Bikini Carwash (That Business Between Us)

by Pamela Morsi

  Initially she’d set the town on edge, but in the end there were no protestors, no legal maneuvers, no problems really to speak of. People got accustomed to seeing the staff in their swimsuits and it got to be no big deal.

  Unfortunately, that was true for the customers as well. After the initial burst of waiting lines, it became a car wash, not an event. Toward the end, it was as much Mrs. Meyer’s group, the senior citizens who didn’t want to drive to the interstate, as the ogling men who kept them in business.

  She gave a casual glance across the crowd. There were people here who’d openly reviled her as a modern-day harlot. And there were also some who’d championed her as a heroine. But mostly, they were just people from her hometown. People who had regular hopes and dreams, some of which had been busted to bits in the last few years. But they were trying to put them back together, piece by piece.

  As the mixed message marriage ceremony concluded, Father Blognick blessed them. And Pop stomped a piece of crystal with his foot. They were pronounced man and wife. They kissed each other, waved to the crowd and then walked arm-in-arm through the pathway between the chairs.

  Andi watched a bit nervously as Jelly and Seth paired up to walk behind them. Her sister’s chin was high and proud. She didn’t miss a step. Andi and Dave walked behind them.

  “So my official stepsister, what’s next?” he asked.

  “We drink, we dance, we eat cake?”

  “What about the hora?” Dave said. “Don’t we need to get those two dancing up in the air in chairs?”

  “Just don’t drop them,” Andi said. “At their age somebody is bound to break a hip.”

  But the reception proceeded without incident. Everybody was on their very best behavior. There seemed to be almost a competition going on between the ladies of St. Hyacinth’s and those from the synagogue. Sort of like, “we’ll show them that we can be more open and welcoming than they ever could!” Whatever, it was working. And Andi was grateful.

  The party pretty much started without the principals as the family posed near the scenic ledge for photo after photo after photo.

  “Do I get these in a picture book?” Jelly asked a half-dozen times. “Do I get these in a picture book?”

  The photographer assured her she would, but Jelly had her doubts.

  “Perjury will get you time upstate,” she warned the poor man. “Remember you’re under oath!”

  Andi hardly got a moment to hug the happy couple and wish them well. The caterer, looking desperate, called her away. The cranberry-mango chutney was missing and she couldn’t serve the turkey breast without it.

  Andi spent at least the next hour being the point person for every possible emergency. Including more guests than flatware and an inexperienced server pouring the toasting champagne into the dinner glasses.

  “Hi Andi! Hi Andi! Hi Andi! Hi Andi!”

  Tony Giolecki and his grandmother were among the guests. Tony wasn’t used to such a big, fancy party. But he looked good in his Sunday suit and was obviously having a nice time.

  “Andi’s my girlfriend,” he told the caterer and the waiter and guest after guest after guest. “Andi’s my girlfriend. Andi’s my girlfriend.”

  “Tony,” she said. “You’d better go find your grandma and eat your dinner, because when the dancing starts they’ll take the food up.”

  “I gotta eat,” Tony agreed. “I gotta eat. I gotta eat. I gotta eat.”

  Andi didn’t get to eat. By the time everything was running smoothly, she hardly had time to slip into her seat at the head table for the toasts.

  Dave’s was clever and entertaining, he had the crowd laughing.

  Andi’s was more heartfelt.

  “I’ve always known how lucky I am to have my pop,” she began. “He is just the kind of guy you can always depend on. He’s the guy who, when you need help, will always be there with a wrench or a hammer or a shoulder to lean on. Today, he’s getting a helpmate of his own. Rachel, I hope that you and Pop have a hundred years of life together and are as blissfully happy as you deserve to be.”

  Andi raised her glass sincerely and the applause was spirited.

  When the dancing started, people finally got up and started moving around again. Andi shook a hundred hands and smiled until she thought her face might break.

  She spotted a small familiar young fellow in the crowd. He hurried toward her, followed by his parents.

  “Caleb,” Andi said. “Don’t you look all grown up.”

  “This is my first time to be at a wedding, that I remember,” he said. “And it’s pretty cool.”

  “I’m glad you like it.”

  Just as Tiff and Gil stepped up to join them, Caleb added, “We’re going to have our own wedding. And I get to be in it this time.”

  “What’s this?” Andi asked, looking hopefully at Tiff.

  “We told Caleb to keep it a secret,” she said.

  “Sorry, Mom.”

  “Well, this kind of secret is sure to get out,” Andi said. She smiled at them both. “Well, best wishes, congratulations, whatever. I’m happy for you.”

  Tiff shrugged, a little embarrassed. “We’re back together and it’s working. So...so we decided to make it official.”

  “That’s great. That’s so great.” She hugged Tiff and shook hands with Gil.

  “We’re going to wait a couple of months on the wedding,” he said. “I’ve just been accepted into an eight-week course at the hospital. If I pass the test, I should get steady employment. So we’ll have double reasons to celebrate.”

  “Congratulations!” Andi said. “What are you going to be doing?”

  “I’m going to be a nurse’s aide,” he answered. “There’s a lot of opportunity in that, both at the hospital and in home health care. I’ve got a lot to learn, but at least I already know how to carry a bedpan.”

  They both laughed as if they were delighted by the prospect. “I’m really happy for all of you,” Andi told them.

  They were obviously happy for each other, too. Andi later saw Tiff and Gil on the dance floor together and thought they looked exactly like what they were, a young couple in love.

  But they weren’t the only young couple in attendance. Andi caught sight of Cher-L in the crowd. It was a wonder that she recognized her. Since the closing of the car wash, she’d lightened her black-and-blue goth hair to a light ash-brown. And she was accompanied by a very handsome, buff-looking guy who was somehow familiar. Andi figured he must have been one of the customers at the car wash.

  When they finally ran into each other, Cher-L hugged her excitedly.

  “It’s so good to see you,” she said. “I’ve missed you.”

  “I’ve missed you, too,” Andi said, only realizing it was true when she said it. “I love your new hair.”

  “Oh, thanks,” Cher-L said. “I did it for my new job. It doesn’t really scare people off the way the old hair sometimes did.”

  “You have a new job?”

  “Oh, I haven’t told you?” Cher-L shook her head. “It is so totally cool. Of course, it’s not a real real job. I don’t get wages, just commission, but I’m doing good. I’m working at Spangler’s Used Cars out by the interstate. I thought, you know, I know cars and I know how to sell people stuff. So I just went out there and proposed myself. So far, it’s working great.”

  “Oh, Cher-L, that is fabulous. I’m so proud of you.”

  “Oh, that’s another thing,” she said, sheepishly. “I’m just plain Cheryl again. That really works better and I don’t have to spell it or explain it all the time.”

  “Well, okay, Cheryl. If it’s what you want, then I’m very glad about that.”

  “Thanks. Me, too.”

  “And who is this handsome guy you’re not introducing me to,” Andi said. “I promise I won’t try to cut in.” She addressed the familiar young man directly. “Hi, I’m Andi Wolkowicz.”

  “Doug Mayfield,” he said, taking her hand. “I guess you don’t recognize me out of unif
orm.”

  “Oh...oh, of course, Officer Mayfield. It’s good to see you again. So glad you could come and that you could bring our Cheryl.”

  He winked. “I try to see she doesn’t go anywhere without me.”

  They all laughed.

  Jelly came by and dragged the two back out on the dance floor. She motioned for Andi to come as well, but she declined.

  Andi had spotted Pete several times in the crowd, but somehow, every time she headed in his direction, she got called away. She spoke for a few moments to his mother. Madeleine looked great. She was doing a big remodel of her home.

  “I’m really just getting it into some sort of condition for sale,” she told Andi. “I want to move into something smaller. So I’m trying to get all the work done this fall and winter, so I can put it on the market in the spring.”

  Andi nodded. “Pete told me that you were going to Chile and Argentina this winter.”

  “No, I’ve decided against it. I haven’t spent enough time in town the last few years and I just want to stay home, I think.”

  There was something slightly insincere about her answer, but Andi had decided that she no longer cared that much about what people thought was true.

  “I actually gave my reservations and my travel plans to Doris,” Madeleine said.

  “Doris Kepper?”

  “Turns out that she always dreamed of retiring and doing some travel. Now she can.”

  That bombshell sort of rested at the back of Andi’s mind.

  Pop came and got her to take a turn about the floor. During an awkward fox-trot to “They Can’t Take That Away From Me,” she asked him about it.

  “Miss Kepper is going to retire from Guthrie Foods,” she told him.

  “Really?”

  “Yes, and Pete hasn’t mentioned it at all. I mean I know I’ve been busy with your wedding, but I’d think he would have mentioned it.”

  “I guess it just didn’t come up,” Pop said.

  “Do you think it just didn’t come up?” she asked. “Or do you think it didn’t come up on purpose?”

  “I don’t get what you mean.”

  “Pete knows how desperately I’m looking for a new job. And he knows how more than qualified I am to do that one,” she said. “Do you think that he doesn’t want me to know about it so that I won’t apply? It’s a family business, but I’m sure they still have rules about hiring people you’re dating. And giving a plum job to your girlfriend, even if she’s qualified. I guess that would look really bad. Is that what he’s thinking?”

  “I don’t know, Andi. I think you’ll have to ask him.”

  Andi thought about that for a moment. “Are you sure I shouldn’t just wait for him to tell me? Or should I ask him?”

  “I think you should ask him,” Pop answered. “And it looks like your chance is walking right up.”

  A second later, Pete was there, cutting in. He looked so good. What had made her think that he was not still the high school hottie? The guy was gorgeous.

  “You’re a difficult woman to get my hands on,” he told her.

  “Oh, I don’t know, you manage it fairly regularly,” she answered.

  They danced together, smiling at each other for a couple of minutes.

  “Did I mention you look beautiful today,” he said.

  “No,” she replied. “And you didn’t tell me Miss Kepper was leaving either.”

  “Ahh,” he said. “The Plainview gossip machine still hard at work. News really spreads fast in this town.”

  She nodded. “Was there a reason you didn’t tell me?”

  “Yeah,” he answered. “There’s always a reason of some kind.”

  “You didn’t want me to apply for her job.”

  Andi stated it as a fact and then swallowed hard. She was determined to be okay with this. There were good reasons not to hire her and she was not going to allow her longing for the job to override her sense of doing the right thing.

  “I’m doing away with that position,” Pete said. “Executive secretary is kind of an antiquated job. We’re such a small company, even the executive does most of his own paperwork. So why have a whole position tied up in something like that.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’ve been talking about it a great deal with the management board,” he said.

  “The management board? That’s just you and your mother.”

  He nodded very soberly. “And that’s one of the problems,” he said. “Two people are not a board, they’re just partners. What if we disagree on something? Then it’s just her against me. We need a tiebreaker. We need to add another person to the management board. Someone who’d be willing to put some hands-on time with the company.”

  Andi nodded.

  “And since we’re a family-owned company, it really should be a family member,” he said. “Guthrie Foods in all its history has never had outsiders on the management board.”

  “Well, who do you have in your family?” she asked.

  “There’s Aunt Sylvie out in Idaho,” he said. “But she’s almost eighty and I doubt she’d want to relocate. We have some Grosvenor cousins in town, I think. But they’ve never been involved in the business.”

  “I guess people can learn,” she said.

  “Yeah, sure, whoever takes the seat will have to put in a lot of time learning the business,” Pete agreed. “But those guys are not the ones I have in mind.”

  “Who then?”

  “I have an outrageous plan,” he said. “I mean it’s something so crazy that you might even have thought it up.”

  “Hey,” she complained.

  “You are the Bikini Car Wash entrepreneur after all,” he pointed out.

  “Anyway, this idea is really out there and it’s totally fearless.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I’m going to get married and put my wife on the board.”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s a proposal, Wolkowicz, please don’t make me get down on one knee. I can do it, but it would really be embarrassing.”

  Andi stopped in mid-quickstep and nearly fell over his feet. He had to wrap his arms around her waist to keep her upright.

  “So what do you think, Andi,” he said. “Great benefits, you get a job, a house and a man who loves you. It seems like a good deal if you want it.”

  “I do!”

  Jelly lovingly clutched her brand-new photo book. It was pale green with little white ribbons on it. She ran up to her new room at the back of the big house. That’s what she called the place she lived now, the big house. It was a big room and Andi had helped her fix it up so that it was a young lady’s room and not with a bunch of stuffed bears and bright colors. Jelly still had the stuffed bears. She kept them on shelves in the closet. And when she wanted them, she’d bring them out to sit on the bed or the chairs or wherever they wanted to sit.

  She snuggled up in her window seat that overlooked Pete’s house. No one was at home, of course. They were in Italy, but only for a week more, Pop promised.

  Jelly opened the book and there she was on the first page. She was wearing the beautiful green dress that was in her own closet this very minute. And her hair was very cute and she was holding a bunch of flowers. Beside her, Andi looked good, too. They didn’t have matching dresses. Andi’s was white and gigantically poofy. They were standing by the big tree in front of St. Hyacinth’s. They were both smiling.

  Jelly let out a heavy sigh. This was why she loved the photo books. It was as if she could live the good moments again and again and again.

  Also by Pamela Morsi

  Territory Trysts

  Wild Oats

  Runabout

  Tales from Marrying Stone

  Marrying Stone

  Simple Jess

  The Lovesick Cure

  A Marrying Stone Christmas (coming soon)

  Small-Town Swains

  Heaven Sent

  Something Shady

  No Ordinary Princess

  Seale
d With a Kiss

  Garters

  The Love Charm

  Women’s Fiction

  Doing Good/Social Climber of Davenport Heights

  Letting Go

  Suburban Renewal

  By Summer’s End

  The Cotton Queen

  Bitsy’s Bait & BBQ

  Last Dance at Jitterbug Lounge

  Red’s Hot Honky-Tonk Bar

  Contemporary Romance

  The Bikini Car Wash

  The Bentley’s Buy at Buick

  Love Overdue

  Mr. Right Goes Wrong

  Single Title Historicals

  Courting Miss Hattie

  Sweetwood Bride

  Here Comes the Bride

  Novellas

  With Marriage In Mind in the collection Matters of the Heart

  The Pantry Raid in the collection The Night We Met

  Daffodils In Spring in the collection More Than Words: Where Dreams Begin

  Making Hay

  About the Author

  National bestseller and two-time RITA Award winner, Pamela Morsi was duly warned. “Lots of people mistakenly think they are writers,” her mother told her. She’d be smart to give it up before she embarrassed herself. Fortunately, she rarely took her mother’s advice. With 30 published titles and millions of copies in print, she loves to hear from readers.

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