Молли Харпер - And One Last Thing...

“Sarah was, is, a really nice girl. She was an emergency room nurse. We used to take a lot of crazies, drunk and disorderlies, to her hospital. I finally worked up the nerve to ask her out and that was it. There was nobody else for me. We were together for five years. We were about six months from the wedding when I got shot… and she just shut down. She thought she could cope with it. She was used to seeing people in crazy situations, seeing people hurt. But seeing me in her hospital, laid up with a bullet wound to the ass, was more than she could handle. The idea of waiting up each night, wondering if I was coming home, freaked her out.”

“She hadn’t thought of this in the course of five years?”

“Some people need to be smacked in the face with reality before the possibility even occurs to them,” he said, shrugging. “Had you thought Mike was capable of boffing the receptionist?”

“Point taken.” I shook my head. “But let’s not bring my ex into this. If we’re going to refer to him, let’s give him a code name like Satan or He Who Should Not Be Named. So, she gave you back the ring?”

He nodded. “And we parted as friends.”

“Oh, come on,” I whined. “She broke your heart, say something that lets me hate her a little bit.”

“She was half Canadian,” he offered. “She was a smoker. She had never seen a single episode of Saturday Night Live.”

“You suck at this,” I told him.

“Well, pardon me for being able to let go of my hatred and bitterness.”

“I don’t hate my ex,” I protested. “I just want him alone, broke, bald, impotent, toothless, fat, and wailing and twitching in a twisted tiny ball of spastic misery.”

He shuddered. “Wow, that was visual.”

“You seem fine now,” I conceded. “Somewhat socially maladjusted, but fine.”

He smiled cheekily. “I spent so many nights thinking how she did me wrong. But I grew strong. I’ll learn how to get along.”

“Fine. Make fun of me. In case you’re wondering, this is why people don’t like you.”

“I’m not making fun,” he insisted, though he couldn’t cover his impulse to snicker. “But do you see how that damn song gets into your head?”

Nothing cements friendship like beer and eggs.

I ended up staying at Monroe’s until the morning. The storm wasn’t letting up. Monroe couldn’t sleep either. We sat on his screened-in back porch and listened to it rain while we ate scrambled eggs and some of Mama’s banana bread. We talked about our hometowns and our families, how Monroe got published, and why exactly I was willing to risk my neck for a rowboat that predated the Carter administration.

I learned that other than naming him Francis, Monroe came from a nice, normal family. He had two brothers, both of whom were doctors. He had loving parents, also doctors, who proudly purchased a police scanner when Monroe was hired by the Louisville department. And now his father walked around the hospital with a copy of Monroe’s latest book under his arm, just waiting for someone to ask him about it.

I found out that Monroe’s first crime novel, a story about a neo-hippie whose dark past catches up with him in the form of poisoned patchouli oil, stemmed from a writing exercise he did based on “the story you like to tell at parties.” He was a newly graduated patrolman called to Mall St. Matthews on a disturbance call involving a man named Raintree Feldman who had chosen to “meditate against the war” in the middle of a city fountain.

“Well, that’s not a capital offense, is it?”

“He preferred to meditate naked. Well, there was some liberally applied body paint. And some sort of yoga diaper thing.”

I grimaced. “I hope they drained and bleached the fountain.”

“That’ll teach you to interrupt.”

While I shuddered, Monroe told me that Mr. Feldman didn’t appreciate being cited for trespassing, public indecency, and disturbing the peace. The whole time Monroe was filling out the citations, Mr. Feldman railed about how Monroe’s karma would be ruined from that point on, that anything bad that happened to Monroe would be traced back to his persecution of Mr. Feldman.

“Over and over and over, karma karma karma,” Monroe said, buttering a toasted slab of banana bread and handing it to me before making one for him. “He actually filed a complaint against me with the local branch of the ACLU.”

“That would be a rather sad ending to that story, but I can tell by the twinkle in your eye that there is more,” I said solemnly, spearing fluffy scrambled eggs on my fork. I’d never had beer with breakfast before, but I have to say it was a nice complement to the fried potatoes. At this point, a little alcohol was the only thing that was going to help me sleep when I went home.

“Well, let’s just say Mr. Feldman kept right on protesting around our fair hamlet. His next meditation exercise took place in the elephant enclosure at the zoo. He didn’t think it was right that the recent addition to the elephant family was born into captivity when baby Raja deserved to be running free with all the other little elephants. Turns out mama elephants get downright cranky when strangers get too close to their babies.”

“Well, they do carry them for two years…”

“Mr. Feldman found himself on the wrong end of pachyderm maternal rage. The business end, you might say.”

I groaned. “The elephant sat on him?”

He nodded. “The vegan animal rights activist was smothered by elephant ass cheeks. If that’s not ironically bad karma, I don’t know what is.”

I was very glad I’d swallowed my banana toast because I would have choked on it when I busted out laughing. Monroe looked very pleased with himself. “And from all that, you got a book about an annoying eco-warrior who buys the farm in the middle of a corrupt natural foods store?”

“I thought the elephant story was a bit too grim. Didn’t exactly paint the elephant in the best light. I killed Feldman’s character in many horrible ways before I settled on patchouli poisoning,” he said. “In my first draft, he choked on bulk-priced mung beans.”

“Ouch.” I scrunched my nose. The flickering of my porch light caught my attention. I watched as the lights of my cabin surged back to life. “Oh! I have power!”

“And you seem awfully excited about it,” Monroe said drily.

“It takes several small appliances to keep me looking this good,” I told him as I gathered the empty plates from the table. “I’m not going to lie; there’s a belt sander involved.”

“You don’t have to do that,” he said. I looked down at the dirty dishware. My cheeks flushed. I’d cleared the table without even thinking about it.

“You’re going to do the dishes?” I asked.

Monroe chuckled, taking the plates from me. “Yeah, you’re a guest. Didn’t your mother teach you that guests don’t do the dishes?”

“Yes, but she also taught me that you don’t swim naked, alone, at night, less than thirty minutes after eating. Obviously, I’m a slow learner,” I said as I carried dirty cutlery to the kitchen.

I couldn’t remember the last time someone washed a dish for me. In fact, when I left town for an aunt’s funeral, I came back after four days to find Mike had left me. a full sink. Somehow, the idea of Monroe up to his elbows in suds was even nicer than the whole wet shirt thing.

Dang it. I really did have crush-y feelings for him. That was a problem.

“Well, thanks for breakfast. Without your kindness, I’d probably still be swimming in the lake, trying to drag my boat to shore. Or possibly just eating cold cereal. The banana bread’s all yours, by the way.”