Hotter than Helen (The "Bobby's Diner" Series) (10 page)

Georgette nodded her head. “Thanks, hon. I owe you big time.”

“Well, I suppose I should learn the dinner part too.”

“It’s not so hard. I’ll teach you everything. Thanks for covering for me, Rob. I just need to do a couple of things around here and I’ll be there for dinner.”

She stood at the door outside the kitchen door next to the garage in the thermal warmth the coming storm had created and watched as Roberta drove off. She thought she heard Gangster’s familiar yowl but he was nowhere in sight. She blamed the wind again. She looked around waving Roberta off and then placed one hand to her mouth. She decided to open the garage now. Helen might come by today if she was leaving early tomorrow. But first, she went back into the kitchen to grab a pen and piece of paper. She scratched out a terse note letting Helen know to help herself into the garage, the cabinet and to remember to shut the door when she was finished. She didn’t even sign her name.

She found the tape dispenser in a drawer and stuck the note to the door. Walking to over her car that she’d left parked in the driveway, she reached inside the driver’s side window and pressed the garage opener sitting on the console. With her head still inside the car, as the garage door jostled and creaked, Georgette didn’t hear Gangster’s yowl upon hearing the door open.

Instead, she hung there, her head and shoulders inside the cab and watched to make sure it didn’t come down again automatically as it sometimes did. This time it didn’t. The garage gaped open and the tambour door stayed up. She walked back inside the house and headed off down the hallway to her bedroom, to the bathroom inside her bedroom and in to take a long, hot shower.

20

“Georgette. You’re being a damn stubborn woman.”

“Look, Hawthorne. We can’t talk now. I have a full dinner crowd. I don’t have time for,” she waved her arms as if searching for a word, “this” his eyes followed her hand as she gestured.

“We need to talk.”

“Not now, Hawthorne.” She pressed out his name, opening her eyes wide for emphasis. “I can’t.”

“When, then?”

Georgette turned back to a customer’s plate she was dressing. She delicately placed five sprigs of asparagus next to a filet of salmon and poured a lemon cream sauce over the fish.

“Tomorrow!” she barked. “We can talk tomorrow.” She turned quickly, however, from the plate and added, “Call first. And don’t you dare just show up or come to my house.”

“Fine,” he gnarled. His eyes flashed silver in anger. “Fine. I’ll call you tomorrow at nine.”

“Fine.” She gnarled back, glaring at him and continuing to stare until he left her kitchen. He walked toward the back door and she followed. He opened it and stepped through. She grabbed it and began to close it. He turned around as if to say something else. She looked him squarely in the eyes and closed the door without letting him speak.

“He gone?” Roberta asked as she came into the kitchen.

“Yes. The salmon dish is there. Sorry. I was seeing Hawthorne out.”

“Did you two talk?”

“How can we? Look how busy it is.” She walked over to the plate and handed it to Roberta. “He’s calling tomorrow.” She rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Can you make the salad?”

“Yep.” Roberta grabbed a salad plate and began dishing organic greens onto it, placing grape cherry tomatoes in a pile in the center and adding three slivers of hearts of palm, then finishing it off by drizzling their sweet signature balsamic dressing over the top. She picked up both plates and looked at Georgette with a smile across her plump red lips. She always looked so pretty to Georgette when she played hostess for the dinner crowd.

“I need to pee.” Georgette really just needed to sit and relax alone in the bathroom. Just to be alone, if only for a second and patted down several unruly hairs on the side of her head and wiped her hands on her white chef jacket. “I should wear my hat.”

Roberta continued to smile and walked through the swinging doors taking the food to their patrons.

Five minutes later, Georgette came out of the bathroom. It was only eight o’clock. They still had another solid thirty minutes until people began thinning out. Cammy was in the kitchen rustling through her purse for her pack of cigarettes.

“Make it quick.” Georgette hated hiring smokers but Cammy had been one of the most reliable, hardest working gals they had. She could smoke, wash her hands, rinse her mouth out and be back out on the floor within five minutes. Georgette paid her well for it, too. Cammy had a kid, a small house she was trying to buy and a dog, the newest addition to her small family. She’d gotten it for her boy. She wanted to teach him how to be responsible, for himself and for another living thing.

Something Georgette obviously couldn’t yet accomplish at middle-aged. She felt so guilty about losing Gangster. She agonized between worrying about her cat and dealing with Hawthorne.

By nine, she had peeled off her chef coat and started putting the kitchen back in order. She needed to go home, to see if Gangster had returned. To see if Helen had been by.

By nine-thirty, she asked Roberta to lock up, who happily agreed.

By nine-forty-five, she was driving her car up to her house. The lights angled across the driveway, glaring into the open mouth of the garage. Helen had yet to come by. The headlights spread over the front yard, reflecting off the windows and slanting down the street, fading off in the distance and giving the evening and eerie glow.

She parked on the street. If Helen needed to put her things in her car, she wanted the driveway clear for her.

The engine hummed and died when she turned the key off. Opening the car door, the smell of the desert night struck her first. Creosote cooling under the stars giving off its spicy, tar scent seemed to be as fragrant as when it warmed under the day’s sun.

The stars blanketed the black sky and Georgette spotted the big dipper. Following it up and finding the north star, she located the little dipper next to it, sort of upside-down and, breaking the peaceful night, she yelled out, “Gangster!” Then adding in a high note, she yelled the universal call for all cats, “Kitty, kitty, kitty!” She paused, bending her ear to the evening ground and called again, “Kitty! Gangster!”

But giving up she wondered how many times she would go out tonight calling for him. She listened at her front door. Heard the distant barking of coyotes in the prairie and dreaded her cat’s possible fate.

21

She’d slept until the breaking sun shone against a wall and lit up the living room. Georgette remembered going outside only a few times that night to look for Gangster. Exhaustion sent her to sleep on the couch watching an old rerun of Law & Order during one of their usual marathons. Another episode was playing on the TV with the volume so low that when her eyes opened she thought the sound was a fly buzzing around.

She reached for the remote and clicked it off.

Stepping into her slippers and shuffling toward the kitchen, she yawned while emptying yesterday’s cold coffee from the pot and running water to rinse it clean. As she stood refilling the pot, she looked over at the clock above the kitchen table. Six-thirty. After pouring the water into the coffee maker and starting it  making sure that it began to drip, she walked to the front door and looked through a window. She remembered leaving her car on the street and why but hadn’t heard anyone drive to her house, instead knew when she had slept she had slept soundly.

Unlocking the door and opening it, a blast of cool desert air streamed into Georgette’s face. She smelled the muddy, adobe earth mixed with a strong whiff of the jasmine that vined along the side of her driveway. The delicate star-shaped flowers intoxicated a few bees who alighted languidly as they collected powdery mustard-colored pollen along their legs and underbellies.

But the cool, heavy air made her skin prickle and she wrapped her arms around her.

Before going back inside, she notice the garage door was still up. Georgette realized that Helen could have come, cleaned out whatever was in there of hers and left without closing the garage—no matter how insistent Georgette had been about closing it.

Instantly, her face went hot with anger. “Stupid cow.”

She slammed the kitchen door and once again thought she heard the muffled sound of a cat’s mew. “Gangster!” She said as she swung the door open fast. Not wanting to give up on the search, she thought she heard him again. She closed the door behind her.

The sound pulled her closer to the garage.

She looked around. After yelling his name, everything seemed to go deaf again, even birds and bees seemed to halt.

Turning one way then the other, she remembered she had never once looked inside the garage. But, why would she? He couldn’t have possibly gotten into the garage without letting him in. “Gangster,” she repeated.

Once again, nothing. The mewing stopped when she called him.

In an instance she realized that was how it had been for the last two nights. Whenever she heard him crying, she would call his name, making him think that she was coming for him, making him stop calling to her.

Just inside the door of the garage, she froze. She barely took in air. Looking from one side of the garage to the other, she remained quiet. The place was sparse except for a worktable, the garbage and recycling cans and a set of storage cabinets marked “BD-Files” where Bobby had stored old diner information. There was a combination lock through the hasp that locked its doors. The lock was new. The lock hadn’t been there before. It was the only thing out of place. Her eyes latched onto the cabinet. “Oh no! Gangster.”

She heard a shred of noise from that direction and ran over to the cabinet. “Gangster?”

He cried. It was him. She’d heard him distinctly, his meow, a meow that broke Georgette’s heart.

“Oh my lord! Gangster! How did you …” She trailed off as she examined the lock. She didn’t know the combination.

But. Wait.

She did know the combination.

The four numbers on Helen’s note. They meant something!. She had to find that note. Running off, yelling behind her, she called out, “Gangster. I’ll be back, honey!”

Nearly slipping on the Saltillo kitchen tile, she hung onto the door for only a moment when she ran into the house. Then she ran down the hall and into her bedroom. To the waste bucket. To the note.

She uncrumpled the wad of paper. 2 8 1 4.

She ran back through the hall through the kitchen, out the door and back into the garage

“Gangster!” The cat mewed inside the cupboard. “I’m here, honey.” Through her panicked breathing, she repeated, “I’m here.” It had been nearly three days that he’d been locked inside the cabinet. Her hands shook as she held the lock in them. She stared down at its black face trimmed in a neat circle of white numbers, spaced in increments of five, beginning with the number zero and ending at thirty-nine.

She tried twenty-eight first, then one, then four. The lock remained tight. But maybe it was because her hands were shaking terribly. She tried the combination again. Twenty-eight, one, four. Nothing.

She paused and breathed in then out. Then she stopped and took one deep breath and let it out slowly.

Georgette examined the lock again and knew the only plausible next set of numbers. Two, eight and fourteen.

She turned to the right to two and then, slowly passing by the eight, she landed there on the next pass. She paused and took in a deep breath again. Gangster let out a low groan. “Okay, honey. I’m here. Just hold on a little longer, baby.” She turned the dial slowly, slowly enough to know she hadn’t made a mistake. She stopped. Then she pulled hard, once. The lock unlatched.

Fumbling with the thing through the hasp’s looping metal felt grueling. She finally got it off and pulled the door open wide.

Gangster stumbled out. Yowling, objecting, he sat down only a foot outside of his jail. He was gaunt and visibly weakened. He needed water. He needed a can of catfood.

A waft of foul air struck her. The odor from the cabinet stung her eyes. It had been his bed and cat box for three days.

Georgette dropped the lock onto the concrete floor, startling the cat but scooped him up into her arms, holding him tighter than she probably should have and cooing to him how she missed him.

She sped back into the house.

He needed rehydration and food.

22

Georgette stood embarrassed in front of the jeweler. Sunnydale was a small town. She was sure everyone already knew about how her and Hawthorne’s relationship fell to pieces before getting started. She tried to shoo the thoughts out of her head, concentrating instead on the fact she’d found her lost cat.

“Oh, now, let me see that gorgeous thing.” Paul Kessler examined the ring through his eyeglass and paused.

“Can you give me an idea of how much I might get for it, Paul?” Georgette’s eyes looked puffy and owlish from the make-up she had applied, trying to hide the fact that she’d been crying.

Paul had owned Sunnydale’s finest jewelry store since before computers came into fashion. Georgette often thought he looked an awful lot like Mark Twain with his wild white hair and moustache. The band around his head with a single magnifying glass for viewing jewels seemed almost for show since he used his loupe instead. He flipped each layered lens of the loupe out in succession squeezing one eye tight for a better view. Then, in quick succession, he closed each layer again—one, two, three. He rose up straight when he finished the inspection of the Georgette’s engagement ring, the one Hawthorne had given her.