On the television a very pretty woman looked into the eyes of a very handsome man and said, “Brent, I never loved anyone but you! Ever!”
“Oh, she is such a liar!” Connie said.
“No, she’s not—she didn’t love any of them. She just screwed ’em all,” Joy said.
On the TV: “Belinda, the bab—”
“Brent, the baby is yours!”
“The baby is Donovan’s,” Joy told the TV.
Mel leaned a hip against the desk. “What is this?”
“Riverside Falls,” Connie said. “Brent and the slut Belinda.”
“This is what Lizzie is going to be doing if Connie can’t get her out of those slutty clothes.”
“I have a plan,” Connie said. “As she grows out of her clothes and I replace them, we’re going to get a more conservative wardrobe.”
Joy laughed loudly. “Connie, it looks like she already grew out of them!”
The camera pulled back and Mel saw that the couple on screen were in bed together, their naked bodies barely concealed by a sheet. “Whew,” she said. “Soaps have come a long way.”
“You ever watch any soaps, honey?” Connie asked.
“Not since college. We watched General Hospital.” Mel put down her magazine and book on the desk and helped herself to a cup of coffee. “We used to get our patients to keep an eye on it for us. I had one long-term care patient—an old guy—and I used to give him his bath at two every afternoon and we’d watch it together.”
“There is only one man left on this show that Belinda hasn’t done—and he’s seventy. The patriarch.” Connie sighed. “They’re going to have to bring in some new talent for Belinda.”
Back on TV, Belinda bit at Brent’s lip, then his chin, then slipped lower in the bed and disappeared under the sheet. All three women in the back room leaned toward the TV. The lump in the sheet that was Belinda’s head went lower and momentarily Brent threw back his head and let a delicious moan escape.
“My God,” Mel said.
Connie fanned her face.
“I think that’s her secret weapon,” Joy said. And the program cut to commercial.
Connie and Joy looked at each other, giggled and got up out of their chairs. “Well, not much has changed since yesterday. That baby’s gonna be in college before it gets out who the daddy is.”
“I’m not even sure it is Donovan’s. She was with Carter, too.”
“That was a long time ago—it couldn’t be his.”
“How long have you two been watching this soap?” Mel asked.
“Oh, God, fifteen years?” Connie answered by way of a question.
“At least.”
“You find a magazine, honey?”
Mel made a face and held up the Playboy.
“My, my,” Connie said.
“I’m not too interested in trucks, fish, guns or game,” she said. “Don’t you ever get any others in?”
“If you tell me what you want, I’ll have Ron pick ’em up on his next run. We only carry what we sell.”
“Makes sense,” she said. “I hope I haven’t just snatched up some poor guy’s Playboy that he’s looking forward to.”
“Don’t you worry about it,” Connie said. “Hey, there’s a little potluck at the bar tonight for Joy’s birthday. Why don’t you come on over?”
“Aw, I don’t have a present!”
“We don’t do presents, honey,” Joy said. “Just come and party.”
“Well, happy birthday anyway, Joy. I’ll check with Doc,” she said. “What time? If I can come, should I bring something for the potluck?”
“We’ll get over there about six, and no, don’t you worry about bringing anything. I don’t guess you do any cooking at Doc’s and we have the food covered. Nothing new on that baby, huh?”
“Not a peep.”
“Damnedest thing,” Joy said. “Bet whoever’s it is came from another one of the towns.”
“I’m starting to think that, too,” Mel said. She pulled some bills out of her pocket to pay for her stuff. “Maybe I’ll see you later, then.”
On her way back to Doc’s she passed the bar. Jack was sitting on the porch with his feet up on the rail. She wandered over. Sitting beside him was a fishing tackle box full of beautiful feathery flies. Small pliers, scissors and a razor blade were sticking out of the tackle box, as well as little plastic envelopes that contained colorful feathers, silver hooks and other paraphernalia.
“Break time?” he asked her.
“I’ve been on break all day, except for a little diaper changing and feeding. The baby’s asleep, there aren’t any patients and Doc is afraid to play gin with me. It turns out I can beat his socks off.”
Jack laughed. He leaned forward and peered at the book and magazine. He looked at her face and raised an eyebrow. “Little light reading?” he asked.
She lifted the magazine. “It was either this or guns, trucks, hunting or fishing. You want to borrow it when I’m through?”
“No, thanks,” he laughed.
“You don’t like naked women?”
“I love naked women—I just don’t feel like looking at pictures of them. It seems like you’d get enough of that in your line of work,” he said.
“Like I said, the choices were pretty limited. I haven’t seen one of these in years, but when I was in college my roommates and I used to laugh ourselves stupid at the advice column. And they used to have some interesting stories. Does Playboy still run fiction?”
“I have absolutely no idea, Melinda,” he said, grinning.
“You know what I’ve noticed about this town? Everyone has a satellite dish and at least one gun.”
“A couple of items that seem to be necessary. No cable TV out here. You shoot?” he asked.
“I hate guns,” she said with a shudder. “Try to imagine the number of gunshot deaths in a trauma center in L.A.” She shivered again. He has no idea, she thought.
“The guns around here aren’t the kind people use on each other. Hardly a handgun in the town, although I have a couple, just because I’ve had them for a long time. This is rifle and shotgun country—used for hunting, euthanizing a sick or wounded animal, protection from wildlife. I could teach you to shoot, so you’d be more comfortable with guns.”
“No way. I hate to even be around them. All these guns I see in the gun racks in the trucks—are they loaded?”
“You bet. You don’t take a minute to load your rifle if a bear is charging you. Bear fish in the same rivers we do.”
“Whew, fishing just took on a whole new meaning. Who shot all the animals on the walls in the bar?” she asked.
“Preacher got the buck. I caught the fish and shot the bear.”
She was shaking her head. “How can you get any satisfaction out of killing innocent animals?”
“The buck and fish were innocent,” he admitted. “But that bear wasn’t. I didn’t want to shoot her, but I was working on the bar and she was poking around right back there, maybe looking for trash. Bear are scavengers—they’ll eat anything. It was a real dry summer. Her cub wandered too close to me and riled her up. Pissed her off. She must have gotten the idea I was going to interfere with the cub. So…？”