”Always,” he screamed at me. “She always calls me about a body when I’m trying to eat dinner!”
I paused, holding the battered appetizer I’d lifted to taste – the perfection of deep-fry timing at the best Japanese restaurant Rumor, Wyoming has to offer – there, inches from my lips. Beyond this perfection, his pig-red, puffing face meets my paused glance. To respond or to bite? This is the question considered.
I bite the tempura shrimp in half and lower the tail away to use like a conductor’s baton, shake it with some ferocity over stemmed chardonnay and screw my head around to snap back in a nod that says Ab-soh-LUTE-ly!
“If only she had your heart, your sensibilities,” he mewls, complexion faded to a near-normal fleshy pink.
I pout my lips as if to say, Now Charles, she’s your wife and you picked her out, all on your ownsome, from a whole fleet of Wanna-Be-Mrs.-Charles-Hueter’s all docked at the Hueter Mortuary and Funeral Services Franchise Corporate Offices; I finger-feed him the next shrimp. He takes it off at the tail, right at my fingertips, his breathing moist on my knuckles.
Without saying a word, I will maneuver this big fish into my boat. His wife is already a “body” – they just don’t know; no one knows the notches I have on my creel. Or how often I’ve slipped through the nets of the system. (A wink will do wonders! And a pout has more clout than words. Ask me! I have tales . . . Sh-h-h – not here.)
