Chapter 28 #4
Lady Whiskey’s Christmas Carol Night is extremely popular.
I had to have all staff on board. The band drummed and thrummed, the people sang and danced, and a rollicking, Christmassy time was had by all.
The eight-foot-tall plastic Santa in the corner looked more drunk than usual.
I stood in the back with Logan. We sang along but didn’t share any kisses.
We were trying to keep things on the down-low.
It wasn’t working.
My cousins Ruby and Madison later sidled up to me. Ruby was wearing a red, lights-flashing tutu and Madison had a Rudolph hat on. Rudolph’s red nose was a bright light that flashed on and off like a strobe.
“Huh,” Madison said when Logan was visiting with friends on the other side of the bar. “Looks like Mr. and Mrs. Claus are getting back together.” She put an arm around my shoulders. “It’s like the angels got together and figured this mess out for you two. You can always count on angels.”
“What?” How did she know?
Madison winked at me. “The angels told me. They’re naughty.”
My cousin Ruby poked me in the ribs with a flying elbow, shouting over the Christmas carols, which were getting raunchier as the night went on, “Madison and I saw how you were ogling each other. Ogling! We were surprised the air between you didn’t catch fire, flames bursting everywhere.
Honestly, Bellini, we never understood why you two broke up in the first place. ”
“Now you’ve got a second chance at love and lust,” Madison said.
“Based on how healthy and vibrant she appears, I think she’s getting plenty of love and lust.” Ruby tapped her head to indicate how intuitive she was.
“I’m seein’ the glow. Like Rudolph’s nose,” Madison said, tapping her own Rudolph’s nose. “Not that your nose is red, Bellini, not at all. In fact, you have a nice, tidy, little nose.”
“Nice to know I don’t look like Rudolph.”
“Cousins can always be counted on to be honest,” Madison said, using her wise, ethereal tone. “There is no resemblance between you and Rudolph. I should know.”
That night, Logan and I snuck quietly into my house, careful not to wake my mother as we passed our collection of Christmas trees and the little white village.
The next morning, we made breakfast for her. She appreciated it. “It’s a pleasure to see you, Logan,” she told him, beaming.
He grinned back. “The pleasure is all mine, Whiskey. I’m glad I didn’t have to climb up two stories to Bellini’s bedroom with help from the pine tree and gutter this time.”
She laughed. “I always made sure that gutter was strong and tight, Logan. Couldn’t have you breaking your neck on the way down.”
We gaped at her.
“Mom, now that I’m thinking about it, you did have the gutter guy come out once a year.” She knew. She’d always known. “In fact, I remember when he put in an industrial-strength gutter…” I blinked as everything clicked together. “It was huge. He reinforced it with these steel clamps.”
“Now why do you think I did that, sugar? Logan is built like a tank.”
“Thanks, Whiskey,” Logan said, clinking his orange juice glass with hers. “As you can see, my neck is intact.”
“You’re welcome!”
My mother winked at me as I got up to get her more coffee. When I sat back down with another pancake for Logan, he winked at me, too. The Christmas tree lights were also winking. There was a lot of winking going on.
The next evening, a little bar fight between two sisters ensued.
Amelia and Addy Carruther come in to get burgers, a beer, and a shot of Deschutes Family Tequila once a week.
They don’t always get along, probably because they are twins.
They are eighty years old and live in the same pink Queen Anne home they were raised in, which their mother and grandmother were also raised in.
All of the Carruther women live to be, at least, ninety.
All of them are hell-raisers. It’s something to be proud of, as Amelia and Addy’s mother and grandmother fought for women’s rights their whole lives, using the considerable money their family made from mining.
Amelia and Addy were both married, once each, for about two years, then they divorced their husbands with fanfare.
They took an ad out in the newspaper together to announce their divorces, which came within a month of each other fifty-five years ago.
They told the people of Kalulell they were divorcing their husbands because they were “slothful, lazy, ignorant asses,” who—and I am not kidding— “were poor and selfish in the bedroom, leaving both of us to believe that we were sleeping with demented, rutting boars.”
Few newspapers would have printed that, but they owned the newspaper, which had a female editor, their eccentric aunt. They wrote that their husbands, and they named them, were as honest as “horse-jackin’ sleaze fiends.” They were also “gutless cowards and donkey-faced bacterial idiots.”
Amelia and Addy insisted in the ad that they had tried to explain what marriage was to both their husbands by “drawing pictures with crayons in a way that those pea-brained fraudsters could understand, but they still didn’t understand, because they think with a part of their anatomy they shouldn’t be thinking with.
” They said they divorced their husbands to save their sanity from the “tiny-pickle kings, who believe their pickles are something to be proud of.”
They topped it off with, “We are better off without these men in our lives. They brought nothing positive to the table, to the bedroom, to the bank account, or to our general happiness—in fact, it was the opposite. They are unkind, thoughtless, and selfish cavemen. We, as women, refuse to be dragged down any further, despite the cultural, religious, and societal pressure to stay married, even if one is married to two-legged viruses who pop into other women’s beds—including the beds of women who are always proclaiming that they are faithful Christians and condescendingly condemn those who are not Christian.
If you call us, we will tell you the names of these so-called Christian women here in Kalulell who popped their poppies onto our husbands’ popsicles. ”
It was the talk of the town, I’m told, for years, for many reasons.
Most especially: Who were the two-legged viruses sleeping with?
The women who had slept with the soon-to-be ex-husbands did call Amelia and Addy and begged not to be named.
Amelia and Addy said they should have thought of that before they bonked another woman’s husband!
The Carruther women were stars in the eyes of the women of the town, and a number of divorces followed. If the Carruther women could divorce, couldn’t they? Soon a divorce was known as “Carruthering your husband.”
Amelia and Addy were a curse in the eyes of the men in town.
They didn’t want their own wives to think they were “horse-jackin’ sleaze fiends” or to make fun of their pickles.
Nor did they want their wives to start thinkin’ they could go out and get a divorce.
No, that wouldn’t do. Their wives were not allowed to divorce.
They needed to remain at home, submissive and subservient, a hot dinner waiting.
Many of the men in town started looking at their wives differently. What was going on behind that pleasant smile? Did their wives think they were, “poor and selfish in the bedroom,” or “demented, rutting boars?”
But that night, the Carruther twins got in a fight over the tequila shots.
Amelia thought Addy drank her shot. Addy denied that crime most vociferously.
Amelia said this was the third time it had happened.
Addy denied it again. Beer was sloshed in one face, then the other, and then it ended up in a messy fight.
I separated them, with help from Stacy and Javier. We had to be very, very careful, as no one wanted those ladies to fall and break a hip! When they settled down, I brought them each another shot of tequila, and they apologized and cleaned up their mess, even insisting on getting out the mop.
And there it was. Another serene evening at Lady Whiskey’s Bar and Grill.
Logan called me at work the next evening.
“Would you like to see my aquarium?” he asked. He tried to muffle his laughter, but he couldn’t.
It was eight o’clock. It had snowed. A lot.
There were three snowmen outside of Lady Whiskey’s that had been created by four brothers who always came in to drink beer and play poker.
The snowmen all looked a little dizzy. Their eyes were off kilter, their arms were badly angled, and they appeared to be grimacing.
But the dizzy snowmen were definitely in the Christmas spirit, as they were wearing Santa hats and red and green scarves.
Plus, the brothers had put a wood sign in front of them that said, “Merry Beer Christmas.”
It had been a long shift. I had fielded many calls about the T and A show from people who were performing, asking what to wear, what did burlesque mean in terms of costumes, how much time did they have onstage again?
They couldn’t remember and apparently were not taking the time to go through my quite detailed list that I had re-emailed to everyone. Again. For clarity.
I was also working on a hundred details to get the show up and running and everyone in the right place at the right time. I didn’t have time to do anything else.
“I would love to see your aquarium,” I told him. “Do you have an octopus in your tank?”
“Yes, I do. His name is Herman,” Logan said, not missing a beat. “And I now have a great white shark. Her name is Beatrice.”
“Then, yes, to see the shark, Beatrice, and the octopus, Herman, I’ll agree to come to your place.
I will only accept your invitation because of my desire for a marine biology lesson, so do make sure the lesson is informative and engaging.
Also, note I am coming strictly for intellectual stimulation only. ”
“Noted,” he agreed. “I will strictly and obediently follow all rules as will Herman and Beatrice.” He picked me up from work, and we barely made it up the stairs and into his loft. It is a good thing that there is a thick rug in front of his fireplace.
I woke up in the middle of the night in Logan’s bed, his body wrapped around mine, a warm comforter over both of us.
It was so quiet, so peaceful, the darkness in his bedroom lit only by bright white stars.
This was the happiest Christmas I’d had since I’d left Logan. I laced my fingers through his.
“You okay?” he murmured sleepily.
“Yes, I’m fine.”
“I hope you found my octopus acceptable, a conduit of many marine biology lessons, as you requested.”
“I found your octopus to be strong and capable. I felt all eight of your octopus legs wrapped tightly around me. The lesson was both informative and titillating, as planned.”
“Good. I am proud that I followed all the rules. I understood you were coming to my home for intellectual reasons only. Strictly.”
“Intellectual stimulation only,” I whispered, my breath catching as he ran a warm hand over my top half. “Strictly.”
He flipped me toward him and gave me a long kiss. I wrapped my arms around him.
I could tell that his octopus was going to be busy again soon.