Resting my forearms on her desk, I smiled back and nodded in agreement. “You have a lovely facility here, and the residents were quite charming.”
She laughed loudly, the sound traveling down the empty halls. “You’ve got that right. I hope you’ll be back? I’ve already had several requests for more classes from both you and your uncle. There was also, ah….” She paused and furrowed her brow as if contemplating whether she should continue.
I leaned in and tilted my head, curious. She couldn’t leave me in such suspense. “Yes?”
Some tension returned to her, but she smoothed her already perfectly done hair back and only grimaced slightly before continuing. “Well, the original class today was meant to be self-portraits. But when this month’s schedule of classes was posted last week, there was a bit of an uproar from some of the residents, and they voiced their concerns.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Oh?”
She sighed. “In summary, they said the last thing they wanted to do with their time was to look at themselves, so they requested a model be brought in for the class instead.”
I nodded in understanding. I’d taken similar classes over the years. “Mmm, figure drawing. That’s always a good one.”
“I’m sure it would be,” Jillie agreed. “But they had more requests regarding the type of model and, umm… how clothed they would or wouldn’t be.” Cheeks flushed, she added, “And honestly, I need to take a long look at the Locc’s insurance policies before I entertained their ideas further, so, yes, I am so relieved that today seemed to satisfy them.”
That explained some of Miss Lenny’s earlier comments, but I made the conscious decision to not think further on it for now. Glancing through the Locc’s front doors and to the quiet street outside, I turned my attention to another minor problem that had needed fixing for quite a while.
“I’m hoping to come back for classes, but I’m in need of my own transportation. Any chance you could direct me to a good sales lot?”
She considered for a moment and then straightened as an idea lit her eyes. “I can do you one better. We have a community bulletin board where residents post items for sale. It’s not uncommon for vehicles to be listed on there.” She reached under her desk and pulled out a pad of Post-it notes. “Leave me your number and email on here, and I’ll check the listings daily for you.”
I eagerly took the pen when she offered it to me and wrote down my information, doodling a happy little crab for razzle-dazzle at the bottom.
“Is there a certain kind you’re looking for?” she inquired.
I finished the crab’s toothy smile and set the pen down, turning my thoughts to Vinh’s old RAV4 and Cody’s truck before answering, “Something that has been well-loved but is reliable enough to not have my overprotective brother pitch headfirst into a pit of despair.”
Jillie smiled in amusement. “Sounds reasonable.”
We said our goodbyes then, and when I stepped out into the March sunlight, I was filled with excitement at the thought of having my own way to get back to Bay Springs.
To gazebo sunrises, the hush of the Bay, and the man who I was somehow both closer to and further from than ever before.
19
Cody
By the timeI reached the docks after my B&E, it became glaringly apparent that my plan to break into Miss Barb’s burnt house and make off with a truck bed full of mementos was not a flawless story of redemption and heroics.
Exhibit A being that the houseboat had no good place to store such a quantity of evidence.
I sat in my truck and glared at the boat in the small harbor as if all watercrafts were the root of my problems, but ya know what? The casinos on the Gulf partially floated on water, and I’d spent six months on a cruise ship competing for the title of worst cruise ship employee and even worse boyfriend, so maybe there was something to that.
Eventually, I formulated a half-assed plan of procrastination that included buying a tarp from the closest hardware store and covering everything in the back of my truck bed with it.
Once that one small hole in the plan was plugged, I went inside the houseboat to stew for the rest of the day—and night—while pretending I hadn’t just put a bright blue beacon on my truck that practically yelled, “Stolen items here!”
But maybe that was just my paranoia being an intrusive little bitch.
The twin to my anxiety, that one.
By the time I woke from sleeping off my feelings and regrouped, I was sore as hell and beyond hungry. I unlocked my phone and noted two missed calls from Bree and a text asking if I wanted to come to the cottage for lunch.
Welp. I’d missed that, and it would be shitty to ask her to feed me dinner instead.
When I thought on everything that’d happened yesterday, it really had been the perfect representation of my life. A tornado blowing through town, terrorizing the innocent citizens in its path, like that poor barista at 7th Street Coffee. My various failures and the broken pieces of my relationship with my mother, and even with AJ, were the shards of debris spread throughout the funnel—inescapable, jagged, and debilitating.
I was the black-and-white moo cow caught up in the tornado, mystifying and almost whimsical—if you didn’t think too hard about what would happen when gravity eventually reclaimed it.
