“It might hurt a little bit,” Annajane said, shooting Celia a look. “But we’ll be right there with you, the whole time. We need to get the doctors at the hospital to see what’s wrong with your tummy. I think they’ll give you something to make you sleep, and then they’ll take a look and figure things out.”
“Okay,” Sophie said wearily. “Only, don’t let me go, Annajane. Okay?” Her eyelids fluttered, and she dozed off, her forehead nestled against Annajane’s ruined dress.
“I won’t, baby,” Annajane whispered. “I promise.”
Mason reached over and gently removed the little girl’s glasses, which had slid off the end of her nose, tucking them into the pocket of his tux jacket.
The door flew open again, and Sallie Bayless bustled in with Davis in her wake. “Pokey says there’s some talk that it might be her appendix? And an ambulance is on the way? I just called Max Kaufman. He was on the third tee at the golf club when I reached him,” she told her son. “He’s going to meet you at the emergency room.”
“Max Kaufman?” Celia asked.
“Chief of surgery at the hospital,” Sallie said. “A very old family friend. He should have been sitting right out front in one of those pews, but Max is a hopeless philistine. Says he never goes to weddings or funerals. But he’s a wonderful doctor, isn’t he, Mason? He’ll take very good care of the child.”
“Mason and Annajane are going to the hospital, and I’ll follow in my car. Maybe you could ride with me,” Celia said.
Sallie shook her head. “Celia, dear, I think it would be better if you and I went on over to the club to greet our guests. Mason has his cell, and I have mine, and he can keep us posted.”
“I don’t know,” Celia said, her brow furrowed prettily. “I think I need to be with Sophie…”
“Look, y’all, we don’t all need to go to the hospital,” Davis spoke up. “Mama, I’ll take you and Celia over to the club for the reception. If there’s nothin’ seriously wrong with Sophie, Pokey can bring Mason back over there once Doc Kaufman gets it figured out. Hell, maybe it’s nothing. It’d be a shame to cancel the party if it’s only a bellyache.”
He glanced toward the doorway, where Celia’s sultry maid of honor leaned against the doorjamb, looking bored.
“Good idea,” Mason nodded in agreement. He grasped Celia’s arm and gently steered her toward the door.
“Well,” Celia said hesitantly, “If you really think you can do without me…”
Mason walked her to the door. His hand rested lightly on the small of her back, and he brushed a kiss on Celia’s forehead. “I knew you’d understand. Look, I’ll call you the minute we know something. Maybe it’s not really anything serious. In which case, I’ll be at the club in an hour or so. Okay?”
Celia responded by wrapping her arms tightly around Mason’s neck, molding herself to him, and kissing him deeply and passionately.
Sallie Bayless looked away politely. Finally, she cleared her throat. “Celia, dear, I think we’d better go. Your great-aunt is out there, and she’s beside herself with worry…”
In the distance, they heard the approaching keen of a siren.
Mason peeled himself off the front of his bride’s low-cut gown. “Better go,” he said.
“Call me,” Celia repeated, reluctantly allowing herself to be towed away.
* * *
When they were alone again, Mason went back to the settee, where Annajane was still holding Sophie in her arms.
“Let me take her,” he whispered, holding out his arms.
“You’ll ruin your tux,” Annajane protested, but Mason was already sliding his arms under the child’s limp torso. He straightened up and cradled Sophie against his chest.
“You really think it’s her appendix?” he asked.
Annajane shrugged. “My cousin Nadine had appendicitis one summer when we were up at the cabin. Thank God Mama was there, because my aunt really thought Nadine was just constipated. Mama insisted they go to the emergency room, and, sure enough, that’s what it was.”
Mason blanched. “Maybe we should take her to Raleigh. Max Kaufman is a good enough country doc, from what I know, but Passcoe Memorial is just a little old podunk hospital with, what, fifty beds? Maybe she should see a pediatric specialist…”
The siren was getting closer now.
“Mason, Passcoe Memorial is a fine facility,” Annajane said. “It’s small, but they have a state-of-the-art surgical wing, thanks to your father’s Rotary Club, and Mama always said Dr. Kaufman was the best surgeon, the best diagnostician, she’d ever seen. If it really is her appendix, there’s probably no time to take Sophie to Raleigh. If it’s something else, something more serious, Dr. Kaufman can refer us to a specialist, but in the meantime, let’s just take one thing at a time, please?”
Pokey rushed into the room, pink-faced and breathless.
“Okay, the cars are moved, and the ambulance is pulling around front,” she said. She put one hand to Sophie’s cheek. “Oh wow, she really does have a fever,” she said. “How long has she been asleep?”
“Just a few minutes,” Mason said.
“Where’s the bride?” Pokey asked, looking around the room. “Checking her makeup?”
“Not funny,” Mason snapped. “Mama persuaded her to go on over to the country club. Maybe you should join them.”
“Not a chance,” Pokey said. “Pete’s taking the boys over there, but I’m going to the hospital.”
6
Geographically, the distance from the church to the hospital, which was located on the bypass just outside the Passcoe city limits, was only seventeen miles.
To Annajane and Mason, the ride seemed to take a lifetime. Jammed into the back of the ambulance, perched on either side, with Sophie’s tiny form on a gurney between them, they could only watch helplessly as she writhed in pain.
“She’s hurting! Can’t you give her something?” Mason growled at the emergency medical technician riding in the passenger seat.
“Sorry, Mr. Bayless, but with kids this young, we just make sure their pulse and breathing are stable,” the EMT said. “We’ll be at the hospital in fifteen minutes, and they’ll probably give her something then.”
“Daddy,” Sophie whimpered. “Annajane. It hurts.”
She was awake again, and she looked terrified. Annajane squeezed the child’s hot, clammy hand and brushed back a strand of hair from her forehead.
“We’re taking a ride to the hospital, sweetpea,” Annajane said. “Can you tell how fast we’re going? This old ambulance goes even faster than your daddy’s fun car.”
Mason laughed despite himself. The “fun car” was what Sophie called his restored candy-apple red 1972 Chevelle convertible. It had been Glenn Bayless’s favorite big boy toy, handed down to Mason as a twenty-first-birthday gift.
The convertible was currently garaged in a truck bay at the bottling plant, brought out only occasionally, for Sunday drives to the coast, or as a special treat for Sophie, because there wasn’t room for it in the two-car garage at the house, what with his own Yukon and Celia’s Saab. And also because Celia had taken an instant disliking to—and distrust of—what she called his “middle-aged crazy car,” or, worse, “your pimp-mobile.”
“Why can’t you buy a nice Porsche, like your brother’s?” Celia had asked. “Or something with say, air-conditioning? Or satellite radio?”
The Chevelle’s air probably hadn’t worked all that well when it was new, and as for a radio, Mason preferred its tape deck, on which he listened to his stash of ’80s hair bands.
He’d had some times in that Chevelle, for sure. In his youth, he’d ripped up and down the East Coast in it, ridden the length of the Outer Banks, the one summer of his youth when he hadn’t worked at Quixie, his summer of rebellion, when he’d gotten a job working at a convenience store at Nags Head. He’d even driven to California and back, following the old Route 66, the summer he’d graduated from Penn.
Sophie’s tear-swollen eyes widened. “Can
you make the top of the amb’lance go down so I can see out?”
“I can’t do that, sugar,” Mason said soothingly, “but just as soon as we get your tummy better, I’m gonna take you all the way to the beach in the fun car. Just you and me.”
“And Annajane,” Sophie added. “Annajane loves the fun car, too.”
Mason exchanged a look with his ex. Her cheeks colored and she looked away. He wondered if she remembered.
* * *
He’d been driving the Chevelle the second time he remembered an important encounter with Annajane Hudgens. She was what? Maybe nineteen? Which would have made him twenty-three.
It was summertime, and he’d somehow allowed himself to be roped into driving the convertible in the Passcoe Fourth of July parade, chauffeuring a local beauty queen, Tamelah Dorman, who’d actually been crowned Miss Passcoe, although it should have been Miss Spray-Tan, because she was surely the most artificially overbronzed girl he’d ever encountered.
Anyway, he and Tamelah were having a pretty good time that day. She, perched on the back of the Chevelle, decked out in a short, low-cut spangly firecracker-red dress that definitely showed off her best assets, and he in shorts and a white Quixie Soda polo shirt. He’d filled a flask full of crushed ice, Captain Morgan rum, and Quixie, and he and good old Tamelah had emptied and refilled it before they got a quarter of the way down the Main Street parade route that morning.
The Fourth of July parade was always a major deal in Passcoe, and that year, the hundredth anniversary of the town’s incorporation, made it an even bigger deal than usual. Thousands of people lined Main Street, seated on lawn chairs, standing in the shade of storefronts, or crouched on the curbs.
He’d hoped for a spot either at the very beginning or the very end of the parade lineup, but no such luck. They’d slotted him slap in the middle, between Patti-Jean’s Twirling Tykes—three dozen tap-dancing, baton-twirling preschoolers, and the El-Shazaam Masonic Lodge’s Shriner Klown Korps, which consisted of ten middle-aged men in white face, baggy pants, and red fright wigs, perched atop souped-up lawn-mower chassis.
Their progress was agonizingly slow. The Tykes’ twirling routines were limited to two songs—playing over and over again—which blared out from a huge boom box mounted on a wagon pulled by Patti-Jean herself, a Sousa march and I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy. Behind him, the Klown Korps guys zigzagged crazily across the pavement, popping wheelies and running a dizzying series of figure eights that left an acrid cloud of gasoline fumes hanging overhead.
The sun was blazing down, and Mason worried that their snail’s pace would cause the Chevelle’s supercharged engine to overheat.
What with the heat and all, he and Tamelah had slain one whole bottle of the Captain and were shaking hands with another, and they still had half a mile to go before they would reach Memorial Park, where the parade ended and a huge citywide picnic and carnival was set up. If his memory served, Tamelah was so trashed that she’d given up her regal, queenly wave, and begun flipping off the good citizens of Passcoe seated on folding chairs along Main Street. Twice, when male admirers ran up alongside the car to snap photos of her, Tamelah had obliged by flashing them her boobs. She and Mason had already discussed a postparade meet-up back at his apartment later that evening.
At some point along the route, he’d glanced to the right and noticed that his wasn’t the only Quixie soft drink unit participating in the parade.
There, pushing a hand cart and handing out complimentary cans of Quixie and fifty-cent coupons, was the company mascot, Dixie, the Quixie Pixie herself.
Somehow, somebody in the company had conned some poor sap into climbing into the pixie costume. Whoever it was, he thought, was probably ready to spontaneously combust in the outfit, which consisted of a long-sleeved green felt tunic, bright red tights, oversized green booties with curled-up toes, and a huge foam-rubber Pixie head, topped off with a pointy green and red elf cap.
Hell, he was roasting in the ninety-five-degree heat, and he was just dressed in shorts, flip flops, and a polo.
He slowed the Chevelle to a roll, waiting until the company mascot was right beside it. “Hey Dixie,” he called over. “How’s it goin’?”
The mascot head turned, and then the pixie made an exaggerated shrug and marched away at an accelerated pace. He studied the pixie’s shape, trying to figure out who might be wearing the costume. The tunic was loose-fitting, but it was short, ending midthigh, and from the looks of the tights, he was pretty sure there was a girl under there. A girl with awesome legs.
“Whoossh that?” Tamelah demanded, whipping her head around to see what Mason was staring at.
“Why darlin’, that’s just our company mascot,” Mason said, grinning.
“Zat a damned leprechaun?” Tamelah asked bleerily.
“Close. It’s a pixie.”
“What z’actly is a damned pixie?”
Mason gave it some thought. “A mischevious elf. Plus, it was the only word my grandmother could think of that rhymed with Quixie.”
“Hmmpph,” Tamelah hmmpphed. “Pass me that flask, will ya?”
Mason handed the flask back to Tamelah and rolled up alongside the pixie again.
“Hey Dixie,” he called. “Wanna ride?”
This time the pixie did not bother to turn around. She tossed three cans of sodas to a trio of cat-calling teenage boys in rapid succession, and then took off again, the brass bells stitched to her curly toes jingling merrily with every step.
Mason chuckled under his breath, and accelerated the Chevelle.
“C’mon,” he called, sliding easily alongside Dixie again. “Who is that under there? We’re almost at the park. You can tell me.”
But now the pixie was very nearly trotting, the cart bumping along on the street’s uneven asphalt pavement, spewing chunks of ice in its wake. She managed to sidestep the baton twirlers, and then, suddenly, she disappeared into the crowd.
“That damned pixie just shut you down, Mason baby,” Tamelah giggled. Mason turned his head, to tell her to pipe down, but he needn’t have bothered, because right about then, Tamelah’s eyelids fluttered, her head slumped to one side, and she rather inelegantly slid down onto the backseat of the Chevelle. Passed out cold. Or hot, in Tamelah’s case, with her spangly dress hiked up nearly to her waist.
Shit. He hoped none of the Twirling Tykes had seen that little performance. Mason turned and yanked the hem of the dress down.
Thank God, he was within half a block of the park. He would have left the parade right then, but he was hemmed in tight.
Fifteen minutes later, he finally pulled the Chevelle into the shade of a towering oak in the parking lot at Memorial Park. He got out of the car and walked around to check on Tamelah. She’d slumped into a prone position on the convertible’s white leatherette bench seat, her rhinestone tiara had fallen to the floor, and she was now snoring in a very unqueenly manner. Mason shrugged, again readjusted the hem of her dress for modesty’s sake, and looked around.
It was nearly one o’clock, he was hungry, and the irresistible aroma of kettle corn and charcoal-grilled hotdogs was wafting through the treetops from the area of the food concession tents. He pocketed his car keys and set out to find himself some lunch.
The park was already mobbed with people. He had to bob and weave his way through the chest-high banks of shrubbery and flowers, and he was finally making a beeline for the Kiwanis Club’s barbecue stand when he happened to see a flash of red out of the corner of his eye. He stopped short and grinned.
The slight figure of a girl in a green tunic and red tights was seated on a park bench a hundred yards away. The foam-rubber pixie head sat beside her on the bench.
Mason ducked behind an overgrown azalea bush, circled around, and came up to the bench from behind. He still couldn’t guess the girl’s identity. Without a word, he picked up the pixie head and sat himself down on the bench in its place.
“Well, hey there, Dixie,” he drawled.
&nb
sp; The girl turned and looked at him. It was her, his little sister Pokey’s best friend, Annajane. She’d been a cute little kid when he’d seen her last, and he’d glimpsed her around the plant over the past two summers but had somehow never really run into her again.
He’d been right about the heat inside that pixie suit. Her hair was wet and plastered to her head, and her face was beet-red and slicked with perspiration. She’d taken off the oversized green booties, and was so busy rubbing her stocking feet that she hadn’t seen his approach. Also, she appeared to be crying.
“Oh no,” she said quietly, covering her face with her hands.
“No good,” Mason told her. “I can still see you, even if you can’t see me. It’s Annajane, right?”
“No,” she said, sniffing, and still not moving her hands. “I don’t know any Annajanes. Go away, please.”
He looked around. “Where’s your cart?”
“G-g-gone,” she wailed. “I was almost at the park, and this bunch of little thugs snuck up behind me. I could only see straight in front of me with that darned pixie head on. Two of the boys grabbed me by the arms and held me, and the others took off with the cart. I tried to chase after ’em, but I couldn’t run in these stinkin’ shoes. I tried, but I tripped and fell. I tripped and fell, and I’ve ripped these doggoned tights.” She stuck her right leg out, and Mason could indeed see the stocking was torn and stained with blood.
“You’re hurt,” he exclaimed, bending over to get a closer look. He could see now that the sleeve of her tunic was also ripped and spotted with more blood.
“Just scrapes,” Annajane cried. “But I’ve ruined the costume! And that cart—it was probably really expensive.”
“Well, hey,” Mason said. “It’s not like it’s your fault. Nobody’s going to blame you. You were mugged!”
Annajane drew her knees up to her chest and clutched them tightly. “God! I just want to go home and take a cold shower and forget about today.”
“Do you need a ride?” Mason asked. “How were you supposed to get the cart back to the plant today?”
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