Mr. Fix-It (14 page)

The seafood section smelled of brine and the ocean, but not of fish, despite the presence of low barrels of ice piled high with live clams, mussels and oysters. Lobsters in a glass tank seemed to sense their eventual fate, scrambling over one another, reaching for the top of the tank as though knowing escape lay there. The glass display case housed still more fruits of the sea, with sea and bay scallops stacked high next to more exotic fare, such as mako shark and mahi mahi.

Khela had once spent an hour browsing the canned meats and sauces aisle, admiring the fanciful or just plain fancy bottles and jars and other packaging, imagining how she could use them in her stories. She’d once purchased a pricey bottle of imported balsamic vinegar because the bottle came with a security band sealed with purple wax and stamped with an ornate letter “V.” That stamp had inspired one of her most popular books,
The Pirate’s Princess
.

Calareso’s was the one place where Khela could find her favorite English condiments from Crosse & Blackwell, such as mint sauce for roasted potatoes and sweet peas, alongside her favorite American relishes and jellies from Stonewall Kitchens. Her cart already contained big jars of Stonewall’s red pepper jelly and roasted garlic and onion jam.

Right next to the fresh artisan breads were tinned squab and venison, and an olive bar featuring savory morsels from as far away as Morocco and Sicily.

Though Khela had no taste for squab or venison or imported olives, she liked knowing that she could get them if she ever needed to describe the taste for one of her characters.

Their shopping cart was stacked high with a week’s supply of groceries. Fresh fruits and vegetables in green plastic bags rested atop the boxed and canned goods she and Carter had chosen. They were on their way to the bakery to select a loaf or two of Tuscan bread when Khela drew up short.

“Great,” she muttered. “There’s only one check-out open and Mangela is manning it.”

Carter glanced at the tall, thickly built cashier at register two and chuckled. “Mangela?”

“His name is Angela,” Khela said, grasping Carter’s upper arm as she hid behind him. “But Daphne and I started calling her Mangela because she’s so masculine. He hates me. She’s the only thing I hate about this store.”

“Why does she—he—that person hate you?” Carter asked, trying not to stare.

“Why do snakes bite?” Khela said. “Because it’s just her nature. She was fine with me until he overheard Daphne and me talking in line one day, and she asked me if I was a writer. I said yes, and he’s been evil to me ever since. She read one of my books and really gave it to me one day. I came in to buy some monkey bread, and the next thing I knew, Mangela’s berating me about
Teacher’s Pet
.”

While listening to Khela’s rant, Carter searched his memory for
Teacher’s Pet
. Then it came to him.
Teacher’s Pet
, Khela’s fifth novel and first Cameo Sizzler, was about a grad student who carried on a secret affair with her recently divorced English professor.

The book’s sex scenes were so tantalizing, Carter imagined he saw steam rising from its pages every time he opened it. It had the wit, sassiness and humor that he had discovered in Khela, but it also had love scenes that left him so tense with pent-up desire that most nights he couldn’t sleep until he’d given himself some relief, usually while looking at Khela’s photo on the inside back cover of the book.

“She said that it was the most far-fetched, ridiculous book he’d ever read,” Khela went on. “She went through it almost page by page while she rang up my groceries, criticizing just about everything I’d written.”

“You should be used to criticism,” Carter said. “You’ve been at this a long time.”

They stepped up to the glass bakery case and studied the loaves of bread, cakes, pastries and cookies prettily lined up along the five shelves.

“Mangela screamed at the top of her lungs how stupid she thought I was for giving my English professor—he was the male lead in the book—a Porsche. She said it was improbable that an English teacher would make enough money to own a Porsche. Shows what Mangela knows about the income of tenured professors.”

“Why didn’t you explain that in the book?”

“Because the kind of car he drove wasn’t integral to the plot. It was merely used to illustrate his character. He was a 40-year-old, graying, balding, recently divorced man who went out and bought himself a gunmetal grey Porsche. What he bought was more important than describing his financing for it.”

“Sounds like she’s criticizing creative choices and not the actual writing,” Carter said. “Just because she doesn’t know any professors with Porsches, they must not exist.”

Khela tossed up her hands in relief. “Exactly! I get that all the time, people questioning what I write as though I get my ideas from stone tablets handed down by God. I make stuff up—”

“Hence the word fiction.”

“—based on my own experiences and the ones I steal from people around me, and the news, and television. Almost all of my characters come from people in my life, although—”

“I recognized Daphne and the concert pianist who lives under you in two of your books,” Carter interrupted again.

“—I try to disguise them so I don’t get sued!” Khela went on. “You can’t complain about a character’s
car
when the book is about a professor’s erotic encounters with a much younger graduate student. That’s not a constructive critique, that’s just…just…I don’t know what it is!”

“Sorta seems like a personal attack to me,” Carter offered easily. “Maybe she’s jealous of you.”

“Yeah,” Khela glowered, cutting her eyes in Mangela’s direction. “That ol’ bald-headed thing is jealous that I was born with ovaries and a va—”

“What can I get for you today, cutie pie?” interrupted the overly cheery woman behind the bakery counter. She leaned forward, resting her ample bosom atop her crossed forearms.

With her white apron and flour dusting her nose and cheeks, Khela thought the woman looked like she had been sculpted from hefty pillows of biscuit dough.

Khela ordered one loaf of Tuscan bread, one large French baguette and two loaves of monkey bread. By eating an entire loaf of it for breakfast, Carter had demonstrated a particular fondness for the sticky ring made of cinnamon-and butter-soaked lumps of sweet bread.

“Cutie pie,” Carter mimicked with a snicker when the counterperson retreated to fill the order. “No one has called me ‘cutie pie’ since I was in kindergarten.”

“She’s a baker,” Khela said. “It makes sense that she would give you a nickname with ‘pie’ in it.”

“So I guess she might call you Sugar Buns?” Carter asked with a laugh.

“The really funny thing is her name,” Khela said.

“Is it funnier than Mangela?”

Khela shushed him, afraid that he’d spoken too loudly. “Don’t invoke her name. He’s got a sixth sense when it comes to stuff like that.”

“Well, what’s the counter lady’s name?”

“Honey Baker,” Khela grinned.

“No way,” Carter responded. “Are you kiddin’ me?”

“Nope,” Khela giggled. “I just love that.”

“It fits, that’s for sure. That’s like finding a mechanic named Otto Carr.”

“There’s a reality show about plastic surgeons, and one of the physicians on it is named Dr. Alter,” Khela said.

“That’s a good one,” Carter said, nodding appreciatively. “Dr. Cutter would be good, too.”

Khela shook her head. “Naah, too obvious.”

“How about a dentist named Dr. Payne?” Carter suggested.

“Or a policeman named Booker?”

“A shrimp boat captain named Fisher,” Carter countered.

“A seamstress named Taylor.”

“A scuba diver named Schwimmer.”

“That’s really reaching,” Khela giggled.

“Okay, an actor named Hamm.”

“That’s really good.”

Carter lowered his voice and aimed his words at Khela’s left ear. “A porn star named Wood.”

“A prostitute named Hooker,” Khela whispered.

“We have to stop this,” Carter chuckled. “I think I’m getting a little slaphappy hanging around with you.”

“I need slaphappy,” Khela said, gathering her waxed bags full of bread. She thanked Honey Baker and set her selections atop her other groceries. “First Daphne, now Mangela.”

“Did something happen to Daphne?” Carter asked, rolling the cart toward Mangela’s checkout.

Khela swallowed hard when she saw Mangela do a double take. The cashier leveled a sinister smile at Khela before handing change to her current customer.

“I’ll wait for you outside,” Khela said.

“No, you don’t.” Carter grabbed her hand tightly, preventing her escape. “I can’t believe you’re scared of a cashier.”

“She’s not an ordinary cashier!” Khela argued. “He’s vicious, and she hates me! Normally, criticism rolls off my back. I don’t expect everyone to love my work, but I don’t expect someone to crap all over it to my face as if what I wrote was a personal affront to them. Or him. She just makes me very uncomfortable because I can’t look her in the eye and tell him to go to hell.”

“Yes, you can,” Carter told her.

“And the very next day, I’ll read about it in the Herald-Star’s
Psst!
gossip column,” Khela replied. “I wouldn’t put it past her to call up the information line and tell Meg LaParosa what a big bitch I was to him.”

“Will you please stop that he-she stuff? You’re confusing me.” Carter pushed the shopping cart to the conveyor belt, pulling Khela along behind him. “Hey,” he said, greeting the cashier, who stood with arms sullenly crossed, wearing a nametag reading
Hi, I’m Angela.

“Haven’t seen you in a while, scribbler,” Angela said, ignoring Carter’s greeting. “Been hiding out in your fancy apartment writing more of your silly little tales?”

Carter was prepared to defend Khela, but he was disarmed by the sound of Angela’s voice. It reminded him of Lou Rawls with laryngitis. He slowed in the process of loading the groceries onto the conveyor belt to study Angela a bit closer.

Her flawless chocolate complexion was her best feature. Her hair was shorn close to the scalp, giving her head a mere shadow of dark coloration. Even though it was June, she wore a natty pink ascot that complemented the mint green of her Calareso’s smock. Carter wondered, but really didn’t want to know, what the accessory might be concealing.

Angela palmed a honeydew melon with ease, and the sheer size of her hands and broad span of her fingers surprised Carter. After punching the melon’s price code into the register, she dropped Khela’s carefully chosen fruit into a brown paper bag standing open at her side.

“Could you be a little more careful there?” Carter asked.

Khela flinched, fully expecting Angela to retrieve the melon and break it over Carter’s head.

Angela’s brown eyes, wide, deep-set and lashless beneath her sloping forehead and prominent brow ridge, seemed to flash with anger.

“Sure thing, boss,” she finally said.

She next rang up Khela’s Tuscan bread, making a point of stabbing it with her thumb as she placed it with exaggerated gentleness into the bag with the melon.

“I don’t know what your problem is, but I’m about ready to call your manager over here and tell him about a little lady with a very big attitude problem.”

“Aren’t you the big hero come to the rescue,” Angela said, her voice softening a little. “Why haven’t I seen you around here before?”

“I’m more of a Stop & Shop kinda guy,” Carter said. “I can’t see my way to paying five dollars for a loaf of bread.”

“I hear you,” Angela said. “I work here and I can’t afford to shop here.” She laughed, and the sound boomed throughout the front of the store. “Your little writer friend there shops here all the time. Some people sure like to be good to themselves.”

“If you got it, spend it, ’cause you sure can’t take it with you,” Carter said.

Behind him, Khela rolled her eyes, sickened by the heavy dose of Southern charm Carter was wasting on the meanest cashier in the world.

“Miss Thing hiding in your back pocket sure has got it,” Angela said, her voice low, conspiratorial. “She was in here last week buying beef tenderloin at twenty-two dollars a pound. Of course, if she was buying it for you, then I’ll bet it was worth it.”

“Isn’t there some sort of customer-cashier confidentiality code you’re supposed to adhere to?” Khela demanded, stepping out of the safety of Carter’s shadow. “Who are you to judge what I buy and how much I pay for it, and why the hell do you have to talk about me while I’m standing right here?”

Angela innocently batted her eyelids. “I didn’t see you there, Ms. Halliday.”

“Folks in Boston have the reputation for being rude,” Carter began graciously, “but you might want to rethink the way you treat Miss Halliday. One of these days, she might decide to put her writing skills to work on a letter of complaint to your manager.” He set the three bags of groceries in the cart. With a wink at Angela, he said, “Just something to think about, darlin’.”

Angela appeared to do exactly that—think about whether she wanted Khela to compose a letter of complaint to her manager. “That’ll be one hundred and eleven dollars and sixty-two cents,” Angela said politely. “Would you like that to go on your account?”

“Please,” Khela said.

Angela, her broad mouth widening in a smile, swiveled a mounted keypad to face Khela, who punched in her personal account number and hit
enter
. A moment later, Angela ripped the receipt from the register and held it out to her.

“Thank you very much,” Khela said pleasantly.

“Have a very wonderful day,” was Angela’s saccharine response before turning to her next customer.

“She wasn’t that bad, once I showed her who’s boss,” Carter said, gathering the bags into his arms before they left the store.

Khela returned the cart to the cart lot near the entrance. “You called him a lady. That’s when she stopped hassling me and started trying to charm you.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“Of course I am.” Khela got the door by stepping in front of its electronic eye. “When you try so hard to look like a lady, and a handsome man comes along and calls you one, I imagine it goes a long way. Of course, your sweet way of threatening to get her fired probably did show her who was boss.”