind the girls was rimmed with barbed wire.

On a hunch, I threaded my way through the crowd, pausing along my way, closing in on the guy who’d done the announcing. A word or two of the girls’ song broke my concentration. As best I could figure, the tune was a plea that “Daddy keep me safe and Daddy keep me pure” from, well, I can’t even repeat the rest.

“Mr. Gartner?” I flashed my press pass. “A real honor to meet you, sir.” My guts turned to liquid. Suddenly, the import of my visit hit me squarely. I was alone, in the dark, among people who’d turn very ugly if they knew my purpose.

“I’m so nervous,” I confessed to him, ducking and blinking. “I’ve never interviewed anyone as powerful as you before.”

That much at least was true. I flashed Gartner senior my most winsome smile and quickly slipped my press pass into my skirt pocket. Four or five brawny men encircled me. A pair of hands yanked at my notebook. Fortunately, I’d locked my purse and my current driver’s license in the truck’s glove compartment or I’d have been roasted right along with the other weenies.

“It’s okay. I tole her to come. She’s giving me an interview.” Gartner gestured over the crowd and emitted an earpiercing whistle. He leaned close to my ear. A fetid puff of beer and garlic engulfed me and I tried not to wince as I followed the direction of his pointed finger. “That’s my boy, Danny.”

A hand gripped my shoulder. It was a squeeze calculated to hurt a little, but with my recent bike wreck, it caused a tidal wave of pain to rip through my upper arm. I gulped and tried not to let my discomfort show. A bodyguard steered me onto a patio, up a short flight of concrete stairs, and into a spotless kitchen, dispatching me inside with a rough shove. Danny came in and slammed the door behind him. “So you’re the media? Little squirt of a thing, ain’t you? Let me get you a beer,” said the newcomer as he rubbed his gut. “You know, one of my friends told me that if my belly was on a woman, she’d be pregnant. I told him it was, and she is!”

How quaint.

I managed what I hoped looked like a shy smile. Danny Gartner dipped into a cooler and cracked a Bud and shoved it my way. His father fished one out for himself. I raised the can and saluted two men each a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier than I. I wasn’t sure about mixing beer and Bextra, but I figured it was better to take my chances with the interaction between pharmaceuticals and alcohol, than between fists and my face. I lifted my can right along as they toasted “Love Our Race” and took a long drink. I nodded and smiled what I hoped was a simpleton’s grin. The fizzy bubbles hit me hard. And I needed it.

I was surrounded by the sort of animals who thought my daughter had no right to live.