“Or else what?” Mindy challenged, her eyes lengthening to slits. “You’ll stick us with the dry cleaning bill?”
“You got that right.” Sheila thunked her forearm on the table and wrenched the sleeve of her blouse back and forth in an adult version of show and tell. “See this? It’s silk. Silk requires special handling, and it’s damn expensive to have laundered.”
Mindy thrust out her bottom lip and fused her pencil-blackened eyebrows together in an angry vee over her nose. “So … what are you saying? You think we can’t afford to have your crummy blouse cleaned?”
“The thought did enter my mind. Frankly, I’m amazed you’re even on this trip. What did you have to do? Mortgage your house?”
Ricky shook free of his wife and planted his elbows on the table, cushioning his chin in the palms of his hands. His eyes were bleary, his words labored. “You guys wanna hear about … the thirty-three-yard touchdown pass I threw in the game we played against—”
“Zip it, Ricky,” snapped Mindy, then to Sheila, “Not that it’s any of your business, but I’ll have you know that a land transportation engineer earns some of the highest wages in Bangor.”
“Land transportation engineer?” Sheila crowed with laughter. “He changes oil and rotates tires. He’s a grease monkey! Where do you get off calling him an engineer?”
“It was fourth down,” Ricky rambled on. “Five ticks left on the clock. Brewer’s throwing everything they got at us …”
“Let me tell you whose oil he changes,” bellowed Mindy. “He services all the lemons that Gary Bouchard sells at Bouchard Motors. You hear that?” She drilled a menacing look at Gary. “Your cars are crap. And the more dealerships you open, the crappier your cars get. But don’t change anything. Ricky’s getting rich repairing the defective brake lines and electrical systems in your over-priced clunkers.”
“Hennessy scrambles. He fakes.” Ricky wishboned his arms over his head. “Touchdown!”
Gary gave him a squinty look. “Homecoming? Senior year? Xavier versus Brewer?”
Ricky nodded.
“You lost the game by thirty points.”
Ricky shrugged. “I know. But it was still a great pass.”
“And furthermore,” Mindy ranted, “if that blouse is made of silk, I’ll eat it.”
“Why don’t you let Ricky eat it?” Paula volunteered. “It might be easier on his digestive system than bruschetta.”
Ricky curled his lip into a sneer. “Stuff it, Paula. I’m not eating no cussid blouse.”
I wouldn’t be able to eat a blouse after downing a whole platter of appetizers either, but before the mudslinging deteriorated into food slinging, I decided to redirect the discussion to a less controversial topic.
“Did anyone actually see what happened to Charlotte today?” I asked off-handedly.
“A bicycle plowed into her,” said Gary. “Did you sleepwalk your way through Volendam?”
“I know she was hit by a bicycle. I’m just curious if any of you were nearby when it happened.”
“What if we were?” Paula’s tone was combative. “What’s it to you?”
I offered her my most innocent look as I concocted what I believed to be a credible story. “It’s nothing to me personally, but my group is balking at having to cross the street now, so you can imagine how much that’s going to slow us down. I figure if I can reassure them that Charlotte died not because a bicyclist was
flagrantly reckless, but because she failed to look both ways when she stepped off the curb, they might feel less skittish.”
Mindy pointed a stubby, manicured forefinger at me. “Are you with those old geezers who are pestering all of us to become friends with them on Facebook?”
I flashed a clueless smile. “Excuse me?”
“They practically accosted us in the lobby tonight,” groused Ricky, looking slightly less gray than he had five minutes earlier. “They were so desperate, they even offered to access our accounts from their cellphones so we could accept their invitations and become friends immediately. Why should I become friends with them? I don’t even know them. They’ve got a lot of nerve wanting to stick their noses in my private Facebook business.”
“I’m sure they were just trying to be cordial,” I defended. “They’re quite respectful of other people’s privacy.”
“Maybe they’d like to become friends of Bouchard Motors,” Gary piped up. “Do they ever travel to Maine? I give senior citizen discounts on year-end models.”
“For God’s sake, give it a rest,” his wife bristled. “Do you always have to be groveling at the feet of complete strangers?”
“There you go again.” Paula wagged her finger at Gary. “Acting common. Shame, shame. You know how much it pisses Sheila off when you associate with the little people. She’s afraid you’ll catch something vulgar. Like poverty.”
“Shut up, Paula,” snarled Sheila.
I sighed inwardly. Man, trying to keep these people focused was harder than trying to herd cats. I breathed with relief when I saw our waiter heading toward us, balancing a tray with the next course.
“Chinese vegetable soup,” he announced as he placed small soup bowls in front of each of us. He removed the empty appetizer platter from the table and hurried off again to someplace where the conversation was probably less hostile, which made me realize that if I was going to tease any information out of these people, I needed to skirt the issue rather than be so direct. Who knew that Chinese vegetable soup would provide the perfect diversion?
“Did anyone get a chance to eat in Volendam today?” I picked up my soup spoon and poised it over my bowl. “I lost my appetite after Charlotte’s accident, so I missed lunch.”
Mindy stared into space, her eyes crinkling in thought. “Come to think of it, that’s where Ricky and me were when Charlotte got creamed. We were waiting in line to get into a little restaurant across the street from the scene of the accident.”
“What’s this white gunk floating in the soup?” asked Ricky. He nudged it with his spoon. “Looks like a hunk of rubber.”
“We only had to wait about five minutes because two women who were sitting at a window table were just finishing up, so the hostess showed us right to their table.” She smiled smugly, her voice dripping with entitlement. “It was absolutely the best seat in the house. We saw the ambulance arrive, the bicyclist getting first aid, Charlotte’s body being carted off. We didn’t miss a trick.”
Ricky fished the questionable ingredient out of his soup and dumped it onto a saucer. He poked it with his finger. “What the hell? It
“You’re never up for trying anything new,” Mindy complained. “Rubber vegetables are probably the latest trend in Chinese cuisine. I bet they’re a delicacy, like grilled scorpions or chicken’s feet.” She shrugged. “Could be that rubber has more nutritional value.”
Gary dipped his spoon into his soup bowl then held it aloft for Ricky to see what he’d retrieved. “It’s not rubber, dufus. It’s tofu.”
“Toe what?”
“Tofu. Unfermented soybean curd. It’s the vegetarian version of a T-bone steak.”
Ricky snorted derisively. “T-bone steak. Right. You’re so full of crap, I’m surprised your eyes haven’t turned brown.”
Gary shook his head, his voice almost sympathetic. “You haven’t changed at all, Hennessy. Still the same mental giant you were fifty years ago.”
“Like you’re so smart,” Mindy fired back. “I didn’t see you graduating first in our class. Or second. Or third. I can’t imagine how disappointed your daddy must have been when you told him you got beaten out by an orphan, a social misfit, and a girl who was afraid of her own shadow. If Bobby hadn’t disappeared from the picture, you wouldn’t have even ended up in the top five. That would have killed your daddy, wouldn’t it? Hard to show your face around town when your kid’s high school career ends up a total bust. No basketball scholarship and no academic awards.”
“Ya,” Ricky piled on. “You must have been turning cartwheels when Bobby made his exit. Finnegan gets
