Trouble in Rooster Paradise (35 page)

“
Hmm …. You want to play Watson
to my Holmes?”

Her smooth forehead creased as she thought
about that. “No … more like I’d be Boswell to your Dr.
Johnson,” she said in a satisfied tone. “But you don’t need to
decide right now. Just promise me you’ll think about it,
okay?”

I promised I’d think about it.

“
So, getting back to what happened,”
she said forming a cheery smile as she switched on the recorder.
“You’d just finished talking with Rikard Lundeen, and when you got
back to your car you tore up his card with his private phone number
on it. So let me guess what happened next. You hooked up with Cissy
Paget like you told her you would, and probably sooner than you
planned to, I bet. You made up for being rude and missing your
date. Right?”

“
Yeah … something like that.
Sure.”

“
I knew it. I just knew that’s what
you’d do.”

The recorder was clicked off and put away, and
Kirsti started to roll me back to my room.

Mind you, I was tempted, but when it came right
down to it, I didn’t have the heart to tell Kirsti the whole story,
including how after I tore up Lundeen’s card, I waited a minute
before I got out of my Chevy and picked up all the pieces; and how
later I taped them together with Mrs. Berger’s help. That woman
just loved jigsaw puzzles.

However, I did follow through on my promised
amends-making to Cissy Paget, but as I’d told Cissy, not till the
next evening. So, Kirsti’s guess was correct, even though she was a
little bit far afield of what really happened that day I gave
Lundeen my bill.

I’m pretty sure Dr. Johnson didn’t tell Boswell
every little thing. Besides, sometimes you want to keep people from
getting the right impression.

The snoring woke me. But it was the rhythm of
her hoarse sputter that kept me awake. I knew after five minutes
there was no point in trying to get back to sleep. I just stared
across the room at the wallpaper and fought an urge to count faded
daisies.

The bed was small and I was about to be pushed
off my side of it. Verna Vordahl’s shapely rump was pressed in the
small of my back like warm lead in a plaster mold. She was every
bit the hot and spry Amazon of her customers’ fantasies. Her
Tuesday shift didn’t start till 10:00 a.m. At the moment she needed
her sleep. So I carefully pried free of her clinging silkiness and
our short-lived closeness.

I got up, quietly pulled my pants on, and
tucked in my shirt. Verna rolled over and nuzzled the corner of the
mattress where I’d been. Her snoring halted. A disheveled cluster
of reddish brown hair hid her face. Only her mouth showed, her
lipstick worn colorless from a necking session the night before
that left both of us eager and gasping. My head ached from our
little charade at dinner and the stiff drinks we used to make it
credible.

From the roadhouse, we came to her place for
another drink and more alchemy that temporarily transformed our
grief-affirming bedpost rattling into something honest. For a few
hours we lost ourselves in sensation, lessened our loneliness, and
became oblivious to the events of the past week. In our grip of
mutual affection we each forgot about Hank Vordahl for our own
reasons. Verna briefly forgot how much she still loved him, and I
was able to put from my mind the enemy I’d make when the two of
them got back together.

But I also managed to forget all about Britt
Anderson.

Well, almost, anyway.

Gunnar the Self-Deluded.

* * *

B
orn into a blue collar
family in Seattle, Washington, and raised in the suburbs of the
greater Seattle area,
T.W. Emory
has been an avid reader
since his early teens. In addition to fiction, he likes
biographies, autobiographies, and the writings of certain
essayists. He also enjoys reading secular and religious history,
and is a dabbler in philosophy and sociology. Moreover, he likes
reading reprinted collections of old comic strips such as
Thimble Theatre
(aka
Popeye
),
Moon Mullins
,
Captain Easy
, and
Li’l Abner
.

After taking on various odd jobs that included
brief stints assisting a grounds-keeper, working in a laundry,
washing dishes, waiting on tables, and doing inside and outside
painting, he got into drywall finishing and eventually became a
small-time drywall contractor.

In addition to writing, T.W. enjoys cartooning
as a hobby. He is second-generation Swede on his mother’s side and
third-generation Norwegian on his father’s, which helps explain the
Scandinavian flavoring in his first novel,
Trouble in Rooster
Paradise
.

He currently lives north of Seattle with his
wife, two sons, one cat that is companionable and another that is
aloof and rather ditsy.

For more information, go to
www.twemoryauthor.com.