“They have programs.”
“Right? Those things are great. I watched a zombie program last night, and tonight I’m going to watch this one about a blond chick who controls dragons. And there’s this sexy short guy who’s drunk all the time.”
“Not those kinds of programs.” She admonished me with a withering stare. It almost worked. “There are clinics.”
I scooted back and leaned against the wall. I didn’t know much, but I did know if I told a counselor about my interactions with dead people, she’d lock me up and throw away the access code. I just wasn’t ready for a life of padded rooms and pudding.
“I don’t think therapy is the answer.”
“I couldn’t agree more.” She shifted excitedly. “You need hypnosis.”
I blinked. Squinted. Crinkled my brows.
“Think about it. You could learn about your current life and your past ones.”
“There is that.”
“I’m pretty sure I was Cleopatra in a past life.”
She was serious. I tried not to giggle.
“Or a vacuum cleaner salesman. My arches fell.”
I didn’t ask. “I’m not sure I’m ready for a padded cell.” Pudding, however…
“No way. What could you possibly say that would convince a therapist you needed to be committed?”
If she only knew.
“No, really,” she continued. “You can tell me anything. You know that, right?”
I rose, and she helped me stand. After I knew for certain I wasn’t going to snog the linoleum again, I said, “Can I ask you something instead?”
“Of course!” She followed me out.
The café was glaringly bright compared to the storeroom. Reyes was gone, as were most of our customers. The dinner crowd wouldn’t start showing up for another hour. And thankfully Ian was gone, too. One less headache I had to deal with.
I called out to Frazier, one of the third-shift cooks, and ordered two sandwiches to go. Cookie had grown used to my order and didn’t question it. The sun loomed low across the cloudy sky in preparation for the inevitable sunset, and the air outside looked frozen. My walk home was going to suck.
I turned back to Cookie. Now was as good a time as any to ask her about something that had been niggling at me, but I had to surprise her. To get her true reaction before she tried to cover it up.
I grabbed a takeout bag and opened it while slipping in a casual “Who’s Charley?”
Cookie gaped at me a minute as I read her every reaction.
When she didn’t say anything, I decided to explain. “You’ve called me Charley at least six times lately.”
At first, I thought she might actually know me, but Charley didn’t fit any better than any other name I’d tried. Not to mention the fact that I looked nothing like a Charley.
“I – I’m sorry,” she said. “That just slips out occasionally because it’s what I call Robert at home. I’m just so used to saying it.”
That was a bald-faced lie. And the mystery deepened. “You call your husband Charley?”
“Yes.” She nodded for emphasis. “Yes, I do. Because that’s his name. Charles Robert Davidson.” She tossed the towel she’d been carrying and took off her apron. “Everybody back home calls him Charley. So I still call him that most of the time.”
“I thought you said everybody back home called him Bob.”
She blinked. Did her darnedest to recover. “Yes, they did. They called him Charley… Bob.”
I coughed to keep a giggle from erupting. “Charley Bob?”
“Charley Bob.”
The second she said it, Bobert walked in, his timing impeccable.
A rush of sheer panic washed over Cookie, but she recovered and waved to him a little too enthusiastically. “Hey, Charley Bob!”
He slowed, a frown creasing his brows as he got closer. “Hey, Cookie Butt.”
She laughed out loud and waved a dismissive hand. “It’s not his favorite nickname. But I have to tease him every once in a while to remind him of his past.”
He stepped closer and gave her a quick squeeze before settling his attention on me. “Are you okay, pumpkin?”
People asked me that so often. “I’m good,” I said as he pulled me into a hug. I breathed in the scent of his drugstore cologne and the barest hint of a cheap cigar. He smelled wonderful.
It was odd how when Cookie and Bobert called me things like sweetheart and pumpkin, I wanted to drown in their embraces. But when Ian did the very same thing, my skin crawled. Clearly my skin was trying to tell me something. Either that or I was a meth kingpin and had a natural aversion to cops. I didn’t think so, though. I had fantastic teeth.
Cookie chuckled again. For no reason. “I was just telling Janey that your nickname back home was Charley Bob and that I call you Charley sometimes. At home. When we’re alone.”
He set me at arm’s length. “Ah.”
“So, can I call you Charley Bob?” I asked, ever so hopeful.
“No.”
He sat in a booth close to the station. Cookie scooted in next to him and I sat across from them, completely uninvited. ’Cause that’s how I roll.
“Okay, I have to be honest. I do this thing and —” I wasn’t sure how to tell them, so I decided to skip the hows and get right down to the whats. “I can tell when someone isn’t being completely forthcoming. And I know that your name is not really Charley Bob. Thank God, because damn.”
Totally busted, Cookie wrapped an arm in Bobert’s and sighed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to bring it up. It’s very painful.”
Okay, she wasn’t lying that time.
“It’s just… I recently lost my best friend and her name was Charley and I keep slipping and calling you Charley and it’s just wrong. I – I apologize.”
Bobert covered her hand with his and squeezed.
I cringed and prayed for a freak hurricane to shatter the glass and cut me into tiny pieces. “Cookie, I am so, so sorry.”
“It’s okay,” she said, hurrying to console me.
“No, it’s not. Why didn’t you tell me? What happened?”
After a quick glance at her husband, she said, “We don’t really know what happened. We lost her a few weeks back.”
“She died?”
“No, she just… vanished. But we’re hoping she finds her way back to us.”
Every word she said was the truth, and I felt like dog excrement after a jogger stepped on it and ground it into the dirt. I sucked ass.
The bell dinged. Frazier had finished my sandwiches, and I had work to do.
“Cook, I don’t know what to say.”
“Janey,” she said, taking my hand into both of hers, “don’t you dare feel bad. I should have told you.”
“No. It was none of my business. I shouldn’t have forced it out of you.”
“We’ll give you a ride home, pumpkin,” Bobert said.
A sadness had settled over both of them, and suddenly my dog-excrement analogy seemed too light-hearted.
“That’s okay. I have to do a couple more things before I leave.”
Bobert’s interest was piqued. “You aren’t going to do what you said you wouldn’t, right?”