Chapter 32 Marilyn Monroe
THIRTY-TWO
Marilyn Monroe
Hutch
Hutch parked behind Mabel’s shop, let himself in the back, and greeted Tonks as she came running.
When he hit the front, he saw Mabel was alone and straightening some sweaters.
She looked his way. “Hey, honey.”
“Hey. Where’s Abigail?”
“Sent her home early. I think she might be getting that flu Emma had.”
He arrived at her, put his hand to her waist, dropped his mouth to hers for a kiss, and when he was done doing that, said, “Little late for that incubation period.”
“Brett had to stay home with Liam today because he got it. Maybe from school. So she might have escaped the first volley but is succumbing to the next one.”
“Bummer.”
“Yeah. I’ll check in with her later.” She smiled up at him. “It’s time to close. I’ve done everything so we just have to turn out a few lights, keeping some on for the furries. We can turn the rest off when we come back to get them.”
The plans they’d made were to have dinner at the Double D before they headed back up the mountain.
“I’ll do the lights. You get your jacket,” he said.
“Deal.” She smiled again and headed to the counter.
He left the hanging pendant on, and when she met him at the door, she switched the sign from saying Heck, Yeah! We’re Open! to Come On Back Tomorrow, We’re Closed.
They went out, she locked up, and he slid an arm around her shoulders as they hunched against the cold and headed down the block to get to the crosswalk to hit the Double D.
“Good day?” he asked.
“Sold all those designer bags. I knew they’d go, but I didn’t know they’d go this quick.
We’re thinning out on Halloween stuff really fast because apparently, Misted Pines is even bigger into Halloween than I thought.
And I already thought it embraced that holiday wholeheartedly.
And I still haven’t sold that freaking leather chair.
I’m gonna have to reduce the price and that’ll hurt, since I spent so much time on it. How about you?”
“Got your tires on, the weights in the back, and Harry showed me around the compound and gave me an update.”
The rest of their short walk he shared that update with her, and when they hit the Double D, Heidi, one of the servers, aimed a smile at them, and Hutch led them to a side booth at the back.
He waited until he and Mabel took off their jackets and hung them up on the hook that rose above the booth, and Mabel picked the seat facing the wall, and only then did Hutch slide in opposite her.
Heidi was there immediately, sliding cloudy turquoise plastic tumblers of water on the table in front of each of them.
“You,” she said to Hutch, “California Combo.”
Hutch smiled and said nothing because there was nothing he ate on their menu but the grilled chicken breast, avocado and bacon sandwich on a whole grain bun that came with fruit and cottage cheese.
Unless he was there for breakfast, and then he got the yogurt, granola and fruit or oatmeal.
She turned to Mabel. “You’re flummoxing me. You never order the same thing twice.”
Mabel was proving her right by perusing the plastic-coated menu like she was cramming for a test.
“Diner food is a culinary adventure, Heidi,” Mabel replied to the menu.
She looked up to their server. “You could come in here and always get the patty melt, or the Reuban. But what if the tuna melt or club sandwich are gonna rock my world? Or the meatloaf? Or beef tips? Do you want me to die without experiencing the Double D’s beef tips? ”
Without delay, Heidi asked, “Do you want the beef tips?”
“Yes.” Mabel put the menu back in its holder behind the napkin dispenser. “And I’ll be following that with apple pie à la mode.”
“Gotcha,” Heidi said. “Hutch drinks water. What do you want?”
“Singapore Sling?” Mabel jokingly requested.
“Ha ha,” Heidi replied, but there was amusement in her eyes. “Diet Sprite Shirley Temple?”
“Perfection.”
Heidi took off.
And Hutch sat in that booth, having watched this interaction, realizing in a manner it felt like he took an imaginary bullet, that he’d never really loved Molly.
He was young. She was sweet and pretty, and in his way, he got off on the clingy because he’d misinterpreted it as the depth of her love.
And he’d been trained, since birth, to misinterpret a lot of behavior, specifically from a female.
He was also realizing he did love Danielle, but even if they got married, they wouldn’t have worked.
It wasn’t her controlling nature, or that wasn’t all of it.
It was that he wanted a woman with drive, with hustle, with energy, humor, a thirst for life, but he didn’t want it to come with high heels, designer blouses and dinner parties.
Unless they were like the ones he and Mabel had with Brett, Abigail and the kids, Doc, Nadia and Ledger and Mrs. Matthews and Mark.
He was also low-key. Laid-back.
Danielle was not.
They just didn’t fit.
Last, he was realizing all of that brought him right here.
Sitting across a booth.
From Mabel.
Mabel ordering like that with Heidi.
Funny. Cute. Natural. At one with herself. Wearing jeans that did great things to her ass, a peach Henley thermal with a scarf wrapped around her neck, her boots, her silver, her hair down, her makeup minimal.
She’d been through it since birth as well, her story far worse than anything that had hit him, and she found a professional to help her to deal with the worst parts of it, she adjusted and simply kept going.
She wasn’t an imposter.
She was a marvel.
“What?” she whispered, and it was only then he noted how she was watching him.
And it felt like another bullet hit him.
He opened his mouth.
“You. Move out.”
At these words, they both turned their heads to see Kimmy standing there.
“Oh my God,” Mabel breathed with sheer, unadulterated delight.
This might have to do with Mabel being Mabel and Kimmy wearing a Rudolf sweater, its nose glowing with a red light, an antler headband on her head decorated by colored Christmas lights that also turned on (and they were), and earrings that were a fall of old-fashioned, fat, colored lights, and they glowed too.
“Please tell me you’re Kimmy,” Mabel breathed.
“My reputation precedes me, I see,” Kimmy said. “Now get out. You’re gonna sit over there. My butt is too big to share a booth.”
Before Hutch could find some polite way to tell Kimmy to back off, or just go the impolite route, Mabel scrambled out of the booth and headed to his side.
Since obviously Mabel wanted this interaction, with nothing for it, he slid out, she slid in, he slid back in again, and of course, Heidi was there with a water tumbler for Kimmy.
Kimmy didn’t miss a beat. “Tuna melt. Extra tuna. Extra cheesy melt. Curly fries. Dr. Pepper. And a chocolate malt.”
Evidently, Kimmy was having dinner with them.
“Wait, Heidi. Should I get a chocolate malt?” Mabel asked.
“Instead of the apple pie?” Heidi asked back.
“No, in addition to,” Mabel told her.
Hutch had been on the verge of starting a conversation that would change his life, and Mabel’s, and he’d been interrupted by fucking Kimmy.
But still.
He wanted to bust out laughing.
Heidi stretched her lips out in a you’ll-regret-that-choice look without, as a waitress, directly telling a patron not to order more food.
“Okay, I’ll come in tomorrow and get one,” Mabel said.
Heidi clicked her teeth, did an exaggerated wink and walked away.
Mabel turned to Kimmy. “I’ve been wanting to meet you.”
“Everybody does,” Kimmy returned. “I’m the town character, and I take that role seriously.”
“I can see, but I wanted to ask you about your shop,” Mabel said.
“And I wanted to ask you about those religious bozos that live up where you two live,” Kimmy shot back. “Or they did, past tense.”
“Can I go first?” Mabel requested.
Kimmy sprawled back in the booth and invited, “Shoot.”
Heidi returned with the Dr. Pepper and Shirley Temple.
“I do vintage and local artisan stuff,” Mabel told Kimmy after Heidi left.
“I know,” Kimmy replied.
“But I thought maybe we could swing a deal. Especially around the major holidays where I might not be able to source much good stuff. You could put your stuff in my shop, I could sell it, keep track, give you a check at the end of the month. And maybe put up a few cards around that say something like, ‘If you like this Rudolf sweater, there’s more Christmas at Kimmy’s. ’”
She quit talking and Kimmy stared at her.
This went on awhile.
Hutch, who seemed to have become invisible, sat back and stretched an arm on the booth behind his woman, not caring a bit.
“That it?” Kimmy prompted.
“That’s it,” Mabel replied.
“I’m confused, girl. What do you get out of it?”
“A store that doesn’t look like it’s half-stocked? Cool holiday stuff that gives a vibe that makes people want to hang and look around longer? Good relations with my fellow shopkeepers?”
“Can I guess you’re running out of Halloween stuff?” Kimmy deduced.
Mabel copped to it. “Yes.”
“Come over tomorrow. Have a look around. We’ll get you sorted out,” Kimmy said.
“Awesome,” Mabel replied.
“Now, about those religious bozos,” Kimmy started, remembering Hutch was there because she looked at him. “You see anything?”
“A lot of red and blue light illuminating the air above that compound,” Hutch replied, hoping Mabel would catch how they were going to play this by the vagueness of his answer.
“That it?” Kimmy pushed.
“Harry being closed-lipped?” Hutch asked instead of lying.
Kimmy scrunched her face.
She’d harangued him for info, as was the way of Kimmy, and Harry was being closed-lipped.
Mabel, fortunately, stayed quiet.
“I know it was a mess,” Hutch said when Kimmy’s stare didn’t go away.
“I know Harry and his crew have a lot to clean up. I think Lacey Diever is going to get her family’s land back.
And I think Harry’s been worried about that group for a long time, so after he wades through all the shit, it’s at least one thing he doesn’t have to worry about anymore. ”
This did not appease Kimmy, who wasn’t only their local holiday store owner, Christmas freak and colorful character, she was also their conspiracy theorist.
“I hear some of them are still on the run,” she pushed.
“I hear that too,” Hutch said.
Kimmy gave him a hard stare. She transferred that to Mabel.
She then declared, “You two both know more than you’re letting on.”
“I’m just glad it’s getting sorted out,” Mabel said.
“Right,” Kimmy mumbled. Then, “So, I gotta know who I’m doing business with. Who do you think shot Kennedy?” she asked Mabel.
For fuck’s sake.
“Obviously, it was the mafia,” Mabel replied blithely.
Startled, Hutch looked to her.
Kimmy, having fresh meat who would actually talk to her about this shit, practically stretched across the table to get in her face. “Not Castro?”
Mabel leaned into the table too. “Okay, I can see why you think that. Because, you know, all that tension. And Fidel was…”
She waggled her eyebrows, something that could mean anything, so Hutch had no idea what it meant.
And then she did the worst thing she could do when Kimmy was around.
She said, “But see, I don’t think Marilyn Monroe committed suicide either.
There are gaps in the official timeline.
Her body disappeared for a while. No pill residue in her stomach.
Found with a phone in her hand like she was calling for help.
All of that is fishy. There’s the mafia connection and the Kennedy connection, and I think it’s all a big, tangled web that Marilyn got caught up in, then JFK did too. ”
Kimmy fell back to the booth like someone pushed her, chuffing out, “Whoa!” as if Mabel just rocked her world.
“I know, right?” Mabel said, shoving a straw in her Shirley Temple and then leaning forward like a little kid to sip at it.
“All right, do you think Paul McCartney is the real Paul McCartney?” Kimmy asked.
Mabel kept sipping while her eyeballs moved left to right like she was actually considering this lunatic question.
She stopped sipping and sat up. “I mean, if it’s his twin, how does he sound just like him singing? Do twins have twin voices?”
Oh Christ.
They launched in.
Heidi eventually served their food, and they ate it as the two women talked about Paul McCartney (Kimmy: twin, Mabel: no), the moon landing (both of them believed it happened and really could not understand those knuckleheads who didn’t, and it was Mabel who used the word “knuckleheads”), Area 51 (they both totally believed they had alien technology hidden there, and that there had been abductions), and they ended on where they thought the wife of the head of Scientology was (Kimmy: suspected she was dead, Mabel: they had her at their religious compound).
After finishing her malt while Mabel was eating her pie, Kimmy started to go for her wallet.
“Don’t even think about it,” Hutch said low.
Kimmy assessed him then made the proper decision and stopped going for her wallet.
But she did slide out of the booth, point at him, and say, “You got a live one there, Hutch Hutchison. Finally.” She then trundled out of the diner without words of farewell to the people she horned in to have dinner with, shouting at Heidi, “Later, Splits!”
“Later, Kimmy.”
And she was gone.
“I think I have her approval,” Mabel said.
Hutch turned to her. “Do you really think there’s alien technology at Area 51?”
Mabel looked shocked. “Don’t you?”
Hutch started chuckling, bent to kiss her and found her lips tasted of ice cream, cinnamon and apples.
Not the best kiss he had from Mabel, but it was a good one.
He didn’t move far away when he was done, and said, “No, baby, I don’t.”
“Do you have insider knowledge from your time in the military?”
He grinned. “Sad to say, Area 51 was not a high priority at any of our briefings.”
She pretended to pout.
He sat back and tipped his head to the remaining pie. “You eat that, we can get the pets, load up and go, so you can get home and unbutton your jeans.”
She laughed. “How’d you know?”
“I didn’t always eat clean.”
Her hazel eyes sparkled and she turned back to her pie.
So, tonight wasn’t the night.
She was full of good food, in a good mood, enjoyed meeting someone and getting to know them, he wasn’t going to crash her vibe.
He knew it was an excuse.
He knew he was searching for a reprieve.
But if you were lucky, tomorrow inevitably came.
And when it did, Hutch would do it then.