Chapter 5 An Unnamed Side Character in a Scorsese Movie #2
Across the room was Larry Pometti, a stout man with olive skin and little hair to his name.
He was both the high school theater director and the proprietor of a fledgling architectural tour company.
He was always angling for more access to the exclusive Groff Retreat, and Bree was always avoiding him like Lainey did debt collectors.
“I’m going to sneak out the alley door with the smokers,” said the pregnant woman before stuffing a disconcerting amount of mac and cheese into her mouth. “Meet me at Caribou Coffee in ten minutes.” Then Bree disappeared.
“Should she be drinking coffee?” Elliot asked, watching the swinging door.
“She likes their Lemonade Refreshers. She says if she’s tired enough she can pretend it’s a margarita, and in the offseason, Caribou’s one of the only places open until seven that’s not a bar.
” Lainey waited for him to say whatever it was he’d come to say, but suddenly they were alone again and it was as though he’d forgotten how to speak to other human people.
“Have you hit the buffet yet?” she asked when the silence became unbearable.
“I don’t really do buffets,” he answered, activating an anticipatory rage response in Lainey’s chest at whatever outrageous explanation he was about to provide. “The only food that’s left is what everyone else didn’t take.”
Lainey took a deep inhale through her nose. “I’m not sure what that says about you, but I’m certain it’s incredibly revealing.”
“You’re probably right.” The corner of his mouth pulled upward. Was that the first genuine smile she’d earned from him since the gas station? “You know that guy is still looking at us, right?” Elliot shifted from foot to foot, uncomfortable with even the smallest amount of scrutiny.
“Larry’s probably waiting for Bree to come back to talk Groff business. When she doesn’t, he’ll—”
“Beeline directly for us?” Elliot asked out of the side of his mouth.
Larry appeared at her side as if conjured.
“Elaine Davis?” he asked, with the energy of a man who would lay down his life for a youth production of Once Upon a Mattress.
When she didn’t respond instantaneously, the man curled a brow.
Prior to this moment, Larry had never had any reason to care about Lainey, and contrary to what movies and television would suggest, she didn’t personally know every citizen of Timber Creek by virtue of living in a small town.
“That’s me,” she responded.
“You’re the owner of Forest’s Bridge?” he asked so dubiously she ought to have been offended. Just because she was wearing a vintage Hamm’s Beer T-shirt featuring a bear playing baseball didn’t mean she couldn’t be a serious person in possession of architecturally significant real estate.
“That’s right.”
She waited for Elliot to object or offer some qualification, but to her surprise, he didn’t. He simply stood beside her, eyeing Larry up and down like a security guard assessing a threat.
“Good.” Larry clasped his hands together with a loud clap that made Lainey jump.
“We should talk about tours. I’m already working on adding Forest’s Bridge to the listing.
Vincent Groff lovers are going to go nuts for this one.
It would be nice if you put out picnic tables or Adirondack chairs so visitors can rest. They love those extra touches. ”
As much as Lainey wanted nothing more than to cut Larry off, this was a man whose primary job security hinged on the success or failure of a winter meat raffle and was no stranger to the odd side hustle. Lainey had begrudging respect for that brand of enterprising spirit.
“I don’t know. I’m not sure I want strangers wandering in front of my house—”
“Lainey and I were actually in the middle of something important,” Elliot cut in, wedging his body physically between her and Larry. When he was stretched in front of her to his full height, she was reminded of how tall he was, and she wasn’t exactly seeking reminders.
“If you’d excuse us,” Elliot said to Larry. Elliot tilted his head in the direction of the front door, lifting his bent elbow to Lainey expectantly.
“Uh, yeah,” she said back. She hooked her hand through, managing to avoid sustained contact while following him out of the VFW on wobbly legs. Each incidental press of arm against arm hit her body with a zap in their private game of upright Operation.
“I’m not sure if there’s too much taxidermy or not enough,” Elliot commented, taking in the dozens of stuffed creatures displayed on the walls: deer, muskrats, and one grizzly bear torso mounting its escape from the side of the building.
She dropped his arm when they were finally through the door and out on the sidewalk. “Yeah, it’s a real delicate dance between alarming and kitsch. So is this the part where you fess up? Why are you hovering around me? What are you plotting?”
“Do I need to be carrying out some plot to talk to the only person I know at a town event commemorating a failed crow genocide? How about a thanks for extracting you from that conversation you obviously didn’t want to be in?”
“I can’t be the only person you know. That’s too sad,” she said, ignoring the second part about owing him a thank-you.
“It’s not great. I’ll give you that.” The sidewalks were damp with spring melt, and the sun was low in the sky, leaving the lamplights questioning whether it was their time to glow against the darkened storefronts.
His eyes were on her, but he wasn’t speaking.
She was no longer sure why she was still standing there.
She moved slowly in the opposite direction, giving him one second, then two…
“Will you let me get you ice cream or something?” he asked her.
She turned back and attempted to dissect his expression for clues. “Another peace offering? If this goes the way of the last one, I think I’m good.”
“Are you going to let me buy you ice cream or not?” he griped with her in a way that was becoming, if not friendly, at least familiar.
“Fine.” She held back a grin. “I still have to meet Bree, but I know a spot that’s on the way.”
They walked down the street, side by side, his hands in his pockets, hers holding her suede jacket together since the otherwise immaculate garage sale find was missing some essential buttons. His phone beeped from somewhere inside his coat. Then beeped again with a bit more oomph.
“Are you going to check that?” she asked.
“No, I know what it says.”
“Is that your wife?” she teased. It could not have flopped harder if it were a goldfish escaping from a tank.
“What?” Elliot seemed affronted by her perceived accusation. “Of course not. You thought I was married?”
“No, I was joking. It was—”
“It’s my friend,” he explained. “He thinks this whole moving-to-Wisconsin-and-running-a-lakeside-motel thing is a cry for help. Or like a mental breakdown. He’s been trying me all day.”
She nodded, her eyes facing forward as they walked. “Your friend sounds smart. Maybe you should listen to him.”
“I think Sebastian would agree with you,” he replied, his shoes clicking against the sidewalk.
“Ooh, Sebastian. That’s a hard name to pull off. Is he wildly attractive? He has to be. It would be cruel to name a regular-looking kid Sebastian.”
He grabbed at the back of his neck for dear life. “It’s a normal name. And can you stop trying to hit on my friend through me? Who is happily married and living across the country, mind you.”
“We’ve established you don’t have any friends I can hit on around here.”
They walked up to the white-domed shack with the words The Dairy Cave painted above the service window in faded sans serif.
Elliot looked at the building like it’d done something to him. “The Dairy Cave doesn’t open until Memorial Day weekend.”
“So the sign says,” she replied. Her gaze roamed the street for witnesses. “Can you be the lookout?”
He narrowed his eyes. A challenge. A game. A fuse lit in her stomach. “Lainey Davis,” he said, fuming with mock outrage. “Are you planning to knock over an offseason ice-cream stand right in front of me?”
“It’s not like that—the owner and I have a system.” Peering over her shoulder, she slid open the service window. “But that system involves entering the stand by way of the front window, and to the untrained eye, it can look a bit…crime adjacent.”
He nodded. “It can have the appearance of a B and E.”
“Exactly. But it isn’t,” she agreed.
“Of course.”
“I can’t tell if you’re trying to be funny—”
“I’ll be your lookout, Lainey. Just make it quick.”
Lainey let her eyes wander up and down Elliot, taking the measure of him before deciding to hoist herself up on the counter and dive into the ice-cream stand.
“Good evening, officer,” Elliot called out.
Lainey cursed and smacked her head in her mad dash beneath the cash register. She held her breath until a pair of spectacled eyes and floppy dark hair peeked over the counter. “Gotcha,” he said, his eyes smiling.
Lainey unclenched. “That was mean.” She stood up from behind the counter and watched his head pop up, much too pleased with himself.
Tucked under the cash register was an envelope.
“Aha.” She ripped it out from under the weight of the cashbox.
“See. It says, right here, ‘Lainey’s Honor System.’ ” She revealed the blue inked letters to Elliot with a triumphant flourish.
He tipped up his chin. “Okay, that’s fairly persuasive evidence for the existence of a system. I believe you about twenty percent more than I did before.”
“And how much was that?”
“Zero.”
She frowned. “Thirty, please. Cash only.”
“Each ice cream costs fifteen dollars?” he grumbled.
“Inflation’s a real bitch.” She marked the tallies on the envelope, exchanging Elliot’s cash for two cookies-and-cream bars from the chest freezer.
Once she’d placed a ten in the envelope (pocketing the twenty for gratuity), she climbed back onto the counter to shimmy out the window.
He extended his hand to her as her feet met the pavement, his grip warm and firm, and released it just as quickly.