Chapter 10 #3
It was an incongruous response given that Beryl had taken it upon herself to be her own physician, but then people were complex.
Just like Zoey, the failed academic who ran a smoothie shop, of all bloody things.
Why couldn’t Maeve have owned a bookshop?
Although she supposed she was less likely to have met Nick if that were the case.
‘All right, off to our next sign location,’ said Nick cheerfully.
Leaving the azure-tinged Beryl scowling, he rounded up Zoey and Ainsley, and with a wave, they cruised off.
‘Quite a character,’ he noted. ‘Very …’
‘Chet-Baker-inspired,’ added Zoey drily. Although Beryl was a bit beyond ‘Almost Blue’, really.
‘Wow.’ Nick’s dark eyes widened, and she could tell he was biting back a laugh. ‘You are something else, Zoey, and I mean that in the best possible way.’
Zoey fought a grin of her own. Then a grimace when Ainsley gave her another seatbelt jab.
‘See?’ Ainsley hissed in Zoey’s ear. ‘Keeper. Absolute keeper.’
They drove from street to street at Ainsley’s behest, hammering in signs to ensure that Mean George was given a run for his money.
‘Speaking of our mayoral candidate, it would be good form to find him before the winner is announced. It’s not like we can accept a formal municipal role on behalf of someone. That’s, like … voter fraud,’ said Ainsley.
‘Well, everyone on the street is keeping an eye out for him,’ said Zoey, although they hadn’t had any confirmed sightings yet. Just a few messages about furry things that might have been raccoons or opossums. Or furries.
Ainsley sighed. ‘He’s probably found a better, more tuna-rich neighbourhood and simply left us poor plebs behind. I don’t blame him. How could you blame him for following his belly?’
‘I signed up for Nextdoor so I could post an alert to all of the nearby neighbourhoods as well,’ Zoey reassured her. ‘We’re casting a wide cat net. We’ll find him.’
The Nextdoor thing had been a regrettable choice: she was now receiving a hundred neighbourly posts a day about poor parking and kombucha starters and people who played their TVs so loudly that they were spoiling popular shows.
‘And I’ve been doing Romero drive-bys every time I bring Alice to Laurelhurst Park,’ promised Nick. ‘I regularly get screamed at by this one lady who thinks that leaded gas is still a thing, and that I’m the main contributor to her future brain damage.’
‘Ah, she’s just bad at flirting,’ said Zoey. ‘She’s trying to find a point of connection.’
‘I’m sure that’s it, now that you mention it.’
‘Romero will turn up,’ said Zoey, who missed her fuzzy-faced, furious visitor. Even if his contributions to the household mostly involved biting ankles and knocking glasses of water off the coffee table. ‘He’d never miss being crowned mayor.’
Nick turned on the truck’s indicator. ‘You can’t be crowned mayor. Mayors are voted for, not appointed. Haven’t you watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail?’
‘That insult was more than a flesh wound,’ countered Zoey, who was nothing if not a nerd.
‘Touché,’ said Nick.
They’d hit the curving streets north of Laurelhurst Park and were cruising about, jumping in and out to add signs to mossy areas and beneath massive trees.
‘Garfield?’ Ainsley folded her arms as she covered up the cartoon cat with a Ro-mayor-O sign. ‘He doesn’t even go here.’
‘Further up forty-first is where I park when I go to the airport,’ noted Nick conspiratorially, as they crossed Cesar Chavez. ‘I walk up to the MAX overpass and take the tram from there. No one’s fined me yet.’
‘Damn straight,’ said Zoey. ‘Stick it to Big Parking.’
‘Although I did almost miss a flight to Denver because it was late Sunday night and the MAX was like forty-five minutes late. But, fun fact: there’s a Voodoo Doughnuts at Denver Airport right now.’
‘Wow, the true taste of home,’ said Zoey. ‘Do you wear your PDX carpet socks when you travel, too?’
‘Naturally.’ Nick’s grin was teasing.
‘Holy shit, you two,’ said Ainsley. ‘Get a room. I can’t do sock talk. That’s just too much.’
As Nick pulled down the street, a pinecone bounced off the car.
‘Hey! Slow down! Children live here!’ shouted a sinewy woman wearing so many gold bangles she could barely lift her fist to shake it at them. ‘I’m going to report you to the non-emergency number!’
‘I’m going like ten miles an hour,’ muttered Nick. ‘My speedometer doesn’t even register I’m moving.’
The woman stalked over to the truck, gesturing wildly at the signs in the tray. ‘Are you here with the cat signs? Because we don’t do that on this street. It impedes visibility. Children could die.’
‘All right, ma’am,’ said Nick. ‘I can see you feel very strongly about this. We’ll just—’
‘Wait, there’s Celeste!’
Ainsley pointed, then leaned over Zoey to blast the truck’s horn.
‘Celeste! What the fuck are you doing here?’ she shouted.
Celeste looked up from the Mean George sign she’d been hammering into the damp grass. The sinewy woman looked as though she were about to suffer an aneurysm from the impropriety of it all.
‘Hey, babe!’ Celeste’s red hair swirled around her as she righted herself. ‘I just got pulled into Mean George’s campaign. Congrats on the InkWell thing, by the way. We should celebrate!’
Zoey winced at the grinding sound that suddenly drowned out the engine – did Nick need to take his car to the shop?