A Bad Day for Romance (19 page)

Stella blushed and lowered her eyelashes in preparation for batting them coquettishly, when someone called her name.

It wasn’t Goat. Or Chrissy or Ian, for that matter. Stella spun around in the direction of the voice and found herself staring down at her
other
boyfriend, who was stretched out on a piece of plywood set on a couple of chairs. He had his hands clasped over the gentle slope of his stomach as though he were getting ready to be planted out in the cemetery behind Calvary United Methodist, but he lifted up his head and gave her an eager smile.

“Surprise!” he hollered, and then “Ow” and a string of curses as he lay back down on the board. A man hurried over from the bar carrying two tall frosty beers, one of them with a straw sticking out of it—Jorge from the bar, dressed in his trademark fleece-lined L.L.Bean plaid shirt and camo pants.

“Hey there, Stella,” Jorge murmured, brushing past her in a hurry as though he were on a critical errand.

Goat was standing several paces away with his good hand on his hip, and his splinted hand held gingerly to the side. Chrissy jumped up from her table, disentangling herself from Ian, and then all of a sudden everyone was talking at once.

Everyone, that is, except for Stella, who started backing toward the bar.

“Wow, there you are, Stella, we been saving you a seat!” Chrissy chirped.

“Yo, buddy, don’t be doing anything you’re going to regret,” Ian hollered, heading for Goat rather unsteadily; it was unclear if he was love drunk or just plain drunk.

“Just try a little,” Jorge coaxed softly, as he tried to get BJ to take a sip of his beer out of the straw. Jorge was the most soft-spoken man Stella knew; you had to lean in pretty close to make out what he was saying most of the time. “Stella, I brought you some tamales. They’re in the cooler out in the truck.”

“What the hell is
he
doing here?” BJ demanded, looking as affronted as a man can when he’s been fixed to a length of plywood by what looked like a torn-up sheet and industrial staples.

“
Me
? I’m an invited
guest
,” Goat snarled. “Which is more than some can say.”

“
I
was invited,” BJ rejoined, wiggling in an apparent attempt to find the most comfortable pose on his makeshift papoose board while Jorge fussed around trying to keep him still. “I was invited by
her
. I’m Stella’s
date
. Jorge, tip me up a little, will you?”

Jorge, who was roughly two-thirds as wide as he was tall, most of it solid muscle, obligingly lifted up the end of the plywood that held BJ’s head, giving him a better view of the bar. Stella took a break from rapping on the wooden bar in an attempt to get the attention of the bartender, who appeared to be mesmerized by the site of BJ and had stopped drying the glass he held, his mouth agape. She gave BJ a discreet once-over: he was freshly shaven and neatly dressed in a pair of pleated khaki trousers and a striped sweater in shades of blue; his hair was gelled up in stiff spikes the way he did for more formal occasions. He’d gone to some effort, even if the effect was spoiled a bit by his percale shackles at his ankles, waist, and chest. Stella had to give him and Jorge an A for ingenuity; it looked like the getup kept BJ’s spine well immobilized.

And he must have made the drive up here in the back of his own truck, with Jorge at the wheel. That had to have been a hell of an uncomfortable trip, despite the hard top affixed to the truck bed and the savory aroma of Jorge’s tamales wafting from the cooler. Not to mention what a challenge it must have been to get him into and out of the truck, though Jorge—an amateur powerlifter who competed all over central Missouri—was clearly the best choice for the job.

The bartender finally got unmesmerized enough to sidle down to Stella. “Help you, miss?”

“Just a Diet Coke,” she said regretfully. “I’d hit the hard stuff, only it looks like someone’s gonna have to stay sober enough to deal with all of this.”

“That’s a dogfight brewin’, you ask me,” the bartender said as he squirted soda into a tall glass. “Wonder what all they’re tussling over. Probably some woman.” He shook his head with disgust, as though it was the biggest waste of time he’d ever seen.

“Maybe she’s worth it,” Stella suggested.

The bartender snorted and wiped his hands on a bar rag before handing over her soda.

“On the house, as long as you can convince them to take it outside. I don’t need nobody turning over the place.”

BJ and Goat hadn’t gotten any further than glaring and sticking out their chests—at least, Goat was; BJ was reduced to making the tendons in his neck stand out. Stella almost felt a little sorry for him.

“Well, since the wedding’s been canceled, I guess you probably have to get back to town, lawboy,” BJ commented. “Of course before you go, I expect you’re itching to put some other innocent bystander in traction. Maybe get that gal in the green—she don’t look like she’ll give you too much trouble.”

All eyes turned to see who BJ was talking about. A pair of elderly women were sharing a club sandwich in a table at the window. One of them was wearing a green cardigan sweater over her plaid golf slacks and pristine white fringed shoes. She couldn’t have weighed more than ninety pounds.

“I didn’t do nothing to you,” Goat said. His voice sounded like it had been roughed up with sandpaper. “You’re just in over your head.”

BJ shrugged, a motion that evidently hurt like hell since he made a mewling sound that he quickly turned into a fake coughing fit. “Keep telling yourself that, if it makes you feel better. But if you was paying attention you’d know it was
my
truck parked over at the lady’s house two Sunday mornings ago.”

Goat’s silvery eyebrows shot up and he whipped around to stare at Stella, whose own mouth fell open with dismay. It was technically true that BJ had been at her house, if by “morning” he meant closing in on 1:00 a.m. The stupidest part was that she’d urged him to stay with every nonverbal trick in her arsenal, but after a couple of hours of gentle groping on the couch, BJ had adjusted his trousers and tucked his shirt back in and blushed and refused to meet her eyes and asked if she might like to have dinner with him the next Tuesday, when the Rob Roy Grill had a brisket special.

Instead, BJ had made it sound like he’d bedded her and kept her there, pinned under the weight of his animal passion, until the midday sun streamed through the windows. Which was what more or less she’d been trying to get him to do, but now Stella could hardly believe she’d even shaved her legs for the event.

Especially when the look in Goat’s eyes rounded the corner of astonished and went right on going until it arrived at wounded. He swallowed hard, took a deep breath, and walked over to BJ. In full view of the half dozen people who were trying hard to act like they weren’t paying attention, and studiously ignoring Stella, he extended his unhurt hand. “May the better man win,” he said.

BJ hesitated only for a moment before shaking. Goat, Stella judged, may have been a bit firm in his grip, judging from how BJ’s face turned to a shade close to Stella’s maid-of-honor dress.

“All right then,” he finally squeaked, and Goat shook one last time and let go. BJ waited until Goat had stalked out of the bar before he seized his shook hand with the other one, clearly in pain.

He might ought to have waited just a little longer, because the motion jostled the plywood, which made the ice bin slip out the side, causing the board to slam down on the chair and then tip off the side of the seat, with the end result being that BJ was dumped unceremoniously onto the floor, facedown and still attached.

It took Jorge and Ian both to get him turned over, and from the sounds he was making, Stella wondered if he’d broken something. When she saw the blood pouring out of his nose she had her answer. By then the bartender was already on the phone, barking out the address of the bar.

Chrissy hurried over to Stella, skirting the table where Jorge and Ian had set BJ’s board. Ian had gone after Goat, no doubt hoping to calm him down or cheer him up or at least keep him from getting arrested again.

“Suppose he called the cops or 9-1-1?” Chrissy asked, jerking a thumb at the bartender.

It turned out to be the paramedics who showed up to deal with BJ. While they got him ready to transport, ignoring his loud protests that there was absolutely nothing wrong with him, a claim that was made less credible by the approximate gallon of blood that had leaked from his nose and a cut on his head, Jorge came around to join Stella and Chrissy. By now, a crowd had gathered to watch, with the two elderly lady golfers at the center of it loudly recounting how it had all unfolded, embellishing the story a little differently each time.

“How’d you get him into the truck?” Stella asked Jorge.

“Borrowed a dolly from Dumfree Liquors,” he said softly. “Used a few bungees so he wouldn’t slip off.”

“I hope BJ’s paying you overtime for all of this.”

Jorge shrugged. “We worked it out.”

Stella knew that BJ was more than generous with his employees; he was constantly helping them out of some scrape or other, like paying for a waitress’s tonsillectomy or housing Jorge’s cousins in the garage when they came up to visit.

“What’d that getup run you, anyway?” Chrissy asked.

Jorge shrugged. “Got that old sheet from the lady down the street for free. Borrowed the plywood from that house they’re building over on Oak Street. BJ had the bungee cords… so I guess a couple of bucks for a box of staples.”

Chrissy shook her head and whistled as the paramedics strapped BJ into place on their wheeled black-and-yellow stretcher. “And what do you suppose insurance is going to bill to haul him off in that contraption?”

Jorge squinted at it, moving his lips silently as though he was totaling up an estimate. “Few thousand, anyway,” he finally said in a perturbed whisper.

“Fucking health care system,” they muttered in unison as BJ was wheeled out the door.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

STELLA HAD BARELY FINISHED CATCHING CHRISSY
up on her visits with Lexie and Divinity when Noelle arrived with her new girlfriend in tow. Stella gave Noelle a crushing hug and Cinnamon a rather shy one, since they’d only met a few times so far. Both of the girls were beautifully made up, with sparkly wings of eye shadow shading from one jewel tone to another and the flawless skin that is wasted on the young and lips glossed with vibrant red. Their hair was another matter. Back in Stella’s day, no one she knew would have dared go out of the house in curlers, but both Noelle and Cinnamon had complicated arrangements of combs and curlers on top of their heads, like ceremonial headdresses from some alien culture.

After a flurry of greetings, Chrissy had Noelle glue some fake eyelashes on her and left to do the rest of her primping on her own, which Stella figured involved a fair amount of help from her beau, or if not help, at least the sort of interfering that Chrissy wouldn’t much mind. Then Stella invited the girls up to her suite.

“Oh, Mama, look at you,” Noelle sighed, shaking her head and unzipping her cosmetic case, which was so big it came with wheels to make dragging it around easier. “We best get busy. I knew this would happen, is why I did Cinnamon and me before we left home. All’s we need to do is change clothes and take our hair out a few minutes before we go down to the party, so I can focus all my attention on you.”

“I couldn’t ask you to do that,” Stella said, sighing happily and propping her feet up on the chair Noelle dragged over for her pedicure. “You must be exhausted from your trip.”

“Oh, hush. What I hear, your man on the side came up here to lay claim to you, and Goat just about put him in traction—you got to look good for the tabloid photos when they fight to the death over you.”

“Okay, little miss, who you been talking to?” Stella asked, not entirely displeased.

“Irene, if you got to know. She was so mad she missed the fight, she called me ’cause she thought I might of heard more details than she got.”

“It wasn’t a fight.” Stella gave a quick summary of what had happened. “BJ just needed a couple stitches, is all. Jorge called to tell me he was picking him up in time for the party. The thing is… since I did invite BJ up here in the first place, I guess I need to, you know…”

“No, I don’t know, Mama. What is it you think you need to do?” Noelle demanded, pausing from her cuticle pushing.

“Well, be a good
date
,” Stella said, blushing. “Like, sit with him tonight, keep up my end of the conversation, introduce him around—for heaven’s sake, honey, didn’t we have this talk the first time you went out with Schooner?”

Schooner was Noelle’s very first boyfriend, a sweet young man who was a regular fixture in the Hardesty house back in high school, before Noelle had figured out that she preferred girls.

“That ain’t all you told me,” Noelle said hotly. “Don’t you remember the no-no talk?”

Stella blinked. It sounded vaguely familiar… in fact, she seemed to remember her own mother giving it to her, nearly four decades ago.

“If a boy wants more from you than you’re ready to give,” Noelle recited, in a perfect imitation of Stella, right down to the tilt of the chin—“whether it’s a date or a kiss or your special gift—then you just tell him ‘
No
way,
no
how.’ No and no.”

“Oh, Lordy,” Stella said. “ ‘Your special gift.’ In my defense, that was
my
mom’s name for it, I didn’t make it up.”

“Yeah, ’cause if Grammy Pat said
virginity
out loud the earth would have swallowed her up.” Noelle’s eyes got a little misty. “I wish Grammy could have met Cinnamon. You think she would have liked her?”

It had never occurred to Stella to wonder how her mother would have greeted the news that her only grandchild was a lesbian. But Pat Collier had been sweet and fair and kind, and Stella had never seen her offer anything but friendship and encouragement to everyone she met.

“Oh, sweetheart, if you love Cinnamon, then I’m sure Grammy would, too.”