Before Him

“You know what won’t be hot?” I answer tartly. “That coffee.”

“Got it, boss lady.” Jenner gives an ironic salute and begins to lift the tray when something snags my attention.

“Wait.” I clamp my hand over his forearm, making the tassels on his Western-style shirt dance. Think line dancing circa 1985. “Please tell me that isn’t a penis.” I glance down at the cup and the dubious-looking coffee art.

Jenner rears back as though surprised, setting the tassels to swaying again. “You’re telling me you remember what one looks like?” I narrow my gaze. “I guess you don’t because that is an orchid, honeybun.”

“Really.” The word is more of a statement of disbelief than a question.

“That’s what I’ll tell her if she asks. You just don’t appreciate my talent,” he adds airily.

“Your talent is for annoying the woman responsible for your paycheque, not coffee art. You cannot serve that.”

“Relax. I doubt Betty’s memory goes back that long. That schlong,” he adds as a giggling afterthought.

“You’re not funny.” Okay, so that was funny, especially as he theatrically presses his free hand to his chest.

“I am hilarious. And you know in that hard little heart of yours that I am to coffee art what Picasso was to paint.”

“Yeah, you’re a regular dicasso,” I mutter, my gaze sliding to the oldies who, true to form, are straining to hear what our conversation is about.

“You know, I think it would be kinda hard to tell between you and Miss Betty, who last had a little dickalicious lovin’.” And she’s ancient, his sweeping glance seems to say.

“I went on a date last month with Drew Sanchez.” I don’t know why I bother replying or why I sound so defensive.

“Having dinner with a dick and getting dick isn’t the same.” When I fail to deliver a comeback, he nods decisively and sashays his sassy self away. “Here we go, ladies,” he says, setting down the tray.

“Couldn’t your favourite colour be orange?” Betty demands, glancing up at him through beetled brows.

“Hush now, Betty,” her sister fusses, tugging on her arm.

“What? I’m only saying what everyone else is thinking.”

“I had no idea I was so popular.” Jenner straightens with a bland smile as Betty’s attention slides to Wilder, then back to my barista, a man who is clearly amused—bemused?—by what we both sense is coming.

“Couldn’t you just tell the boy that’s your favourite colour?”

“Wilder knows I prefer pink,” Jenner replies with an enigmatic kind of smile and a shimmy that says: look, my shirt has tassels! Like anyone in a mile radius hadn’t already noticed.

“Pink is not a colour for men,” Betty censures.

“But most of the parts of a man I favour are pink.” He shoots Ursula a wink. “Or, you know, a variation of.”

The octogenarian turns pink herself beneath her liberal dusting of face powder. “Betty dear, Jenner is a friend of Dorothy.”

“Dorothy Meyers? Didn’t she die already?” Not waiting for her sister’s answer, Betty blusters on. “It doesn’t matter who he’s friends with because that boy needs a father. You could marry her—marry Kennedy.”

“No.” Jenner’s attention swings to mine, and he shakes his head so hard, I think it must rattle his brains. “No, I could not.”

And neither could I for reasons best not mentioned, legal and otherwise.

“Why not? She’s pretty. And solvent. Now, I know she might not make the best of herself.” Lady, have you seen what he’s wearing today? Salmon-pink jeans and tasselled shirts aren’t exactly a hot turn-on. “But she works hard, and she scrubs up nice when she makes an effort.” Betty turns to her sister for confirmation.

“Yes, yes, she does,” Ursula agrees, her eyes finding mine. “You do, dear. You just need to wear a little lipstick sometimes.” Her mouth curls in a dimple-inducing smile.

“You work together, and you get along,” Betty continues in her misguided madness, turning from cajoling to adamant. “It’s more than most have. And the good Lord knows none of that family has been able to keep a man.” Reaching for the sugar jar, she heaps the spoon with enough sugar to give her sister contact diabetes. “Well, her mother couldn’t keep to just one man. One man of her own, at least.”

Irritated, my eyes slide to Wilder, who is, thankfully, still engrossed in his sketchbook.

“And her poor sister? One minute, the church is booked, and the next, the groom is living in sin with some other girl.”

I grab the tongs and pull the lid off the cookie jar, swallowing down my murderous turn of thought. There is a good and just God waiting to get his hands on that woman, I silently intone. He’ll probably kick her ass southwards for all the spite she spits. And if he doesn’t, I’m pretty sure Nana will.

“And do you think her grandmother was happy to find Kennedy back from a fancy college with a belly full of baby in the place of a degree?”