Chapter Eight
They walked along Main Street, John carrying the bag with his new cassette and Phoebe enjoying the colorful cacophony of storefronts. He sprung for ice cream for dinner at a kitschy little shop called Karma Kustard, and Phoebe considered John fully forgiven.
She’d decided “when in Rome” and went for the Technicolor rainbow cone. John had—predictably—stuck with plain old vanilla.
He seemed to be amused by her reaction to the entire town.
“I just can’t believe this place is real.” She shook her head, scanning the Frisbee tournament happening in the park across the street.
“What’s so unreal about it?”
She rolled her eyes. “Everything. You’ve lived here your whole life, so you don’t even see the fleet of VW vans or the tie-dye twins named Daisy and Dharma who say ‘groovy’ and ‘far out’.”
“That’s just surface weird. We’re pretty normal underneath it all.”
“Oh, really? Didn’t one of your normal townsfolk con you into believing I was a man?”
“That probably happens everywhere.”
She snorted. “When’s the last time you left the county? There’s a whole wide world of people who mind their own business out there.”
John remained silent, content to focus on his ice cream cone.
“Why did she do it, anyway?” Phoebe asked. “What did this Mrs. Normandon—”
“Nordemann,” he corrected.
“Nordemann. What did she hope to get out of this? It seems odd for a stranger to be so invested in helping me finish my thesis.”
He hemmed and hawed his way to a half-ass answer. “Who knows the workings of the female mind?”
“Me. I do.” She drilled her finger into his shoulder. “I know the workings of the female mind. And I know there must have been some kind of reason for her to foist a female grad student on you.”
He cleared his throat and took a breath. “Well, then. I expect she wants me to marry you and live happily ever after.”
Phoebe’s ice cream cone fell out of her hand and splatted on the sidewalk in a puddle of rainbow. “Marry you? She never even met me! I could have been some college coed psychopath! She wouldn’t even know if we were compatible. You can’t just force two people together and expect them to get married! I thought this town was trapped in the ’60s not the 1860s.”
“Next you’re going to tell me that’s something that only happens in Blue Moon.” John handed her a fistful of napkins
“Yes! It is.” She stooped to scoop up her sidewalk dessert with a napkin and deposited it in the trashcan. She frowned at him until he offered her his cone. She took a lick, noting the sharpening in his eyes.
“What are you going to do about it?” she asked.
He shrugged, unconcerned. “What can I do?”
“You can’t make me marry you.”
He laughed. “I have no intention of marrying you. I do have every intention of minding my own business and getting my farm up and running. I have no room for anything else.”
They started walking again. “I still think it’s weird,” Phoebe grumbled.
“Yeah, well, it won’t be the weirdest thing you witness here,” he predicted.
They walked on in silence passing storefronts—Phoebe wondering how such an insane little town could exist—until she spotted the florist shop. Phoebe paused to study the riotous display of flowers in the window.
“Sunflowers are my favorite,” she sighed. “They should be ugly because they’re so different, so weird, but instead they’re just so happy. How can anyone not think they’re beautiful?”
Not expecting an answer, she was surprised when John opened his mouth. “Don’t you think that’s their appeal? They are so different, proud about it, too. Why wouldn’t we like them?”
Well, the farmer had some depth to him.
“So, what’s the story with you and Michael?” she asked, pulling his cone toward her to catch the vanilla drip with her tongue.
A cloud passed over his face. He closed his eyes. “Why do you have so many questions? Jesus, it’s like a walking interrogation.”
“I’m just curious. I’m not like taking notes and keeping a dossier on you.”
“We’re friends. Cardona and I grew up together.”
“You didn’t look very friendly in the store,” she countered.
“I didn’t like him hitting on you.”
Phoebe raised her eyebrows, but before she could jump on him with a dozen questions, John knocked her shoulder companionably. “Shut up.”
“There’s no way I’m shutting up on that one,” she warned him.
“I had a feeling.”
“So, you’re attracted to me. I’m attracted to you. But you’re still not going to act on it because of some sense of responsibility for my well-being, but you also don’t want me attracting anyone else,” she recounted.
“Exactly,” he said, sounding relieved.
She laughed. “You’re an odd kind of guy, John Pierce.”
“I like to think I’m a sunflower.”
She choked. “A legitimate joke and an apology from you in the same day? I think I need to sit down.”
“I have just the place for you to recuperate.” John nudged her toward the movie theater.
“What’s Town Meeting?” she asked, reading the marquis.
“It’s not a movie. There’s a town meeting tonight. I have to go, but you’re welcome to join me.”
“Yes!” Bouncing on her toes, she barely let him get the words out. “I want to meet everyone here and see you all in action together. It’s like getting into a secret society! How many people will be there tonight? Can I ask questions? What’s the age range of residents who attend town meetings?”
“You have a curious mind.”
“Sociology minor,” she explained. “People fascinate me.” They moved out of the way of a young couple decked out as if they were from competing decades. She wore her bangs in two-stories high Aqua Net glory, acting as a frame to her turquoise eyeshadow. Her pink satin dress looked like something Molly Ringwald would party in. Her partner was a skinny man in a Jerry Garcia t-shirt that was two sizes too small. His jeans rode low on his nonexistent hips and flared out over platform boots. His curly hair was somewhat tamed under a bandana.
“Hi, John.” The girl waved a friendly greeting, cracking her bubble gum.
“Peace, man,” the guy said, flashing two fingers.
“Hey Rainbow, Gordon.” John nodded. They parted as the ’80s and ’60s walked between them holding hands.
“What. Was. That?” Phoebe breathed.
“Rainbow Gilbenthal and Gordon Berkowicz. They’re an item.”
Phoebe grinned. “You’re an old soul, John.”
He winced. “It’s because I said ‘an item’ isn’t it?”
“That and about a thousand other things.”
“Does it bother you?”
“I think I kinda like it,” she confessed. “Except the part where you think that because I’m a woman I can’t do shit jobs.”
“It’s hard to think about you as a farm hand. Not women in general. You specifically.”
“I’m not sure if that’s better or worse,” she admitted.
--------
He settled her in an aisle seat in the theater that had retained its art deco glory. Two seats over, a girl with a chaotic headful of tight black curls grinned at them.
“Stay here and behave, please,” John said quietly.
“Aren’t you sitting here?” Phoebe asked. She’d hoped that sitting quietly next to him at the little town meeting would give her some time to think. He’d dumped an awful lot on her in a short period of time. From an apology to his admission of attraction, their entire relationship may have just shifted. And Phoebe wanted to know what that meant.
John shook his head, looking a little green around the gills.
“He’s gotta participate,” the girl with the curls said, tilting her bag of popcorn toward the stage. “Good luck up there, Pierce.”
John looked like he was going to toss his ice cream, and Phoebe leaned away just in case.
“I’ll meet you after,” he said and trudged toward the stairs on the side of the stage like a man facing his death sentence. Phoebe watched him cross the stage and take a seat between two more residents. He pulled a piece of yellow legal paper out of his back pocket and began studying it.
“Elvira Eustace,” the woman said, leaning across the empty seat and offering her non-butter-covered hand for a shake.
“Phoebe Allen.”
“Oh, you must be John’s grad student.” Elvira offered the popcorn to Phoebe.
Phoebe dug out a handful of greasy goodness. “I am but not the one he was expecting.”
“Mmm, I heard Mrs. Nordemann pulled a fast one on him.”
“Yeah, what exactly happened with that? She was my second cousin’s college roommate, and when I was looking for a farm to spend the summer on, my aunt said that John and Blue Moon would love to have me.”
Elvira chuckled. “Jillian abhors loneliness. She’s been happily married since she was nineteen and thinks everyone else should be, too. She figured John out there all by his lonesome on those two hundred acres needed some company.”
“Some female company?”
Elvira nodded sagely. “Yep. And she knew he wouldn’t ‘go gentle into that good night.’”
“So, she pulled a fast one on him.”
“There’s a lot of fast ones pulled around here. It’s part of our charm,” Elvira insisted.
“Can you give me a crash course in Blue Moon?” Phoebe begged.
“First, you shouldn’t have left a seat between us. Blue Moon is all about acceptance and snooping in other people’s business, and that means giving up all rights to your personal space.”
Eagerly, Phoebe slid over a seat and Elvira laughed. “Next lesson, young grasshopper, always expect the unexpected.”
The lights dimmed, and the milling crowd took their seats, quieting down to a dull roar. A woman in jeans with a gun strapped to her belt strode across the stage to the podium.
“Who’s that?” Phoebe whispered.
“That’s Sheriff Hazel Garfunkle. She’ll run the meeting tonight. Mayor Nordemann—your matchmaker’s husband—is down with bronchitis according to Gordon Berkowicz and a broken ankle according to Farmer Carson. Bruce Oakleigh insists it’s a fishing trip.”
Hazel shook hands with the residents on stage and then settled in to start the meeting. She leaned on the podium with the ease of a lifetime resident surrounded by friends and spoke into the microphone. “Yeah, okay. Let’s get this meeting started so we can all get home. I’ve been asked to remind everyone that, as close as we all are, it’s still illegal to push your face up against your neighbor’s windows and look inside.”
Phoebe snickered, convinced it was a joke, and then silenced herself when hands shot up everywhere in the audience.
“Is this serious?” she hissed at Elvira.
“Oh, yeah. We had an incident last week where a certain busybody got worried that she hadn’t seen the Guzmans outside the house in a while. This is after she read an article in the paper about a carbon monoxide leak that killed four in Iowa. So, she sneaks over in her house dress and peeps in the window on the front porch.”
“What did she see?”
“The Guzmans having sex on the living room rug. At least that’s what they were doing until they saw her plastered up against their window gaping at them.”
Phoebe’s laugh escaped as a raspberry against her palm. The woman in front of her turned around and frowned at her. “Sorry,” Phoebe whispered.
“A lot more questions than I was thinking there’d be for a pretty straightforward ordinance,” Hazel sighed. “All right, we’ll start with you, Clayton.”
A large man with an even larger afro and white silk shirt unfolded himself from his seat. “Thanks, Sheriff. I was just wondering like what if you see smoke coming from inside the house?”
Hazel was obviously a pro at handling Blue Mooners. “In that case, I think it’s safe to look and make sure no one’s inside.”
Appeased, Clayton nodded and sat back down. More hands shot up.
“Tuesday,” Hazel pointed at a woman wearing a tie-dye leotard over black tights.
“Her name’s Tuesday, and she teaches at the aerobics studio,” Elvira said before Phoebe could even ask.
“Yeah, like what if we don’t see smoke but we hear something?” Tuesday twirled the crimped end of her ponytail around her finger.
“Can you give us an example?” Hazel asked.
Tuesday let out a blood-curdling scream that silenced the theater. Phoebe clutched a hand to her chest.
“Right. Okay. A scream like that, I’d start knocking on the front door, and if no one answered, go ahead and look in the windows. Just be sure it’s not the Fitzsimmons kid because he’s got a crazy set of lungs on him and makes everything sound like bloody murder.”
“Thanks, sheriff,” Tuesday said cheerfully and bopped back into her seat.
A dozen more hands raised.