Designer Genes (4 page)

“Have you
given any thought to having one?”

“No, ma’am,”
he said. “I’m not married.”

“I meant in
the future!”

“Why would I
think about having children when I’m not married?” he asked. “That’s putting
the cart before the horse.”

She folded her
arms. “It’s normal to think about having babies. In fact, that’s the reason
some people get married in the first place.”

He knew what
the pastor would say about that. “Yes, ma’am, but not if they’ve been behaving
themselves.”

Buffy Arden
began to laugh and the merry, lilting sound tickled his heart. “That wasn’t
what I meant,” she said at last. “I meant because they
want
to have
babies, not because they’re already having them.”

“Guess I
misunderstood.”

“Guess you did.”

The truck fell
silent save for the rump-rump of tires on pavement. Why was this blonde lady
interested in his opinions on babies? he wondered. Did she seek reassurance? “I
hope you didn’t think I was criticizing. I mean, you haven’t mentioned whether
there’s a Mr. Arden.”

“Unfortunately,
yes, there’s a Mr. Arden, my ex,” she said. “And a bigger louse never walked
the earth. Or crawled upon the earth, or whatever lice do.”

“Louse or not,
he must miss his cute little girl,” he said as he turned from the highway onto
Main Street.

“He
has
his cute little girl,” Buffy said grimly. “Her name is Yoko and she’s been the
centerfold in Amazing Asian Mammaries three times.”

“Amazing Asian
Mammaries?” he repeated. “Doesn’t that mean…”

“Breasts,” she
finished. “Bought and paid for by my husband.”

Now, that
was
a sad situation. “I don’t hold with married men fooling around.”

“That’s what I
like about you.” She favored him with a smile that could light up the Fourth of
July. “You’re an old-fashioned guy, aren’t you, Carter?”

“You might say
that.” In truth, every time he looked at her, his mind seethed with
old-fashioned thoughts. Some of them were downright Neanderthal.

The sports car
jounced in place behind them as the tow truck rattled along the worn pavement,
its edges marked by the occasional hitching post. As they passed the church,
Buffy rolled down her window.

“Did I read
that right?” she asked, staring at the sign out front.

Carter was
glad the darkness hid his heated cheeks. “You mean the Nowhere Nearer to Thee 0
Lord Church?”

“Is that
really what it’s called?”

“Yep.”

“That’s a
ridiculous name,” said his passenger.

“Not when you
know the story,” he assured her. “It used to be a branch of a church in
Groundhog Station, our town’s…” He wasn’t sure how to pronounce “nemesis,” so
he finished, “…rival. Groundhogs are always claiming they’re the best and the
first at everything, and when we prove ‘em wrong, they sneer at our name.”

“People from
Groundhog sneer at your name?” She appeared to find that notion amusing.

“Yes’m, and we
got mighty tired of attending the Groundhog Nearer to Thee 0 Lord Church, which
sounds like more of their bragging. The congregation was dwindling till we
changed it.”

“Didn’t
anybody think about the implication?” she asked. “That you’re nowhere nearer to
God?”

“The Lord
understands what we mean,” he said. “Unlike those snobs from Groundhog, we
don’t consider ourselves any closer to God than anybody else. We’re all equal
in His eyes.”

“Good point.”
Her attention shifted to their surroundings. “This can’t be your main street,
is it?”

He had to
admit, there wasn’t much around except a storage yard and a warehouse. “We’ll
be coming up on the downtown section in a minute,” he assured her.

“I can hardly
wait.”

As they neared
the center, he tried in vain to imagine how the block-long business district
must seem to Buffy. Small and dark, he supposed, although a few signs glimmered
in his headlights.

Over the
darkness lay Carter’s memories of crepe-paper-covered trucks carrying homemade
parade floats every Memorial Day. He could see costumed schoolchildren
trick-or-treating on Halloween at the grocery, the dry goods store and Binny’s
Beauty Salon. And of course the Christmas season, with the school principal
ho-ho-hoing as Santa Claus in the park and everyone gussying up their stores
with colored lights. Despite the evening quiet, he couldn’t visualize the town
empty and silent, even when he was staring right at it. But things must look
very different to a visitor.

 
“Those signs.” Buffy shook her head. “I can’t
believe what they call their shops. No wonder you think the church’s name is
normal.”

“What do you
mean, what they call their shops?”

She waved her
hand. “Gigi’s Grocery and Anderson’s Coffee Shop and Drugstore.”

He puzzled
over her meaning as they turned onto Cross Street. “What’s wrong with those
names?”

“They’re
dull,” Buffy said.

He supposed
she had a point. “But accurate.”

“This town
could use some pizzazz.”

Her
mispronunciation surprised him. “There’s a pizza parlor down the road.”

“Not pizza.
Pizzazz. That means style and glamour.”

“Who needs a
glamorous grocery store?” They were passing the ten-bed Nowhere Junction
Hospital, two blocks from his garage. To be polite, he added, “What kinds of
names should they have?”

“Just off the
top of my head, how about the Smart Shopper Supermarket,” Buffy suggested,
which wasn’t a bad idea, considering how Gigi was always laying in big supplies
of whatever had fallen off the wholesaler’s truck. “Or the Poets’ Corner Café.”

“We used to
have a poet in Nowhere Junction,” Carter said. “Only he moved to Austin.”

The lights had
gone off at the school, he noticed, and wondered what else had been
accomplished at the meeting. With the start of the new fiscal year less than
three months away, there’d probably been a lot of talk about ways to raise
funds.

Five million
dollars. Maybe they should change the name of the school district to the
Broken-Down-But-Not-Out Education Association.

That might
rouse someone’s charitable instincts.

*

The large
overhead door of the Nowhere Garage stood open. Buffy could understand how
Mimsy Miles had walked in and answered the phone.

In the dim
light, she detected a couple of hulking vehicles awaiting repairs. “Don’t you
worry that someone might steal something?”

“Not likely.”

“You can’t
tell me nobody in this town ever feels temptation!”

“I’m sure
you’re right, because the pastor talks about that sort of thing all the time,”
Carter said. “It’s not much of a risk, though. They couldn’t sell anything they
stole in Nowhere Junction without getting caught. And since the main highway
bypasses us, we don’t get many strangers.”

She held her
breath, afraid he was going to ask the obvious question: what was
she
doing here? Mercifully, he didn’t. Possibly he was too polite, or just lacked
curiosity. Good, because she wasn’t ready to tell him.

He pulled the
truck around, backed it into the garage and lowered her car. The grinding noise
of the tow mechanism woke Allie, who began to cry.

Through the
passenger window, Buffy peered around. “Where can I breast-feed her?” A garage
was hardly likely to have a clean corner, she realized. “Never mind. When
you’re done disconnecting my car, would you drop us at a motel?”

“That could
pose a problem,” Carter said.

“Then call me
a cab and I’ll go there myself.” She wondered if the First National Bank of
Nowhere back on Main Street had an ATM, because she was running low on cash.

“I’d drive
you,” the man explained, “but we don’t have a motel. Billy and Willie Grimes
used to rent out a spare room until they had their sixth kid, or maybe it was
the seventh. Now people have to stay with relatives or go to Groundhog Station.
They have two motels, although I wouldn’t recommend them, being as the folks in
Groundhog aren’t nearly as nice as the people around here.”

No motel? The
energy that had powered Buffy all the way from California seemed to drain onto
the concrete floor of the garage. She didn’t know anyone in this town, she had
no place to go and her daughter was hungry.

As usual,
though, her depression lasted somewhere on the short side of thirty seconds.
“Don’t you have a spare room?” she asked. “I’ll pay you to put me up
overnight.”

Carter made no
move to exit the truck. “I don’t mean to be rude, but this is a small town.
People will gossip.”

“About what?”
Allie started squalling full-out, cutting off his reply. This feeding couldn’t
wait until the man worked through his ridiculous small-town qualms. After
unstrapping the restraints, Buffy lifted her daughter out of the baby seat and
began unbuttoning her blouse.

Carter averted
his face. “Do you have to do that with the garage door open?”

“I’m
breast-feeding.” Buffy couldn’t believe anyone would object. “My clothes are
designed not to show anything, okay?”

The man opened
his door and hopped out. “You take care of your business while I unhook your
car, and then we’ll figure out where you can sleep.”

“Fine.” For
one night, she could handle anything within reason, Buffy figured. Thank
goodness she’d brought a sleeping bag in case she got stuck between towns.

She might look
like a city slicker, but she’d seen practically every episode ever made of
“Survivor.” And there were scissors in her manicure kit to cut the tags off the
sleeping bag.

The truck
bounced a couple of times while Carter was freeing her car. The motion seemed
to reassure the baby, who nursed lustily.

The man
returned while Buffy was still holding Allie. He kept his face averted.

“Mimsy Miles
rents a small apartment over the coffee shop,” he said. “She might put you up
in the living room.”

It would have
been an acceptable suggestion, had Allie’s yawn not reminded Buffy of her mission
in Nowhere Junction. If she stayed somewhere else, how would she get to know
Carter Murchison?

She’d come to
Texas to give her daughter the one thing in life that Buffy had always lacked:
a father. And she intended to complete her mission.

“Why can’t I
stay at your place?” she asked. “There’s no reason the town gossips have to
find out about me.”

He was so
startled that he met her gaze just as she rearranged her blouse. Although he
couldn’t have seen much, he turned bright red.

“They, um,
already know about you,” he stammered. “You called me during a school board
meeting, remember? They took a vote that I should go help you right away.”

“The school
board sent you to help me?” Until now, Buffy hadn’t imagined that anything
about this town could truly surprise her.

“They did.”

“Does it fall
within their jurisdiction?”

“Not
technically.” With the shop illuminated, she saw that Carter’s skin—now that
he’d stopped blushing like a schoolgirl—was a golden bronze that would put a
surfer to shame. “But in Nowhere Junction, everything is everybody’s business.”

“You have a
spare room or at least a couch, right?” she pressed. “I’ll pay you. If anyone
asks, you can explain that it’s strictly business. I mean, how long will it
take to fix my car? I could be out of here by...” Was tomorrow night too soon
to ease him into the idea of parenthood? “Say, Thursday?”

He shook his
head.

“Friday?”

“Ms. Arden...”

“Buffy,” she
corrected.

“Ms. Buffy,”
he said, as if determined to keep his distance, “you don’t seem to grasp the meaning
of the word ‘fried,’ which is what’s happened to your engine. ”

“Maybe if
you’d said ‘sautéed,’ I’d have understood you.” He didn’t laugh. “Okay, bad
joke. What does fried mean, in technical terms?”

“In technical
terms, it means your engine is toast.” Carter stretched, a movement that pulled
his T-shirt tight across his chest and demonstrated that working on cars ought
to be a new craze for developing muscles. “You melted things I’ve never seen
melted before. You’ll need a complete rebuild and I’ll have to send to San
Antonio for parts. We don’t run into this kind of car around here very often.”

She didn’t
care how much the repairs cost, since her bills still went to Roger until the
divorce was finalized. “How long will it take?”

“Could be a
week,” he said. “It depends on whether they have the parts in stock. As for the
cost, I’ll give you an estimate tomorrow.”

“Fine.” Buffy
opened her door. “Would you mind helping us down?”

He came around
and reached for the baby. His big hands, although they nearly overwhelmed the
child, were gentle as he took a firm grip.

Allie held
herself straight in the air and stared at the man as he lifted her. She didn’t
fuss, as she sometimes did around strangers.

“She has gray
eyes with a hint of purple.” Carter gazed deep into them. “Kind of unusual.
Takes after her father?”

“You might say
that.” Buffy hopped down beside him. In her weariness, she wobbled a little and
caught his shoulder for support. It felt reassuringly sturdy.

“You smell
nice.” He made no attempt to move away.

“Herbal
shampoo and baby powder.” She didn’t feel inclined to move, either.

“What I can’t
figure out,” the man said, “is how your husband managed to notice some other
woman, even if she is a centerfold.”

The compliment
warmed Buffy. In Los Angeles, men didn’t pay compliments unless they wanted
something. “He’d been gone for several months on business.”

“That’s no
excuse.” Carter rested one hand on her waist, as if he didn’t know where else
to put it. “Wherever he goes, a man takes his character with him. If he’s got
any.”