“Are you okay?” I asked Grandma.
“Of course I’m okay,” Grandma said. “I was winning, too. Didn’t it look like I was winning?”
Lula clattered over in her high-?heeled boots, got Grandma under the armpits, and hoisted her to her feet.
“When I grow up, I wanna be just like you,” Lula said to Grandma.
I swung my attention back to the little man, but he was gone. His car door slammed shut, the engine caught, and the car sped down the street.
“Sneaky little bugger,” Lula said. “One minute you had a hold of him, and then next thing he’s driving away.”
“He wanted my bag,” Grandma said. “Can you imagine? He said it was his, so I asked him to prove it. And that’s when he tried to run off with it.”
I looked down at the bag. “What’s in it?”
“None of your beeswax.”
“What’s in the bakery bag?”
&nbs
p; “Jelly doughnuts.”
“I wouldn’t mind a jelly doughnut,” Lula said. “A jelly doughnut would go real good with the Lucky Clucky Shake.”
“I love them shakes,” Grandma said. “I’ll share my doughnuts if you take me for a shake, but you gotta leave my duffel bag alone. No one’s allowed to snoop in my duffel bag.”
“You don’t got a body in there, do you?” Lula wanted to know.
“I don’t like carrying dead guys around in my Firebird. Messes with the feng shui.”
“I couldn’t fit a body in here,” Grandma said. “It’s too little for a body.”
“It could be a leprechaun body,” Lula said. “It’s St. Patrick’s Day. If you bagged a leprechaun, you could make him take you to his pot of gold.”
“I don’t know. I hear you gotta be careful of them leprechauns. I hear they’re tricky,” Grandma said. “Anyways, I haven’t got a leprechaun.”
The day after St. Patrick’s Day, I woke up next to Joe Morelli, my almost always boyfriend. Morelli’s a Trenton cop, and he makes me look like an amateur when it comes to the impure thoughts. Not that he’s kinky or weird. More that he’s frighteningly healthy. He has wavy black hair, expressive brown eyes, a perpetual five o’clock shadow, an eagle tattoo from his navy days, and a tightly muscled, entirely edible body. He’s recently become moderately domesticated, having inherited a small house from his Aunt Rose.
Commitment issues and a strong sense of self-?preservation keep us from permanently cohabitating. Genuine affection and the impure thoughts bring Morelli to my bed when our schedules allow intersection. I knew from the amount of sunlight streaming into my bedroom that Morelli had overslept. I turned to look at the clock, and Morelli came awake.
“I’m late,” he said.
“Gee, that’s too bad,” I told him. “I had big plans for this morning.”
“Such as?”
“I was going to do things to you that don’t even have names. Really hot things.”
Morelli smiled at me. “I might be able to find a few minutes....”
“You would need more than a few minutes for what I have in mind. It could go on for hours.”
Morelli blew out a sigh and rolled out of bed. “I don’t have hours. And I’ve been with you long enough to know when you’re yanking my chain.”
“You doubt my intentions?”
“Cupcake, my best shot at morning sex is to tackle you while you’re still sleeping. Once you’re awake, all you can think about is coffee.”