Carolina Moon

before he breaks the leash and you have to give me a citation.”
    “Need a hand?”
    “No, I’ve got him.” She laughed as she and the dog lunged out the door. “Barely. Nice to have met you, Mayor Frazier. Bye, Max!”
    “Likewise,” he murmured, then rolled his eyes toward Maxine at reception. “Didn’t have English teachers like that when I was in Progress High. Might’ve taken me a few more years to graduate.”
    “You men.” Maxine chuckled as she took her handbag out of the bottom drawer. “So predictable. Mongo was our last patient, Mayor. Doc Wade’s washing up in the back. You mind telling him I’m running off to make my evening lecture?”
    “Go right on. Have a nice night, now.”
    He wandered back to find Wade straightening the drug cabinet. “Got any good stuff?”
    “Got me some steroids that’ll put hair on your chest. You never did grow any.”
    “ ‘Cause you used it all on your ass,” Dwight said easily. “So how about that blonde?”
    “Hmm?”
    “Jesus, Wade, you been hitting that cabinet for doggie downers? The blonde with the big dog who just left. English teacher.”
    “Oh, Mongo.”
    “Well, I see it’s too late.” Dwight shook his head, boosted himself up to sit on the padded table. “When you start missing pretty blondes who fill out their skinny jeans the way that one did, and remember a big, sloppy dog, you’re too far gone even for Lissy to fix up.”
    “I’m not going on another blind date. And I noticed the blonde.”
    “I’d say she noticed you, too. You hit on her?”
    “Jesus, Dwight, she’s a patient.”
    “The dog’s the patient. You’re missing a golden opportunity here, son.”
    “Get your mind off my sex life.”
    “You don’t have one.” Dwight leaned back on his elbows, grinned. “Now, if I was single and only half ugly like you, I’d have talked the blonde onto this table, instead of her big, hairy dog.”
    “Maybe I did.”
    “In your dreams.”
    “Ah, but they’re my dreams, aren’t they? Why aren’t you home washing your hands for supper like a good boy?”
    “Lissy’s got a bunch of women coming over to look at Tupperware or something. I’m steering clear.”
    “It’s makeup.” Wade closed the cabinet door. “My mother’s going.”
    “Whatever the hell. Christ knows the woman doesn’t need any more face paint or plastic bowls, but she gets bored to death when she’s this pregnant. So how about we have a beer and something to eat? Like the old days.”
    “I’ve got some things to do around here.” Faith could come by, he thought.
    “Come on, Wade. A couple hours.”
    He started to refuse again. What the hell was wrong with him, locking himself in his apartment, waiting for Faith to call? It was as bad as a teenage girl mooning after the football star. Worse.
    “You’re buying.”
    “Shit.” Cheered, Dwight pushed off the table. “Let’s give Cade a call, get him to meet us. Then we’ll make him pay for it.”
    “That’s a plan.”

15
    S he hadn’t expected to be nervous. She was prepared, she’d checked and rechecked every detail down to the color and weight of the cord used to secure her boxes. She had experience and knew every piece of her merchandise almost as well as the craftsmen who created it.
    She had gone through every step and stage of the creation of her shop with a calm and often cool eye, and a steady hand. There were no mistakes, no gaps, no flaws.
    The shop itself looked perfect, warm and welcoming and bright. She herself looked casually professional and efficient. She should, as she’d spent the hour between three and four that morning agonizing over her choice of outfit before settling on the navy slacks and white linen shirt.
    Now she worried it was too much like a uniform. Now she worried about everything.
    Less than an hour before opening and all the nerves and doubts and fears she’d managed to ignore for months tumbled down on her like broken bricks.
    She sat in her storeroom at her desk with her head between her knees.
    The sick giddiness insulted her, shamed her. Even as she went limp with dizziness she berated herself. She was stronger than this. She had to be. She couldn’t come so far, work so hard, then collapse inches from the goal.
    They would come. She wasn’t worried about drawing in people. They would come and they would gawk, and shoot her the quick, curious glances she was already used to seeing aimed at her around town.
    The Bodeen girl. You remember her.