eyes gave my body a quick glance, then she said, “I did notice, honey, how you’ve dropped a few pounds. Congratulations.”
“Thanks, but I’ve still got a long way to go,” I said as I rushed to finish the plates, and felt my heart pounding, and pretended I needed to pass the cake among the crowd milling around the hall looking at all the lamps and crystal bowls and what have you.
Well, that’s when I decided then and there that I could be playing with fire, and that I’d done too much to improve my physical self-esteem and maybe start a real catering business, and that I was gonna have serious words with Billy Po the next time he dropped by for me to light his firecracker.
“But I thought we were having fun and agreed to play fair and square,” he said when I told him at my kitchen table I wasn’t just a piece of meat, and I thought tongues were beginning to wag, and we both had our reputations and future to think about.
“What tongues?” he asked like he was a little shocked.
“Well, let’s start with your own wife’s.”
“Whadda you mean? Sissy’s got nothing to do with this.”
I told him point-blank what comments she’d made at the auction, and when he heard this, he did get this real worried look on his puffy face for a minute.
“What else did Sissy say?” he mumbled as he ate another cheese stick and fingered the side of his hair.
“Oh, nothing really touchy or ugly,” I said, “but I could tell she was wondering about lots of things.”
“You sure you’re not just imagining that?” he asked.
“Listen, honey, we do have fun, and you know how grateful I am for all your help,” I went on. “But the truth is I’m trying to pull my life together, and this hanky-panky isn’t getting you or me anywhere, and I think we gotta cool it before something happens we’ll both regret. Don’t you agree, Billy Po?”
Well, I was pretty proud of my gumption, but then I notice he’s looking daggers at me, and, I swear, for a second I thought he was fixin’ to reach over and smack me right in the face.
“So that’s the way you want to play,” he then said as he fiddled with his gold cuff links in the form of oil rigs.
“Billy Po, I’m trying to look out for us both and not risk any scandal, so, well…Billy Po, it’s got to stop—that’s all there is to it. I want us to be just good friends, honey, and, goddammit, if that means you can’t use me for jobs any longer…well, honey, I hope you won’t be that mean.”
He then changed his expression and took my hand real easy. “Now, now, just hold your horses, little lady. You ought to know I’m not a mean man and just like to cut up now and then. So okay, I’ll back off if that’s what you want. Tell you what: why don’t we let things simmer down a while, then just let nature take its course.”
Yeah, I figured. Let nature take its course. Right to the sack whenever José wants his enchilada, and maybe right to the front page of the Houston Chronicle. Oh, I was real sweet to Billy Po before he left that day, and I’d be lying if I said we didn’t have as much fun as ever, but when he left, I was pretty sure the guy knew exactly where he now stood with me. If I’ve learned nothing else lately, I’ve learned that sometime a girl just has to take control.
7
THE BOY FROM WACO
It’s still too soon to know exactly how I feel about Vernon, but I can say that after our dinner at Amalfi Garden, I decided once again to put my foot down with Billy Po and concentrate on who matters to me most—jobs or no jobs. Will say I wasn’t too thrilled about Vernon seeing where I lived, but he insisted on picking me up and arrived in his Cherokee decked out in a green cowhide jacket and string tie and hat and pair of snake-skin boots that had to set him back at least a couple of hundred. A real knockout. Myself, I let Roberta talk me into wearing my hair down for once to show off what she called the really nice sheen, and I must have spent an hour trying to decide whether I looked thinner and sexier in my new stovepipe jeans and eyelet denim shirt or in a fancy, low-cut blue dress with glitter beads I found at Macy’s. Well, the way Vernon kept staring at my boobs all through dinner, I guess I was right to pick the dress, and the more red wine we drank, the more he worked me over with those dark eyes of his.
“You look like a really healthy gal,” he kept saying, and all I was tempted to scream was, “Buster, you wouldn’t be saying that if you’d seen me a year or so ago.”
Of course, ordering food was the ordeal I expected it to be even after sucking on a Nips, and when I picked a small tomato and mozzarella salad to start with, then a few shrimp grilled with garlic in olive oil, Vernon almost had a fit that I didn’t order the fried calamari and manicotti the way he did. The truth is that I would have given my eyeteeth for the manicotti.
“Listen,” I lied, “if you’d been making cheddar puffs and Texas caviar and snapper wraps all afternoon for a cocktail party job the way I have, you wouldn’t have that much appetite either. Besides, you know, we girls have to watch our figures.”
When I said that, Vernon looked at me again real hard, and cracked a big smile, and said, “Why don’t you let me do all the watching?” which made me tingle inside and probably blush a little bit.
I’d be hard-pressed to remember what all we talked about, but I gotta say Vernon can talk about almost anything. Country music, computers, the Aeros’ winning streak, barbecue, old cars, calf scrambles, Houston restaurants—everything you can think of. And, holy blazes, is the man drop-dead good-looking, especially when he gets kinda sad about something and runs his hand through his wavy hair. Which is why I had to keep my goddamn wits about me when he invites me back to his house and says he has a bottle of Wild Turkey we can crack open. Yeah, sure, I knew exactly what Vernon had on his mind, and I admit I was just aching to cut the buck with him. But this is one guy I really want to respect me, so what I did was tell him it was my turn to open up the shelter early the next morning, which was true, and say I needed a full night’s sleep, and ask if I could have a rain check. What I sure didn’t tell him was how worried to hell I was about the little bit of loose skin left on my thighs and abdomen, and that he might not like me as much with my clothes off as on. I mean, I still have to think about things like that.
Well, that question was answered on our date last Sunday night when we went to a movie starring Tom Hanks and ended up at Vernon’s big ranch-style house over on Cameron. Actually, I’d fixed up the apartment nice and decided to invite him back to meet Sugar and Spice and eat some shrimp salad and ham biscuits so I wouldn’t have to worry about ordering food in another restaurant, but Vernon had other ideas.
“Know what I’m really craving tonight?” he said on our way to the car before I could mention the salad. “A big fat juicy steak and some onion rings at Brick Oven. Whadda you think of that?”
Of course Vernon had no way of knowing how he was torturing me with those onion rings, and the last thing I wanted was to seem like a creep, so I just bit the bullet and said, “Sure, sport, but I think I’ll leave the steak up to you this late at night and settle for maybe a piece of broiled fish myself.”
“Doll, you’re gonna grow fins if you eat any more seafood,” he kidded as he grabbed me around the waist, and squeezed real hard, and made me wonder if I felt flabby to him. What I wanted to say is fins would be a hell of a lot better than the gobs of fat I once carried around, but no way could I risk grossing him out by telling him just how obese I was—not to mention showing him the hideous picture I carry around in my wallet to remind me.
So Vernon has his thick sirloin and onions and a beer, and me a redfish fillet and some spinach and a glass of Chardonnay. I take a tiny bite of his steak and eat one onion ring, and, Lord, did those taste good. Like always, we just love being together and getting to know each other better. He tells me about his uncle’s farm machinery business up in Waco, and how he went to Baylor for a year to learn how to build and service computers, and about Bonnie and Clyde’s shotguns