“I’m not following,” I said.
“What do you know about Bing Crosby?” Salem asked.
“Next to nothing.”
Hadley nodded and said to Salem, “We’ve got a lot of work to do.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
The Bar
“Wade!” Salem hollered across the Copper Mule. “Another order of fried pickles!”
Hadley buried her head in her hand and laughed.
“We’re not the only ones in this place,” I said to Salem.
Salem shrugged.
“Fried pickles?” a customer said from the next table over. “That sounds amazing. Wade! An order for us too!”
Wade saluted and then went to the computer to punch in the orders.
“You see, Poet, my loudness sold another order of pickles,” Salem said as she reached for her mocktail. “I’m doing the Lord’s work.”
“You mean Wade’s work,” Hadley said with a grin.
My pint of beer was halfway gone, and it had done nothing to clear out the clutter in my mind.
“You okay?” Salem asked me.
“My brain is goo,” I admitted. “You know when you haveso many ideas and you’re trying to hold them all in your head, but it’s just crammed full?”
“Uh, no, Salem doesn’t have that problem,” Hadley joked.
Salem rolled her eyes. “Yes, I know exactly how that feels.”
While the banana bread baked, Salem and Hadley had helped me with a business plan. The plan was now three quarters of the way finished, but it was still little more than an overview.
I desperately wanted to drill down into the semantics and intimate details that would make my bookstore special and unique.
“Any ideas yet on what you want to call it?” Salem asked.
“The Shop Around the Corner is taken,” I said, referencing the 1940s movie with Jimmy Stewart.
“But that was a gift shop,” Hadley said.
“But it was also the name of the bookstore in You’ve Got Mail,” I said. “I want something like that. Something cute, without being annoying.”
“Somethingpoetic,perhaps?” Salem quipped.
“Peabody, Paperbacks, and . . .” Hadley trailed off when it was clear she couldn’t think of another word.”
“Pens,” Salem supplied. “Pretty things.”
“Meh.” I shrugged. “It’ll come to me. Probably at three a.m. I’d like to go to the bank when I have a name though.”
Wade delivered the fried pickles to the table. Hadley’s high-school boyfriend smirked as he cleared away the other two empty baskets. “You guys still pretending to hold out on ordering barbecue?”
