by Lisa Wingate
“Way-ul, bless yer heart,” the woman was saying. “Doesn’t that sound excitin’? My Jack used to dream about quittin’ work at the insurance office and setting sail on a cruise ship. One day he come home and told me he was ready to retire. He said, ‘Imagene’—I’m Imagene Doll, by the way. Sorry I didn’t introduce myself. Anyhow, Jack said, ‘Imagene, we been workin’ all these years, and I’ve seen some of the world in the navy, but we ain’t seen much of the world together. It’s time.’” Letting her eyes fall closed, she laughed under her breath. “He had the tickets for a cruise and everything, but I couldn’t do it.” With a rueful shake of her head, she added, “I was afraid I’d get the willies, out there in the middle of that water, with sharks ’n’ that sort of thing, and no dry land in sight.”
Yes. Me, too. That’s it exactly. I’m having a problem with the no-dry-land thing. “Mandalay Florentino,” I said quickly, shaking her hand. “My fiancé is an experienced sailor. He says if you spend enough time at sea, you get used to it.” Of course, even after six years of marriage, his ex-wife still hated the boat. She resented the time he spent at the marina. I will not be that kind of wife. I will embrace the boat.
Imagene’s gaze caught mine, the creases around her eyes deepening contemplatively. “Jack told me the same thing, but I never did find out if he was ri-ight. We turned in the cruise tickets, bought us a camper, and saw places on land. Me and Jack were gen’rally pretty good at working things out so we’d both be happy.”
“That’s nice.” What compromises would David and I face over the years? How would we have to change for each other? Would we change for each other?
In Hollywoodland, compromise is a dirty word. It comes wrapped in unwelcome connotations of settling for something less than perfect, of reaching for the brass ring and falling short.
Imagene stared off into the street, where the rain had tapered to a steady downpour and the Amber banner had been washed white as snow. “After Jack passed on, I always wished we’d taken the cruise. I’da liked to see those places, I think.” It was hard to say whether she was talking to me or just reminiscing out loud. The melancholy tone of the words made them seem private.
“You still could,” I offered.
“I might, someday.” Silence fell over us, and we stood in the doorway, watching the rain, looking into the past, into the future.
Under the next canopy to the north, the door jerked open and a tall, thin woman with even taller red hair peeked through.
“Whut’na world you two doin’ out’chere’n the rain?” Pushing the door open farther, the red-haired woman braced a hand on her hip. I only thought Imagene had an accent.
“Just passin’ time, Donetta,” Imagene called, moving to the edge of our dry spot. “Waitin’ out the storm. I rescued this young lady from out in front of the washateria.”
“Washateria’s closed Thurs-deys,” Donetta pointed out.
“Told her that. That’s how we ended up here.”
Donetta craned her neck, inspecting me as if I were an alien about to invade the Daily Chamber of Commerce. “Way-ul, y’all just git on over here. We got coffee. No sense standin’ out’n the rain.”
Motioning for me to do likewise, Imagene made the dash to the next awning. I followed suit, huddling my arms over my chest, protecting the Prada at all cost. Prada is not meant to be rained on.
We arrived, slightly dampened and breathless, in the beauty shop doorway. Imagene glanced at her watch. “Think I’d better git on back to work before Bob has a rigor. I’ll drop over for coffee after the lunch crowd dies out.” Motioning toward the café building, she turned to me. “Got a chicken-fried steak special today, comes with mashed ’taters and good cream gravy.”
My stomach rolled over at the idea of deep-fried meat smothered in white flour and trans fat. No way that was on the Best Life Diet. “No thanks. I ate some kind of Mexican breakfast burrito–thing this morning.” Which isn’t on the diet, either, and quite unfortunately is still with me. “Actually, what I really need to do is get a room booked.” If the weather was going to be wet and nasty, I definitely didn’t want to drive the forty or so miles to the nearest real town. “Is this hotel open, or is there one close by?” Even if it was Ursula’s idea, there would be advantages to stationing myself at a base of operations on Main Street.
Imagene shook her head. “Well, no, but if you go …”
“Actually, I do have a room available,” Donetta preempted, snatching my arm and drawing me toward the beauty parlor like a fly into a web. “You just come right on in hay-er, darlin’.” The next thing I knew, I was being hauled in the door so fast that I stumbled over a tiny Asian woman with permed salt-and-pepper hair. She seemed as stunned as I was.
From the sidewalk, Imagene protested, “Donetta, you don’t …”
Kicking the door closed, my new friend slipped an arm around my shoulders. Donetta guided me through the salon toward an old hotel desk by a timeworn oak stairway in the back of the room. “ ’J’like some coffee? It’s hot and black. Lucy, pour this little gal a cup, would’ja? Hon, you visitin’ from outta town? How long you plannin’ to stay? Don’t you worry ’bout a tha-ang. Here in Daily, we believe in good hospitality. Yey-us, we shore do, I’ll tell ya that right now. We’ll fix ye-ew up quicker’n ye-ew can say Cooter Brown.”
Chapter 4
Imagene Doll
Curiosity was eating me like a winter cow on spring wheat by the time the lunch crowd tapered off, and I felt the need to slip over to the beauty shop to see what Donetta had done with that cute little girl I found outside the washateria. Grabbing the leftover pecan pie for a snack before our afternoon exercise show, I headed for the bookshelf.
When I came through the wall, Donetta was giving a haircut to some good-looking young fella in a Hawaiian shirt, starched blue jeans, and flip-flops. Definitely an out-of-towner. The bookcase creaked as I shut it, and that boy popped out of the barber chair, hit the floor flatfooted, spun around, and reached for something on his belt.
“Don’t shoot!” I hollered. “I got pecan pie.”
That boy got tickled at the sight of an old lady held up with a pecan pie, and he grinned as he sat down. “No thank you, ma’am,” he said with a little twinkle in his eye.
Donetta finished brushing off his flowerdy shirt, then set her tools aside. “That’ll do it,” she said, like it was the most normal thing in the world to be cutting the hair on a fella in a Hawaiian getup and beach shoes. “Nice to meet you, Carter. Thanks for coming in.” As usual, Donetta’d used the haircutting opportunity to get sociable.
“My pleasure.” He smiled again as he handed her a twenty-dollar bill. On the other side of the room, Lucy fluffed her hair. Carter was a handsome fella. Too young for any of us, of course.
“Hope ya feel better.” Donetta went right on chattering as she rolled the twenty around her finger. “Sorry you had such a rough flight back to Austin. Them storms just blow in like wildfire this time of year. Don’t imagine it’s like that where you flew in from. “California,” he answered pleasantly, following her to the cash register. Where’d you say that was?”
That cinched it. Donetta could make friends with a stump. She could get Moses to tell the secrets of the burning bush. “Oh, isn’t that nice? I hear California’s a real pretty place.” Counting out the boy’s change, she winked at Lucy.
“Yes, it is, but this trip was pretty much all airport, hotel, and high-rise—just business,” he said, and started toward the door. He stopped with his hand on the knob and stood looking around the building. “Thanks for the conversation. It’s good to be back in Texas.”
Donetta closed the cash drawer, nodding like she understood. “Way-ul, I sure hope your brother feels better. That’s awful young to have cancer. But they can do some amazin’ things these days, and Austin has great hospitals. Don’t lose hope. My cousin had cancer. She went with one of them stem cell transplants, too, and now she’s healthy as a horse.”
“Thanks,�
�� he said as he put on his sunglasses. There was a hint of moisture in his eyes before the room reflected off the mirrored lenses and he went out the door.
I wondered what else that boy had told Donetta, but I didn’t question her right away. She was staring into the window glass again. She didn’t flinch, even when the pie, and Lucy and I, moved to the old hotel counter by the stairs, where we keep the coffee pot and various kitchen items.
Lucy and I fixed coffee and pie, and waited. We’d learned not to disturb Donetta when she was looking into the glass. When she finally came to the counter, she had a determined expression. “Ima,” she said, checking her watch, “could you sneak away for a bit tomorrow after the breakfast rush and go get some things for me at the Wal-Mart over in Austin? I’d do it myself, but I’ve got appointments booked solid, and tomorrow’s my day to do hair at the old folks’ home.” Squinting hard toward the stairs, she pursed her lips and nodded. “We’re gonna need paint. Lots of paint.”
I hesitated for a minute, studying Donetta and wondering if sending me to Wal-Mart was another one of her little plans to get me out and about. Donetta didn’t like the fact that all I did these days was go from work to home and back. “I probably could, if it’s real important,” I said carefully.
“It’s important,” Donetta answered. “I already called down to Barlinger’s Hardware, but they don’t have enough of any one color in stock—unless I want barn paint, and that won’t do.”
“I’ll have to ask off from Bob,” I said, still hanging back a little. Maybe the drive to Wal-Mart would do me good, though. “Bob’s got Maria there with Estacio, and she could wait tables, as long as it’s not too busy.” I savored a bite of pie, afraid to ask, on an empty stomach, about Donetta’s plans for the paint. Being an accomplice in a Donetta Bradford plan requires fortification, and lots of it.
Lucy beat me to it—the asking, that is. “What? You a-goin’ to paint the old folk home?”
“Nope.” Donetta scooped a bite of pie and chugged it down like a hungry field hand. “We’re gonna reopen them old rooms upstairs. I rented ’em to that lady that was here this mornin’.”
I choked on my coffee. “You did what?”
“I rented her the hotel rooms. One room for tonight and tomorrow night, then all the rooms for Saturday night, through the weekend,” she stated, just as sure as if she were saying, The sun is gonna rise in the east tomorrow.
“Donetta!” I gasped. “Those rooms haven’t been used in years. You can’t rent them out to folks.”
Lucy followed the conversation back and forth like a spectator at a tennis match.
“I sure enough can,” Donetta declared, jerking her chin up. I almost expected her to get on her hind legs and fight. “All them rooms need is some junk cleared out from last year’s parade and the church rummage sale, linens washed, and a quick coat of paint.”
“By tonight?” What in the world was she thinking? There wasn’t one of those rooms fit for habitation, much less by some lady wearing silk pants and toting a high-dollar handbag.
Donetta wagged her chin like I was half idiot. “Not by tonight. By Saturday. We can get the rooms ready by Saturday.”
“What are you gonna do with that girl until Saturday?” As usual, the more Donetta talked, the less sense she made. “Keep her at your house?”
Donetta glanced away, then back at me, then cut a quick look toward the stairs. “I gave her the keys to the Beulah room.”
Both Lucy and I gasped at once. Clearly, Donetta’s plan had caught even Lucy unaware.
“You gave her … the Beulah room?” I repeated slowly, trying not to imagine what Beulah, Donetta’s mother-in-law, would say if she knew Donetta had rented out Beulah’s private shrine.
Lucy muttered something in Japanese. I think she was praying.
Chewing the side of her lip, Donetta nodded. “Mama B’s in Florida for another month and a half yet. It ain’t like she’s usin’ the room.”
I wasn’t sure if Donetta was trying to convince herself or me. She looked nervous, and rightly so. Beulah was about as easy to get along with as a cow with a swole-up teat, and not half as useful. When Beulah took up residence in Daily, in between her winter trips to Florida and her summer trips to New Mexico, Donetta’s blood pressure went haywire.
And aside from the obvious question of Beulah’s reaction to having her room rented out, there was the issue of the room itself. “Has that girl seen the Beulah room?”
Donetta folded her arms on the edge of the table and locked them down tight. “Well, no, but she said she wasn’t particular.”
“She looks particular.”
“Well, she said she wasn’t, and she paid in cash—for all five rooms. I gave her the key to her room, and one to the rear entry door, and she left. She said she had some tourin’ to do around town and she’d be back later.”
“So she ain’t actually seen the Beulah room yet.” Which made sense, considering that I hadn’t heard anyone run out of the hotel screaming while I was serving lunch at the café.
“No, she ain’t, actually.”
The conversation dried up for a minute, and the three of us took bites of pie and swilled it around, thinking.
Even though I hated to do it, I had to bring up the subject of the rooms again. “It just don’t make sense, Netta. Why do all that work, clean out and paint the rooms, just for a few days’ rental? It won’t pay what you put into it.”
Setting down her fork, Donetta let out a long breath, the air blowing through her Rumba Red #5 lips in something between a whistle and a sigh. “That lady’s from Hollywood, Ima. If she stays here and the hotel gets on American Megastar, it’ll bring the customers back, just like the old days.” Donetta’d always hated the fact that after several decades of declining business, she’d had to close down the hotel that had been in her family for over a hundred years.
“Who said she’s from Hollywood?” Call me slow, but so far there hadn’t been any herd of cameras showing up in Daily. So far, all we had was a lot of supposing and guessing, and a couple yay-hoos hanging a banner over Main Street.
Donetta turned slowly, her pale gray eyes reflecting the faded words Daily Hotel from the old plate glass window. “Nobody has to say it, GiGi.” Donetta only called me GiGi during serious, emotional moments. It was a pet name from childhood, one of our sister-names for each other. DeDe and GiGi. “I just know.”
The room went silent, and a draft moaned down the dumbwaiter behind the counter, as if the building itself were getting in on the conversation. The sound crept up my shirt, and I shivered head to toe. Beside me, Lucy crossed herself and kissed her locket with the baby curl in it.
“All right. I’ll go to Wal-Mart for you,” I said, even though I knew it was crazy. One thing we all need in this world is a friend who’ll buy paint without asking questions. “Any particular color?” All right, that was one question, but I didn’t ask how three old women were going to clean out four musty hotel rooms.
“What?” Donetta asked, only halfway listening. Her eyes were darting around the beauty shop, making bold plans that, if she revealed them, would probably drive me to climb to the roof and jump off.
“The paint. What color?”
“Oh … off white.” The words were confident, like she could already see it in her mind. “That washable latex kind. Flat. Flat hides imperfections.” She sighed, looking up at the ceiling, momentarily deflated by the weight of her own intentions. “I’ll line up some high school kids to help us with the job. No telling what shape those rooms are in up there.”
That was a point I couldn’t even stand to rehash. I didn’t want to think about what the rooms looked like. “All right. Flat off-white latex. How much?”
“A lot.” She was too far into her own world to count up gallons.
“All right. A lot.” Lucy and I traded glances like two castaways being dragged out to sea. “I’ll run over and talk to Bob about getting off awhile tomorrow morning,” I said, and left poor L
ucy there to deal with the rest of Donetta’s plan.
I caught Bob cleaning up the fry grill and asked him about taking a break tomorrow to go to Wal-Mart for Donetta. I tried to sound casual, because I didn’t want any questions about Donetta and her crazy plan.
Fortunately, Bob didn’t ask for details. “Sure. Not a problem,” he said, as I’d expected he would. Bob’s like a back-porch hound dog. Slow moving, not real smart, prone to bark whenever the wind shifts. Today he had bigger things on his mind anyway. “Hey, uhhh … Guess you didn’t hear anything else over there at Donetta’s … about Hollywood comin’ to town, I mean.”
“Well, Donetta was giving a haircut to a young fella in a flowerdy shirt when I walked in. Never seen him before. Told Donetta he just flew in from California. Seemed strange to me, because he didn’t talk citified. I swear, Donetta could make friends with a stump, and …” Oh shoot. Time to shut up. Past time. If Bob’s an old hound dog, I’m one of them useless little house mutts that can’t stop yapping. Yip, yip, yip, yip.
Bob’s face went gray, and I knew I’d stirred up a hornet’s nest. He started pacing behind the counter, muttering to himself about how he couldn’t understand why, being as he was the president of the Daily Chamber of Commerce, no one from American Megastar had contacted him yet, asking about permits and clearances to film on the streets of Daily. I could tell by the look in his eye that he was about to plow into the situation like a tornado down the midway of the county fair.
I did the wise thing and said, “Thanks, Bob. I’m gonna run over and finish my pie and coffee, then take an exercise class. I’ll be back before the supper rush gets going.” Bob didn’t answer as I hurried to the shelves. He was too busy plotting his next move.