“Anguilles à la provençale,” Natalie told Iona.
“Which is?”
“Eels.”
Mrs. Christiansen was holding up at eye level a wooden spoonful of ambrosia. She turned to face Natalie with concern. “Oh my dear. Eels?”
“Why not eels?” Iona screamed. “She’s got everything else she wants!” And then she rushed out of the house to the front yard. She executed four different but equally fierce Tae Bo kicks and punches, then inhaled deeply and hurried over to the Main Street Café.
Opal was ironing behind the pink Formica counter while a trucker from Sidney nursed his coffee. Opened before the trucker was an individual-sized box of Captain Crunch cereal and he was pinging crunchies one-by-one off his water glass with his finger. Carlo was hunched at the far end of the counter and was whining over an imposs
ibly complex origami construction.
“What the hell’s that?” the trucker from Sidney asked.
“Swan,” Carlo said.
“What’s it for?”
“Well, place-card holders, for one.” He took a moment to sit back and get a new perspective on the problem. He surreptitiously eyed a nearby Scotch tape dispenser.
Opal warned him in sing-song, “Cheat-ing.”
Iona snuck into the café through the kitchen screen door, but Opal saw her as she lifted her steam iron. “Iona!” she said. “How’s the shower coming together?”
“We’re having a great old time,” she said. With some uneasiness she added, “I just remembered a . . . thing I wanted to post.”
The trucker went on pinging cereal against his water glass as Iona tacked her note to Pierre on the bulletin board. She waited by it uncertainly for a moment. Carlo’s knees were jiggling as he folded down a wing of the origami and hopefully held it up for Iona’s appraisal.
She gave it the attention it warranted, and asked, “Anybody been in here this afternoon?”
Carlo scrunched a little as he confided, as if she ought not to have brought it up. “Opal’s in the kitchen. . . . Crawfish soup?”
Opal asked, “You looking for someone in particular, honey?”
“No. Just asking.”
The trucker said, “I’m here.”
“Yes, you are,” Opal said. “And I want to thank you for that.”
Iona left.
After a moment, Carlo sauntered over to the board, unfolded the tacked up note, and read it aloud. “Mrs. C’s, midnight. Room number three.”
“Sounds to me like a ron-day-vous,” the trucker from Sidney said.
Opal ironed. “In Marvyl’s house? Hah!”
Smirking, Carlo folded the note and tacked it up again, thinking, Welcome to my spider’s web.
The trucker faced Carlo. “Which door, you say?”
Opal told him, “Drink your coffee, buster.”
Natalie entered the café just as Iona had. She seemed distraught. Opal and Carlo looked at one another. The trucker turned in his booth.
Opal said, “We must be having a full moon tonight.” And to Natalie she said, “How’s your day been?”