Number eighty-t’ree!”
Ten people surge in front of me, shoving me into the minuscule air pocket left in their wake. I tell Tina to hang on a sec as I peer inside the bag, noting a suspiciously dark image through the butcher paper and nothing that even remotely resembles a container of mayo. Which means either there isn’t any or it’s slathered on the bread thicker than Anna Nicole’s makeup.
Just a mite too preoccupied to assert my usual snarky self, however, I elbow my way through the hordes and over to the register, grabbing a Dasani, a bag of chips and a Hershey’s bar to round out my meal. Juggling the bag, my purse, my now-extracted wallet and the phone, which is too damn small to wedge between my shoulder and my ear, I finally say, “You went alone?”
“Yeah, it was okay, I took a taxi home after.”
The dark-haired hottie on the register gives me a total that could feed a family of six in his country of origin for a week; I swipe my Visa and say, quietly, “You okay?”
The silence on the other end slices right through to my soul. “You’re not mad?”
Frankly, I don’t what I am. And God knows, I don’t know what to say. I do know, however, that she didn’t call just to give me the news.
I sign the slip and say, “I’ll be there in forty-five minutes.”
I told Gretta, our new bookkeeper—Angelique did indeed throw in the towel, the end of last week—I had a family emergency and to tell Nikky to call me on my cell if she needed to get in touch with me. So far, she hasn’t. Which actually might break the tension as Tina and I sit here on her king-size bed in her aqua-and-peach pseudo-Southwest style bedroom, watching Ricki Lake and sharing my mayonnaise-drenched liverwurst on pumpernickel. I gave her my whole chocolate bar, though. I think she needs it more than I do.
More than anything, I want to ask her what she’s planning to tell Luke. Who stopped by last night to show me the itty-bitty pair of athletic shoes he found. The day before that, a toy elephant nearly as large as a real one. Well, a baby one, anyway.
The people at the clinic told Tina since she had it done so early, she should be basically okay by this evening, just to take it easy for a day or so.
But there’s “okay” and then there’s “okay.” I’ve finally sorted out my feelings at least enough to know that I’m feeling sick about the whole thing, but I can’t tell what’s going on inside Tina’s head. Which, as I said, is totally unlike her, since at any given moment her emotions hover a good foot outside her body. Rather than really talking, she’s instead providing running commentary about the bozos on today’s show. Something about fat girls who slimmed down and then slept with men who hadn’t given them the time of day when they were heavy. Without bothering to reveal their true identities, of course.
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