Agnes and the Hitman

“What?”

“I could move. To wherever you have the desk job. I could “You’d leave Two Rivers?”

“It’s just a house,” Agnes said. “I love it, it’s great, but it’s not Tara, for God’s sake, it’s just a house.” Home is with you. It was a terrible thought, the final betrayal, betraying herself.

“No,” he said, and she flinched and thought, You moron, why did you leave yourself open like that?

“Right, sorry,” she said. “That was-”

“I’ll come here,” he said. “I’ll come back.”

The whole world went still, and then she realized she wasn’t breathing and took a deep breath, tears stinging behind her eyes-Do not cry-and she said, “Oh,” and tried not to clutch at him. “That would be good. This would be a good place to come back to. A place to come home to. Whenever you could.” The tears were coming and she couldn’t stop them, so she tried not to breathe so he wouldn’t hear her crying in the dark.

He nodded. “Can we have pancakes for breakfast tomorrow?”

“Yes,” she said on a sob, and then she did wrap her arms around him and held on to him, tighter than she’d ever held on to anybody as he pulled the blanket up over them and smoothed back her hair and rocked her as she cried, and she thought, He’s coming back to me, he’s coming back, and gave up being smart and just loved him.

friday

cranky agnes column #12

“Coke Would Like to Teach the World to Cook”

Some people are critical of Coke, pointing out that when you drop a nail into a Coke, and leave it there for four days, the nail dissolves completely; imagine, they say, what that same Coke does to your stomach. Those who are fans of Coke Ham point out that when you pour Coke over a ham and bake it in a 300-degree oven for two and a half hours, the ham tastes delicious. But anybody who has put a nail in a can of Coke and waited four days knows that it doesn’t dissolve at all. Why do people believe everything they hear? On the other hand, Coke Ham really is good. Better than that, it’s criminally easy.

The next morning felt eerily calm to Shane, sitting at Agnes’s kitchen table in the sunshine with Rhett underneath it draped over his feet and Garth across from him, resplendent in a brand-new shirt and jeans, which he was endeavoring not to get maple syrup on. Shane’s life was crumbling at the edges, but in the middle was Agnes, making love and breakfast, wanting him to come home to her, and a big old dog, keeping his toes warm. Screw the edges, he thought, and poured himself a mug of coffee brewed from fresh ground beans as Agnes put his plate of pecan pancakes in front of him. Still he knew that it wouldn’t work in the long run. Casey Dean was out there, determined to kill somebody after the wedding, and somebody else was out there, determined to kill Agnes. Agnes’s coffee and pancakes were good, but they could only hold off reality for so long.

“I have to go to work today,” he said, trying to prolong the illusion that it was a normal breakfast between two normal people who had just made love until they’d both collapsed and were now smiling at each other in a sunlit kitchen, giddy with mutual approval.

Garth nodded, his mouth full of pancake.

“Selling insurance,” Agnes said, going back to the grill for the bacon she had crisping there.

The pancakes were golden, the butter he slathered on slid off the tops in fragrant melting rivers, and then Agnes reached across the counter and handed him the syrup pitcher Garth had left up there, and he absentmindedly watched her breasts move under her T-shirt as he took it.

“Right, insurance,” Shane said, and poured the syrup, its scent reaching deep into his brain.

Garth gave them both the fish eye and shoveled the last of his pancakes in.

“To get that gold watch,” Agnes said.

“Yep.” Shane cut into the pancakes and forked up a bite: light, tender, nutty, sweet, and buttery, just like Agnes. Home cooking.

The phone rang and Agnes answered it. “Good morning, Reverend Miller. What is it this time?” She listened for a moment and then said, “What? No, she’s not pregnant. Jesus wept, man, are you insane? Do you know what Evie Keyes would do to you if she knew you were calling people and insinuating that her son is going around knocking up girls?” She listened again and then said, “Yes, that is exactly what you just implied, and I am shocked, just shocked that you’d spread gossip like that about a Keyes. And you a man of the cloth. What the world is coming to, I do not know. God must be listening to you right now and reaching for the bottle, that’s all I can say.” She hung up and said, “That man needs medication.”

“They should just put it in the water here, medicate the whole damn town.” Shane said, but he said it without venom-Keyes was what it was and a lot of it was good, the breakfasts, for example-and took another forkful of pancake.

Agnes filled a plate with bacon and came around the counter with it, as Garth got up to go. “I’m go

“Let me give you money,” Agnes said, but Garth said, “Nah,” and went out the back door as she called after him, “You look really nice in that shirt,” and got a grin through the screen door in return. “Please don’t steal plants from people,” she yelled as he went down the path and he waved without turning around.

“I wouldn’t ask any questions about the landscaping,” Shane said when Garth was out of earshot.

Agnes nodded. “I’ll deal with that later. Listen, I know this has probably been screwing up your job, babysitting me and the wedding-”

“No,” Shane said. “It’s part of my job. The wedding is my job.” He watched the warmth fade from her face and the wariness creep back in. “I didn’t know that when I came here. The Don set up a hit here, at the wedding. I’m here to take the hitman, named Casey Dean, out, to stop it.”

Agnes drew a deep breath. “At the wedding.”

The phone rang and she went to answer it. “Yes, Butch, you bastard,” she said, her eyes on Shane, “that was me who left you the message. I know who you are and I know the zoo where you work. If you don’t get Cerise and Hot Pink back there today, I am going to turn you in. I don’t care about your three children or your grandmother with the operation.” She listened for a minute and then she said, “No, two is not enough for a flock as you well know. You take them back today, Butch, or your ass is grass and I am a John Deere super-classic riding lawn mower with a V6 engine and a double cutting blade, do I make myself clear? Good.” She hung up and went back to the griddle and flipped the second batch of pancakes, perfect golden pancakes, while the coffeemaker brewed its second fresh-ground pot.

“Is it a coincidence that all of this is happening at once?” she said. “That Brenda is using the wedding to take the house back, and that your hitman is using the wedding for his hit, and that somebody was in the vault for the first time in twenty-five years just this week?”

Shane put his fork down. “I don’t know. I don’t like coincidences. But I don’t see how they co

She frowned, thinking hard, and he just looked at her for a minute. Agnes. On his side. In her kitchen full of life.

“Who does the Don want dead?” she asked.

“Don’t know.”

She smiled at him weakly. “I don’t suppose there’s a hope in hell that it’s Brenda?”

He smiled back. “I wouldn’t count on it.”

The phone rang again and she answered it. “Kristy. Hi. I wondered what happened to you yesterday. Yeah, probably a smart thing to do, leave when Brenda starts killing people. No, she swears it was an accident. Right, tonight. Rehearsal di