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One by one the women pressed themselves forward. He dispensed courtesies and flattery like Pez candy, while his head ached and his skin itched from dirt and baby oil. There was enough perfume in the air to poke a brand-new hole in the ozone layer and he fought the urge to sneeze.
The door opened behind him, slapping him in the butt. He automatically stepped aside, an action that unfortunately permitted another woman to push her way in.
“You remember me, don’t you, Bobby Tom? I’m Colleen Baxter, used to be Timms before I was married; but I’m divorced now from that cheatin’ sonovabitch used to work at Ames Body Shop. Me and you went to high school together, but I was two years behind you.”
He smiled at Colleen through the angry red haze swirling in front of his eyes. “You’ve gotten so beautiful, sweetheart, I hardly recognized you. Not that you weren’t a pretty little thing back then.”
Her high-pitched
giggle set his teeth on edge, and he saw a lipstick smudge on one of her incisors. “You’re too much, Bobby Tom.”
She batted playfully at his arm, then turned to Gracie and passed over a plastic grocery sack from the IGA. “I got that Neapolitan ice cream you told me Bobby Tom just loves, but you’d better put it in the freezer right away. The air-conditioning in my car’s broke, and it’s gettin’ real soft.”
Bobby Tom hated Neapolitan ice cream. Like most of life’s compromises, it just wasn’t satisfying.
“Thank you, Colleen.” As Gracie pulled the carton from the IGA sack, her Sunday-School-teacher smile was in sharp contrast to the devil-lights flashing in her gray eyes. “Wasn’t that sweet of Colleen to drive all the way back into town, Bobby Tom, just so you could have some ice cream?”
“Real sweet.” While he spoke evenly, the look he gave her carried such clear promise of evil intention that he was half-surprised he didn’t incinerate her right there on the spot.
Colleen tried to get a grip on his arm, but her hand kept sliding around in the baby oil, rubbing the grit deeper into his skin. “I’ve been studying up on football, Bobby Tom. I’m hoping I get a chance to take the quiz before you leave Telarosa.”
“I’ve been studyin’, too,” her friend Marsha piped in. “The library’s entire collection of football books was picked clean the minute word got around that you were comin’ back.”
He’d reached the end of his patience, and with a sigh of pure regret, he placed a hand on each woman’s shoulder. “I’m sorry to do this to you, ladies, but truth is, Gracie passed the quiz just last night and consented to be Mrs. Bobby Tom.”
A deep silence fell over the trailer. Gracie froze in place, the half gallon of Neapolitan ice cream beginning to drip in her hands.
The women’s eyes flew back and forth between the two of them, and Colleen’s mouth flopped like a guppy’s. “Gracie?”
“That Gracie?” Mary Louise said, her eyes cataloging every one of Gracie’s fashion and grooming mistakes.
Bobby Tom gave his intended the best facsimile of a tender smile he could manage to bestow on someone he planned to murder in cold blood. “This sweet lady right here.” He squeezed through the Reba McEntire hairdos to get to her side. “I told you we weren’t going to be able to keep it a secret for long, darlin’.”
Slipping his arm around her shoulders, he hauled her against his bare chest where he did his best to smear dirt and baby oil all over the side of her face. “I’m tellin’ you, ladies, Gracie knows more Super Bowl history than any woman I ever met. Lordy, but she is pure magic when it comes to quoting postseason game records. The way you called out those passing percentages last night, sweetheart, just ’bout brought tears to my eyes.”
She was making funny little strangling sounds against his chest, and he squeezed her tighter. Why hadn’t he thought of this before? Passing Gracie off as his fiancée was the perfect way to buy himself some peace and quiet during his stay in Telarosa.
He shifted her across his body so he could smear up the other side of her face, then sucked in his breath as a frigid half gallon of Neapolitan hit him square in the stomach.
Mary Louise Finster looked as if she’d swallowed a chicken bone. “But, Bobby Tom, Gracie isn’t— She’s real nice and all, but she isn’t exactly—”
He inhaled sharply against the cold and dug his fingers into the hair on the back of Gracie’s head where nobody could see. “Shoot, are you talkin’ ’bout the way Gracie looks right now? She just dresses like this sometimes ’cause I ask her to. Otherwise, she gets too much attention from men, isn’t that right, sweetheart?”
Her response was lost against his chest as she tried to ram the carton into his side. He tightened his grip on her hair and jiggled her head up and down while he smiled to beat the band. “Some of those boys on the crew look sort of wild, and I’m afraid they might get too worked up around her.”
Just as he’d hoped, the announcement of his engagement took away the girls’ party spirit. Doing his best to ignore the leaking ice cream, he kept Gracie close to his side while he said good-bye to his visitors. When the trailer door finally shut behind the last of them, he released her and looked down.
Dirt and oil smeared her face and most of the front of her raccoon tail dress, while melting ice cream sloshed out from under the lid of the squashed container and ran in muddy chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla trickles over her fingers.
He waited for an outburst of indignation, but instead of exhibiting anger, her eyes narrowed with determination. Just as he remembered that Gracie hardly ever reacted in a predictable fashion, her hand shot out and she grabbed the V-shaped opening at the top of his jeans. Before he could react, she had dumped melting ice cream down the front of his pants.
He yowled and leaped straight up in the air.
She dropped the carton to the floor with a splat and crossed her arms over her chest. “That,” she said, “is for making me buy condoms in front of your mother!”
It was hard to yell, hop up and down, cuss, and laugh at the same time, but Bobby Tom somehow managed it.
While he suffered, Gracie stood in a spreading pool of melting Neapolitan and watched. Fairness compelled her to admire his attitude. He had been wrong to bait her, she had retaliated, and, with the exception of an excess of vulgar language, he was being a remarkably good sport about it.
