Shop Talk Page 29

  “Listen, Miss Hare, the federal government isn’t in the business of compensating victims of violence. That’s the policy.”

  Lucille stepped forward. “I’m a writer. A fiction writer. I’ve finished my first novel, Forbidden Words, about a cowboy-slash-poet named Slade Rivers.” Sudden inspiration struck and she went to the counter to find Driskell’s portable. “I just finished today. I’ll read you some, and you can decide whether or not the government should buy me a computer so I can write another.” She clicked the machine on.

  Before she could utter a sound, Bo shifted so he could talk to Roger without being overheard. “I urge you to find the money for a new computer for my sister. You don’t want to hear this story. You have my word on that.”

  Lucille started in. “This is the part where Slade and Annie Oaktree realize they’re destined for one another. I haven’t figured out where to work it in, but it’s too good to be left out.” Unaware that the members of WOMB were one by one slipping into the apartment kitchen, Lucille began to read.

  Slade’s lips moved up from the scar, sucking and caressing her wrist and finally the tender skin of her elbow. She tasted vaguely of macaroni and cheese, his favorite dish.

  “Enough!” Roger waved his hand as he edged toward the front door. “If the government won’t replace the computer, I’ll personally donate the cash.” He pulled open the door. “And now I must be off. I’ll send some men to collect Marvin. He won’t bother anyone ever again.” He held out his hand to Bo. “You’re a good man, Bo Hare. Perhaps a saint.”

  His grip was so strong that Bo tried to withdraw his hand. But Roger was pumping away at it. “A very good man.” He let go and hurried out the door into the darkness.

  “He sure had a grip for a man without fingers,” Bo said, looking down at his own hand. In the center of his palm, almost like a stigmata, was a wound. Several drops of blood welled up in it and began to drip.

  “That bastard!” Iris went to her husband and examined his hand. “Nothing a little peroxide won’t fix right up.”

  “And a tetanus shot.” Mona had peeped back in from the kitchen. “I know a lot about wounds, and a tetanus shot is always a practical thing.”

  “Right.” Iris agreed.

  “What about those sandwiches?” Lucille said. “Or do you want me to read some more of Forbidden Words?” “Food,” everyone chorused.

  “Half a sandwich would be plenty for me,” Coco said. “For some reason I’m not all that hungry.”

  “An-ge-la, you little miscreant. You let me up, and you fix me some broiled fish.” The rug muffled the words, but they were clear enough.

  “What about her?” Mona looked at the rug with distaste.

  “Mother?” Andromeda spoke the word like a curse. “I’m not going back home with her. Not ever.”

  “Nursing home?” Jazz suggested.

  “They wouldn’t have her.” Andromeda frowned.

  “She’s not physically impaired,” Jazz pointed out. “She could make out on her own.”

  Andromeda nodded, but the gesture was half-hearted. “She’ll die if she doesn’t have someone to mistreat. It’s her whole life. It’s what she lives for. And no matter what else she is, she’s my mother.”

  Iris went to the kitchen and returned with the luger. “Well, there is one solution.”

  “Iris, baby.” Bo started toward her, but she waved the gun around.

  “I don’t mean shoot her, Bo. Je-sus, you act like I’m some kind of old lady assassin.”

  Relief lifted Bo’s eyebrows momentarily, before wariness set in. “What’s your plan?”

  “Let her out of the rug.” Iris waved the gun in the general direction of Dallas, Mona and Jazz.

  Jazz flipped her blond hair over her shoulder in a perfect Iris imitation and bent to untie the knots.

  “I’ll thrash all of you.” The rug twisted furiously. “Just let me out of here. I’ll show you whippersnappers how to treat an elderly, retired person.”

  “Mrs. Colson, I have a German luger trained on your heart, and I’m a dead shot,” Iris said coolly. “If you don’t believe me, ask my husband. He’s seen me take out an entire civilization of roaches, and one nasty Peter Hare.”

  “Iris, that was bug spray,” Bo corrected.

  “At this range, a gun should be easier.”

  The rug subsided.

  “Now we’re going to let you up, and we’re going to give you a choice.”

  The ropes fell off the rug and Jazz unrolled it with her foot. Natalie Colson, her gray hair standing out about her head like a porcupine and her eyes as deadly as wasps, got to her feet. She turned immediately to Andromeda. “You sorry devil’s spawn. You’ll pay for this day’s work.”

  “Now, now,” Iris said, leveling the gun. “We have a proposal. You take Marvin Lovelace as your companion, and you let Andromeda go.”

  Natalie swung to face Iris. “A man?”

  “He’s close to your age, and you seem to have the same temperament.” Iris saw the look of appreciation in Bo’s eyes and she nodded. “I’d say a match made in heaven. Something for Lucille to write about.”

  “That’s perfect!” Lucille clapped her hands. “My next book, Silver Threads, a story of two despicable people who find love in their dotage and become nice. It’ll be a smash bestseller.”

  “That’s a terrifying thought,” Mona said under her breath.

  “Is it a deal?” Iris asked.

  “My very own man?” Natalie’s eyes had gone from deadly to calculating. “To do with as I please?”

  “Anything you want, as long as you keep him leashed,” Iris assured her.

  “I don’t like men very much,” Natalie said. “Not since that little worm Ebert Colson got me pregnant and ran out on me and left me with his brats …” She swung a glance at Andromeda.

  “Get Marvin from the back,” Iris directed Sonny and Driskell.

  “Hold it!” Andromeda motioned Iris to keep the gun on Natalie. “His brats?”

  “Yeah, his. He had the two of you before we married. The infant was too much trouble, so I put him up for adoption, but I kept you. You were old enough to train. And it gave me great satisfaction to keep you because Ebert had escaped.”

  Andromeda sank into a chair. “There is a God,” she said.

  Driskell led Marvin in by the handcuffs. The old man was very pink, but his blue eyes still snapped. “So, it’s going to be a public demise. I’ve always enjoyed a good execution.”

  “You could only wish,” Bo said. His voice held the tiniest inflection of pity.

  “Marvin, meet your new mate.” Mona used her booted foot to push him to Natalie.

  Natalie walked slowly around the old man. Her sharp eyes took in his musculature, his erect posture, and the cold, steel gray of his eyes. “Ah, yes,” she said softly. “Maybe not a man for all seasons, but one to warm the winter of my years.”

  The truth dawned in Marvin’s face. The arrogance and hauteur were replaced with fright. “What is she saying?”

  “Natalie’s in charge now,” Iris said, handing the luger to the older woman. “Her word is law.”

  “What about Roger? He wants me turned over to the feds.” Marvin clicked his teeth, but this time without thought or pleasure. “I belong to the federal government. I’m an extortionist, a murderer, a criminal at every level. I demand to be sent to federal prison.”

  Bo’s shoulders squared. “This is one time the taxpayer is going to win.” He punched Marvin lightly in the chest. “You aren’t going to be supported by my tax dollars. You’re going to do whatever Mrs. Colson tells you, and I certainly hope it’s hideous.” He nodded to Natalie. “Now it would be best if you left before Roger’s men come to collect him.”

  “Where shall I go?” Natalie’s question was more academic than concerned.

  “Try the Amazon, or perhaps Africa. There are still some matriarchal societies there which will understand this arrangement.” Jazz saw the strange looks cast her
way. “It was my area of interest in graduate school,” she explained.

  Reaching down to her shoe laces, Lucille pulled a velcro patch and produced a key. “And take the Camaro. It’s the last thing I own, and you can have it.” She looked at Driskell. “I’m starting a new life.”

  He nodded. “We spoke with Roger back at the site. The government is confiscating Dr. Custer’s ranch. They’ve made arrangements so that we’re going to buy it at auction. I’ll take care of the animals, and Lucille is going to write full time.”

  Lucille nodded. “They aren’t all cows, you know,” Lucille said happily, “but they’re close enough for me and Driskell.”

  As the writers watched Natalie herd Marvin out the door, Driskell turned to Bo. “What about the DNA test? Roger got the tissue sample. Are you going to check it out?”

  Bo thought a moment. At last he shook his head. “What difference does it make?”

  Driskell thought back to the story Lucille had told him about Bo as an infant, levitating in the baby bed. The truth would change nothing.

  THE END

  Pertinent Facts

  The characters in this book are all real people. The names have been changed in an effort to protect their innocent family members. Considering what happened, it is a truism that fiction is no match for the truth.

  As a result of the home video that Bo and Iris shot of Coco Frappés cleansing in their back yard, they won the $10,000 grand prize on World’s Funniest Videos. While accepting their award, they were brought to the attention of Steven J. Cannell, who hired them to star in their own television sitcom called, Shop Talk. When not in Hollywood filming, Bo continues to repair television sets while Iris is writing a screenplay based on a female kick boxer.

  Lucille Hare and Driskell LaMont were married in the front of the television shop. Concerned about the propensity of large heads in the Hare line, Driskell had a vasectomy. He also bought a small letter press and self-published her novel, Forbidden Words. Each weekend Driskell and Lucille traveled the blue highways of America, selling the small volume out of the trunk of the old Cadillac. The power of the love story about Slade Rivers, the cowboy-slash-poet and his cross-country cattle drive/search for love, spread by word of mouth until an editor with a big New York publisher heard the story, picked up a copy of the book and bought it for mass paperback release.

  The rest is history. Forbidden Words remained on the New York Times bestseller list longer than Bridges of Madison County. Rumor has it that a movie will be made starring Brad Pitt and Wynona Ryder. Expectations for Lucille’s second book, Silver Threads, and its topic of love in an older generation pushed the book to the top of the bestseller list even before it was released. Lucille, Driskell and the beefalos enjoy life in Saucier, Mississippi.

  Mona d’la Quirt took her research to Washington D.C. where she was hired by the Democratic Party to abuse their highest ranking officials. The theory of the party was that if Mona put her many talents to work flagellating and abusing the elected officials, it would cut down on their need for public debasement. The ploy proved effective, and the Republicans were routed. Mona is currently splitting her time between Washington and Biloxi, where she still keeps a tight rein on the members of WOMB.

  Jazz Dixon and Andromeda Ripley co-authored a book about aliens and the CIA which led to government reorganization of the intelligence branch. For several years the two writers were forced to live in Mexico, fearing that disgruntled federal agents would take their lives. But they have returned to the Mississippi Gulf Coast and are working together to produce a screenplay based on the history of Horn Island.

  Immediately after the beefalo factory roundup, Dallas Dior and Robert left Biloxi and went on a spirit search in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. During the two-year stay in a cave, Robert began to make jewelry. His unique use of natural stone and precious metals resulted in an invitation to appear on QVC. Shunning the limelight, Robert assumed the Dior name, and using her alias, Dallas began to sell the jewelry on the home shopping network. She is currently head of merchandising at QVC where she has single-handedly brought hats back into vogue. In recent months she has resumed working on Hot, Deep Pockets and continues to meet with WOMB.

  Coco Frappé, with the help of Sonny Zanzarro, published her cookbook De-Lush-ous to the delight of dessert chefs everywhere–and the vocal protests of The Moral Majority for “putting sex on the kitchen table.”

  The resulting scandal catapulted Coco into an international celebrity and the toast of Paris. Living the good life, Coco never forgot the man who gave her a boost to stardom–and the only substance she’d ever found more appealing than food. She and Sonny were married in Las Vegas where Coco fashioned a life-size figure of Elvis out of frozen peanut butter and bacon. The Zanzarros live in Biloxi today, and Coco is the host of a noontime cooking show on the local television station, Cookin’ with Coco. The show features Gulf Coast recipes, many containing “the juice of the gods,” bacon drippings.

  When he discovered that he had lost Marvin once again, Roger left the CIA and became a rogue agent. For several years he haunted Bo’s Electronics, hoping for a clue as to the whereabouts of Marvin Lovelace.

  Drs. Custer and Saxon were apprehended with the entire supply of Alpine Lager beer. No mention was ever made in the local newspaper, and the story went underground, much as the true history of Horn Island was buried until Jazz and Andromeda unearthed it for their movie.

  As for Marvin, the members of WOMB and Bo and Iris were sworn to secrecy. Andromeda receives notice once a year from Natalie that she and Marvin are still alive and doing well, by Natalie’s standards.

  No one ever mentioned to Roger the barren homestead in the middle of Death Valley, a place even the desert rattlesnakes avoided. Seen from the supply helicopter that drops goods once a quarter, the small adobe house is clean and orderly, and the elderly woman basking in the sun in a lawn chair looks restful and happy, along with her devoted major domo, a tall, lean man with piercing blue eyes who often stands at the electric fence, staring into the distance at the mountains.

  THE LIVING END

  If you liked Shop Talk check out:

  Touched

  1

  “I dreamed again last night that I was Billy.”

  FROM ADAM BLESSING’S JOURNAL

  Mrs. Auerbach was drunk again.

  In the five years that Adam Blessing had worked for her, he had seen her drunk only once or twice a week. Things were getting worse lately; she was seldom sober. This Saturday afternoon in early May was her sixth consecutive day on the bottle. As usual she arrived at The Autograph Mart a moment or so before closing.

  Adam had been calling her since noon about the customer for “The Lucy Baker Album.”

  “Where the customer is, Adam?” she asked, huffing and puffing her way across the floor of the basement shop.

  Her habit was to eat a whole roll of peppermint life savers as she made her way from her apartment on Second Avenue and Fifty-seventh Street. It was a distance of three city blocks in a straight line, as straight as Mrs. Auerbach could manage.

  “The customer,” he said flatly, “is gone! He was in three times last week, twice this week. He won’t be back.”

  “Goodt! He doesn’t want it enough! I don’t want to sell it to him anyway! That is a law, Adam!”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Adam. “Why don’t we just make it a law that we don’t sell anything to anyone?”

  The old woman ignored the sarcasm. With considerable effort she lowered herself to the folding chair before the card table which was her desk. She blew at some dust on top of old papers there. “Collectors do not interest me, Adam.” She pulled a bottle of rum out of the wire wastebasket under the card table, and set it in front of her. “A customer must love what he buys from me, enough to come back a hundred times if he has to! To collectors I don’t sell! Adam, they are worse than parasites, these collectors! They are saprophytes, who off the dead live!” She unscrewed the cap of the rum bottle. �
��Well, that collector is not going to live off Lucy Baker!” she said, and she punctuated it with a long swallow of rum.

  Adam said, “We aren’t going to live off her either.”

  Mrs. Auerbach was fat and in her late sixties. She always wore sweaters and skirts, even in the hot months, and silk stockings with ankle socks over them, and low black oxfords which were always polished. Her garters never reached above her knees. They were rolled to a stop an inch below her skirt. Her hair was a peculiar orange shade from the self-administered rinses. She wore it long, past her shoulder blades, and when she thought about it, she tied it in place with a piece of rough, brown wrapping cord. Today, she had not thought about it. She kept blowing at it from the sides of her wrinkled mouth, trying to keep it out of her eyes. Often when Adam was confronted with her dishevelment, he was reminded of the way she never dotted her i’s or crossed her t’s—bald proof of her absent-minded carelessness.

  “So!” she said, setting the bottle back on the card table with a thud. “The City wins, no, Adam?”

  Adam knew it was starting—another of Mrs. Auerbach’s harangues against the city of New York. They were going to tear down the apartment house where she had lived for over thirty years. Already she was the only tenant remaining in the building; the gas and electricity had been turned off a week ago. Adam knew this was one of the reasons she was drinking so heavily lately. He sneaked a look at his wrist watch. Five past five. His date with Dorothy Schackleford was for six-fifteen at the Roosevelt Hotel.

  “Mrs. Auerbach—” he tried, but she waved his words away with her pudgy hand.

  She said: “I saw you. You are rushing so much all the time! All the time watching your clock, ah, Adam? Hasn’t that been the trouble with the business, your rushing? In this business, no one rushes and makes one dime! You rush like the City rushes!”

  “You never even arrive here until five o’clock, Mrs. Auerbach. Don’t forget that.”