He imagined turning into The Hulk and smashing desks.
With a sigh, Brian put his glasses back on. Gray was smattered through his dark black curls, and wrinkles creased his ebony skin—this job had aged him.
“Without a change in the tax base, next year we either close the library or we pay the fire chief’s salary,” he said.
“We can’t not have a fire chief.”
“Then we close the library.”
“We can’t close the library! What about volunteers? If we just have volunteers run it?”
“And how do we pay the utilities? Taxes? It’s one of the biggest buildings in the city—”
“Okay. Okay.” Jackson looked out the window and wondered, just briefly, what was happening in Rio de Janeiro at this moment. Dancing, probably. That hipswervy Latin stuff. He wasn’t much of a dancer but if he moved to Rio, he’d learn. He was probably great at it and just didn’t know it.
“The contest—”
“We can’t bank on the contest, Jackson. We can’t.”
Jackson knew that, he did, but he wanted to bank on it. He wanted to put aside all this anxiety over the town and start looking forward to the next part of his life. He wanted to move on.
“Two more months,” he said. “Two more months before we make these big decisions.”
“Jackson.” Brian’s sigh reeked of disappointment and censure, and Jackson bristled. “What happens if we don’t win? This town needs to restructure. It’s not the town it was before the recession, which doesn’t have to be a tragedy. But I think if we really looked at reality—”
“You can restructure when you’re mayor.” As soon as the words were out, he regretted them. Brian didn’t deserve that, but Jackson had started down this road and he couldn’t change direction now. He was swinging for the fences here, damn it! “How are the Okra Festival plans going?”
“Great. We’ve made a little money on the parade permits. The street-fair vendor licenses are all sold—people seem to be excited.”
“Good. That’s … good.” Good, but not enough. Not nearly enough and they both knew it.
Brian closed his books, which was the universal signal that the meeting was over. He stood and collected his stuff, and Jackson had to admire the guy. Considering they were the only two people with all their fingers in the dam, Brian kept his cool. Brian could quit, as he’d no doubt been tempted to do once he realized the mess they were in—Lord knows Jackson had been—yet he’d stayed.
They might not always agree, but he showed up at these meetings every week with ideas, ready to try.
“You’ll be a good mayor,” Jackson said.
“The election isn’t for another three months,” Brian said, smiling over his shoulder as he headed for the door.
“No one is running against you, Brian. Everyone knows you’ll be good for Bishop.”
Brian stopped at the door, his hand on the knob. “I won’t have a magic contest to help this town out.”
That felt like hard censure, and Jackson’s back rose. “Should I have sat back and not tried?”
“No, but … not everything needs to be fixed. Some things just … are.”
Jackson shrugged, angry and at a loss, because he didn’t understand what Brian was talking about. Some things just are? What things? Everything was changeable; he knew that better than anyone. One minute a guy could have a life, a girlfriend, plans for the future, and the next that could all be gone. People could change—he had big plans in that department. And everything … everything could be fixed.
Brian shook his head and left, closing the door behind him with a definitive click.
Jackson stared at the intricately carved door of his office. Honestly, he thought, apropos of nothing, who carves a door like that? What is the point of a door like that?
Something restless roared through him and he wanted, ferociously, to see Monica. To bury his discontent in her discontent. To find, in all the expectations that the world seemed to have about them, the truth, as only they could define it.
But then the moment was over, and he got up and walked to the door.
One thing he had learned coming back to this town was that when things were really bad, when he wanted to close his eyes and drown in the problems that rose around him, nothing worked like movement. Forward motion. Not always the best thing, but sometimes the only thing.
Ms. Watson—not Pam, not Pamela, but Ms. Watson—the secretary who came with his job, who had worked at the desk on the other side of that stupid door through the terms of four mayors including his father, looked up expectantly.
“I’m going to go to Cora’s,” he said. “You want something?”
Ms. Watson declined; Ms. Watson always declined. Jackson shrugged. “I have my cell if anyone needs me.”
Ten minutes later, as he crossed the street to Cora’s, the front door to the café opened and Cora stood there, her eyes wide and lit with manic excitement. No scarf in her hair today, and she wore chef whites. Very professional. Something was up.
“He’s here,” she said.
“Who is here?”
“The cracker guy.”
“He is?” He glanced through the plate-glass window. Inside, the café seemed filled with regulars. But all the regulars were staring at the corner booth, obscured by the door.
He followed Cora into the restaurant, and the expectations he’d felt on Friday were doubled at least. It was like walking into a giant web.
“Coffee, Cora?” he said, and she walked away nodding. He took a deep breath and turned to face the man in the corner booth. Dean Jennings, in the flesh, wearing an ordinary summer-weight suit and button-down shirt, but somehow making it look glamorous.
“Hi,” Jackson said as he approached the tall blond man. “I’m Jackson Davies, mayor of Bishop.”
“Oh, right.” The man stood partially and shook Jackson’s hand. “I was going to make my way over to your office in a bit. Dean Jennings, CEO of—”
“Maybream Crackers, of course. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Dean.” The man’s handshake was firm and swift. Chalk another point up for Dean, Jackson thought.
“Well, I don’t want to interrupt your breakfast—” He let it dangle, banking on the man’s manners being as powerful as his own.
“No, please join me. I was getting a bit wigged out with all of these people staring at me while I ate.”
Jackson sat. “You get used to it.”
“I’m not sure why I would want to.”
It seemed those moments that just put a pin in the way his life was lived here were coming in fast succession. Those things he took for granted as immoveable realities just got kicked aside by other people, as if they were nothing.
Why get used to people watching you eat, indeed?
“It’s sort of a small-town thing.”
“I wouldn’t know.” Dean looked back at the people staring at him, as if they were the ones in the zoo. It was effective; most people looked away.
“Where are you from?” Jackson asked.
“New York, born and raised.”
The words came with a cool breeze, a whiff of the exotic. Skyscrapers and counterculture coffee shops. Good pizza on every corner, music spilling out of grungy clubs. A city that never sleeps. He imagined himself there in one of those slick skinny suits, going to art galleries with fashion-model girlfriends.
Cora arrived with his cup of coffee. “Usual?” she asked Jackson but stared at Dean.
“That would be great, thank you, Cora.”
“And you?” she asked Dean.
“I’m fine,” he said, and she left. Rather slowly, truth be told.
“When does the America Today crew get in?” Jackson asked, getting comfortable.
“Tomorrow. They’re finishing up the shoot in Alaska.”
“Alaska?”
“One of the semifinalists. I arrived yesterday, drove in from Little Rock.”
Jackson burned to ask about the town in Alaska but refrai
ned. “Well, I hope everything has been satisfactory so far?”
Dean grinned down at his nearly empty plate as if he had a little secret. “No complaints.”
“You’re at the Peabody, right?”
“Yeah, I am. It’s very nice. Inviting.”
The conversation stalled into silence. Christ, this guy didn’t make anything easy. “So, tell me about your decision to move your factory.”
Dean rubbed his face. The bell over the door kept ringing as word got out that Dean was here and everyone in town suddenly got very hungry for Cora’s. “I wouldn’t call it a decision, really. I had to do something. Nabisco is trying to buy us out and the board of directors is breathing down my neck to take the deal. So, this is my last kick at the can.”
Dean looked up and laughed at Jackson’s slack-jawed face. “Not quite the story of patriotic industrial leadership you were hoping for?”
“I guess not.”
“Right. Well, the thing Maybream shares with every town in this contest is we’re all in trouble. We’re all—”
“Swinging for the fences,” Jackson supplied.
“Exactly. So … when can I get a look at your factory?”
“Anytime, really.”
Dean stabbed the last bite of his pancake and ate it, groaning. “Well, so far you guys have the best food of any of the towns.”
Jackson’s heart rate spiked, but he had excellent playing-it-cool abilities.
“Did you have the peach?”
“Pecan.”
“Either way, you can’t lose. You know, after the factory, I’d love to show you some more of the town so you can get a better idea of our community. Shelby Monroe’s art camps—”
“Listen, Jackson, I’m going to stop you right there. I could give a shit about the community—excuse my language. That’s the America Today angle. They force me to tag along to that crap. But I’m interested in the town with the factory that won’t bankrupt me to retrofit and the state that will give me the best tax break.”
Jackson blinked, stunned, trying to keep up with this sudden turn in conversation. The bell rang again and it set his teeth on edge. “But … what about your employees?”
“They’ll go to Timbuktu if it means the company stays alive and they get to keep their jobs.”
Thank God, Cora arrived with his breakfast sandwich on an English muffin, because he had nothing to say to Dean. Nothing good. He felt like he’d been duped.
“No pecan pancakes?” Dean asked.
“When Cora first opened I gained about ten pounds. She was doing this pulled-pork fried-egg thing.… It nearly killed me.”
“Sounds good.”
Jackson forced himself to laugh, to pretend his stomach wasn’t sitting in his shoes. “It was.”
The front door opened again, setting off the bell. Honestly, Jackson was thinking of starting a petition to have that bell removed.
“Jesus Christ, is that—”
Jackson looked up and there, looking like a slightly grumpy forties pinup star, was Monica.
Her black hair was pulled back in a bun and she had a wide blue-and-white polka-dotted headband on. She wore a man’s short-sleeve tan shirt over black leggings. A very sexy Rosie the Riveter.
“That’s … Monica Appleby, isn’t it?” Dean asked. Jackson nodded and tried not to stare. He’d worked very hard not to think about her yesterday, instead finding about thirty very strenuous jobs to do at the Big House, but it didn’t stop him from dreaming about her last night like a fourteen-year-old boy.
Jackson took a bite of his breakfast sandwich—the tomato exploded in his mouth, tasting like summer—and nodded.
“Is she … does she live here?”
“For the moment, I suppose,” Jackson said after he swallowed.
Dean’s mouth hung agape. “Oh. My. God. The book. The book about her father’s murder. She’s here to write it.”
“No. No.” Jackson shook his head but his denials had no impact; Dean was digging through his briefcase. “Where … where did you hear that?”
“There.”
It was the Sunday New York Times book section. A small side piece. Jackson read it out loud.
“ ‘Can Monica Appleby do it again? Wild Child author to write nonfiction account of her father’s murder at her mother’s hands in a small Arkansas town.’ ” Jackson sat back; so much for keeping it a secret. It was in the goddamn Times.
Monica glanced over at him, her hand lifting in a half-wave, and he gave her a sick smile. It was not his finest moment, but there was a disaster looming. Cold sweat formed under his collar, reawakening the smell of chlorine on his skin.
“She’s …” He wasn’t sure how he was going to finish that. Not a part of this town. A dirty secret. Every single thing I want and can’t have right now?
“Beautiful,” Dean said. “Way more beautiful than in her head shot, despite that ugly shirt. Have you read her book?”
“No, I have not.”
“Hot shit, man. That woman is seriously hot shit. And she’s here! Now I find myself a bit more interested in your town.” Dean bobbed his eyebrows like a cartoon lecher and Jackson dropped his sandwich. The firm handshake had been a ruse.
“Are you joking?” Jackson asked.
“Hey, don’t look at me like that. You want people to vote for your town—she’ll help. The world loves gossip and scandal, and her family has that in spades.”
Some awful voice in Jackson’s head said, He’s right. People would give us the vote just for Monica Appleby.
“If just half the things in that book are true …” Dean muttered, his eyes running all over Monica’s body with a hot, insulting sense of ownership.
“Then what?” Jackson asked, his voice hard. He might contemplate using Monica for his own gain, which truly was one of the more despicable things he’d thought of in recent years, but he wasn’t going to sit here and listen to Dean speculate about what she might or might not have done in her past.
Dean blinked at Jackson and then smiled. “You want to duel over her honor? Hardly seems worth it. She threw it away years ago, along with her underwear. I’m just going to go have a chat with her.”
Before Jackson could say anything, Dean stood and crossed the café to the front booth by the window where Monica sat. A few people at the counter twisted on their stools to watch.
Monica had her laptop open and a pair of headphones on, the big fancy ones that he thought only hip-hop artists wore. She glanced up when Dean approached and slipped the headphones off, pulling some of her hair out of the headband she wore, and a fat curl bounced down over her eye. Jackson smiled when she batted it away.
They shook hands, and Jackson was somehow relieved to see that fake smile she gave the world on her face.
Good, he thought, let’s see you get past that, Dean.
She glanced over at Jackson, her eyes unreadable, and the world dropped away for just a moment. Just long enough for him to remember with painful clarity the loosening of her body against his the other night. It felt like a secret between them, something special, perhaps like her frowns. Just for him.
She looked back up at Dean and shook her head. She laughed and gestured to the restaurant. And he could practically hear her saying, I’m not really a part of the town. I’m not a part of the competition.
And he was hit by two waves of equal size, one of relief and one of regret. Thank God, and what if she really is the key to winning?
Christ, could nothing be simple?
He expected Dean, having been rebuffed, to head back over to rejoin him. But instead he kept talking and then, Monica was frowning. Frowning at Dean, and then Dean was sitting down across from her. Jackson watched as the man’s knees touched Monica’s and she shifted to accommodate their length.
Jackson had to look away, embarrassed by his jealousy. He was in no position to monitor her knees and whose knees they touched. He was planning his great escape. He was going to be an art snob in New York.
He dug into his sandwich, which no longer tasted like summer, but he couldn’t leave it. If he was honest with himself, he couldn’t leave at all, not until Dean did.
She threw it away with her underwear.
A different man would have punched Dean’s face for those words. Jackson couldn’t tell if that different man was better or worse than himself.
Again, the bell over the door rang and Jackson fought hard not to roll his eyes. But on a wave of sunshine and sweet air, Shelby Monroe walked in, wearing a green sundress, her blond hair pulled back in a tight, straight ponytail. She saw Jackson immediately and walked over, pushing her sunglasses to the top of her head. They were good friends, and for a brief period of time after he’d moved back, he’d planned on marrying her. It seemed like a no-brainer: she was here, she was solid, and she would have been hugely helpful with Gwen.
But one drunken kiss between them dispelled the thought for both of them. They had about as much chemistry as siblings.
“Hey, Jackson,” she said. “How are you?”
“Good. How was your conference?”
For some reason the question made her blush, and she dug into her briefcase. “I have the final registration numbers for the camps. Better than last year. Not a whole lot, but still better.”
“Good. Hey, since you’re here, I need the factory keys back from your mom. Dean Jennings is here and wants a tour.”
Jackson pointed over at Dean and Shelby turned to look. Sensing the attention, perhaps, Dean looked over, a wide smile on his sharp-featured face, but when he caught sight of Shelby, the smile dropped almost as fast as Shelby’s purse dropped from her arm.
“What—?” Jackson reached for the purse, then for Shelby, who seemed somehow unstable. Her face scarlet, she grabbed her purse.
“Sorry. I.… ah … forgot something.” And then she was gone, the bell over the door ringing madly at her exit.
Jackson glanced back at Dean, who was watching her go, his mouth agape.
Did I miss something? Jackson thought.
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