Chapter 3
Fuck fuck FUCK, Talula thought. Then she called out, “I’ll be right up!”
She hoped the basement door muffled the panic in her voice.
Knowing Dahlia, if Talula didn’t show up soon, her favorite customer would come looking for her.
Talula did some quick calculations. Only a few antlered jackalopes remained; the rest could pass as rabbits.
Talula could just lock the door behind her, make cocoa for Dahlia, then say she was doing inventory or something and come back down to finish the job.
Talula gritted her teeth. Lying was a part of maintaining the Blue Moon’s cover, and after years of practice, Talula was pretty good at it.
But it always made her feel slimy afterward, no matter how harmless the lie.
She still stayed awake some nights feeling guilty for lying to her fifth-grade teacher, who’d asked where Talula’s mom was from.
When Talula herself had asked her mother that question, the sorceress had said, “I was born in the eternal flames of Ahura Mazda, baptized by the tears of a three-headed dragon, and heard my true name in the dying whisper of a fallen star.”
Talula had told her teacher “Canada.”
Now Talula turned to the remaining jackalopes.
They cowered, blinking their black magical eyes up at her.
Talula felt a twinge of guilt. Remembering magical animals were slightly more perceptive than non-magical ones, Talula knelt down to their level.
“I’m sorry. This has probably been really traumatic for you.
Now you’re scared out of your minds after seeing me and my mom throw you guys through a magical blue hole. ”
The jackalopes stared at her.
“If you hang out here for a little while, I’ll get you back home safely.” Then Talula added, “And I’ll get you some lettuce.”
One jackalope with particularly tall antlers gave Talula a slight nod.
“Thank you!” Talula darted up the stairs. She paused at the Employees Only door and fussed. Her hair was a mess, mussed and tousled by the Volta. Her clothes were dusty from her fall, and the fancy lip balm had been smudged away. But she couldn’t keep Dahlia waiting any longer.
Resolutely, Talula opened the door to find Dahlia sitting at a counter stool instead of her usual armchair.
Today Dahlia looked like a cottagecore mermaid, one who could lure sailors to their doom with a crinkle of a dimple.
She wore a chunky green boatneck sweater with a lacy black bra strap peeking out.
Green sea-glass earrings glowed against the gold tones in her skin.
She was so stunning that Talula almost didn’t notice the random collection of items Dahlia was shaking out of her bag onto the countertop.
“Hey!” Dahlia said, scraping a few more things from the depths of her satchel.
“Hey yourself.” Talula desperately tried not to think about that lacy black bra strap. “What’s all this?”
“I’m doing a writing prompt that says to take a household object and write a story about it.”
“So you brought…” Talula began to count. “Forty billion household objects.”
Dahlia beamed. “Yup!”
Spread about the counter was a bafflingly random assortment of items. A Magic 8 Ball, a fancy set of salad tongs, what looked like a retainer case, and…
Talula squinted. A book. A very old-looking book, written in a language that was somehow familiar.
Talula opened her mouth to ask about it, but Dahlia spoke first.
“I have a confession.”
For some reason, Talula thought about that bra strap again. “Okay…what is it?”
Dahlia covered her face with her hands and mumbled something through her fingers.
“Say that again?” Talula asked gently.
Dahlia’s hands fell away from her face. “I’m intimidated by your mom.”
“Oh!” Talula felt the anxiety and excitement rush out of her. “Is that why you came and left earlier?”
“Yes and no.” Dahlia twisted a spiraling curl around her finger. “I realized she didn’t know how to make cocoa, so…”
“She’s not great at the barista side of the business.” Talula pulled out the cocoa ingredients. “But yeah, Mom can be intimidating.”
“I want to be her,” Dahlia sighed dreamily. “I’m also terrified she’ll notice me and decide I’m unworthy.”
Try being her daughter, Talula thought.
Dahlia continued. “She has that thing that queens have.”
“Money and power?” Talula eased the steamer’s spout into a jug of milk.
“Presence. Plus, that striking natural beauty.” Dahlia gave Talula a once-over with her eyes. “I see where you get it from.”
Shocked, Talula dropped the milk jug, caught it again, and in her fumbling, turned the steamed milk into a jug full of foam. “What?”
“Come on, Talula.” Dahlia gestured emphatically at her. “I mean, come on!”
“My mom is…well, she’s beautiful,” Talula argued.
“And you’re not?” Dahlia rolled her eyes, but her dimples remained in place. “You’ve got the most gorgeous eyes, an hourglass figure, great hair, killer cheekbones, and your skin looks like an ad for a celebrity skincare collection. Do you even wear makeup?”
“I wear…” Talula answered hoarsely, “lip balm.”
“You don’t even wear mascara? With those lashes? This is cosmic injustice!”
Talula smiled at Dahlia’s playful outrage; meanwhile, her neurons were frantically searing the last few seconds into her brain.
But she really needed those neurons to tell her what to say next.
This was the difficulty in being bisexual.
Women could be emphatically complimentary of other women (especially in bar bathrooms).
But deciding whether a compliment was actually a flirt was like deciding which wire to cut on a bomb.
Frazzled, Talula replied, “Thank you. That was a lot of nice words about me in a row, and I ruined your milk.”
“That’s okay, and you’re welcome!” Dahlia laughed.
“I have a lot to live up to, when it comes to my mom.” Talula dumped out the foamed milk and started over.
“I get that. My dad was an archaeology professor plus the university’s first Black department chair,” Dahlia explained, sounding proud but far away. “Actually, he never thought of that as an accomplishment. He always said he’d rather be the fiftieth Black department chair than the first.”
“Does that mean he wants you to go into academia, too?”
“No, not at all!” Dahlia shook her head. “He wanted me to do something I loved, the same way he loved his work.”
Talula finally caught on to Dahlia’s use of the past tense. She turned to Dahlia, heart splintering with understanding. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay…but it’s not.” Dahlia shrugged, a tired smile on her lips.
“I just wish I’d heard what he was trying to tell me sooner.
When I was growing up, Dad hadn’t gotten tenure yet, so things were a little tight while he played the adjunct game and Mom had to work double shifts.
I didn’t want to find a lifelong passion. I wanted to find stability, you know?”
Talula nodded, watching Dahlia’s face.
“So I got my degree in marketing, found a job with great pay and tons of benefits. I thought, ‘This is it, I’m set.’ But Dad always wanted to know what I was doing for myself, what I was doing to make me happy.
I thought stable was happy. Then, he…” Dahlia tilted her face up and blinked furiously. “An aneurysm. Six months ago.”
Talula fought the urge to leap over the counter and wrap her arms around Dahlia’s shoulders. She settled for reaching out her hand, laying it on top of Dahlia’s.
Dahlia took a breath, then continued. “When he was gone, I tried to go back to normal. But I just couldn’t do it anymore.
So I said, ‘Fuck it.’ I quit my job, packed everything up in my car, and moved to Pine Hollow.
To their house. It’s just me there. Mom’s at Nana’s because she’s…
” Dahlia swallowed again. “She’s worse off than me.
But I wanted to do something for myself.
Something that Dad would have wanted me to do.
So I’m writing. Or, trying to write, I should say. ”
Talula let Dahlia’s words wash over her, absorbing Dahlia’s story. A memory tickled at the back of her mind, her summer shifts at the café between college semesters. “Did your parents move here about five years ago?”
Dahlia bolted up, her hand gripping Talula’s. “Yes!”
“Was your dad really tall? Did he like wearing quarter-zip sweaters?”
Dahlia laughed. “He called them aca-casual—academic casual.”
“He came into the shop once in a while.” Talula grinned at her memory of the man with a booming laugh and Dahlia’s dimples.
“Really?”
Talula nodded. “He liked that it was quiet here, and that there was always something weird to look at. Mostly, he came in when he was stuck on an article or something for his research. He said he liked to air out his thoughts and pick around them for the good stuff.”
Dahlia sniffed through a chuckle. “Yeah. That sounds like him.”
“He always ordered a coffee but had the good sense not to drink it.” Talula’s thumb moved in soft circles over Dahlia’s hand. “He’d ask me about my day, the stuff in the store, what kind of poisons we put in the espresso—”
“No!” Dahlia gasped in daughterly horror. “He didn’t!”
“It was our running joke,” Talula reassured her. “It was always a good day when your dad came in.” She squeezed Dahlia’s hand. “Like father, like daughter.”
Talula held Dahlia’s tear-glazed gaze. Dahlia gave Talula a slight smile. The moment stretched on, making Talula’s pulse race.
Then, Dahlia gave a big, wet, mucusy sniff. “Do you have any tissues?”
“Yes!” Talula leapt into action, rummaging for the tissue box and handing it to Dahlia.
Dahlia plucked a tissue and blew her nose.
Meanwhile, Talula carefully sprayed out extra whipped cream in a perfect spiral onto the cocoa.
It had probably gone cold, but Talula was too flustered by the sudden intimate moment to mention it.
“Thanks.” Dahlia’s eyes were a little red, but her dimples were back. “For telling me about my dad. It means a lot to hear about him. To find more pieces of him, even though he’s gone.”