Down Home Carolina Christmas. Pamela Browning

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      “It seems like you just placed the last one. Honestly, dogs must have put the word out—head for Smitty’s if you need a home.”

      “This pup is majorly adorable, and I was hoping the Calphus boys could keep her, but their mom said no. Hub’s named her Shasta. She likes to sleep right near where he’s working during the daytime.”

      “Naming an animal is the first step toward keeping her, I’ve heard.”

      “Hub’s got two pit bulls and I’m owned by a house rabbit. Say, Dixie, take Shasta home today. Trial basis. She’s very sweet.”

      “To my little apartment? Ten dollars a month pet rent? No, ma’am.” After a moment, Dixie resumed her previous line of persuasion. “We were talking about the casting call. It could be exciting to rub elbows with Hollywood folks. We might meet interesting guys besides.”

      Carrie narrowed her eyes. “Why, Dixie Lee Smith! Is that the real reason you’re going? Desperately seeking men?” Dixie had been known to bemoan the fact that guys were scarce these days.

      “Well, let’s face it. I’m pushing thirty. If middle age starts at forty-five, I’m two-thirds of the way there, with no husband in sight. You should be worried about this, too. Especially since you said goodbye to Mert over six months ago.”

      “Forty-five is the new thirty-five. It’s hardly middle-aged,” Carrie said, though she remained pensive for a moment. She was thirty-one, which was fine with her. The trouble was that girls tended to marry young in Yewville and have children early. It made late bloomers like her seem backward.

      “Back to the casting call,” Dixie said. “Joyanne and I made a pact to try out together.”

      “At least Joyanne was Miss Yewville and Soybean Festival Queen, not to mention she’s played parts in community theater since she was yay high. She’ll be a natural.”

      “Also they’re paying $104.50 a day.”

      “How’d you find that out?”

      “Joyanne heard it from somebody at the lake last week. Still not interested?” Dixie aimed a sly smile across the table.

      “I’ve already turned down twenty thousand dollars from those movie people for the use of Smitty’s. I guess I can do without their $104.50.”

      Dixie’s eyes nearly bugged out of her head. “You turned down twenty thousand dollars?”

      “Sure did, and from Luke Mason himself,” Carrie replied calmly. She stirred her sweet iced tea and watched the lemon slice bob around amid the crushed ice, taking pleasure in Dixie’s rare speechlessness. She did not add that she’d spotted Luke’s car idling past the garage a couple of times as if he’d been looking for someone. She’d stayed inside where she belonged, though she certainly was intrigued. Maybe she’d made more of an impression on him than she’d thought.

      “You’re a fool, Carrie Rose Smith,” Dixie said with great conviction.

      “I don’t want those people swarming all over my garage. They’ve already overrun the town.” A change of subject was long overdue. “By the way,” she told Dixie, “Tiffany Zill’s chauffeur brought her limousine into the station for gas this morning. I don’t even care to tell you how much it cost to fill it up.”

      “I saw the limo, all right. It occupied the whole business district when it stopped at the traffic light. I bet it has a hot tub in it. Peek inside next time you’re pumping gas.”

      “That galloping gas guzzler could hide the whole peachoid inside and I wouldn’t care,” Carrie said, smiling at Dixie’s unabashed curiosity. The peachoid was Yewville’s famous water tower, which the town leaders, mindful of peach farming’s role in area history, had painted to resemble a peach. Unfortunately it much more resembled someone’s very large fanny, which made it the most photographed feature in Yewville. People traveling north and south along I-95 went out of their way to snap pictures of it.

      “Have you seen her yet?” Dixie asked.

      “Who?”

      “Tiffany Zill. I wonder if she looks as good in person as Luke Mason does. I bet she wears Gucci and Pucci and has her hair colored by a stylist named Raoul.”

      “Like I care,” Carrie said as she slid out of the booth. “I’ve got to run, Dixie. I’ll call you tonight.” She slapped a couple of quarters down on the counter for the waitress and hurried out into the humid afternoon.

      Across the street at the bank, workmen were completing a facade that included a painted-on clock. Carpenters next door at the insurance office were removing a door; the new red one stood nearby. To Carrie, it seemed as if the movie people were fashioning Yewville to resemble a Norman Rockwell painting gone South.

      “Painted-on clocks,” Carrie muttered. “New window boxes. Knowing these movie people, they’ll probably plant polyester geraniums in them.” Her suspicions were correct. On the way past the Southern Confectionery Kitchen, where she customarily bought frozen bananas and, for New Year’s celebrations, bottle rockets, she almost stumbled over two large cardboard cartons labeled Geraniums—Faux Silk.

      “Faux silk,” Carrie said under her breath. “Fake, fake, fake. Isn’t anything real anymore?” Well, Yewville used to be real before they started gussying it up. Carrie had no patience with such things.

      Shaking her head, Carrie walked back to Smitty’s, where nothing was illusion, where what you saw was definitely what you got. Including, presently, a real dog with real fleas.

      Chapter Three

      During the next week, Luke Mason did his best to initiate another encounter with the delightful Carrie Smith, but she never seemed to be at work. He began dropping by Smitty’s to refill his gas tank every time the gauge hit the three-quarters mark. Unfortunately the only person who was even around was the lanky mechanic who emerged from the nether regions of the garage and offered in an offhand way to pump fuel. Luke always declined. He figured that if he took his time filling the tank, that would give the elusive Ms. Smith a chance to show up.

      “Where’s Carrie?” he asked the mechanic one day.

      “Oh, she’s gone off somewhere with her sister,” said the man, whose name, Hub, was embroidered over the pocket of his coveralls. “You want me to tell her you’re looking for her?”

      “No, that’s not necessary,” Luke said, but, of course, Hub stared at him until he drove away.

      Luke didn’t understand his fascination with the woman. She hadn’t been particularly bowled over by him. Maybe the thing he liked about her was that she didn’t fawn over him as women tended to do. Carrie Rose Smith treated him as if he were any other man in the world. This in itself was refreshing, but it didn’t explain why he’d begun to have dreams about kissing her.

      In one of them, they were making out in his Ferrari, cramped and uncomfortable but undeniably passionate. In another, they were in some dark, unspecified place, their bodies tangled amid rumpled sheets, and he was—

      Better not to think about that, maybe. That one had ended up being X-rated because he’d done quite a lot more than kiss Carrie, and he wondered if in real life her lips were СКАЧАТЬ