Page 72 of Just (Fake) Married
Ethan
Night fell earlythis time of year, helped by the western mountain ranges. I parked my car in the twilight around the square, by the statue of Esther Calloway, the bootlegger.
Made immortal in her flapper dress, chest out like she was daring Sheriff McGraw to shoot her. Whoever did the sculpting made it seem like a wind was blowing her dress against her body, and by the look of her brass nipples…she was cold.
It was weird, very weird, but I couldn’t look at that statue of a woman about to be gunned down, standing beside a truckload of Canadian whiskey, and not think of Harmony. She had the same kind of fuck you in her eyes.
And the same nipples, if I remembered correctly, and it wasn’t likely I would forget that.
Two weeks of her trying to dodge me and it was about to come to an end tonight.
A date. With my fake wife.
I turned and walked down Hangman’s Lane to Goods and Provisions. Looking at the storefronts, you could tell which ones were owned by a Calloway – Last Chance Goods and Provisions, Last Stand bar and Last Meal café were all lit up with twinkle lights, even though Christmas was long over.
They were like cheerful, warm beacons in a cold, twilit world.
I pushed my way into Good and Provisions and knocked Harmony off a ladder.
“Holy shit, Harmony,” I said, catching her against my chest and bracing the ladder with my foot. “What are you doing?”
She held up an old brass bell. “Trying to hang this back up,” she said. “It was weighing down my purse.”
As if that made any sense. She quickly disengaged herself from my arms and that made me a little sad.
She wore the green sweater she’d left the house in, and her hair was back in a messy bun that did nice things for her eyes and her cheekbones. I noticed she wore lip gloss and mascara and I wondered if that was for our date. For me.
“What are you staring at?” she asked, wiping her face. “Have I got something-”
“No. You look nice.”
She shot me a wry look that made me want to kiss her, but mascara or not, she’d made it clear there would be no kissing.
Which, of course, now, was all I wanted in the world.
I took the bell from her hand and climbed the ladder. The hook attaching the chain to the bell was broken, but I bent it back into shape, rehung it, and bent the hook closed so it wouldn’t fall.
“You’ve been so busy the bell rang off the hook?” I asked.
I climbed down the ladder and closed it up. She reached for it and I knew she was used to doing things herself.
All the Calloways were, really. They’d had to be. For generations.
“Just tell me where it goes,” I said, determined, for a while at least, to treat her right.
“In the back,” she said, pointing to a small doorway with a bright red, yellow and blue checked curtain. I pulled back the curtain to reveal steps going upstairs and a landing filled with tools, mops and brooms. I tucked the ladder against the wall and came back into the main room, where she was banking the fire in the old potbelly stove.
“You hungry?” I asked her.
“Starved,” she sighed. “We were so busy today, I didn’t get a chance to have lunch.”
“That’s good for business,” I said, and she laughed.
“If people bought anything more expensive than gum, mostly they were coming in to ask about us.”
“Still?”
The last wanted sign had been days ago.
