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“Posey is starting as a part-time desk clerk. The salaries aren’t comparable.”
“She starts fires!” I hissed. “Books tend to be kind of flammable!”
Ignoring me, Mrs. Stubblefield reached into a drawer to remove an envelope, which I hoped included a handsome severance and detailed instructions on how to keep health insurance and feed one large, ugly dog without bringing home a paycheck.
The final indignity was Mrs. Stubblefield handing me a banker’s box already packed with my “personal effects.” I stumbled through the lobby on legs that threatened to buckle under me. I ignored the cheerful greetings from patrons, knowing I would burst into tears at the first face I recognized.
I got into my car, leaned my forehead against the white-hot steering wheel, and began to hyperventilate. After about an hour of that, I mopped my blotchy face on my sleeve and opened what I thought was my severance check. Instead, a bright yellow-and-white-striped slip of paper drifted into my passenger seat, shouting, “Twenty-five dollars! Plus free potato skins!” in huge red letters.
Instead of a severance check, I got a gift certificate to Shenanigans.
This prompted another hour or so of hysterical crying. I finally pulled myself together enough to pull out of the library parking lot and drive toward the mall. Shenanigans was one of the first big chain restaurants to come to Half-Moon Hollow after the county commission finally unclenched its “dry” status. After decades of driving over county lines to Maynard to get liquor by the drink, Half-Moon Hollow residents could finally enjoy cocktails close enough to walk home drunk instead of drive. Personally, I find that comforting.
McClure County was one of the last counties in the state where you could legally smoke in restaurants —thank you, local tobacco farmers—so the bar was cloaked in several layers of cigarette haze. I made myself comfortable on a bar stool, ordered some potato skins and a large electric lemonade. For those unfamiliar with the beverage, picture a glass of Country Time that looks like Windex and makes your face numb. After the gift certificate ran out, I handed my Visa to Gary the bartender and told him to start a tab. I switched to mudslides sometime around happy hour. An “I’m too tired to cook” crowd trickled in after dusk.
Unfortunately, this crowd included Adam Morrow, the man whose blond cherubic children I would one day bear …if I ever worked up the nerve to talk to him.
I’ve had a crush on Adam since elementary school, when he sat beside me in homeroom. (Thank you, alphabetical order.) When we were kids, he looked like Joey McIntyre from New Kids on the Block, which is like preteen-girl kryptonite. And Adam was one of the few people who never called me Planed Jane, so double points for him. We moved in different circles in high school. OK, we were barely in the same building. He was the dimpled football hero with a mysterious dash of debate -team participation. I spent lunch breaks shelving library books for extra Key Club points. I didn ’t see him while we were away at college, but I like to think it means something that we both came home to Half-Moon Hollow. I like to think that he values his roots and wants to give back to his hometown. And that it makes me less of a loser for living less than five miles from my parents’ house.
Adam’s a veterinarian now. He makes his living curing puppies. I’m a woman of uncomplicated tastes.
Adam smiled at me from across the bar, but he didn’t come over. It was just as well, since (a) he probably didn’t remember my name, and (b) I might have melted off my bar stool into a puddle of hammered, unemployed hussy. Plus, I have had the same reaction around Adam since our very first elementary-school encounter. Total lockjaw. I cannot speak normal sentences. I can only smile, drool, and burble like an idiot…which was pretty much what I was doing at the time.
Had I not suffered enough already?
I considered cutting my losses and scuttling home, but I did not need to add “blackout drunk driver” to my already tattered reputation. Nestled in a crook of the Kentucky-Ohio River border, Half-Moon Hollow is not one of those stereotypical Southern towns where everybody knows everybody, we have one stoplight, and our sole cop carries his bullet around in his pocket. We had the second stoplight installed last year. And don’t call it a “holler,” or I will personally track you down and hurt you.
Of the ten thousand or so people who live in this town, I am on a first-name basis with or related to about half. And if I don’t know you, I know your cousins. Or my parents know you, your parents, or your parents’ cousins. So I was caught off guard when a complete stranger materialized on the bar stool next to me.
“Hi,” I said. Actually, I think I yelled in a too-loud drunk voice. “That was…unexpected.”
“It usually is,” said Mr. Tall, Dark, and Yummy. He asked the bartender for the Tequila Sunrise Special and was served in record time. As I stared at the maroon cloud swirling in the bottom of his glass, he asked if I would like another drink.
“I’m already drunk,” I said, in what I’m sure I thought was a whisper. “I probably need to switch to coffee if I’m going to get home tonight.”
His hesitant smile showed perfectly even, almost unnaturally white teeth. He probably suffers an addiction to tooth whitener, I mused. He seemed to take pretty good care of his skin as well. Hair: longish, winding in dark, curling locks from a slight widow’s peak to his strong, square chin. Eyes: deep gray, almost silver, with a dark charcoal ring around the irises. Clothes: dark, well cut, and out of place in the Shenanigans crowd. Preliminary judgment: definitely a metrosexual, possibly gay, with a spontaneous yen for mozzarella sticks.
“What’s your name?” Mr. Yummy asked, signaling the bartender to get me a cup of coffee.
“Jane Jameson,” I said, extending my hand. He shook it with hands that were smooth and cool. I thought that he must moisturize like crazy. And then I started to babble. “It’s mind-blowingly boring, I know. Why don’t I just go completely bland and change my last name to Smith or Blank? Or why not do the mature thing and go by my middle name? Well, you’d have to be crazy to go by my middle name.”
“And what is that?” he asked.
“Enid,” I said, grimacing. “After a distant relative. My dad thought it was really original because no one else had a daughter named Enid. I guess it hadn’t occurred to him why nobody else had a daughter named Enid. I think Mama was still hopped up on the epidural, because she agreed to it.”
“Purity,” he said. I think I squinted at him, because he repeated himself. “‘Enid’ is Welsh in origin. It means ‘purity’ or
‘soul.’”
“It also meant there were a lot of jokes at my expense when our full names were announced at school, ” I muttered sulkily.
The coffee was a bitter black jolt to the system after frothy frozen cocktails. I shuddered. “Graduations were hell.”
He paused for a moment and then laughed, a good explosion of honest, barking laughter. It sounded rusty, as if he hadn ’t done that in a while.
“Jane Enid Jameson, my name is Gabriel Nightengale,” he said. “I would very much like to keep you company until you are able to drive home.”
