The Quintessence of Quick (The Jack Mason Saga) by Stan Hayes Page B

to charm her ass, he thought. She hasn’t had much of a chance to think about how good a little bitta ol’ Nels’d feel.
    “I’ll see if I can twist her arm. She’s still talkin’ about that breakfast you put out the other day.”
    “She ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” Lord assured him with a particularly Cochranesque grin.
    “Git on wit yo’sef!” Reba admonished the flapping aluminum-skinned doors. “I swear, it’s a good thang he’gn cook. Little sawed-off Romeo. Everthang OK, honey?”
    “Better’n that, Reba; way better.”
    “Good. Don’t you pay no attention to that Nelson. Pore ol’ Mose gave ‘im an inch, just to be friendly, and of course he took a mile. Almost got ‘im shot, riitchere in the place. You remember.”
    “Yes I do. But I’m sure Mose’s forgiven him, aren’t you?”
    “I certainly am,” she said, her eyes rolling heavenward. “Mose had a mighty big heart. I reckon you do too, honey; that’s why I’m telling you. Enjoy ’is food, but don’t be takin’ ’im up on no after-hours socializin’. Most p’ticly, not with that lady friend of yours. Why hey, Miss Lynne.”
    “Hey, Reba; you too, stranger.”
    “Hey, Lynne. How you doin’?”
    “I’m fine, and I’m curious,” she said, planting her ample posterior on the stool next to his. “Heard you were in here for breakfast the other day with some fine-lookin’ woman who’s got a big ol’ boat tied up over in Augusta. Who, pray tell, is she, anyway?”
    “Rich bitch from Miami,” Jack said with a grin. “Thinkin’ about buyin’ my house.”
    “Really!” Her eyes widened to their physical maximum. “Why would somebody like that ever want to live here?”
    “Said sump’m about openin’ up a high-fashion dress shop and lookin’ around for a rich man to marry,” Jack said, poker-faced. “Said she didn’t think she’d have much competition.”
    Lynne Browne’s mouth dropped open as her eyes glazed over. To her credit, she recovered quickly. “Jack Mason, you lying son of a bitch. If you don’t want to tell me, just say so.”
    Jack pushed collard greens onto his fork with a piece of cornbread. “I swear it’s the truth, Lynne. She said she felt like it was her duty to help the women of Bisque get out of the backwaters of fashion, while she looks around for some local boob with a lot of dough. Preferably unmarried, she said, but that part could be secondary, and she wasn’t worried about getting any man in Bisque to leave his wife for her.”
    “You’ve been this way since grade school,” she said, getting to her feet. Everything’s a fucking joke to you. You just listen for a change; Terry saw y’all out at Don’s, and she said she didn’t think that girl was anything special; said she was thirty-five if she was a day.”
    “Well, I guess Terry’s as good a judge of age as there is in Bisque; only thing about it is, the preferred measure of time in this town’s always been dog years. Well, please tell Terry when you see her that we enjoyed meeting Mr. Gump.”
    “Who?”
    “Mr. Gump. Wasn’t that Andy Gump with her the other night?”
    “Goodbye, Jack,” Lynne Browne said through clenched teeth.
    “So long, Coco. Oh, by the way.”
    “WHAT?”
    “She said that if she buys my place, she might run for chairman of the County Commission.”
    Lynne Browne turned to face him, arms akimbo. “Well, if she does Daddy’ll hand her her ass. And he won’t need any of your damned old beer money to do it.”
    “Uh, Lynne?”
    “WHAT?”
    “Gotcha.”
    A split-second of wide-eyed assimilation preceded the close-to-the-bodice finger that Lynne Browne flashed Jack as she flounced to the cash register. Reba took her money with ill-concealed mirth. Still huffy, she narrowly missed an exit collision with Lee Webster, who graciously backed his bulk out of the door to make way for hers. Raising his eyebrows in ironic greeting, he made his way past the café’s rapidly-filling tables to the stool