“Alcohol is like love. The first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After that, you take the girl’s clothes off.”
–Raymond Chandler
There was no sign of my aunts in the house when I left for the soup shop the next morning. Auntie Ida usually baked something for the soup shop, but this morning I arrived empty-handed. I had the sinking suspicion that my aunts had snuck out to Remington’s apartment already. At least they had the common sense to go out under the cover of night. I didn’t need them to draw any more attention to us.
Not that anyone would notice, with everything else going on. As soon as eleven o’clock hit, it was total bedlam in the shop. The tablets on the wall were beeping nonstop. Mouse felt guilty about the added work, so she tried to take up the slack, handling the delivery men. But it was too much for one person to handle. I was taking orders, and serving food nonstop.
“Today’s soups are matza ball, broccoli and cheddar, vegan paradise, and beans beans beans,” I told Bud.
“I’m leaning towards broccoli and cheddar, but I probably should go for the vegan paradise,” Bud said, pointing at his laptop. “I’m reviewing heart stents. It’s some scary shit, I gotta tell you.”
“You have a heart stent?”
Bud shook his head. “Nope. Just reviewing them. Medical reviews get me double money.” He scratched his ear for a moment and seemed to think about his medical reviews. “Oh, what the hell. Throw me a bowl of broccoli and cheddar. You only live once, right? You got anything that goes good with the soup?”
“Mouse made great rye bread, but the deliveries took all of those. You want a baguette? I think we still have some left.” Bud glanced over at Mouse. Her face was red, and she was dripping sweat. The tablets were beeping, and she was filling orders one after the other, all the while trying to knead dough.
“She looks like she should rest a little,” Bud noted. “She wouldn’t want to end up with a heart stent, too.”
I studied Mouse for a moment. Bud might be right. All of the new business was too hard to manage, and because Mouse felt guilty about it, she was taking on far too much on her own. I was hoping that she would get overwhelmed and just quit the delivery apps idea so we could throw the tablets and the delivery men out the door. But Mouse was stubborn, and she didn’t want to give up on her idea for more soup business.
Something had to change, quick. I hated the new atmosphere in the shop. The soup shop/bookstore was supposed to be a sanctuary, a place where one could get hearty, home-cooked soups, and read books. It wasn’t a place for nonstop business and people coming in and out, like it was a 7-Eleven.
The door opened, and my friend Frances Finkelstein walked in. She was wearing her usual business suit with pantyhose and pumps, but her hair-sprayed hair was slightly mussed, and she looked down in the dumps. She walked to an empty seat at an already occupied table, and sat down, surprising the diners who were eating at the same table.
She rested her elbow on the table, put her head in her hand, and sighed.
“Do you mind?” one of the people at the table asked her.
“Not at all. Eat up,” she told them with a loud sigh. I went over to her.
“Are you all right?” I asked her.
She sighed again. “I’m a woman without a purpose,” she said. “I used to be a high-powered female warrior goddess, but now I’m a ship without a rudder. I’m a peanut butter sandwich without the jelly. I’m a Hershey bar without the nuts.” She touched her stomach. “Oh, boy, Agatha. I guess I’m hungry.”
I grabbed a basket of cornbread off of another table and handed it to her. Frances had been in a deep dark funk since her real estate/fudge shop closed a week before. Normally, she was busy trying to buy and sell homes in Sea Breeze, but real estate moved slowly in a town with a raw sewage problem, and her business failed. Now, she was unemployed and without prospects.
Frances took a bite of the cornbread. “The only good thing in this town is those scooters,” Frances said with her mouth full. “They’re so cute. Folks are noodling around town on them. It’s like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting. Don’t you think?”
I hated the scooters. I thought that they were a threat to public safety. I wanted to take a baseball bat to them. But I didn’t want to throw water over the only thing that was making Frances happy these days. So, I just nodded.
“Give me your news,” Frances urged me. “Tell me something good. I need good news.”
I racked my brain, trying to come up with some good news. I would have bet money that Frances wouldn’t think that John’s new lease on life in Remington’s body was good news. She might have thought that the increased business from the delivery apps was good news, but I couldn’t bring myself to talk positively about it.
Luckily, Mouse came to the table, and I didn’t have to make something up. Her eyes were bloodshot and her clothes were stained because she had forgotten to put on an apron. She looked like she hadn’t slept in days.
“I’m fine,” Mouse squeaked. “I’m not going to die.”
“You’re not?” Frances asked. “You kind of look like you are. You’re sweating a lot, just like old man Sam Russell looked right before he had a massive coronary and died in the doughnut shop last year.”
Mouse clutched at her chest, and her face turned up in a panicked expression. “My chest does kinda feel tight. But I don’t want to die. I’m not going to die, right?” she asked, looking at me.
“You’re not going to die,” Bud called from his table. “You can always get a heart stent, and that’ll save you.”
Mouse did sort of look like she was going to die. “No, of course you’re not going to die,” I told her. “You’re just overwhelmed.”
“Why are you overwhelmed?” Frances asked Mouse. “Are you going hot and heavy with your flour guy?”
Mouse had recently started up a relationship with our flour delivery man.
“I don’t have time for relationships!” Mouse screeched. “Who has time for sex?” she screeched even louder. The diners stopped eating and looked at her for a moment before they went back to their meals.
I put my hand on Mouse’s back. “It’s the delivery apps,” I explained to Frances. “It’s bringing in a lot of business.”
Frances looked at the wall by the cash register, and her eyes grew large. “That’s right. You told me about the delivery apps, but I must’ve forgotten.” She tapped her chin with her finger, as if she was thinking about the delivery apps. “I bet I could be a great delivery man,” she said, as if she was speaking to herself. “I could set my own hours. I could be outside. I could see people. And I would probably lose a lot of weight with all of the activity. You know what? I’m going to work for the delivery apps.”
“You are?” Mouse asked. “For which delivery app?”
“All of them,” Frances said. “If one of those unwashed teenagers can handle one delivery app, then a professional woman with years of work experience like me can handle all of them. Easy peasy.”
The hair on the back of my neck stood up. At first, I thought it was my intuition pestering me because I had a niggling suspicion that Frances’s delivery work experience was going to wind up in disaster, but it wasn’t that. The hair on the back of my neck was reacting solely to the door opening.
Frances, Mouse, and I all turned our heads, as if we were the tide, pulled by the moon’s gravity. John walked in as Remington Cumberbatch, hot stuff detective, dressed in his custom-made suit. He took two long strides and stood in the center of the shop with his hands clasped behind his back, just like I had seen John do a million times before.
Our eyes locked, and John smiled at me and waggled his eyebrows. He seemed completely delighted to finally be walking around town on his own like a real live person.
Mouse clutched at her chest, again. “Maybe you’re right, Frances,” she said. “Maybe I’m dying. My heart’s racing. It’s pounding like it’s going to come out of my chest. Do you think this is it? Should we call 911?”
Frances waved at her. “No, that’s a normal reaction to seeing that hot cop. He looks better now than before he went into the hospital. More distinguished. More Cary Grant to go along with The Rock. No heart can beat normally when faced with all of that.”
I began to sweat. “What are you talking about?” I asked, my voice an octave higher than usual. “He doesn’t look at all different. Just the same old Remington. Nothing to see here. Nothing out of the ordinary.”
“O…kay…” Frances said, drawing out the word. “You all right, Agatha? Maybe you should get some water.”
I waved her off. “I’m fine,” I said and rushed toward John.
“What’re you doing here?” I whispered to him.
“I came to say hello before I go to work. I’m going to work, Aggie. Look at me, I’m alive and working.”
I looked around to make sure no one was listening, but everyone was listening. They were all looking at him and looking at me with him. There had been a lot of interest in the possible relationship between me and the new, sexy detective.
I shushed John. “Don’t talk about being alive,” I whispered. “Everyone here is alive. We don’t talk about being alive.”
“Sorry. I’ll get over it, eventually, I assume,” he said, dejected. “Anyway, today I’m going to fight bad guys.” He leaned in closer, and his smile returned. “I’ve been watching a lot of television. I know what to do. I’m totally caught up on modern-day law enforcement. I need to use my gun as much as possible, shoot everyone. First, though, I need to chase them in my car, beat them up when they don’t talk to me, and then shoot them in the face.”
I started sweating for real, now. “Don’t do that,” I urged in a whisper. “You can’t do any of that. Not the face shooting. Not even the car chases. You have no idea how to drive a car. This is not television. This is real. This is Sea Breeze. It’s a tiny little town. We don’t have crime. You know, unless there’s a murder. But even then, it’s not the normal kind of murder. It’s a bizarre small-town murder. So, you’re not going to do anything. Nothing. No law enforcement. You can look the part, but you don’t act the part. You understand? You can bide your time until we, you know, fix this.”
“Noted,” he said. “Don’t worry about me, Aggie. I got this. I think I’ll be good as a twenty-first century detective.”
The door opened and a few potheads walked in. They were carrying baggies of marijuana that they must’ve just purchased next door. Business was booming so much, that they weren’t even waiting until they got stoned before they ate. It was like a preemptive binging before they lit up. I rolled my eyes and sighed.
“Take any seat,” I said.
John leaned down and whispered in my ear. The sensation of his breath on my skin made me shudder with pleasure. “You want me to arrest them? I would love to make all your troubles go away, my dearest Agatha. Say the word and I’ll clear them all out.”
With his lips so close to me, my blood raced in my veins and my body heated up. How could a mere whisper ignite my desire? But it had. It was all I could do not to strip naked right there and then.
I wouldn’t know what to do after I was naked, though, because I was the world’s oldest virgin, but something told me that John would fill in any gaps that I might have in the sex department. He seemed raring to go at any moment, but right now, my anxiety was overpowering my sexual desire.
I was worried about John going off into the world without me. Yes, we lived in a small town with practically no crime, but he knew nothing about the modern world, besides what he saw on television. Two weeks was not enough time to prepare him to be a cop on the beat.
“No, I’m fine,” I croaked. I tried to clear my throat, but the desire and anxiety were blocking it. “I don’t need help. You do.”
John stepped even closer to me. His lips grazed my ear now. “I’d love you to help me, Aggie,” he said in a breathy whisper.
I shivered visibly, and I broke out into a sweat. I wondered what kind of hellish trick it was to make me sweat and shiver at the same time. Whatever it was, I figured that it was out of the realm of understanding for a virgin.
“Wait for me, and I’ll take you to work,” I told him. “I’m worried about you going alone. You don’t know what’s out there waiting for you. Let me help you for the first day. I just need to finish up some orders, handle the potheads, help Mouse with the deliveries, and those sorts of things,” I told him.
John shook his head. “Sorry, babe,” he said, winked at me, and threw me into a dancer’s dip. He winked at me once more before kissing me right there in the middle of the shop. I was briefly aware of all eyes in the shop watching us, but then I wasn’t aware of anything else except for the reaction of my body to him.
We hadn’t kissed since that first time in the hospital, and here it was happening again. The intoxicating mix of the sexy Remington, along with John, who had loved me for most of my life, was almost too much to bear. Like the new composite man, the kiss was both gentle and hard.
His tongue slipped into my mouth, and I greeted it greedily with my own. My body ignited in a flame of desire, and Lord help me, I pulled him closer to me. In front of everyone. I might have moaned, too. I was pretty sure that my brain was melting, and maybe that’s why I kept kissing him like I couldn’t stop. Maybe that’s why I forgot that I was in the middle of the shop with about fifty people watching me.
Thankfully, John stopped the kiss for me. He lifted me up and straightened my clothes. He threw me a devilish grin and winked at me once more. “Gotta dip, Aggie,” he announced and pointed at me, like he was part of the Rat Pack in Vegas.
The entire female population of the store watched him leave. When he walked through the door and out of sight, there was an audible sucking in of air, as if we had all been holding our breath at the sight of a singularly hot and dashing man.
The door remained open for a second, and Eddie Acid walked in. He stepped in the middle of the store, and he tried to strike a pose, but he was only halfway successful. Normally, his presence drew a lot of oohs and ahhs, but everyone was still in a cloud of Remington, and they didn’t react to the punk rocker.
Eddie frowned in disappointment, but then he recovered quickly. “Announcement!” he shouted. “I’ve got great news for you lazy townspeople. Chris Trist, one of the four Chris’s, is going to be one of the contestants at the taco-eating contest.”
He finished his announcement, and then he managed to do his punk rocker pose, surprising himself and everyone else. My friend Amy Hawthorne, the town’s professional cat walker, stood up and screamed while clutching the sides of her head.
“What?” she screeched loudly, dragging out the word. “Chris Trist? He’s my favorite Chris of the four Chris’s!” She screamed again, and this time she did a little dance with it. “Will I get to meet him?” she asked when she came up for air.
“If you volunteer,” Eddie said. “Volunteers will get to meet Chris.”
Amy ran towards Eddie, pushing aside chairs, tables, and me, like she was going for a touchdown. “Back off, people,” she barked. “I’m going to be the number one volunteer. I’m going to spend the most time with Chris. Nobody’s going to meet him before I do. Chris loves me. I mean, he wants to meet me. I mean…Back away people, or I’ll get my cats to claw your eyes out.”
Despite her threats, half of the diners in the shop filed in behind Amy to sign up to volunteer for the taco-eating contest and to meet one of the four Chris’s. I didn’t know who the four Chris’s were, let alone Chris Trist, but the announcement that he was going to be here had set off a chain reaction. Eddie Acid now had more volunteers than he knew what to do with.
Hopefully, it meant that the taco-eating contest would run without a hitch. I smiled when I thought about it, because it might mean that tomorrow would be a slow soup day, while everyone watched the taco eaters.
A slow soup day. I had been wishing for one of those, and my wish was going to come true. Maybe I did have good news for Frances, after all.
I returned to Frances’s table and sat down across from her. “That was lucky timing,” she said to me.
“What do you mean?”
“The Chris Trist thing. Now no one’s talking about the Remington kiss.”
I could feel my face grow hot, and I was probably the color of our tomato soup. “Oh that. That was nothing.”
Frances smiled. “I could do with a little bit of nothing in my life. I don’t think I’ve ever been nothinged like that before. That was like a movie star, porn movie, Gone With the Wind kind of nothing. It’s probably illegal in thirty states. I was sure you were going to get naked right here. Actually, I was pretty sure I was going to get naked just watching Remington kiss you. You lucky soup shop owner, you.”
I shrugged, as if the kiss wasn’t all that, and I had been kissed like that a million times in my life. My face grew hotter, and I was sure that I was bright red.
Frances stood. “That does it. I’ve made up my mind. I’m going to enter the world of delivery apps. I’m going to blow everyone out of the water. I’m going to make a fortune and be someone important in this town. More important than a Chris. I’ll be like the fifth Chris. And I’ll lose twenty pounds. It’s the genius idea of the world, Agatha. I wish I had thought of this earlier. Thank you for all your help.”
Frances marched out of the shop like a conquering hero. I hope that she was right about the delivery apps, but I had my doubts. I didn’t think the delivery apps were a good thing for anybody.