By then it’s time for my check-in call with Dusty, a twenty-minute conversation that might as well just be me playing jock jams and running circles around her, chanting her name. I throw the word genius out a half dozen times, and by the time we hang up, I’ve convinced her to turn in the first chunk of her next book—even if it’s rough—so her editor, Sharon, can get started while Dusty finishes writing.
Afterward, I rejoin Libby where she’s primping in the bathroom, curling her freshly pink hair into soft ringlets. “Let’s walk to dinner,” she says. “My neck is sore from that last cab ride. Also it made me pee myself.”
“I remember,” I say. “It made you pee me too.”
She glances over my outfit. “You sure you want to wear those shoes?”
I’ve paired my black backless sheath with black mules, my widest heels. She’s in a daisy-print sundress from the nineties and white sandals.
“If you offer to lend me your Crocs again, I’m going to sue you for emotional damages.”
She balks. “After that comment, you don’t deserve my Crocs.”
On the hike down the hillside, I attempt to hide my struggle, but based on Libby’s gleeful smirk, she definitely notices that my heels keep puncturing the grass and spiking me into place.
The sun has gone down, but it’s still oppressively hot, and the mosquito population is raging. I’m used to rats—most run away at the sight of a person, and the rest basically just hold out tiny hats to beg for bits of pizza. Mosquitoes are worse. I’ve got six new red welts by the time we reach the edge of the town square.
Libby hasn’t gotten bitten once. She bats her lashes. “I must be too sweet for them.”
“Or maybe you’re pregnant with the Antichrist and they recognize you as their queen.”
She nods thoughtfully. “I could use the excitement, I guess.” She pauses at the very empty crosswalk and scans the equally desolate city center, her mouth shrinking as she considers it. “Huh,” she says finally. “It’s . . . sleepier than I expected.”
“Sleepy is good, right?” I say, a bit too eagerly. “Sleepy means relaxing.”
“Right.” She sort of shakes herself, and her smile returns. “Exactly. That’s why we’re here.” She looks more quizzical than devastated when we pass the general-store-turned-pawnshop, and I make a big deal of pointing out Mug + Shot to distract her.
“It smelled amazing,” I insist. “We’ll have to go tomorrow.”
She brightens further, like she’s on a dimmer switch powered by my optimism. And if that’s the case, I’m prepared to be optimistic as hell.
Next, we pass a beauty parlor. (“Okay, definitely should’ve just gotten our hair cut here,” Libby says, though I silently disagree, based on the dripping-blood-style letters on the sign and the fact that they spell out Curl Up N Dye.) After a couple more empty storefronts, there’s a greasy-spoon diner, another dive bar, and a bookshop (which we pledge to return to, despite its dusty and lackluster window display). At the end of the block, there’s a big wooden building with rusty metal letters reading, mysteriously, POPPA SQUAT.
By then, Libby’s distracted by her phone, texting Brendan as she shuffles along beside me. She’s still smiling, but it’s a rigid expression, and it almost looks like she’s on the verge of tears. Her stomach is growling and her face is pink from the heat, and I can imagine her texts are something along the lines of Maybe this whole thing was a mistake, and a sudden desperation swells in me. I need to turn this around, fast, starting with finding food.
I stop abruptly beside the wooden building and peer into its tinted windows. Without looking up from her phone, Libby asks, “Are you spying on someone?”
“I’m looking into the window of Poppa Squat’s.”
Her eyes lift slowly. “What . . . the hell . . . is a poppa squat?”
“Well . . .” I point up at the sign. “It’s either a very large public bathroom or a bar and grill.”
“WHY?” Libby screams in a mix of delight and dismay, any remnant of her disappointment vanishing. “Why does that exist?!” She plasters herself against the dark window, trying to see in.
“I have no answers for you, Libby.” I sidestep to haul one of the heavy wooden doors open. “Sometimes the world is a cruel, mysterious place. Sometimes people become warped, twisted, so ill at a soul level that they would name a dining establishment—”
“Welcome to Poppa Squat!” a curly-haired waif of a hostess says. “How many are in your party?”
“Two, but we’re eating for five,” Libby says.
“Oh, congratulations!” the hostess says brightly, eyeing each of our stomachs whilst trying to perform an invisible math problem.
“I don’t even know this woman,” I say, tipping my head toward Libby. “She’s just been following me for three blocks.”
“Okay, rude,” my sister says. “It’s been much more than three blocks—it’s like you don’t even see me.”
The hostess seems uncertain.
I cough. “Two, please.”
She hesitantly waves toward the bar. “Well, our bar is full-service, but if you’d like a table . . .”
“The bar’s fine,” Libby assures her. The hostess hands us each a menu that’s about . . . oh, forty pages too long, and we slide onto pleather-topped stools, setting our purses on the sticky bar and scanning our surroundings in a silence driven by either shock or awe.
This place looks like a Cracker Barrel had a baby with a honky-tonk, and now that baby is a teenager who doesn’t shower enough and chews on his sweatshirt sleeves.
The floors and walls alike are dark, mismatched wooden planks, and the ceiling is corrugated metal. Pictures of local sports teams are framed alongside HOME IS WHERE THE FOOD IS needlepoints and glowing Coors signs. The bar runs along the left side of the restaurant, and in one corner a couple of pool tables are gathered, while in the corner opposite, a jukebox sits beside a shallow stage. There are more people in this one building than I’ve seen in the rest of Sunshine Falls combined, but still, the place manages to look desolate.
I flip open the menu and start to peruse. Easily thirty percent of the listed items are just various deep-fried things. You name it, Poppa Squat can fry it.
The bartender, a preternaturally gorgeous woman with thick, dark waves and a handful of constellation tattoos on her arms comes to stand in front of me, her hands braced against the bar. “What can I get you?”
Like the coffee shop/horse farm guy, she looks less like a bartender than like someone who would play a bartender on a sexy soap opera.
What’s in the water here?
“Dirty martini,” I tell her. “Gin.”
“Soda water and lime, please,” Libby says.
The bartender moves off, and I go back to skimming page five of the menu. I’ve made it to salads. Or at least that’s what they’re calling them, though if you put ranch dressing and Doritos on a bed of lettuce, I think you’re taking liberties with the word.
When the bartender returns, I try to order the Greek.
She winces. “You sure?”
“Not anymore.”
“We’re not known for our salads,” she explains.
“What are you known for?”
She waves a hand toward the glowing Coors Light sign behind her shoulder.
“What are you known for, with regard to food?” I clarify.
She says, “To be known isn’t necessarily to be admired.”
“What do you recommend,” Libby tries, “other than Coors?”
“The fries are good,” she says. “Burger’s okay.”
“Veggie burger?” I ask.
She purses her lips. “It won’t kill you.”
“Sounds perfect,” I say. “I’ll have one of those, and some fries.”
“Same,” Libby adds.
Despite her insistence that the burger won’t kill us, the bartender’s shrug reads, Your funeral, bitches!
Libby seems totally fine, happy even, but there’s still a kernel of anxiety in my gut, and I accidentally drink my entire martini before our food arrives. I’m tipsy enough that everything’s taking me longer than it should. Libby scarfs her burger down and hops up to use the bathroom before I’ve made a dent in mine.
My phone vibrates on the sticky counter, and I’m one hundred percent expecting it to be Charlie.
It’s a zillion times better.
Dusty has finally turned in part of her manuscript, and not a minute too soon—her editor goes out on maternity leave in a month.