Talk of the Town

by Lisa Wingate

  “I see travel by air.” Madame Murae took a lid from under the counter, popped it on my soda, pulled my hot roast beef and Swiss from the oven, and stood speculatively studying the curlicues of slightly browned cheese. “Soon.”

  A sharp-edged lump formed in my throat and descended slowly to my stomach. I wasn’t supposed to be traveling. I was supposed to be picking out wedding gear, reserving the Chapel-by-the-Sea’s reception room, deciding how to have my hair done. “I’m not scheduled to be traveling these next three months, but with my job, it could happen.” With Ursula, anything’s possible.

  “Ah.” Madame Murae continued surveying my sandwich. “I see negative energy surrounding the travel card.”

  That would be Ursula Uberstach. Five feet eleven inches of blond, blue-eyed negative energy, with a size four waist, a perpetual tan, and men constantly groveling at her feet.

  “Change, I see change.”

  Maybe Ursula’s leaving the show. Then again, maybe I am.

  “An ending, a begin—”

  Setting a ten on the counter, I snatched the sandwich away in what, for me, was a surprisingly impolite maneuver. Twelve years in Episcopal school and a lifetime of competing with four disgustingly perfect older siblings had taught me manners, if nothing else. “Paula and I had better get moving. We want to do a little shopping over lunch.” Madame Murae slid her hand under mine as she dropped the coins one by one and listened to the sound, her dark eyes fixating as she stroked a finger across my palm.

  “Be careful,” she said. “For you, the path to happiness travels uphill.”

  “Thanks,” I muttered. Tell me something I don’t already know.

  “Isn’t she great?” Paula chirped as we headed for a table on the sidewalk. “You’d be amazed how often she’s right. Every time she tells me something, it happens, I swear.”

  Stepping into the sunshine of a beautiful LA noon, I followed my best friend and future maid of honor to a patio table. “You know I don’t believe in that stuff,” I said. “And you shouldn’t, either. If Madame What’s-her-face is so good at foretelling the future, what’s she doing running a sandwich shop?” Just to prove my point, I ate a big bite of the hexed roast beef and Swiss.

  Paula gave a snarky sneer and shook her head at my hopeless self, then started in on her Cobb salad. We talked about wedding plans as I consumed my Madame Murae sandwich. Pinching the last bite between my thumb and forefinger, I popped it into my mouth, smiling at Paula, who rolled her eyes and reached for her purse. “You’re so … pragmatic.”

  Dabbing the corners of my mouth, I looped my bag over my shoulder and followed her out. “I have to be pragmatic. I work in reality TV.”

  “I liked you better back in the old days when you were writing copy in the newsroom.” Paula and I had started out at a local LA affiliate twelve years ago. Two babes in the woods, fresh out of broadcasting school. Paula had always been more interested in landing a boyfriend than building a career, which was why she was still on the writing end of the business, albeit now for a prime-time soap. In soap opera land, a belief in hexes and a cursory knowledge of tarot cards was a professional advantage.

  “You love me anyway,” I said, then hip-butted her off the curb.

  She caught a heel in a storm grate and twisted her ankle.

  By the time Paula dropped me back at the studio, Ursula was waiting with airline tickets to Texas and the news that I would be the advance man for Amber’s hometown segment. Given Amber’s recent media glow and the fact that the Final Five had not yet been revealed, secrecy was paramount. This was too big to trust to a low-level staff member.

  What Ursula wants, Ursula gets, and less than twenty-four hours later I was standing at Third and Main in Daily, Texas, watching as the secret Final Five news was broadcast on a banner over Main Street. How could people in Amber’s hometown possibly have found out the results of the semifinals already? Even Amber hadn’t been told, and wouldn’t be told until Friday, the afternoon before she was scheduled to fly to Texas. Tomorrow, at the regular Friday lunch meeting, the camera crew chiefs would receive their marching orders, but for now, the identities and hometown locations of the Final Five were known only to Ursula, two other associate producers, the director, and me. It was a closely guarded secret …

  The Doom-o-meter screamed like a panic alarm in my head. Somewhere in there, Madame Murae whispered, “I see negative energy surrounding the travel card.”

  From the parapet of the old Daily Bank building across the street, gargoyles laughed down at me, their narrow grins saying, Who are you to thumb your nose at fate, Mandalay Florentino?

  I should have left the roast beef and Swiss alone.

  Chapter 2

  Imagene Doll

  Some places in this world come with grand titles, like Philadelphia and Marina Del Rey. You get the feeling that when the founding fathers named those places, they expected grand things to happen there. Hard to say what was in the minds of the folks who named our little town of Daily, Texas. Guess they expected it to be a regular kind of place. And it is. Mostly.

  Every ten years or so, something really peculiar happens in Daily. There’s never any telling what it’s going to be, but it’d been about a decade since the Christmas lights fell off of Town Hall and landed in the shape of the Virgin Mary, and twice that long since Elvis had a flat tire on Main Street. So when Brother Ervin Hanson spotted a TV network helicopter hovering over the fairgrounds one April morning, he figured we were due for another Daily event. He pulled off the road and watched with a mix of fear and awe as that helicopter flew round and round in a blank blue sky.

  When it disappeared altogether, Ervin proceeded to the café to tell everyone what he’d seen. When you’re sitting on a Daily news story, that’s where you go. The café can spread information faster than chaff in a brisk wind, so when Ervin showed up saying he’d seen a TV network helicopter at the fairgrounds, word was all over town lickety-split. Don’t need 60 Minutes here. We’ve got the café. Paul Harvey would be impressed at how quick the rest of the story gets told in Daily, Texas.

  Somebody ought to have warned those TV network folks of that before they came to town.

  I wasn’t at the café working that morning, which is unusual during the breakfast rush, but I’d come upon a dead raccoon on my way into town, so I was next door at the Daily Hair and Body getting my car fixed and my hair redone. If you’re not from Daily, you might ask what one thing has to do with the other. Long story short, the dead raccoon had attracted a big old turkey buzzard, and if there’s a buzzard within fifty feet of the road, it’ll fly up and hit my car. The boys at the body shop keep a road kill tally on their chalkboard next to the results of last year’s Big Buck contest, and I’ve got the record for most buzzard collisions in a twelve-month period. My name’s right there at the top, Imagene Doll, next to a stick figure (if you can imagine that) of a buzzard, and four little tally marks. That’s just this year’s count. And there’s still eight months to go.

  It’s sort of embarrassing, but at nearly seventy years old, you take fame where you can get it.

  This buzzard was a big one, and it hit smack in the middle of the windshield like a giant BB, then hung there in the wiper. By the time I finally got it loose, I felt like I’d been ten rounds with Muhammad Ali. Which was how I ended up needing my hair redone, even though it was only Thursday.

  Sometimes it’s convenient having an auto body shop and a beauty salon all in one building. You wouldn’t think so, but sometimes it is.

  I guess you could say that by eight-thirty that morning, it was already a pretty strange day in Daily.

  I’d just come out from under the hair dryer when Brother Ervin’s news made it over from the café next door, via Harlan Hanson. Harlan had started his mail route earlier than usual that morning because he was packing the biggest story to hit our town since Elvis. That was the old bloated, rhinestone-wearing Elvis, and he never got off the bus, so really, that story doesn’t compare with th
is one, even though Elvis had supposedly been dead for eight years when he showed up in Daily.

  But a posthumous Elvis can’t hold a candle to a real live TV network helicopter. It’s more likely that the King of Rock and Roll would rise from the grave and show up on a tour bus than a TV network would come to Daily, so I didn’t believe Harlan at first.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Harlan, you expect us to swallow that?” I said. “It’s more likely Brother Ervin’s been eating too many of them pickled raisins with his breakfast.” Ervin soaks brown raisins in white gin and eats them for medicinal purposes. It’s supposed to cure arthritis, so everyone looks the other way, even though Ervin’s our Baptist preacher. I don’t hold it against him, and God probably don’t, either. Being the Baptist preacher in a small town would drive anyone to eat gin-soaked raisins, eventually.

  “Sober as a judge,” Harlan argued, and he ought to know, because he and Ervin are brothers. “Erve saw a helicopter flyin’ ’round and ’round over the fairgrounds out on Cowhouse Creek. Thought he’d better check on it, it bein’ almost time for the Daily Reunion Days out there and all. By the time he got down the road, the whirlybird had landed and it uz goin’ up again. Erve got a clean look at it.” Squinting one eye like he was sighting in a rifle, Harlan stretched out a long bony finger and reenacted the drama of Brother Ervin and the helicopter. “How ’bout them apples?”

  Behind me, Lucy clucked her tongue and shook a bottle of hairspray at him. “You say to Ervin we are only fools on the first day of April.” What she meant, of course, was that this wasn’t April Fool’s Day. Lucy’s from Japan originally, but she’s been here since the fifties, when she came over as a war bride. Her English is good, but her Texan is questionable.

  “This ain’t no April fools,” Harlan insisted. “That helicopter had a Austin TV station sign on the side, bigger’n Dallas. Whadd’ya think that means?”

  “Can’t imagine,” I said, and I really couldn’t.

  “And then”—Harlan leaned close, like this part was top secret and the Russians were on the other side of the wall with cups on their ears—“Bailey Henderson gets a call not five minutes ago, down to the Town Hall. It’s some stranger with a Los Angeles accent, asking all about the upcomin’ Daily Reunion. After that he recalled when, a few days ago, some other stranger’d called and booked the community building for a surprise fiftieth wedding anniversary party. What’s that tell ya?”

  “Tells me someone’s having a fiftieth wedding anniversary, and someone else is wantin’ information about the Daily Reunion Days, which makes sense, being as it’s coming up this weekend,” I said.

  “Yeah, but they both had Los Angeles accents,” Harlan repeated, like I was a little thick, not getting the point and all. “Bailey’s got it figured that the fiftieth anniversary’s only a cover story for Amber’s hometown reunion concert.”

  Sometimes I’d swear Harlan would swallow a boar hog if Bailey Henderson sugarcoated it for him. “Harlan, how does a Los Angeles accent sound, exactly?”

  He threw his hands in the air, knocking some letters out of his pack. Lucy picked them up. “Well I don’t know, Imagene. Like TV people and stuff. Like TV people. What’s that tell ya?”

  “I don’t know, Harlan. What’s it tell you?” I thought we’d been at this point once already.

  Leaning close again, Harlan rolled his eyes upward like a lazy old yard dog watching a squirrel run overhead. “It means Amber Anderson made it to the Final Five on American Megastar. They always do them hometown visit shows with the top five finalists. Heck, I bet Amber’s gonna win the whole thing. That child’s been singin’ since she was hip high to a horned toad. You can take it to the bank, Imagene. Our little hometown girl’s gonna bring the bright lights to Daily. Brother Erve and the mayor are out there right now doin’ their part to make Amber’s dream come true. They done got a tarp cloth and some paint from the hardware store, they painted American Megastar Finalist and Vote for Amber on it, and they’re hangin’ it over Main Street, right below the Daily Reunion Days banner.” With a purposeful nod, he added, “How’s that for a fine bushel of ’taters?”

  I stood there trying to get my hat around the idea. “Don’t know,” I said. “Seems foolish, getting everyone’s hopes up, painting signs and all. A wiggle in the water don’t mean there’s a fish on the hook.” I wasn’t sure why I felt the need to tamp down Harlan’s excitement. My mama used to say the blues is an ailment that don’t like no sunshine in the room.

  Harlan batted a hand my direction. “Trouble with you, Imagene, is you got no imagination anymore.”

  That stung a bit, being as my father named me Imagene, spelled one letter from imagine, because he wanted me to think big thoughts and believe in wondrous possibilities. But since my husband, Jack, died, I couldn’t imagine much good happening in my life, or in Daily. The town and me were both just marking time, waiting for the days to pass.

  “You just wait and see, Imagene Doll. There’s big things comin’.”

  Harlan wagged a finger in the air, then headed out the door, not willing to let me dampen his excitement about Daily getting a fresh dose of fame.

  I stared out the window as Harlan disappeared down the Main Street business district. That sounds grander than it is. The business district doesn’t have much more than a dozen buildings that mostly sit with paint peeling off the bricks, and the grand secondstory windows staring blank into space, the nameplates reminding us that there were banks, and hotels, and dry goods stores back when wool and mohair were king. Folks don’t shop the hometown anymore. Mostly, they go over to Austin to the Wal-Mart Supercenter, where they can get everything fast and easy. As much as I like Wal-Mart, I miss them old times when shopping was an event you got dressed up for.

  All that to say, I guess, that Daily, same as a lot of small towns, stood forgotten, a little forlorn and faded, which seemed to suit me lately. Even the Reunion Days, which once brought Dailyians home from all over the country to visit relatives, listen to music at the bandstand, ride the old Ferris wheel, and admire the yearly catch of rattlesnakes, wasn’t what it used to be. But watchin’ Harlan walk away, I got the sudden and strange feeling this year’s festival was gonna be dig-in-your-spurs-and-hang-on, Sally. We’re goin’ for a ride.

  I wasn’t sure I was ready for it.

  Donetta seemed to sense a change coming. Her hands were shaking as she teased up my hair and lowered the barber chair. “Ye-ew suppose he’s ri-ight?” When Donetta talks, every word’s got at least three syllables, sometimes more.

  “Doubt it,” I said, but I could tell that Donetta was already sniffing a rustle in the wind. Donetta often has a sense about things, so I knew what it meant when she stared hard into the old plate glass windows. She was having another one of her revelations.

  “What do you think?” I asked carefully.

  In the corner, Lucy crossed herself and kissed her locket, where she keeps a curl of hair from the baby she had to leave behind in Japan.

  The room took on an eerie silence as Donetta stared at the shifting reflections in the wavy glass. “I’m not sure.” She shivered, even though it was a warm day. “I see … people … a lot of people.” Then she turned away, shrugged her shoulders, and sighed. “But what do I know? I could just be havin’ a hot flash.”

  She had a heavy look that told me otherwise. And besides, Donetta’s long past the age for hot flashes. She pictured more in that window than she wanted to let on.

  In the corner, Lucy was quiet.

  “See you two after the breakfast rush,” I said and hopped up, ready to get out of there before Donetta conjured one of her wild plans about how we were gonna cash in on whatever she’d just envisioned. “When I called Bob to tell him about the buzzard, he said he’d see if Maria could come in, but I should get over there for my shift quick as I could. He’s got the coffee club backed up at the counter, waiting for breakfast. I’ll settle up with you later for the cut and curl.”

  “Sure thing,”
Donetta said, and headed for the back room, still looking shell-shocked from whatever she had seen in the window.

  Saying good-bye to Lucy, I slipped through the hidden door between the beauty shop and the café. No one knows why that swinging bookcase is in the wall behind the cash register. It’s long been the subject of Daily supposition, but the fact is that no one, not even my daddy, who was the Daily mayor for half of his life, could say for sure. He got many a laugh over the years, telling tourists and impressionable young folks all sorts of wild stories about the hidden door.

  My mama never much appreciated Daddy’s tendency toward wild Irish storytelling and outlandish moneymaking schemes. She said the swinging shelves were put there so after you got your hair done you could get to the café without going out in the wind. My mama was a practical woman. Some might say she lacked imagination—a little like my boss at the café, Bob Turner, who said the doorway was put there so his help could sneak over to the beauty shop, catch up on the gossip, and waste the time they should have spent getting the dishes washed.

  Most days, Bob’s mood was somewhere between bull and bulldog, if you know what I mean, but today he was whistling “Hollywood” behind the fry grill when I came through the bookcase. My entrance scared him, and he jerked back, flipping a sausage patty into the air. Luckily, it landed on Doyle Banes’s plate at the bar, where the gents of the regular Countertop Coffee Club watch the television, eat breakfast, and solve the problems of the entire world.

  “Thanks, B-B-Bob.” Doyle reached for his fork. Doyle stutters, by the way. Always has.

  “That ain’t done,” Bob warned while tending to a pile of scrambled eggs that was about to burn. “Here, hand it back.”

  “I ulll-like it this way.” Doyle wasn’t about to give up on free food. Doyle’s driven a dump truck down at the lime quarry for twenty years. Eats like a horse, but he’s skinny as a rail fence.