Chapter Three
What?
Winnie held a brush heavy with black makeup, and watched as though viewing her actions from outside her body as it slid across Trevor’s forehead. She was outlining a hat design to go with the boy’s eye patch when Marcy tapped her on the back. Her cousin broke one of the cardinal rules of face painting—oh, commandments existed, all right—which was to never touch or jostle an artist at work.
Luckily, Winnie’s hand had only slipped an inch to brush black paint along Trevor’s hairline. Easily fixed, but what if she’d poked the poor boy in the eye? Cory’s young cousin! She’d never forgive herself for bringing harm to any child coming to their booth. Marcy knew better to act so carelessly.
“Are you serious?” Cory was asking, his body shaking with quiet laughter. “You think I can write a book?”
“Football players versus pirates. Think about it.” Marcy hopped out of the chair and laid out the scenario with jazz hands and an excited voice. Once the woman got an idea in her head, Winnie knew to simply let her air it out. Like with Marcy’s others schemes, Winnie doubted anything would come of it. Cory would hear her out then take Pirate Trevor back to his mother and forget the whole thing.
Forget he’d brought the boy here…well, after the makeup faded. Then it’d be off to whatever post-retirement venture he had planned, most likely sitting behind a desk in a blazer on ESPN, bantering about bowl games with another former player. Living it up in New York or Los Angeles, wherever sports legends turned television personalities called home. Playing golf or opening a sports bar with all his memorabilia nailed to the walls.
“It starts with the star quarterback of his team, who may or may not resemble you. Depends on how Mary Sue you want to get with this,” Marcy chattered on. “He’s entrusted with the ball for the big game, but the pirates mistake it for treasure so they steal it. The quarterback then enlists his team to become pirates themselves and go after the ball.” Marcy bounced on her heels, giddy. “It becomes a worldwide chase, with each setting designed like a football field. You kick a field goal over the Eiffel Tower.”
“Um, the quarterback wouldn’t kick a field goal—”
“All your fans line up along the Great Wall for the fourth on goal play,” Marcy broke in, obviously hearing nobody else.
Winnie held up her hands to avoid another makeup malfunction. All the pirate talk wound up her young customer, who turned his half-done face to his older cousin. “That’s awesome! Cory, you can write that.”
Cory looked less confident. An eyebrow raised high as he shook his head. “Sounds to me like you already wrote the book, Marcy. I think you and Winnie can do a better job than me.”
“Oh, I’d be happy to ghost write it for you, if I had the time.” Marcy drifted back to her workstation and busied herself with arranging her tools and paints. “Besides, you know more about football terms and game plans. You’d work better with Winnie at visualizing the story. You two should go out for coffee later and hash it out.”
You should shut your damn mouth. Winnie had half a mind to silence Marcy with the pointed end of a brush jammed into the base of her skull. A face-painting artist writhing on the grass, blood squirting in all directions, couldn’t be good for business, though. Think of the children.
She bade nicely for Trevor to keep still and applied the finishing touches—the skull and crossbones to his forehead “hat” and a few scars to impress the girls. “Ahoy, matey,” she announced, and flashed the hand mirror at the boy. “No scalawag will mess with you today.”
Trevor, now permitted to unleash his enthusiasm, leaped from the chair and tugged at Cory. He’d forgotten the pirate tale already. “I wanna show Mom and Pop-Pop and then get ice cream. Come on!”
“Okay, Captain No-Beard. Let me pay first.” Cory flipped a folded stack of bills and gave Winnie a fifty percent tip. “Thanks. He’ll want to sleep with that on, I have a feeling.”
“Two Chicks, Two Palettes is not responsible for permanent stains on car seats, bed sheets, or wedding gowns.” Winnie clutched the tenner and the five in her hand and nodded her appreciation. They never put out a tip jar, mainly because some of their regular pint-sized customers saved their allowances to pay. She thought their prices were fair enough while allowing them a decent profit margin. Let them use the rest of their money for popcorn and other treats.
“That Oxy Scrub stuff is really good for getting the makeup off fabric, just in case,” Marcy offered.
“I’ll remember that. Hey, do you have a card with your number or email?” Cory rubbed his thumb and forefinger together. “I’ll get in touch with you about that book idea. You might have something there, and I need a job.”
Winnie’s heart panged. Funny how a simple request, a baffling one at that, triggered memories she wished stayed buried. If she closed her eyes, she’d see Senora Delgado’s Spanish II classroom, and Cory lumbering between desks to get to Johanna Greenspan before she left. Hey, can I get your number? he’d asked the apple-cheeked blonde who could have doubled for one of the Sweet Valley High twins. He’d requested it under the pretense of finding a study buddy, never mind that Winnie aced every vocabulary test and Johanna couldn’t conjugate a verb, in English or Spanish, to save her life. Johanna filled out her size-two jeans, Winnie filled a damn room and spilled over into the next one.
She looked at Cory, who stared back expectantly. Why? He’d already paid her.
“Take one of mine. It has the same info on it,” Marcy said, and Winnie remembered. Right, business cards. She watched, numb, as Cory took one from her cousin and smiled.
“Awesome. You all have a good afternoon.” He took Trevor by the hand and led him away. Winnie waited for them to turn a corner and disappear from sight before slapping Marcy’s shoulder.
“What the hell was that, ‘you two should go out for coffee later’?” She mimicked Marcy’s voice, heavy on a nasty note, and started packing up her station. “Why didn’t you just give me a wedgie in front of him?”
“Hello, I was doing you a favor, and you’re welcome.” Marcy huffed out a breath and stayed in her seat, tsking as Winnie slammed sealed pots and makeup jars into her kit. “Couldn’t you see how Cory was looking at you the whole time he was here?”
“How could he not? I’m blocking the sun.”
“Shut up,” Marcy snapped. “Even when you joke about it, it’s not funny. This self-deprecating crap needs to stop, Win.”
“Fine.” Winnie wasn’t in the mood for another round of attitude adjustment a la Marcella. They always circled to the same arguments. Your weight’s not the issue, Win, it’s how you act.
Come on, she wasn’t the bitch. Blame the mean girls from high school whom she now charged double her normal fee to entertain at their children’s parties. She acted sweet around potential clients and family. She was a friggin’ ray of sunshine wrapped in unicorn’s laughter, damn it!
Winnie snatched up a pot of yellow—a large one, since the kids were asking often in the last few months to be transformed into minion-like creatures—without realizing she hadn’t tightened the lid. Paint splattered on her shirt and face. She cursed and checked the mirror to wipe away the marks.
“Anyway,” she told Marcy, “Cory was looking in my direction because he was watching his cousin’s son get made up. The mother probably wanted him to make sure we’re on the up and up here.”
“Cory was all starry-eyed and smitten. With you. He wouldn’t have noticed if you were painting a pirate hat on a gourd.” Winnie heard a creaking as Marcy stood from her chair. “How about you break a few more bottles before Halloween? Nothing like a supply shortage to create a high-pressure workplace.”
“Sorry,” Winnie murmured and looked down at the red makeup she’d nearly sprayed everywhere.
“Don’t worry about it. It’s not like all zombies have festering sore and bleeding cuts.”
They spent the remainder of their downtime breaking down their booth in silence. This late in the day, the kids complained more of empty tummies than bare faces, and parents became more judicious in their spending. Winnie never felt bad about packing up sealed paint pots because she’d open them eventually, either next week in the same space or at a party. She surmised they were the only business at the farmers market who felt relieved they had some product left at the end of the day.
Her mind strayed again to Cory Levane and their odd exchange. She called it odd, anyway—a passerby wouldn’t think much of a hometown-boy-done-good chatting it up with the lady giving his young cousin a pre-Halloween makeover. It wasn’t that Cory treated her horribly in high school—far from it, but the most she usually got from him consisted of a wordless smile and a nod before he bolted out of a classroom into the crowded hallway. Now he wanted her card to call later and maybe pick her brain about a book? What the hell.
He’s being polite. Winnie thought if Marcy weren’t around to goad him, he’d have thanked her for making Trevor’s day and returned to the people he actually wanted to hang around. He’d already forgotten about the card he stuffed in his jeans. In a few days, he’d fish out shreds of paper and realize he hadn’t emptied his pockets before doing laundry.
Shame, too. Marcy had a decent idea for once with that children’s book. Winnie itched to get home and work on a drawing or two. In her mind, she saw a gaggle of pirates crouched in a huddle, plotting to nab the prized football from the star quarterback, while the championship football team positioned themselves for defense.
It wouldn’t be the first time she drew a picture of Cory, either.
***
“What’s that you’re holding?”
Cory handed his mother Winnie’s business card. It read Two Chicks, Two Palettes in blue script, with Winnie’s website and her logo, two smiling and waving women riding a large paintbrush like a witch’s broom. An odd choice for promoting a business geared toward children’s entertainment, yet whimsical. “I was thinking of contacting Winnie Segal later for an idea I had,” he said. “Gotta do something besides sit on my ass.”
Eunice Levane, clearly occupied with packing up the unsold produce, pocketed the card and resumed transferring cucumbers into a plastic container. No matter. Cory had the URL memorized, and if he couldn’t get in touch with Winnie that way he’d find an alternative.
“If you want something to do, your father is more than happy to put you to work on the farm,” Eunice said with a smile. “If you don’t think that’s beneath you.”
He knew his mother kidded him. Hard labor didn’t scare him. He’d pulled more than his share of weeds in his day and remembered well the sting of thorns from years of harvesting the family’s blackberry bushes. Levane Farms enjoyed a boost in sales of their output after Cory was drafted, and that was enough for his father to upgrade their equipment and increase planting. They remained a small business but a profitable one. It relieved Cory, though, not to see his goofy mug on any of their labeling. Bow-tied Orville Redenbacher could smile and sell popcorn. I’ll scare the kids, he thought with a laugh.
“Didn’t I promise to help fill the week’s orders?” Their salsas and relishes tended to sell big in the fall for holiday parties, and he’d agreed to assist his mother with canning and packaging. “I even offered to hire on some temps for the holidays.”
“And I told you we’ll be fine.” Eunice snapped the lid and, satisfied it wouldn’t burp open and spill out cucumbers, stacked an empty bin on top and reached for the corn. “Save your money, or splurge on something you want. You earned it.”
Cory offered no argument. Every gesture involving money, be it a new truck or repairs to the house, resulted in vehement refusals from his parents. As much as he insisted he wanted to gift them, they saw his overtures as unnecessary charity, and they were too proud to accept anything.
So he’d stay at the house until he found a nice condo or small home for himself and let them tinker around town in the gas-guzzling, smoke sputtering step-sider his father owned since Cory played JV in middle school and wonder at the irony of it all. Levane Farms heavily emphasized their organic farming methods and lack of GMOs, yet carted their produce in a vehicle that would make Al Gore weep.
“No problem.” Cory sighed and lent a hand with loading up Old Smokey, as he silently christened their ride. “I don’t anticipate a huge investment for what I want to do, anyway.”
“That’s nice, dear. You don’t mind if I hang onto Winnie’s card? We’re thinking of redoing our website, and she did such a good job designing the one for the church.”
Yet another project that could benefit from money Cory wouldn’t exhaust in his lifetime, and if he reached for his wallet, Eunice would slap him away. “She’d do a great job, I’m sure,” he said, then, “Does she go to your church?”
Eunice glanced at him, her features sharp. He may as well have broken one of the commandments right there.
“Our church,” he corrected. His mother didn’t need a reminder about his sporadic attendance since joining the Cougars’ roster. Now his Sundays were free, he knew she hoped to sit next to her son at regular services for as long as he stayed in town.
Eunice shook her head. “I don’t think so. I understand everybody in the area goes to Winnie for web and graphic design, regardless of the project. She certainly has a corner on the market.”
“Good for her.”
All through breaking down the booth and clearing away their market space, Cory thought about Winnie and wondered what else she claimed in St. Florence, in particular a man’s heart. From what he remembered of her in high school, she didn’t date much. One could say the same for many of his fellow students, and it didn’t make of them less desirable. Those were awkward years, never mind if your peers considered you popular or attractive.
If not for his skills on the football and baseball fields, Cory might have fallen victim to peaking in high school. He’d spent those three years at Coolidge in a teenage dream—star athlete, flawless skin, adoring gazes trained on him from every direction. His grades could have been better, but he tested high enough to gain admission to an FBS institution, which suited him fine. He didn’t need to ace every test. The charmed life simply extended to this point.
Back then, like now, dating opportunities came easily. Finding a woman who shared his interests…hell, one who exhibited any interest in him beyond his net worth or potential for improving their station in life proved a challenge. His last date, where he escorted a model known for her fashion magazine covers to a sports banquet, ended on a sour note when he refused to order a bottle of outrageously expensive bubbly for the table.
“I’m not acquainted with any of these people, and I don’t know if they’re champagne drinkers. I’m not, anyway,” he’d murmured to her. Not entirely true. He knew the running back sitting opposite them, who played for a team the Cougars had trounced in the playoffs. Somehow they’d ended up alongside a group of journalists fascinated by how his opponent glared daggers in Cory’s direction all evening.
“So?” Miss Swimsuit pouted like she had since the limo arrived at her building to claim her. “You’re supposed to be gracious, and it’s not like you can’t afford it.” Or me.
Cory had sulked through the event, cursing his agent for setting up this date from hell. When she returned from the ladies’ room sniffling, with evidence of white powder on her nostrils, he called a cab and left her there before the server cleared the salads.
That story, he’d refrain from telling at the Thanksgiving table. At least his version, unlike the one Miss Swimsuit told TMZ, didn’t make him look like an asshole.
He doubted people wanted to hear it, anyway, so long as his mother possessed good voice and a strong opinion. The city is so filthy, and it corrupts people. So glad you came home. He’d heard it more than once this week, and Eunice was right. He traveled the country extensively as a Cougar, yet seen so little of the land. What he experienced hardly compared to the serenity and rural majesty of St. Florence in the Shenandoah Valley. People everywhere else looked at him and saw dollar signs.
Or, in the view of Presley Oleson, a man who ought to wear a cape and a giant S on his chest. Hero worship…eh, it flattered him, but now that he was retired he didn’t expect it to last. When Presley got to high school, he’d place another athlete in the part of his mind and heart reserved for all-time favorites.
“Are you heading straight home?” his mother asked as he saw her into her passenger seat in the truck’s cab. “I have some chicken salad for lunch.”
He shut the door between them. “You guys go on ahead. I’ll be back around dinner. I thought I’d catch up with Aaron and the others.” Truthfully, he wanted to decompress away from the family. He loved his parents and siblings fine, but they hadn’t left him alone for one minute since he arrived. He understood they wanted to make up for lost time, and, thankfully, nobody initiated conversation through the closed bathroom door, but he hoped to have the attention spread out over time. He wasn’t going anywhere for a while, or ever.
Anthony Levane slipped into the driver’s seat alongside his wife and nodded at him before cranking the engine. Strong, silent Dad…the yin to Eunice’s yang. Cory hadn’t realized how much he appreciated his father’s tendency to use one-word responses, though if the man decided to talk now, Cory doubted he’d get a word in edgewise with Mom monopolizing the conversation.
“Don’t eat too much,” Eunice warned as Old Smokey sputtered away. Translation: expect a nice slice of lasagna tonight.
He laughed. “You know, I was texting with Devon Kneale earlier. I’m thinking I might invite him up for a few days when he has free time. He loves home cooking.”
“One of your teammates…then I’d better get advance warning so we’ll have enough.” His mother winked.
Cory watched the farmers market disassemble for a minute or so before retreating to his car. He checked his phone messages and called up an invite to a new craft brewery just outside the town limits. He replied to ask his friends save him a seat then searched for Two Chicks, Two Palettes.
He quit the website after a minute because it appeared too small to read. He had better luck with their Facebook page. Already, satisfied parents were sharing their handiwork on the feed. Aaron had tagged them in his photo of Presley.
Thanks for another great day at the St. Florence Farmers market, read the latest post. We’ll see you next week.
Cory started the engine, thinking of how much sooner he might see Winnie.
***
“I hate that ringtone,” Winnie cursed. For the dozenth time in the space of an hour, her phone emitted a squeaky clown’s horn to alert her to yet more interference from Marcy in her personal life. She’d change the noise, but the other options programmed into her phone sounded equally or more annoying.
Besides, Zeppo preferred this particular tone over the others. To him, the brassy tootle of an incoming text probably resembled the call of an approaching ice cream truck. Even now, his floppy ears perked up and his attention diverted to the window.
“Zeppo, come here, boy.” She snapped her fingers and the beagle loped closer with a whine of disappointment. “I know, sweetie, but vet’s orders. No more people food.”
Zeppo settled on the area rug near her, and she checked her phone. Has he called yet? The question appeared in a blue speech bubble with a second one percolating underneath it. Marcy wanted to chat, never mind they parted company after the market. Winnie’s thumb hovered over the keypad before she changed her mind and set it beside her. What answer would satisfy her cousin? If she said yes it opened the door for Marcy to press for details—what did he say, are you going to meet, what will you wear? Telling the truth would likely lead to less gracious demands—why don’t you call him?
Because I just want to read my damn book and enjoy what was left of my Saturday. Winnie let the rest of her imagined conversation with Marcy play out into her head until she deemed herself fit to give the romance novel she bought yesterday her full attention. Two pages in, after she read the same paragraph twice, the paperback joined the phone in a growing “out of sight, out of mind” pile.
The same couldn’t be said for Cory. Winnie stretched with a loud, keening yawn on the sofa, curled to her side, and closed her eyes. Say she called Cory, then what? She’d bring up the children’s book and suggest a tweak to the plot line, and he’d return with oh, I wasn’t serious about that. I thought Marcy was kidding around. She’d feel like a jackass for wasting his time, he’d get her name wrong saying goodbye and hang up. The end.
Another honk, like a strangled goose calling for help, filled the silence. Marcy’s persistence baffled her. So what if she crushed on the guy back in high school? It didn’t mean Marcy had to scheme to get them together now. Cory’s presence in St. Florence was likely temporary, and Winnie had no designs to follow him anywhere. What was the point in that? She appreciated Marcy’s concern for her single state, but she’d done fine on her own all these years.
Since hanging her own shingle as a designer, she made enough to buy her home. Granted, real estate in St. Florence was much cheaper than in nearby Waynesboro and Charlottesville, and the house might double as a garage in a rich man’s backyard, but it belonged to Winnie Segal. She had a deed with her name on it and the freedom to hammer a nail in any of the walls enclosing her ample behind.
The face painting brought in income for guilty pleasures, like the occasional pair of strappy heels and concert tickets. Also books. Digital, discounted hardcovers, and recent arrivals at Between the Pages in “downtown” St. Florence—be the covers shiny and slick or tattered and curled from an avid reader’s love. But if Winnie harbored any guilt in that department it was overbuying mass market romances by the grocery sack before finishing what she’d purchased the prior week.
Guilt? Nah.
While she hardly burned up the social scene in Shenandoah, she refused to accept the spinster label. She dated once in a while, and just because the few men she’d seen over the years didn’t pan out into deeper relationships, she didn’t see her life as incomplete.
Lonely at times, sure, but she was holding off on ordering the cat lady starter kit until the new year. Of course, she said that last year.
Honk! went the phone. Up went Zeppo’s head, his eyes wide with hope.
Winnie sighed. Even Krusty the Clown gave the horn a rest. She snatched up her phone, mentally working out a tart response to her cousin when she noticed a different name attached to this text bubble.
Cory wanted to know, How are you, Winnie?
Good question. She waffled between the safe and brief fine and revealing how her heart rate shot from zero to sixty and her fingers shook to type one letter. She settled on the former response so as not to frighten him and processed this new development. This, she reasoned, served as the contemporary equivalent to receiving a note in class.
Thank goodness she was alone. If Marcy saw this text, the ensuing squeals would pierce her eardrums.
I was thinking about the book and I have a few ideas I’d like to run by you. Winnie waited a moment, and Cory continued texting about the Lost Girls Brewery near Crozet. Winnie knew practically every winery within a twenty-mile radius of her house, but in recent years Albemarle and Nelson counties boasted a fair number of craft brew houses, some of which served food along with their small-batch saisons and stouts. Since she had little taste for beer, she had yet to visit any.
The thing setting Lost Girls apart from other Virginia breweries, as the name implied, was the fact it was owned and operated entirely by women. Winnie heard an all-female motorcycle gang used the place as a front for a variety of dubious activities, everything ranging from adult video production to marijuana cultivation. Considering Marcy as her main source of information, Winnie took it all in with skepticism.
Eh, what the hell? How often did a nice girl from St. Florence get invited to a biker chick brewery? I can GPS directions. Twenty minutes okay? After receiving the yes, she swung her legs to the floor and slapped her thighs to alert Zeppo.
“Hey, buddy. Let’s go for a ride.”
Zeppo’s tail swished back and forth, and he jittered on all fours. She didn’t use her “off to the vet” voice, so he was up for anything.
Winnie grabbed her purse and the leash hanging from the coat hook near the door. She’d let Cory buy her first and only round and hear him out. Marcy could hear about this from somebody else.