Night Shift
Page 6

“Thirty-five,” he said. “How come?”
Fiji felt heavy and depressed. “Oh, nothing!” she said, doing her best to sound upbeat. “What brings you over here today?” He was due to open the pawnshop soon. And she would have to shower and unlock her own business.
“You know what we need, Feej?” He was looking very serious, and her heart began thudding, just a bit.
Fiji could think of several things they needed, or at least she needed.
“What?” she said, trying not to sound as though she were strangling.
“We need a vacation.”
She wanted to be absolutely certain what Bobo meant before she made a fool of herself. Cautiously, she said, “Do you mean we need to go to a desert island? Or the Grand Canyon? That kind of vacation?”
“I don’t know of any other kind,” he said, smiling. “Yes, that’s what we need. How long has it been since you’ve been out of Midnight for more than a couple of hours?”
“Four years,” she said promptly.
“I’ve been gone overnight maybe three times, but I can’t remember being gone longer than that. Even Lemuel went traveling when he was trying to find someone to translate the books. Chuy visits his kin, Joe goes to antique shows. Manfred goes to Dallas or Los Angeles or Miami for a couple of days every few months. Olivia is gone half the time!”
“Not the Rev,” Fiji said.
“No, not the Rev, I’ll give you that one. And not the Reeds. And Diederik’s only lived here for a few months, so he doesn’t count.”
Fiji was thinking that it surely sounded as though Bobo was proposing they go somewhere together. Like a couple. But she could hardly believe it. She tested the idea. “You think you and I should go to see Hawaii, or Death Valley?”
“That’s what I’m saying.” He looked serious enough to mean it. The morning wind blew his light hair around.
Fiji had waited for this moment for so long. It was like a clear, perfect, shimmering crystal of happiness. Then Bobo shifted slightly and looked anxiously into her face.
“Of course, we can get two rooms,” he said.
For the life of her, she could not interpret his tone. The crystal shattered.
Fiji mustered every smidgen of self-control she could summon to keep her face from showing her painful disillusion. Something inside her snapped, and she lost hope. “I just can’t do this,” Fiji said into her hands. “You have to leave now.”
Her dearest friend and longed-for lover looked shocked, but maybe not so shocked that he could claim ignorance of his offense. “Let me backtrack,” Bobo said urgently.
“No.” She stood up, pushing off the ground to rise to her feet, for once not caring how heavy and clumsy she might look in the process. “No. I’m going in. Do what you like.” She flicked her hand to show how little she cared. She walked away, into the back door, and closed and locked it behind her. Somehow Mr. Snuggly had beat her inside.
“I’m done with him,” she told Mr. Snuggly. “I can’t live like this anymore.”
Wisely, Mr. Snuggly said nothing.
In the shower, you could not tell the water beating down from the tears.
“Fiji,” Fiji told herself out loud, “you are a fucking idiot.”
It was a harder, tougher witch who turned off the water and toweled herself dry just in time to unlock the front door. A car stopped in front of the shop. Good, I need something else to think about, Fiji told herself. But then she took a second look. To her puzzlement, the car was a familiar one. Fiji was even more amazed when she recognized the woman who got out.
Her first customer of the day was her sister.
“Kiki?” she said, incredulously.
“One and the same,” her sister called gaily.
Waikiki Cavanaugh Ransom was four years older than Fiji. Though all the Cavanaugh women were inclined to be well-rounded, Kiki had starved herself and exercised herself so she would never reach that pleasant state. Kiki was a little taller than her sister, and she wore bright green contact lenses that made her eyes extraordinary. That was new. So was the color of Kiki’s hair, a sort of golden wheat. In the time it took to register all this, Kiki had reached the front porch.
The sisters hugged. For about six seconds, Fiji was simply excited her sister had driven up from Houston to see her. Then her knowledge of Kiki’s nature reasserted itself.
“Not that I’m not glad to see you . . . but I’m surprised,” Fiji said, trying to soften her actual impulse to say, “What the hell are you doing here?”
It wasn’t like any member of her family had come to see her since she’d claimed her inheritance. And her one trip home for Christmas two years before had been a terrible mistake.
“Well, it was just time, Fiji! You’re the only sister I’ve got! You know I’ve regretted that big scene. Mom thought she should have gotten the house, and it may have seemed like I sided with her, but I thought the better of it. I know there were a lot of hard words spoken.”
“You’ve waited two years to tell me this? After maybe three phone calls in the intervening time?”
“Give me a break! I’m trying to make nice!” Kiki held her sister away and gave her an admonishing smile.
But Fiji was not having any of it, not today. She folded her arms across her chest. “I’m not in the ‘giving a break’ business. Out with it. There must be some reason you left Houston and drove all the way up here. Let’s have a seat. You tell me about it.”
Fiji gestured to the two armchairs on opposite sides of the little table in the middle of the shop, and Kiki sank into one.
Since she sat down when I asked her to, now she’s going to ask me for something, Fiji thought.
“All right,” Kiki said. “By the way, I could use a cup of coffee.”
Right on the money. “I’ll do the polite hostess thing after you tell me what your trouble is,” Fiji said. She didn’t know where this new tougher Fiji was going, but so far it felt good.
“I left Marty,” Kiki said, almost tearfully. “I just wanted to get out of town for a while, but I don’t have any money, so Mom said I should come stay with you, since you had a house all your own.”
“Fake house envy,” Fiji said. “You didn’t like Great-Aunt Mildred, you never spent any time with her, and you thought this place was a dump. You didn’t keep that any secret. And yet you and Mom have the gall to be surprised that Aunt Mildred left it to me.”