Elvis and The Dearly Departed. Peggy Webb

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СКАЧАТЬ Body Heat, and Bubbles Malone

      After yesterday’s fracas at the funeral home, it’s a relief to go to work.

      I never meant to settle here in spite of the local saying, “When you die, if you’re lucky you go to Mooreville, Mississippi.” After college I was going to move to Atlanta, make a life for myself as wife, mother, and pillar of the community, and a name for myself as a hairstylist.

      But Mama had to have knee surgery, and my best friend and cohort in crime (as Lovie and I call ourselves) had started a catering business she didn’t want to leave. Plus, this great little shop came up for sale.

      This is my domain, the one little segment of my life that’s completely manageable. I renamed the shop Hair.Net and installed a manicurist’s station (sans manicurist, which I can never afford until I pay off my mortgage and my credit card bill at Lucky’s Designer Shoes).

      Mama’s Everlasting Monuments is conveniently located next door (or inconveniently, depending on the day).

      Now I’m here rolling the hair of one of my regulars, while Elvis snoozes nearby.

      Personally I’d prefer to be giving Bitsy a modern cut and a blow-dry, but I pride myself on three things: keeping my mouth shut, satisfying my customers, and wearing cute shoes.

      This is life as I know and love it. Outside, a Peterbilt rig puts on air brakes at Mooreville’s one and only four-way stop, the King’s hit “All Shook Up” blares from the video store next door on my right, and Elvis rouses from his nap in the sunshine by the front door to howl.

      “Good Lord.” Bitsy covers her ears, and Elvis, sniffing with disdain, sashays toward the break room and the comfort of his duck-down doggie bed.

      In this lazy ebb and flow of my days I can almost forget that I lost Jack Jones to a Harley, my prospects of children and financial solvency get dimmer every day, and the California Latons are sleeping off Lovie’s punch in my upstairs guest bedroom.

      Mama breezes in with a five-hundred-dollar plate of brownies. That’s the way I’ve learned to look at the loans I make to subsidize her predilection for poker chips.

      I give her the cash and she gives me a hug. Plus, unsolicited advice.

      “Honey, now that you’ve cut Jack loose, women are drooling all over him.”

      She worships the quicksand he walks on.

      “Mama, I don’t care.” Unfortunately, this is not true. “Don’t forget to shut the back door on your way out.”

      By the time Mama and my last morning customer leave I’m four hundred and twenty dollars in the hole.

      On the bright side, I don’t have anybody to answer to and so far Elvis hasn’t peed on my favorite shoes, a cute little bronze and silver pair of Salvatore Ferragamo sandals that lace around my ankles and make my legs look longer than Julia Roberts’.

      “Elvis? Are you ready for lunch?”

      Usually the mention of food brings him running.

      A quick check shows his bed empty, his second-favorite spot under the washbasin vacant, and the back door wide open. Running around the small yard yelling for my dog, I see my custody battle turning in favor of Jack.

      Panicked, I race inside and dial his cell phone. He answers on the first ring and I don’t know whether to come clean about Elvis or cry.

      I do both.

      “Sit tight, I’m on the way.”

      Holy cow! Now here I am, my good intentions and my willpower taking a powder while the man who knows how to turn every surface in my beauty parlor into a pleasure playground roars this way with eight hundred pounds of horsepower between his legs. I might as well strip and throw myself across the pink vinyl cushions on my love seat.

      With the distant roar of his Screamin’ Eagle putting goose bumps the size of hen eggs all over me, I make a mental list of every reason I should hate him.

      There are about eight hundred and seventy-five, so this could take a while. Topping the list is that I don’t even know who he is. Sure, he says he’s an international business consultant named Jack Jones, but he also said—in French, mind you—that his parents were diplomats in Paris and couldn’t come to the wedding, which proved to be a big fat lie. Turns out he’s an orphan who was such a hell-raiser, nobody would adopt him. And I didn’t find that out until three years after I’d said I do.

      On the eve of my thirtieth birthday, just when I despaired of ever finding a hero, Jack Jones rolled into Mooreville in a silver Jag and started spreading money and charm like it was oil and he was a rich Texan. Which is one of the many states he claims to hail from. Texas. Idaho. New Hampshire. North Dakota. Georgia. Maine. And he can speak in every one of the accents. Plus Spanish, Italian, German, and Japanese in addition to French.

      He seduced me in six languages, then tied me in a knot and delivered me to the altar with the promise of house, dog, and family. He delivered the house (my current abode, which, thank goodness, he’s not fighting for) and the dog (Elvis, whom he’ll get over my dead body).

      “When I can settle down we’ll have kids,” he kept telling me. Then he proceeded to run all over the country doing Lord knows what.

      “You look good enough to eat,” he says, and I nearly jump out of my skin.

      There he stands—Jack Jones in the tightest black jeans I’ve ever seen, a black T-shirt that shows every muscle he’s got and a bulge in his pants that’s either “happy to see me” or his Colt .45.

      “Don’t you even try.”

      He bends me backward over the love seat, then runs his left hand over my lips, down my neck, and into the front of my blouse while I’m trying to decide whether to slap his face or unzip his pants.

      “As tempting as you are, I have other things on my mind today, Callie. Finding my dog, for one.” He releases me and I land in a heap on the love seat. “How did you lose him?”

      “That’s just like you, Jack. Standing there making accusations instead of finding Elvis. He could be in Timbuktu by now.”

      “Not the way he moves. Come on.” We head outside and he tosses me a helmet. “Put that on.”

      “I’m not getting on that Harley.”

      He picks me up, tosses me aboard, then roars off while I hang on. If I could hit the side of a barn, I’d shoot him. With my blue jean skirt hiked up past decency, I look like a gun moll. And I don’t even want to think about my Ferragamo sandals. The left one has come untied. It’ll probably catch in the wheels, jerk me off, and smash me against the highway. I’ll look like roadkill. Even Uncle Charlie won’t be able to repair the damage.

      I don’t have much time to worry because Jack comes to a screeching halt at one of Elvis’ favorite haunts, Fayrene’s convenience store, Gas, Grits, and Guts. (She added the Guts part after she started selling fish bait.) Usually she has a flea market going in the parking lot and kids hanging around, happy to share a hot dog and scratch behind the ears of a dog who thinks he’s famous.

      “Nope,” Fayrene СКАЧАТЬ