Fic: Lonesome Dove
Nov. 10th, 2009 06:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerTitle: Lonesome Dove
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
osprey_archer
Beta:visualthinker11
Fandoms: Wonderfalls and Pushing Daisies
Pairings: Jaye/Eric, with a splash of Olive/Randy and a touch of Ned/Chuck
Rating: PG, for cussing
Summary: Jaye, in an uncharacteristic burst of fellow-feeling, agreed to go on a road trip with Eric. Partway through, her habitual misanthropy firmly back in place, they end up at the Pie Hole - where Olive is trying to figure out is Randy has a hidden criminal life. What could possibly go wrong?
Seven days, six hours, and forty-two minutes into their road trip, Jaye and Eric stopped at the Pie Hole. It was nine o’clock at night, and the establishment was empty but for them.
Jaye slumped in one corner of the green booth, arms tight across her chest, glaring out the big round windows at passing headlights glinting off the snow. Eric sat across from her, leaning on the table, palms open, half-smiling.
Jaye hated that appealing smile. She wasn’t mad at Eric for anything specifically; but that ‘talk-to-me’ smile exemplified everything she was angry about.
The Pie Hole smelled sweetly of cooked fruit and good memories, but Jaye refused to bow to the manipulations of her olfactory senses. She clenched her fists and fulminated.
The waitress – a little blonde wearing a bright green mini-dress – stopped by their table with a couple of menus. “Coffee?” she said.
“Yes,” said Jaye.
“Me too,” said Eric.
“Lots of cream and sugar,” said Jaye.
“Ditto,” said Eric.
Jaye looked at him. He looked at her. Eye contact. “Decaf,” Jaye said, barely more than a whisper.
Eric wavered – wavered – dropped his eyes. He hated decaf even more than Jaye did. “Regular,” he said, defeated.
The blonde looked between them. Jaye scowled at her, and the blonde smiled extra big and clipped back to the kitchen on her green kitten heels.
“She was nice,” said Eric.
Jaye glared at the tabletop. Why had she ever agreed to a road trip? So much togetherness. So much commitment. She should have made Eric sleep in the bathtub as soon as he started rhapsodizing about waking up in each other’s arms, with the sunshine streaming through the threadbare motel curtains, staring into each other’s eyes…
The door chimed, and then there was a crash. Jaye looked up, startled, to see a mousy-looked man wrestling with a box almost half his size.
Eric, the good Samaritan, shot out of the booth. “Let me help you with that.”
Between the two of them they wrestled the enormous box into the booth. Jaye shrank from its enormous pink bow. The man shifted from foot to foot, his shoulders hunched, looking uncertainly from his box in their booth and the nearest table.
“Why don’t you sit with us?” said Eric.
The man’s shoulders relaxed marginally. He sat next to Jaye. Jaye gave Eric a death glare. See what helping people does? It makes weirdos sit at our table and interrupt our festival of mutual loathing.. Eric probably saw that as a plus.
The stranger cleared his throat. “I’m Randy Man,” he said.
“I’m Eric,” said Eric. “And this is Jaye,” he added, to Jaye’s annoyance, because that meant she had to stop glowering at the enormous, pink, glittery bow to give Randy Man at least the cursory courtesy of a nod.
She did, and noticed too late that he had his hand out to shake. He laughed nervously, rubbed his unshaken hand on his flannel shirt, and asked, “Do you come to the Pie Hole often?”
“No, we’re not from around here,” said Eric.
Randy Man nodded. He twisted his hands a little (Jaye, even in her funk, wondered why he was so nervous) and then tilted his head at the waitress. “That’s my girlfriend,” he whispered. “I brought her a present. Can I show you?”
Eric glanced at Jaye. She saw it peripherally; she denied him eye contact. “Sure,” Eric said.
She could hear his creeping disappointment. It pleased her – no, really it did – she wasn’t sorry.
Randy Man opened his box with a flourish. It contained a pair of taxidermied pink doves, with hearts and spangles and glitter, and Jaye had only a moment to start thinking Oh hell n-
—before the doves opened their beaks and, together, warbled “Mend the rift!”
Jaye shrieked and flung herself against the window.
Randy Man looked crushed.
“They’re…they’re…I’m sure your girlfriend will love them,” said Eric, trying to be supportive of Randy and give Jaye a disappointed look at the same time.
“Mend the rift! Mend the rift! Mend the rift!” the doves sang.
“They’re talking to me!” Jaye tried to explain. “I mean, I mean—” she unplastered herself from the window and sat again, and calmed herself with a swallow of coffee. “They speak to me. They really speak to me, like…like art, you know?”
“Really?” said Randy Man. He just about cringed with pleasure. “No one’s ever said that to me before.”
Jaye didn’t think that was at all surprising.
“Mostly, you know, people think it’s a little weird,” he said shyly. “Taxidermy, I mean. But don’t you think it’s nice to be able to preserve things you love?”
Jaye smiled weakly and sipped her coffee (cursed decaf!). In the old days, she would have been the first to think Randy was a weirdo, and start up her own photo album about what a weirdo he was, and spend spare moments comforting herself about how he was much more of a screw-up than she was—
“Mend the rift, mend the rift, mend the riiiiiiiiift!” crooned the doves.
—but now that she was bonafide crazy, it was hard to mock someone for nothing more than a strange hobby.
“Mend the rift!”
Maybe she could hide in the bathroom until the doves were gone. “Excuse me,” said Jaye, nudging Randy Man to move.
He would have. But the little blonde waitress had returned. “Hey Randy,” she said. She smiled enormously, but looked away before he could reply.
Maybe she wasn’t his girlfriend. Maybe Randy Man was a stalker who brought inappropriate and vaguely threatening (because they were dead) gifts.
But Randy-the-stalker would not be ignored. “I brought you a present, Olive,” he said.
The waitress – Olive – looked wary. “You did?”
He beamed and turned the box around so she could see the doves. “Do…do you like it?” he asked, bashful.
She squealed and clapped her hands, then caught herself. (So he wasn’t a stalker. Maybe she was just trying to be professional.) “Are you ready to order?” she asked, all business.
“I’ll have whatever you think is good, Olive,” said Randy, staring up at her like a puppy.
Olive looked away from him. Definitely a stalker, thought Jaye, with some satisfaction.
“Mend the rift!” sang the doves.
“Triple berry,” said Eric.
Damn it. Jaye had wanted the triple berry. “Georgia peach,” she said. “A la mode.”
“I’d like mine a la mode too,” said Eric.
Jaye clenched her jaw. She wasn’t willing to give up her ice cream – especially not when she’d already been forced to drink decaf.
“Okay!” said the waitress, once she’d stopped looking back and forth between Jaye and Eric. “Coming right up.”
She walked back behind the proscenium arch separating the kitchen and the dining room.
“Mend the rift! Mend the rift! Mend, mend, mend the rift!”
****
Olive Snook started slicing pies.
Randy had brought her a present. That was bad. The present was adorable, which was really bad. Randy, according to Emerson, might be involved in an international ivory smuggling ring that had just this Tuesday killed poor Saccharissa Hart who worked at the Papen County Museum of Natural History fluffing the fur of the taxidermied animals in the museums’ collection. The smugglers (Emerson thought) smuggled the ivory in the internal cavities of the taxidermied animals.
Which meant Randy was illegal ivory smuggling mule, which was really, really, really bad.
She should have just left him as the rebound guy. Things would have been so much simpler if she hadn’t fallen in love (as if she’d ever been good at not falling in love.)
Olive noticed, suddenly, that she had just stress-eaten through the pretty, bad-tempered girl’s slice of Georgia peach pie.
“Itty bitty,” Emerson growled.
Olive jumped. She’d forgotten she was wearing an earpiece, but she was: an earpiece and her bumblebee brooch which would transmit everything Randy said, just in case he confessed.
“Get your ass in there and start interrogatin’,” Emerson growled.
“Olive?” said Chuck. There was a tapping, a muffled “Is it working?”
“It’s working,” Olive said.
“I know this is hard, just go in there whenever you feel comfortable,” said Chuck. “Take as much time as you need.”
“Time is money,” said Emerson. “And money’s a-wastin’.”
“I’m going in,” said Olive.
She cut a new slice of Georgia peach, and then a slice of strawberry chocolate dream for Randy – and, after a hesitation, one for herself too. Make the interrogation subject feel a kinship with his interrogator.
Olive thought she’d just thrown up a little in her throat.
But she was a professional, so she scooped up the ice cream and bustled out to the table with the pie. “Triple berry a la mode, Georgia peach a la mode, and two strawberry chocolate dreams a la mode,” she said, setting the slices down and sitting down across from Randy. “I’m Olive Snook,” she told the newcomers.
“These are Eric and Jaye,” said Randy, pointing them out eagerly and levering half the slice of pie into his mouth. “Thif if goo,” he added.
“It’s nice to meet you,” said Eric. He had a nice smile – sweet.
The girl called Jaye glanced at Olive, then reared back.
Olive surreptitiously checked her teeth. Nothing to cause that reaction. Maybe this Jaye person read Olive’s dishonesty on her face. Maybe all the secrets were eating holes in her skin.
“Where do you come from?”
“Buffalo,” said Eric.
“Ooooh, do you know a lady with a muffin store?” asked Olive.
“Muffin Buffalo,” said Jaye. She looked up from the pie she had been dismantling. “She lives in my trailer park.”
Olive suddenly felt guilty about all that prize money. She chased it away with a sweet bite of pie. “I just love chocolate strawberry dream, don’t you?” she said to the air. “Ned bakes the best pies.”
“They’re delicious,” Eric agreed fervently. Olive’s opinion of him – already high because of his sweet smile and long lashes and the fact that he was exuding love for his girlfriend the way a ripe peach exudes fragrance – rose.
So did her waitressly instincts. She leaned over confidingly and said, “We have a special sampler try if you like. Five different types of pie on one try for only $12.99.”
“It’s great,” said Randy. He spewed crumbs in his misplaced enthusiasm.
Olive leaned around the doves so she could like Jaye straight in the face with a I’m-going-to-sell-you-soooooo-much-pie smile. Jaye stared at Olive glassy-eyed.
“Quit pussy-footing around,” Emerson barked in Olive’s ear. She jumped, nearly knocking over the doves.
“Oh, um,” she stammered. “Oh, I just get so excited thinking about the pie sampler. Of course, I feel kind of bad about being so flighty now…what with the murders in the paper… Randy, did you see the article about Saccharissa Hart?”
His fork clattered to his plate. Bad sign. Bad sign. “It’s terrible,” he said. “I met her at the, the Papen County Taxidermy Club. She was always nice to me even though, despite,” he shrugged his shoulders turtle-like, “you know.”
Olive did know. Her heart just about broke. She knew exactly what it was like to feel unlovable. Maybe the smugglers had just been nice to Randy, and he’d gone along just to have friends, and now that he had a girlfriend he wouldn’t need that anymore and they could keep him out of prison.
“Olive?” Chuck said, worried. “Olive, you need to keep him talking.”
“It was so sad,” Olive started, but she got cut off:
“Excuse me,” said Jaye. “Does your brooch play ABBA songs?”
Olive’s heart just about jumped out of her throat. “Not at all!” she cried. “My brooch has absolutely no connection with any auditory equipment of any kind. Especially not ABBA songs. I like to hum them, though. Maybe that’s what you heard. Mamma Mia! Here I go again! My my, how can I resist you?”
“You have a great voice!” said Eric.
Olive jumped from the table and started clearing plates and dancing at the same time. No, no, not hysterical at all. “Mamma Mia! Does it show again? My my, just how much I missed you!” She nearly dropped one of the plates, right onto the doves no less, the stains would have broken Randy’s heart. “Yes, I’ve been broken-hearted…through, since the day we parted…why why, did I ever let you go?”
And, because the song seemed a too-appropriate prediction of the future, because Randy was clapping adoringly, and because she’d gathered all the plates, Olive rushed back to the kitchen.
“I’m been smoked,” she hissed. “They aren’t from Buffalo, they’re spies, international ivory smuggling spies and—”
“We heard, we heard,” said Chuck, just at the outer edge of frazzled.
“Olive,” said Ned. “Emerson’s driving back as fast as he can. Chuck and I are staying here for the stakeout. See if you can get Randy to confess before Emerson gets there.”
A sound of shushing cloth – passing the microphone back and forth. “Olive,” said Chuck. “Olive? Can you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“There’s some of the homeopathic happy juice left,” Chuck said, in a rush. “On the top shelf, between the orange extract and the coriander. Give the spies a lot of it and they won’t be able—”
“No,” said Olive. “Just say NO. No more homeopathic drug muling for me.”
“But—” said Ned.
It was a sign of progress, she thought, that her heart didn’t soar at the concern in his voice. Of course that might just be because her heart was too busy beating like a prize thoroughbred pounding down the home stretch. “I’ll be fine,” she said.
She cut more pie for everyone, and headed back out to the table. Her heels drummed on the floor like footsteps of doom. No more late night horror marathons, she told herself firmly.
“More pie!” said Randy, pleased, as she whipped the pie around the doves in front of everyone.
“But we didn’t order…” said Eric.
“On the house!” Olive cried, stuffing a large proportion of her slice into her mouth. She chewed and chewed and chewed and chewed (all this chewing was eating into her nerve), swallowed, nearly choked, and coughed out, “So. Saccharissa Hart.”
“We saw it on the news this morning,” said Eric. “She was really young, wasn’t she?”
“Just out of college,” said Jaye. “No time to screw up her life yet. No, shut up.”
Olive stared at her. “Not you, not you,” said Jaye, scrunching up so she was hidden behind the doves.
Randy frowned at her. “It was awful sad,” he said, giving his turtle shrug and an awkward half-smile. “She had so many friends, you know, everyone was so sad…”
“She had a lot of friends?” said Olive. Another mammoth bite. She should have just brought out a whole pie. Eric had nearly finished his slice too, and at the rate things were going she’d have to go cut more pieces just when Randy was about to spill.
“Oh, yeah. Everyone at PCTC loved Saccharissa. Jody Marino, Ermengarde Appaloosa de la Cruz, John Escallion, Phoebe Felicia Fedocia DiAngelo, Shinwei Ting, Marcus Aurelius Cae—”
He’d go on forever. Olive loved hearing him list things. Emerson would probably have her head if he had to listen to a list of all the members of the PCTC and it made him late to his late-night date with Simone. “I heard she was kind of a sneaky person,” Olive interrupted. “Don’t you just hate that, people who won’t just come out and say what they mean?”
“No one ever says anything straight out,” agreed Eric. “They just sit there and expect you to guess.”
“Be direct,” said Olive, pounding the table with a fist. “No more lies, no more evasions, no more elliptical speeches that never quite tell you what you need to know.”
“I’m very liptical!” Jaye said.
Olive had a dawning bit of an idea about Jaye and Eric, but she squashed her matchmaker instincts firmly. Focus, Snook, focus.
“I don’t think Saccharissa was sneaky,” said Randy. “Some of her friends were. They always whispered together.”
“Anyone in particular?” Olive said, too eagerly. Randy frowned. “Emerson’s looking into the case,” she said.
“Olive!” Chuck scolded.
“Well, I have to—” Olive snapped, then remembered that no one else could hear Chuck and answering the air looked crazy. She giggled nervously. “I have to get myself another piece of pie, anyone else want…?”
“I’m tired of taking chances!” Jaye shouted.
“We do have some of the more ordinary pies, cherry and so forth,” said Olive, rattled. Maybe Jaye had Tourette’s. That would explain a lot.
“Once of Saccharissa’s friends was called Chance,” said Randy. “She wasn’t part of the PCTC though. Andy Chance? Candy?”
“No one’s making you take chances,” Eric told Jaye.
“Sandy,” suggested Ned. His voice was so loud it made her ear ache.
“Sandy?” asked Olive, her heart clogging her throat so she couldn’t swallow her last stress-bite of pie.
“Yes, they are,” said Jaye.
“Who is this ‘they’? ‘They’ do this, ‘they’ tell you that, who are these people?”
“Sandy,” agreed Randy. “It was before I met you,” he added hastily, misreading Olive’s discomfort. “Her boyfriend wanted – Sandy’s boyfriend, I mean – wanted to buy some of my animals, and he pretended he was interested in taxidermy but you could tell he was just in it for the money.”
“Alyosha Tolstoy,” breathed Ned. “He’s a Russian.”
“Can’t you tell me?” asked Eric.
“What was his name?” Olive whispered.
“No,” said Jaye.
“I don’t remember. I only met him once. I didn’t sell him anything, he wouldn’t have loved them.” Randy poked his fork into his piecrust. “You don’t think he killed her, do you? I never liked him. I kind of thought…”
“But we found some of Randy’s animals,” Ned crackled in Olive’s ear. “He must be lying, we found that dog with the kerchief and the guitar…”
“But wasn’t that dog his childhood pet?” said Chuck, fainter – farther from the microphone. “Ned, would you sell Digby? Even if someone offered you a million dollars?”
“Jaye, you have to trust me,” said Eric.
“It was stolen,” Olive hissed.
That brought the whole table up short. “What?”
“Your pet dog that you taxidermied. It was stolen, wasn’t it?”
“Well…” Randy scratched awkwardly at his ear. “Yes…how did you—?”
“By Alyosha?”
“Alyosha! That was his name. Alyosha Tolstoy. How did you know?”
“Yes!” yelled Olive. She leaped up (nearly knocked over the doves) and pranced around. “Yes! Yes!”
The whole table stared at her.
“Emerson thought maybe you were conspiring with the ivory smugglers but you’re cleared!” she shouted.
“Um?” said Randy.
“They were listening in on my bee brooch,” she explained, pirouetting. “I was bugged.” It seemed like a great joke. “Bugged!”
“You thought I was conspiring with ivory smugglers?” said Randy.
“Because they found some of your taxidermied animals with ivory inside them at the ivory smugglers warehouse that they’re staking out. But you’re cleared!” whooped Olive.
Her earpiece crackled with static. “He is!” Ned cried. “What about the others?”
Olive stopped mid-pirouette to stare at Eric and Jaye. Eric looked totally nonplussed. Jaye looked –
“Why didn’t you just ask me?” asked Randy.
Jaye had been saying random things all evening… “Well I couldn’t, I wanted to but Emerson said I should try a more indirect approach and after all it is his case—”
Jaye had been talking to the air – as if she were hearing things no one else could hear. Through an earpiece. An evil, ivory-smuggling earpiece.
“Oh hell no,” Olive whispered.
“Don’t you trust me?” Randy asked. He pushed his pie plate away. One of the taxidermied dove’s tails dragged through the leftover filling.
“Olive?” Chuck murmured in her ear, all worried. “Emerson will be there soon.”
“I’m…I’m going to go get everyone more pie,” said Olive. And she ran back to the kitchen.
***
Randy stared tragically at his cherry-smeared plate. He pushed a crumb of crust across the plate with his fork; the tine shrieked against the china.
Jaye shuddered. “It’s okay,” she said. “Dishonesty is the foundation of every happy relationship.”
Eric looked alarmed. “I don’t think that at all,” he said.
“It’s just,” choked Randy. “I thought I’d finally found someone who really loved me, you know?”
“Mend the rift, mend the rift, mend the rift,” the doves sang, dirge-like. Jaye figured it would break Randy’s heart if she wrung the stupid birds’ necks.
His heart was already broken, so it might be worth trying it.
But Jaye had been under the thrall of the voices for too long not to at least try to follow their advice. “Maybe…maybe she really does and she just made a mistake,” Jaye suggested. “I mean, obviously she shouldn’t have told you that she had you bugged.”
Randy Man honked into an oversize handkerchief. He sounded like a goose.
“She shouldn’t have bugged him in the first place,” said Eric. “Loving someone means you have to trust them.”
In this specific instance Jaye agreed about the bugging – if Olive hadn’t been wearing the stupid bee brooch if never would have told Jaye to “Take a chance on me!” and if it hadn’t she never would have said chance which never would have brought up Sandy Chance and then Olive and Randy would still have been happy, except they wouldn’t because Olive wasn’t happy because she thought Randy was a smuggler.
It just went to show. “You can’t trust people,” said Jaye. Eric shook his head. “So instead of trusting people you just don’t tell them that you distrust them and then everything is fine.”
Eric continued shaking his head, faster and faster. “I can’t believe this,” he said. “I can’t – you can’t – we can’t have a relationship like that, Jaye. Why can’t you trust me?”
“This isn’t about you!”
“You have to be able to trust people before you can love them!”
“And how many happy relationships have you had with this enlightened philosophy?” Jaye demanded.
“How many have you had with yours?” Eric shot back.
Jaye flushed. How many? Romantically? None. Non-romantically? Well, even her family— “At least I never got left at the altar!”
And with that Eric left her at the table. He grabbed his coat and stood and left, and the Pie Hole door swung behind him like a saloon door in a black-and-white movie.
Jaye dug her hands into her hair and tried to pretend she hadn’t just said that. “Mend the rift,” chirped the doves, menacing. “Mend, mend, mend the rift.”
A hand on her wrist. Jaye jumped. She’d forgotten Randy was there. “He got left at the altar?” Randy said, awed. “But he seems like such a nice guy.”
“Well,” Jaye stammered. “Not at the altar. Exactly. It was…” she fumbled. Somehow she didn’t want to explain the sordid details to Randy. “There was a miscommunication between him and his bride and – actually they did get married – things broke up on the honeymoon; she wasn’t the person he thought she was.”
“She lied to him?” said Randy.
“No,” said Jaye. “I guess he thought she was a nice person.” How had he ever thought that? Given that Heidi was such an all-around grade-A betraying-him-on-the-honeymoon—
Then again, Eric thought Jaye was a nice person. Which, well. Fool me twice, shame on me.
“Mend the rift! Mend the rift!”
“Goddamn it, what do you want me to do?” Jaye roared.
Randy cringed.
“Not you,” she said. “I mean, yes you. What would you like me to do? Do you want relationship advice? Not that I’m the best person to give it. I can give you great advice on lots of ways to destroy your relationship, though.”
He looked horrified. “Why would I want advice on how to destroy my relationship?”
“So you can avoid it?” Jaye suggested. “So you don’t make mistakes?”
He looked even more concerned. “You can’t have a relationship if you never make mistakes?”
“Mend the rift,” said the doves. “Mend the rift.”
“Nooo,” said Jaye. “You just…when you make a mistake…you have to mend the rift.”
“What?”
“Mend the rift!” she shouted. “Excuse me—” but he wasn’t moving; so she grabbed her coat and climbed onto the table and jumped on the floor, narrowly missing Olive Snook coming back with four more slices of pie.
“But you haven’t paid yet!” cried Olive.
“I’ll be back!” Jaye yelled. The Pie Hole door swung shut behind her.
***
Olive tried to feel philosophical. At least if Jaye and Eric left there was no way there were going to hold her at gunpoint to protect their hypothetical ivory smuggling gang.
On the other hand, she had to be all alone with Randy.
“More pie for us I guess,” said Olive, trying to smile as she sat down across from Randy. She stuffed most of a piece of shoo-fly into her mouth. “Key lime,” she said, pushing a slice over to him. “Your favorite.”
Randy looked at it miserably.
Olive wanted so badly just to dive into those other three slices of pie and not come up for air till she’d buried her stress in flaky crust and sugary fruit, but she knew Randy would think that pigging out just then would mean she didn’t take things seriously. So instead she said, “I’m sorry. That was a shitty thing of me to do.”
Randy’s mouth worked.
“Oh don’t cry, please don’t cry, I really can’t—” she shoveled kiwi coconut surprise into her mouth so fast she nearly choked on it. “I don’t see how you can be angry with me! We hardly know each other! How was I supposed to trust you?”
“I helped you smuggle your kidnappers who aren’t really your kidnappers into Canada,” said Randy, contorting himself into a pretzel of embarrassment. “How, why, why can’t you trust me after that?”
“That’s different! I don’t distrust you when it comes to things that are related to me, but that doesn’t mean I think you’re entirely trustworthy in every other area of your life! Look at Ned, I trusted Ned, and he’s helping Chuck pretend to be dead and he also admitted to maybe kind of not really killing Dwight Dixon! And then I helped him dispose of the evidence,” said Olive, realizing that this perhaps did not make her particularly trustworthy either, or possibly made her trustworthy in the wrong way.
Fortunately Randy seemed to be following a few sentences behind, so she steamrolled over her guilt. “The point is that you’re being unreasonable! You want me to just know that you wouldn’t take part in an ivory smuggling ring even though we only started kind of dating a few weeks ago! And—”
The door chimed. Olive expected Jaye and Eric, but no, random revelers—“We’re closed,” she informed them, shoving them out the door. (As they were ice hockey players, they were very surprised by her strength.) “Closed, closed, sorry, come back tomorrow, fresh pies every morning—” She slammed the door behind them, and switched the sign to Closed. “Closed,” she said, to Randy.
“You want me to leave?”
“Yes!”
“No!” he said.
She put her hands on her hips and glared at him. He ducked his head and applied himself to his key lime pie with dogged concentration. Olive tapped her foot and sighed gustily and Randy glanced at her over his shoulder and hunched over the pie more, and Olive sighed (sincerely this time) and slumped into the booth across from him.
“You have pie crust crumbs,” she said, and pointed to the corner of his mouth. He smiled uncertainly and wiped them off.
She waited. He finished the pie and scraped the remaining filling off the plate, then pushed it away and worried his hands together. “See…” he said. “See…well, see, it’s not that I could expect you to know I wouldn’t ever help kill elephants. But don’t you know I’d tell the truth if you just asked me?”
Olive’s mouth formed an O. “Well, I…” Well, of course he would. Randy was constitutionally incapable of lying, which was why he had so much trouble making friends, because lying was the number one social skill of friendship. “Usually when I ask people to tell me the truth they tell me that they can’t tell me.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know! They won’t tell me why they can’t tell me because that would be telling the truth! And it makes everyone underhanded and sneaky, and by everyone I mean me, and—” Olive groaned. “Oh, I’m so sorry, Randy. This evening was a stupid thing to do, stupid, stupid, stupid.”
“It’s okay,” said Randy. “I do stupid things all the time.”
“No, you do awkward things, and everyone acts like they’re stupid even though really everyone else are the stupid ones who never tell the truth because telling the truth is awkward.”
“But being awkward is bad.’
“No! Yes. I don’t know. At least if things are awkward you know everyone is being honest, and then you know where you stand with everyone…”
It occurred to her that although the Piemaker was awkward, he was also the very opposite of honest. She sat back, fingers laced across her stomach. The doves stared at her.
Randy leaned forward. “Did Ned lie to you?” he whispered.
“And Chuck and Emerson,” Olive whispered back.
“They don’t trust you?” Randy sounded scandalized.
“Well, I wouldn’t say…exactly…you know – I guess not.” Olive pressed her forehead into the palm of her hand. “You know what, they don’t, and they have no reason why not to. Why have I stayed here so long? Why why why—?”
“Why?” asked Randy.
“That was a rhetorical question,” sighed Olive. Dating someone with no social skills would undoubtedly be wearing, if he was going to demand that she answered all of her own rhetorical questions.
Then again, it was a good question. Why? Because she was in love with Ned. Which made sense until Chuck came. Why hang on after that? She was still in love with Ned. She liked Chuck, when she wasn’t feeling bitterly resentfully about the fact that Ned was in love with Chuck. She liked Emerson, and working with Emerson.
None of them would tell her why Chuck was pretending to be dead. They didn’t trust her; they hadn’t for ages; why keep hanging on?
The Pie Hole door chimed. Olive blinked herself out of her reverie in irritation. “We’re closed,” she said, not turning around.
“I think you might want to reconsider,” said Emerson.
Olive turned slowly. “Jaye and Eric?” she said.
They both looked at the ground. Emerson waved his gun so they moved forward. “I caught them trying to flee the scene,” he said.
Olive sat back in the booth with a moan.
***
As if Jaye’s night couldn’t get any worse. Two inanimate objects had harassed her; Eric hated her; and now she had been marched at gunpoint by an extremely ill-tempered PI right back to the Pie Hole, where Olive and Randy were looking at each other all googly-eyed.
“We were going to pay,” Jaye snapped at Olive. “You didn’t have to call in Mr. Trigger-happy.”
“He’s Emerson Cod,” Olive corrected.
“Hey!” said the PI – who must be Emerson (Emerson? Like the philosopher?) Cod. “If I was trigger-happy you’d be dead. Now tell us what your connection is to the ivory-smuggling ring that killed Saccharissa Hart.”
Oh for the love of God. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“The ivory-smuggling ring? Which was murdering zoo elephants in cold blood and smuggling their ivory from country to country in the taxidermied bodies of other zoo animals? They killed Saccharissa because she wanted a bigger cut. How about you? Is your cut big enough? Or are they going to cut you off for good?”
What the hell? “I work a shitty job in a shitty retail store that’s been shut down because of a recent robbery that left the place in state of total disarray,” said Jaye.
“She’s from Buffalo,” said Olive. “Right on the border with Canada. Good place for smuggling.”
Olive was in on this crazy conspiracy theory too? Emerson Cod might be just a lone nutball, but if Olive believed too they must had something that looked like proof.
“What makes you think Jaye is part of a smuggling ring?” Eric said. “Killing elephants? She would never do anything like that.”
Jaye’s heart just about melted. “Thanks, Eric,” she said.
Not that he was right, mind. If the money were good enough…
“Oh yeah?” said Olive. “Then who was she talking to all through dinner? All those nonsensical things she said? She was bugged, just like I was.”
Jaye started laughing. She couldn’t help it.
“Let me see your ears,” said Emerson, unsmiling.
“Now wait—” said Eric.
“No, it’s fine,” said Jaye. She lifted her hair.
There was a long pause as Emerson inspected her ears. “There’s nothing there,” he said. “But she could’ve taken it off when she ran out. Let me get my metal detector…”
But the metal detector beeped on nothing but a pocketful of change.
“Then who were you talking to?” demanded Olive. “Do you have Tourette’s? Or schizophrenia? Oh, I’m shouldn’t have asked that, I’m so sorry. But do you?”
“No,” said Jaye, stuffing her change back into her pocket.
“Then who were you talking to?” Olive asked.
Well, all in all she didn’t actually know, but that wasn’t a good answer. “Do we have to go into that?” said Jaye. “It’s…it’s complicated. I don’t think you really want the truth.”
“Goddamn it!” yelled Olive. “Everyone always says that to me! I want the truth and I want it now!”
“Okay,” Jaye squeaked. “Okay. I just don’t think you’re going to believe me and you’ll think I’m totally nuts and lock me up because it’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever heard – ”
“Try me,” said Emerson, dry as gin.
“Inanimate objects talk to me,” said Jaye. “Inanimate animal shaped objects give me orders. Your doves told me to ‘Mend the rift’ and your brooch wanted me to ‘Take a chance on me,’ which I guess meant take a chance on you, which I guess I’m doing, entirely against my will, although it is kind of intoxicating to finally be honest.”
A long, long pause.
“Jaye?” said Eric.
“I tried to tell you,” she said.
“Not the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard,” said Emerson.
“Really?” said Olive. “Because that’s one of the weirdest things I’ve ever heard. That weirder thing of yours, Emerson, is it somehow related to Ned and Chuck and their allergic not-touching thing and the fact that the three of you are always having those stupid little chats in the back while I’m running around pouring coffee?”
“No comment,” grunted Emerson.
Randy tugged at Olive’s elbow. Olive looked down at him, and blinked in surprise, as if she hadn’t noticed standing up and scowling. “Maybe this isn’t the best time to talk about you and your pathological secret-keeping,” she said to Emerson.
“No,” said Emerson. “It isn’t. We’ve got a whole different brand of crazy to deal with.”
“I’m not crazy!” Jaye shouted.
“You just said you hear voices,” Eric pointed out, a little strangled.
“I’ve told you that before,” she snapped.
“Always listen when your women tell you their neuroses,” said Emerson.
“So you believe me?” Jaye asked.
“Not really,” said Emerson. “But the police are rolling up the smuggling operation, and I’ve never heard your name before and as I’m the best PI in Papen County I figure I would have run across it if you were anyone important - " Jaye, despite everything, had to bite back indignation over being called unimportant - "and I have a date with Simone in fifteen minutes.”
“And Simone’s got him whipped,” said Olive.
“Shut your mouth, Itty-Bitty,” said Emerson, good-humored. He straightened his fuchsia tie and knocked snow off his hat. “You two pay for your pie,” he said. “Or I’ll track you all the way to Buffalo and eat you for breakfast.”
The bell over the door chimed as he left.
There was a long and awkward silence. Eric shuffled through his pockets for money to pay for the pie. (Jaye usually argued about who paid for what but right now she didn’t want to open up the avenue for him to speak to her about anything.) “So,” said Randy. “You hear messages from the other side?”
“From somewhere.”
“Because I’ve always wanted to talk to my pet dog,” he said. “You said you hear animals talk to you? Dead animals?”
“Inanimate animal-shaped things. I guess taxidermy counts? Didn’t someone say you’d taxidermied your dog?”
“Yeah,” Randy sighed. “But he got stolen.”
Olive squeezed his hand, and held out her free hand sternly to accept Eric’s money. “That’s too much,” she said. “I’m only charging you for the first slice of pie.”
“Considering we got held at gunpoint,” said Jaye, indignantly, but Eric silenced her with a scowl.
“Thanks for the pie,” he said. “But keep the extra.”
There was another awkward silence. Then Jaye turned and left, and she heard Eric say goodbye behind her, and the door chimed one last time as he walked out behind her.
They walked in silence for a while. The snow had stopped, the stars were cold, the cars were scarce, and Jaye couldn’t think of the words to cut the silence. She wished they’d parked closer to the Pie Hole. She wished the Pie Hole were closer to a Greyhound station so she could get the hell out of here and never have to face Eric again.
Eric – her savior – started the conversation. Eric – who drove her crazy – picked absolutely the worst topic. “Jaye,” he said. “About these voices.”
“It doesn’t matter anyway,” said Jaye, kicking the snow. “Given that we’re breaking up.”
“It does,” he insisted. “It does matter. Even if we’re breaking up. Are we breaking up?”
She couldn’t look at him. “Well, duh,” she said, and speeded up.
She didn’t realize that he wasn’t walking with her until the snowball connected with her shoulder. “Hey!”
“Why are we breaking up?” he asked.
“Because I’m crazy?” said Jaye. “And evil. Let’s not forget evil.”
“You aren’t evil,” said Eric. “You’re a good person.”
“I'm not - okay, fine. Fine then. There’s still the crazy,” said Jaye. “You never know when a kitschy teddy bear key chain will tell me I need to feed you to a killer whale.”
That merited a tiny pause. “I don’t care,” said Eric. “Because—”
“Because you don’t believe me.”
“Because I love you, and—”
“That’s actually not enough to overcome schizophrenia,” said Jaye. “Just FYI.”
“—and when I see any sign that you’re out of touch with reality I’ll tell you, but at the moment I think you’re using the voices as an excuse because you’re too damn chicken to love me.”
“I am not! Chicken! I mean. I do—” Oh God, she couldn’t say it. “Why don’t you think I love you? Aside from all of the incredibly unloving things I do, like that thing about Heidi, which I didn’t mean – I mean I did mean it – but not in a mean way – you’re the one who’s so big into trust, why can’t you just trust that—” I do love you. No, couldn’t say it. She could barely believe she’d thought it. “I’m really sorry, Eric.”
“For what?” Eric looked like the world’s saddest puppy.
“Um,” she said. “Can I get back you on that? Because I feel like compiling the list of things I’m sorry for might take a couple decades and possibly an album of emo power ballads. And I’m not very musical. I used to make Aaron cry on long car trips by singing in his ear.” Eric looked unconvinced. Jaye began to feel panicked. Talking was such a bad habit. Why couldn’t she break it? “I’m just sorry. Insert anything you think I should be sorry for here.”
“I don’t think you should be sorry for anything.”
“Fine then.” A car swooped by, its headlights glittering on the falling snow. “Then let’s get back to the crazy. Every time I bring up the fact that my life is being arranged by voices inside my head you change the subject, and I feel like that could be a serious barrier in the way of any serious relationship because I’m seriously fucked-up and, you know, you always want to talk about everything else.” Jaye tightened her scarf, pressing her face into it. “I’m just saying.”
“What do the voices make you do?” Eric asked.
“Help people,” Jaye spat.
Eric started to laugh.
“It’s not funny!” Jaye cried. “They do! It’s terrible! They’re overriding my will! Left to my own devices I would be as mean as Attila the Hun’s evil lovechild!”
“You wouldn’t,” said Eric. “You’re a—”
"I am not a good person!" cried Jaye. "Aren't you listening?"
"You want to be a nice person," says Eric, "You just don’t have the guts to do it without someone else to force you."
Jaye was momentarily lost for words. "Well, if you want to be mean about it."
“Just being honest.”
“You honestly think I’m that afraid of…of...everything?”
“I wouldn’t have guessed you were a coward when I met you,” said Eric. “But if the shoe - ”
“It doesn't fit!” Jaye insisted.
“Prove it,” said Eric.
Goddamn, why’d he have to up and grow a backbone now? Jaye gagged slightly, cleared her throat, fiddled with her gloves, and then fixed her eyes on some far distance point in the snowstorm and blurted, “Eric, I love you, and I probably should tell you that more often, or, you know, ever, but I don't want to say it because caring about other people means they can hurt you. And I'm afraid of the voices partly because I think maybe I'm crazy but mostly because they make me keep doing kind things for other people, and it may become a habit, and being nice to other people gives them a chance to hurt you because you're all open and icky and vulnerable.” She paused to catch her breath. “Are you happy?”
“Are you?”
Jaye’s mouth twitched and twisted and would not, no matter how she worked at it, form an answer to the question. Too much honesty for one night. Too bad there wasn’t a stuffed penguin around to bully her. “Do we still have to break up?” she asked.
“I never wanted to break up,” said Eric.
Oh. Right, she’d been trying to preemptively break up with him because it was always so much easier to be the dumper than the dumpee. Maybe she should apologize for that too.
Eric pasted her with a snowball.
“Hey!” Jaye cried, brushing the snow off her coat
“Loser pays for the hotel?” Eric said.
Jaye scooped a handful of snow off a post office box and hurled it at Eric, and the two of them raced down the street throwing snowballs.
They were having so much fun that Jaye hardly noticed when she nearly knocked over a girl in a red knitted hat pulling a Radio Flyer wagon with her boyfriend. Maybe if the contents of the wagon – Randy’s taxidermied dog, with a blue kerchief and a guitar – hadn’t been covered by a sheet, she would have stopped.
The girl in the red hat watched in silence as Jaye caught up to Eric, and Eric tangled his bare fingers in her hair and they kissed. And then the girl in the red hat smiled up at her boyfriend, and pressed her mittened thumb against his gloved hand; and Chuck and the Piemaker walked back to the Pie Hole to give Randy back his dog.
Author:
osprey_archerBeta:
visualthinker11Fandoms: Wonderfalls and Pushing Daisies
Pairings: Jaye/Eric, with a splash of Olive/Randy and a touch of Ned/Chuck
Rating: PG, for cussing
Summary: Jaye, in an uncharacteristic burst of fellow-feeling, agreed to go on a road trip with Eric. Partway through, her habitual misanthropy firmly back in place, they end up at the Pie Hole - where Olive is trying to figure out is Randy has a hidden criminal life. What could possibly go wrong?
Seven days, six hours, and forty-two minutes into their road trip, Jaye and Eric stopped at the Pie Hole. It was nine o’clock at night, and the establishment was empty but for them.
Jaye slumped in one corner of the green booth, arms tight across her chest, glaring out the big round windows at passing headlights glinting off the snow. Eric sat across from her, leaning on the table, palms open, half-smiling.
Jaye hated that appealing smile. She wasn’t mad at Eric for anything specifically; but that ‘talk-to-me’ smile exemplified everything she was angry about.
The Pie Hole smelled sweetly of cooked fruit and good memories, but Jaye refused to bow to the manipulations of her olfactory senses. She clenched her fists and fulminated.
The waitress – a little blonde wearing a bright green mini-dress – stopped by their table with a couple of menus. “Coffee?” she said.
“Yes,” said Jaye.
“Me too,” said Eric.
“Lots of cream and sugar,” said Jaye.
“Ditto,” said Eric.
Jaye looked at him. He looked at her. Eye contact. “Decaf,” Jaye said, barely more than a whisper.
Eric wavered – wavered – dropped his eyes. He hated decaf even more than Jaye did. “Regular,” he said, defeated.
The blonde looked between them. Jaye scowled at her, and the blonde smiled extra big and clipped back to the kitchen on her green kitten heels.
“She was nice,” said Eric.
Jaye glared at the tabletop. Why had she ever agreed to a road trip? So much togetherness. So much commitment. She should have made Eric sleep in the bathtub as soon as he started rhapsodizing about waking up in each other’s arms, with the sunshine streaming through the threadbare motel curtains, staring into each other’s eyes…
The door chimed, and then there was a crash. Jaye looked up, startled, to see a mousy-looked man wrestling with a box almost half his size.
Eric, the good Samaritan, shot out of the booth. “Let me help you with that.”
Between the two of them they wrestled the enormous box into the booth. Jaye shrank from its enormous pink bow. The man shifted from foot to foot, his shoulders hunched, looking uncertainly from his box in their booth and the nearest table.
“Why don’t you sit with us?” said Eric.
The man’s shoulders relaxed marginally. He sat next to Jaye. Jaye gave Eric a death glare. See what helping people does? It makes weirdos sit at our table and interrupt our festival of mutual loathing.. Eric probably saw that as a plus.
The stranger cleared his throat. “I’m Randy Man,” he said.
“I’m Eric,” said Eric. “And this is Jaye,” he added, to Jaye’s annoyance, because that meant she had to stop glowering at the enormous, pink, glittery bow to give Randy Man at least the cursory courtesy of a nod.
She did, and noticed too late that he had his hand out to shake. He laughed nervously, rubbed his unshaken hand on his flannel shirt, and asked, “Do you come to the Pie Hole often?”
“No, we’re not from around here,” said Eric.
Randy Man nodded. He twisted his hands a little (Jaye, even in her funk, wondered why he was so nervous) and then tilted his head at the waitress. “That’s my girlfriend,” he whispered. “I brought her a present. Can I show you?”
Eric glanced at Jaye. She saw it peripherally; she denied him eye contact. “Sure,” Eric said.
She could hear his creeping disappointment. It pleased her – no, really it did – she wasn’t sorry.
Randy Man opened his box with a flourish. It contained a pair of taxidermied pink doves, with hearts and spangles and glitter, and Jaye had only a moment to start thinking Oh hell n-
—before the doves opened their beaks and, together, warbled “Mend the rift!”
Jaye shrieked and flung herself against the window.
Randy Man looked crushed.
“They’re…they’re…I’m sure your girlfriend will love them,” said Eric, trying to be supportive of Randy and give Jaye a disappointed look at the same time.
“Mend the rift! Mend the rift! Mend the rift!” the doves sang.
“They’re talking to me!” Jaye tried to explain. “I mean, I mean—” she unplastered herself from the window and sat again, and calmed herself with a swallow of coffee. “They speak to me. They really speak to me, like…like art, you know?”
“Really?” said Randy Man. He just about cringed with pleasure. “No one’s ever said that to me before.”
Jaye didn’t think that was at all surprising.
“Mostly, you know, people think it’s a little weird,” he said shyly. “Taxidermy, I mean. But don’t you think it’s nice to be able to preserve things you love?”
Jaye smiled weakly and sipped her coffee (cursed decaf!). In the old days, she would have been the first to think Randy was a weirdo, and start up her own photo album about what a weirdo he was, and spend spare moments comforting herself about how he was much more of a screw-up than she was—
“Mend the rift, mend the rift, mend the riiiiiiiiift!” crooned the doves.
—but now that she was bonafide crazy, it was hard to mock someone for nothing more than a strange hobby.
“Mend the rift!”
Maybe she could hide in the bathroom until the doves were gone. “Excuse me,” said Jaye, nudging Randy Man to move.
He would have. But the little blonde waitress had returned. “Hey Randy,” she said. She smiled enormously, but looked away before he could reply.
Maybe she wasn’t his girlfriend. Maybe Randy Man was a stalker who brought inappropriate and vaguely threatening (because they were dead) gifts.
But Randy-the-stalker would not be ignored. “I brought you a present, Olive,” he said.
The waitress – Olive – looked wary. “You did?”
He beamed and turned the box around so she could see the doves. “Do…do you like it?” he asked, bashful.
She squealed and clapped her hands, then caught herself. (So he wasn’t a stalker. Maybe she was just trying to be professional.) “Are you ready to order?” she asked, all business.
“I’ll have whatever you think is good, Olive,” said Randy, staring up at her like a puppy.
Olive looked away from him. Definitely a stalker, thought Jaye, with some satisfaction.
“Mend the rift!” sang the doves.
“Triple berry,” said Eric.
Damn it. Jaye had wanted the triple berry. “Georgia peach,” she said. “A la mode.”
“I’d like mine a la mode too,” said Eric.
Jaye clenched her jaw. She wasn’t willing to give up her ice cream – especially not when she’d already been forced to drink decaf.
“Okay!” said the waitress, once she’d stopped looking back and forth between Jaye and Eric. “Coming right up.”
She walked back behind the proscenium arch separating the kitchen and the dining room.
“Mend the rift! Mend the rift! Mend, mend, mend the rift!”
****
Olive Snook started slicing pies.
Randy had brought her a present. That was bad. The present was adorable, which was really bad. Randy, according to Emerson, might be involved in an international ivory smuggling ring that had just this Tuesday killed poor Saccharissa Hart who worked at the Papen County Museum of Natural History fluffing the fur of the taxidermied animals in the museums’ collection. The smugglers (Emerson thought) smuggled the ivory in the internal cavities of the taxidermied animals.
Which meant Randy was illegal ivory smuggling mule, which was really, really, really bad.
She should have just left him as the rebound guy. Things would have been so much simpler if she hadn’t fallen in love (as if she’d ever been good at not falling in love.)
Olive noticed, suddenly, that she had just stress-eaten through the pretty, bad-tempered girl’s slice of Georgia peach pie.
“Itty bitty,” Emerson growled.
Olive jumped. She’d forgotten she was wearing an earpiece, but she was: an earpiece and her bumblebee brooch which would transmit everything Randy said, just in case he confessed.
“Get your ass in there and start interrogatin’,” Emerson growled.
“Olive?” said Chuck. There was a tapping, a muffled “Is it working?”
“It’s working,” Olive said.
“I know this is hard, just go in there whenever you feel comfortable,” said Chuck. “Take as much time as you need.”
“Time is money,” said Emerson. “And money’s a-wastin’.”
“I’m going in,” said Olive.
She cut a new slice of Georgia peach, and then a slice of strawberry chocolate dream for Randy – and, after a hesitation, one for herself too. Make the interrogation subject feel a kinship with his interrogator.
Olive thought she’d just thrown up a little in her throat.
But she was a professional, so she scooped up the ice cream and bustled out to the table with the pie. “Triple berry a la mode, Georgia peach a la mode, and two strawberry chocolate dreams a la mode,” she said, setting the slices down and sitting down across from Randy. “I’m Olive Snook,” she told the newcomers.
“These are Eric and Jaye,” said Randy, pointing them out eagerly and levering half the slice of pie into his mouth. “Thif if goo,” he added.
“It’s nice to meet you,” said Eric. He had a nice smile – sweet.
The girl called Jaye glanced at Olive, then reared back.
Olive surreptitiously checked her teeth. Nothing to cause that reaction. Maybe this Jaye person read Olive’s dishonesty on her face. Maybe all the secrets were eating holes in her skin.
“Where do you come from?”
“Buffalo,” said Eric.
“Ooooh, do you know a lady with a muffin store?” asked Olive.
“Muffin Buffalo,” said Jaye. She looked up from the pie she had been dismantling. “She lives in my trailer park.”
Olive suddenly felt guilty about all that prize money. She chased it away with a sweet bite of pie. “I just love chocolate strawberry dream, don’t you?” she said to the air. “Ned bakes the best pies.”
“They’re delicious,” Eric agreed fervently. Olive’s opinion of him – already high because of his sweet smile and long lashes and the fact that he was exuding love for his girlfriend the way a ripe peach exudes fragrance – rose.
So did her waitressly instincts. She leaned over confidingly and said, “We have a special sampler try if you like. Five different types of pie on one try for only $12.99.”
“It’s great,” said Randy. He spewed crumbs in his misplaced enthusiasm.
Olive leaned around the doves so she could like Jaye straight in the face with a I’m-going-to-sell-you-soooooo-much-pie smile. Jaye stared at Olive glassy-eyed.
“Quit pussy-footing around,” Emerson barked in Olive’s ear. She jumped, nearly knocking over the doves.
“Oh, um,” she stammered. “Oh, I just get so excited thinking about the pie sampler. Of course, I feel kind of bad about being so flighty now…what with the murders in the paper… Randy, did you see the article about Saccharissa Hart?”
His fork clattered to his plate. Bad sign. Bad sign. “It’s terrible,” he said. “I met her at the, the Papen County Taxidermy Club. She was always nice to me even though, despite,” he shrugged his shoulders turtle-like, “you know.”
Olive did know. Her heart just about broke. She knew exactly what it was like to feel unlovable. Maybe the smugglers had just been nice to Randy, and he’d gone along just to have friends, and now that he had a girlfriend he wouldn’t need that anymore and they could keep him out of prison.
“Olive?” Chuck said, worried. “Olive, you need to keep him talking.”
“It was so sad,” Olive started, but she got cut off:
“Excuse me,” said Jaye. “Does your brooch play ABBA songs?”
Olive’s heart just about jumped out of her throat. “Not at all!” she cried. “My brooch has absolutely no connection with any auditory equipment of any kind. Especially not ABBA songs. I like to hum them, though. Maybe that’s what you heard. Mamma Mia! Here I go again! My my, how can I resist you?”
“You have a great voice!” said Eric.
Olive jumped from the table and started clearing plates and dancing at the same time. No, no, not hysterical at all. “Mamma Mia! Does it show again? My my, just how much I missed you!” She nearly dropped one of the plates, right onto the doves no less, the stains would have broken Randy’s heart. “Yes, I’ve been broken-hearted…through, since the day we parted…why why, did I ever let you go?”
And, because the song seemed a too-appropriate prediction of the future, because Randy was clapping adoringly, and because she’d gathered all the plates, Olive rushed back to the kitchen.
“I’m been smoked,” she hissed. “They aren’t from Buffalo, they’re spies, international ivory smuggling spies and—”
“We heard, we heard,” said Chuck, just at the outer edge of frazzled.
“Olive,” said Ned. “Emerson’s driving back as fast as he can. Chuck and I are staying here for the stakeout. See if you can get Randy to confess before Emerson gets there.”
A sound of shushing cloth – passing the microphone back and forth. “Olive,” said Chuck. “Olive? Can you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“There’s some of the homeopathic happy juice left,” Chuck said, in a rush. “On the top shelf, between the orange extract and the coriander. Give the spies a lot of it and they won’t be able—”
“No,” said Olive. “Just say NO. No more homeopathic drug muling for me.”
“But—” said Ned.
It was a sign of progress, she thought, that her heart didn’t soar at the concern in his voice. Of course that might just be because her heart was too busy beating like a prize thoroughbred pounding down the home stretch. “I’ll be fine,” she said.
She cut more pie for everyone, and headed back out to the table. Her heels drummed on the floor like footsteps of doom. No more late night horror marathons, she told herself firmly.
“More pie!” said Randy, pleased, as she whipped the pie around the doves in front of everyone.
“But we didn’t order…” said Eric.
“On the house!” Olive cried, stuffing a large proportion of her slice into her mouth. She chewed and chewed and chewed and chewed (all this chewing was eating into her nerve), swallowed, nearly choked, and coughed out, “So. Saccharissa Hart.”
“We saw it on the news this morning,” said Eric. “She was really young, wasn’t she?”
“Just out of college,” said Jaye. “No time to screw up her life yet. No, shut up.”
Olive stared at her. “Not you, not you,” said Jaye, scrunching up so she was hidden behind the doves.
Randy frowned at her. “It was awful sad,” he said, giving his turtle shrug and an awkward half-smile. “She had so many friends, you know, everyone was so sad…”
“She had a lot of friends?” said Olive. Another mammoth bite. She should have just brought out a whole pie. Eric had nearly finished his slice too, and at the rate things were going she’d have to go cut more pieces just when Randy was about to spill.
“Oh, yeah. Everyone at PCTC loved Saccharissa. Jody Marino, Ermengarde Appaloosa de la Cruz, John Escallion, Phoebe Felicia Fedocia DiAngelo, Shinwei Ting, Marcus Aurelius Cae—”
He’d go on forever. Olive loved hearing him list things. Emerson would probably have her head if he had to listen to a list of all the members of the PCTC and it made him late to his late-night date with Simone. “I heard she was kind of a sneaky person,” Olive interrupted. “Don’t you just hate that, people who won’t just come out and say what they mean?”
“No one ever says anything straight out,” agreed Eric. “They just sit there and expect you to guess.”
“Be direct,” said Olive, pounding the table with a fist. “No more lies, no more evasions, no more elliptical speeches that never quite tell you what you need to know.”
“I’m very liptical!” Jaye said.
Olive had a dawning bit of an idea about Jaye and Eric, but she squashed her matchmaker instincts firmly. Focus, Snook, focus.
“I don’t think Saccharissa was sneaky,” said Randy. “Some of her friends were. They always whispered together.”
“Anyone in particular?” Olive said, too eagerly. Randy frowned. “Emerson’s looking into the case,” she said.
“Olive!” Chuck scolded.
“Well, I have to—” Olive snapped, then remembered that no one else could hear Chuck and answering the air looked crazy. She giggled nervously. “I have to get myself another piece of pie, anyone else want…?”
“I’m tired of taking chances!” Jaye shouted.
“We do have some of the more ordinary pies, cherry and so forth,” said Olive, rattled. Maybe Jaye had Tourette’s. That would explain a lot.
“Once of Saccharissa’s friends was called Chance,” said Randy. “She wasn’t part of the PCTC though. Andy Chance? Candy?”
“No one’s making you take chances,” Eric told Jaye.
“Sandy,” suggested Ned. His voice was so loud it made her ear ache.
“Sandy?” asked Olive, her heart clogging her throat so she couldn’t swallow her last stress-bite of pie.
“Yes, they are,” said Jaye.
“Who is this ‘they’? ‘They’ do this, ‘they’ tell you that, who are these people?”
“Sandy,” agreed Randy. “It was before I met you,” he added hastily, misreading Olive’s discomfort. “Her boyfriend wanted – Sandy’s boyfriend, I mean – wanted to buy some of my animals, and he pretended he was interested in taxidermy but you could tell he was just in it for the money.”
“Alyosha Tolstoy,” breathed Ned. “He’s a Russian.”
“Can’t you tell me?” asked Eric.
“What was his name?” Olive whispered.
“No,” said Jaye.
“I don’t remember. I only met him once. I didn’t sell him anything, he wouldn’t have loved them.” Randy poked his fork into his piecrust. “You don’t think he killed her, do you? I never liked him. I kind of thought…”
“But we found some of Randy’s animals,” Ned crackled in Olive’s ear. “He must be lying, we found that dog with the kerchief and the guitar…”
“But wasn’t that dog his childhood pet?” said Chuck, fainter – farther from the microphone. “Ned, would you sell Digby? Even if someone offered you a million dollars?”
“Jaye, you have to trust me,” said Eric.
“It was stolen,” Olive hissed.
That brought the whole table up short. “What?”
“Your pet dog that you taxidermied. It was stolen, wasn’t it?”
“Well…” Randy scratched awkwardly at his ear. “Yes…how did you—?”
“By Alyosha?”
“Alyosha! That was his name. Alyosha Tolstoy. How did you know?”
“Yes!” yelled Olive. She leaped up (nearly knocked over the doves) and pranced around. “Yes! Yes!”
The whole table stared at her.
“Emerson thought maybe you were conspiring with the ivory smugglers but you’re cleared!” she shouted.
“Um?” said Randy.
“They were listening in on my bee brooch,” she explained, pirouetting. “I was bugged.” It seemed like a great joke. “Bugged!”
“You thought I was conspiring with ivory smugglers?” said Randy.
“Because they found some of your taxidermied animals with ivory inside them at the ivory smugglers warehouse that they’re staking out. But you’re cleared!” whooped Olive.
Her earpiece crackled with static. “He is!” Ned cried. “What about the others?”
Olive stopped mid-pirouette to stare at Eric and Jaye. Eric looked totally nonplussed. Jaye looked –
“Why didn’t you just ask me?” asked Randy.
Jaye had been saying random things all evening… “Well I couldn’t, I wanted to but Emerson said I should try a more indirect approach and after all it is his case—”
Jaye had been talking to the air – as if she were hearing things no one else could hear. Through an earpiece. An evil, ivory-smuggling earpiece.
“Oh hell no,” Olive whispered.
“Don’t you trust me?” Randy asked. He pushed his pie plate away. One of the taxidermied dove’s tails dragged through the leftover filling.
“Olive?” Chuck murmured in her ear, all worried. “Emerson will be there soon.”
“I’m…I’m going to go get everyone more pie,” said Olive. And she ran back to the kitchen.
***
Randy stared tragically at his cherry-smeared plate. He pushed a crumb of crust across the plate with his fork; the tine shrieked against the china.
Jaye shuddered. “It’s okay,” she said. “Dishonesty is the foundation of every happy relationship.”
Eric looked alarmed. “I don’t think that at all,” he said.
“It’s just,” choked Randy. “I thought I’d finally found someone who really loved me, you know?”
“Mend the rift, mend the rift, mend the rift,” the doves sang, dirge-like. Jaye figured it would break Randy’s heart if she wrung the stupid birds’ necks.
His heart was already broken, so it might be worth trying it.
But Jaye had been under the thrall of the voices for too long not to at least try to follow their advice. “Maybe…maybe she really does and she just made a mistake,” Jaye suggested. “I mean, obviously she shouldn’t have told you that she had you bugged.”
Randy Man honked into an oversize handkerchief. He sounded like a goose.
“She shouldn’t have bugged him in the first place,” said Eric. “Loving someone means you have to trust them.”
In this specific instance Jaye agreed about the bugging – if Olive hadn’t been wearing the stupid bee brooch if never would have told Jaye to “Take a chance on me!” and if it hadn’t she never would have said chance which never would have brought up Sandy Chance and then Olive and Randy would still have been happy, except they wouldn’t because Olive wasn’t happy because she thought Randy was a smuggler.
It just went to show. “You can’t trust people,” said Jaye. Eric shook his head. “So instead of trusting people you just don’t tell them that you distrust them and then everything is fine.”
Eric continued shaking his head, faster and faster. “I can’t believe this,” he said. “I can’t – you can’t – we can’t have a relationship like that, Jaye. Why can’t you trust me?”
“This isn’t about you!”
“You have to be able to trust people before you can love them!”
“And how many happy relationships have you had with this enlightened philosophy?” Jaye demanded.
“How many have you had with yours?” Eric shot back.
Jaye flushed. How many? Romantically? None. Non-romantically? Well, even her family— “At least I never got left at the altar!”
And with that Eric left her at the table. He grabbed his coat and stood and left, and the Pie Hole door swung behind him like a saloon door in a black-and-white movie.
Jaye dug her hands into her hair and tried to pretend she hadn’t just said that. “Mend the rift,” chirped the doves, menacing. “Mend, mend, mend the rift.”
A hand on her wrist. Jaye jumped. She’d forgotten Randy was there. “He got left at the altar?” Randy said, awed. “But he seems like such a nice guy.”
“Well,” Jaye stammered. “Not at the altar. Exactly. It was…” she fumbled. Somehow she didn’t want to explain the sordid details to Randy. “There was a miscommunication between him and his bride and – actually they did get married – things broke up on the honeymoon; she wasn’t the person he thought she was.”
“She lied to him?” said Randy.
“No,” said Jaye. “I guess he thought she was a nice person.” How had he ever thought that? Given that Heidi was such an all-around grade-A betraying-him-on-the-honeymoon—
Then again, Eric thought Jaye was a nice person. Which, well. Fool me twice, shame on me.
“Mend the rift! Mend the rift!”
“Goddamn it, what do you want me to do?” Jaye roared.
Randy cringed.
“Not you,” she said. “I mean, yes you. What would you like me to do? Do you want relationship advice? Not that I’m the best person to give it. I can give you great advice on lots of ways to destroy your relationship, though.”
He looked horrified. “Why would I want advice on how to destroy my relationship?”
“So you can avoid it?” Jaye suggested. “So you don’t make mistakes?”
He looked even more concerned. “You can’t have a relationship if you never make mistakes?”
“Mend the rift,” said the doves. “Mend the rift.”
“Nooo,” said Jaye. “You just…when you make a mistake…you have to mend the rift.”
“What?”
“Mend the rift!” she shouted. “Excuse me—” but he wasn’t moving; so she grabbed her coat and climbed onto the table and jumped on the floor, narrowly missing Olive Snook coming back with four more slices of pie.
“But you haven’t paid yet!” cried Olive.
“I’ll be back!” Jaye yelled. The Pie Hole door swung shut behind her.
***
Olive tried to feel philosophical. At least if Jaye and Eric left there was no way there were going to hold her at gunpoint to protect their hypothetical ivory smuggling gang.
On the other hand, she had to be all alone with Randy.
“More pie for us I guess,” said Olive, trying to smile as she sat down across from Randy. She stuffed most of a piece of shoo-fly into her mouth. “Key lime,” she said, pushing a slice over to him. “Your favorite.”
Randy looked at it miserably.
Olive wanted so badly just to dive into those other three slices of pie and not come up for air till she’d buried her stress in flaky crust and sugary fruit, but she knew Randy would think that pigging out just then would mean she didn’t take things seriously. So instead she said, “I’m sorry. That was a shitty thing of me to do.”
Randy’s mouth worked.
“Oh don’t cry, please don’t cry, I really can’t—” she shoveled kiwi coconut surprise into her mouth so fast she nearly choked on it. “I don’t see how you can be angry with me! We hardly know each other! How was I supposed to trust you?”
“I helped you smuggle your kidnappers who aren’t really your kidnappers into Canada,” said Randy, contorting himself into a pretzel of embarrassment. “How, why, why can’t you trust me after that?”
“That’s different! I don’t distrust you when it comes to things that are related to me, but that doesn’t mean I think you’re entirely trustworthy in every other area of your life! Look at Ned, I trusted Ned, and he’s helping Chuck pretend to be dead and he also admitted to maybe kind of not really killing Dwight Dixon! And then I helped him dispose of the evidence,” said Olive, realizing that this perhaps did not make her particularly trustworthy either, or possibly made her trustworthy in the wrong way.
Fortunately Randy seemed to be following a few sentences behind, so she steamrolled over her guilt. “The point is that you’re being unreasonable! You want me to just know that you wouldn’t take part in an ivory smuggling ring even though we only started kind of dating a few weeks ago! And—”
The door chimed. Olive expected Jaye and Eric, but no, random revelers—“We’re closed,” she informed them, shoving them out the door. (As they were ice hockey players, they were very surprised by her strength.) “Closed, closed, sorry, come back tomorrow, fresh pies every morning—” She slammed the door behind them, and switched the sign to Closed. “Closed,” she said, to Randy.
“You want me to leave?”
“Yes!”
“No!” he said.
She put her hands on her hips and glared at him. He ducked his head and applied himself to his key lime pie with dogged concentration. Olive tapped her foot and sighed gustily and Randy glanced at her over his shoulder and hunched over the pie more, and Olive sighed (sincerely this time) and slumped into the booth across from him.
“You have pie crust crumbs,” she said, and pointed to the corner of his mouth. He smiled uncertainly and wiped them off.
She waited. He finished the pie and scraped the remaining filling off the plate, then pushed it away and worried his hands together. “See…” he said. “See…well, see, it’s not that I could expect you to know I wouldn’t ever help kill elephants. But don’t you know I’d tell the truth if you just asked me?”
Olive’s mouth formed an O. “Well, I…” Well, of course he would. Randy was constitutionally incapable of lying, which was why he had so much trouble making friends, because lying was the number one social skill of friendship. “Usually when I ask people to tell me the truth they tell me that they can’t tell me.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know! They won’t tell me why they can’t tell me because that would be telling the truth! And it makes everyone underhanded and sneaky, and by everyone I mean me, and—” Olive groaned. “Oh, I’m so sorry, Randy. This evening was a stupid thing to do, stupid, stupid, stupid.”
“It’s okay,” said Randy. “I do stupid things all the time.”
“No, you do awkward things, and everyone acts like they’re stupid even though really everyone else are the stupid ones who never tell the truth because telling the truth is awkward.”
“But being awkward is bad.’
“No! Yes. I don’t know. At least if things are awkward you know everyone is being honest, and then you know where you stand with everyone…”
It occurred to her that although the Piemaker was awkward, he was also the very opposite of honest. She sat back, fingers laced across her stomach. The doves stared at her.
Randy leaned forward. “Did Ned lie to you?” he whispered.
“And Chuck and Emerson,” Olive whispered back.
“They don’t trust you?” Randy sounded scandalized.
“Well, I wouldn’t say…exactly…you know – I guess not.” Olive pressed her forehead into the palm of her hand. “You know what, they don’t, and they have no reason why not to. Why have I stayed here so long? Why why why—?”
“Why?” asked Randy.
“That was a rhetorical question,” sighed Olive. Dating someone with no social skills would undoubtedly be wearing, if he was going to demand that she answered all of her own rhetorical questions.
Then again, it was a good question. Why? Because she was in love with Ned. Which made sense until Chuck came. Why hang on after that? She was still in love with Ned. She liked Chuck, when she wasn’t feeling bitterly resentfully about the fact that Ned was in love with Chuck. She liked Emerson, and working with Emerson.
None of them would tell her why Chuck was pretending to be dead. They didn’t trust her; they hadn’t for ages; why keep hanging on?
The Pie Hole door chimed. Olive blinked herself out of her reverie in irritation. “We’re closed,” she said, not turning around.
“I think you might want to reconsider,” said Emerson.
Olive turned slowly. “Jaye and Eric?” she said.
They both looked at the ground. Emerson waved his gun so they moved forward. “I caught them trying to flee the scene,” he said.
Olive sat back in the booth with a moan.
***
As if Jaye’s night couldn’t get any worse. Two inanimate objects had harassed her; Eric hated her; and now she had been marched at gunpoint by an extremely ill-tempered PI right back to the Pie Hole, where Olive and Randy were looking at each other all googly-eyed.
“We were going to pay,” Jaye snapped at Olive. “You didn’t have to call in Mr. Trigger-happy.”
“He’s Emerson Cod,” Olive corrected.
“Hey!” said the PI – who must be Emerson (Emerson? Like the philosopher?) Cod. “If I was trigger-happy you’d be dead. Now tell us what your connection is to the ivory-smuggling ring that killed Saccharissa Hart.”
Oh for the love of God. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“The ivory-smuggling ring? Which was murdering zoo elephants in cold blood and smuggling their ivory from country to country in the taxidermied bodies of other zoo animals? They killed Saccharissa because she wanted a bigger cut. How about you? Is your cut big enough? Or are they going to cut you off for good?”
What the hell? “I work a shitty job in a shitty retail store that’s been shut down because of a recent robbery that left the place in state of total disarray,” said Jaye.
“She’s from Buffalo,” said Olive. “Right on the border with Canada. Good place for smuggling.”
Olive was in on this crazy conspiracy theory too? Emerson Cod might be just a lone nutball, but if Olive believed too they must had something that looked like proof.
“What makes you think Jaye is part of a smuggling ring?” Eric said. “Killing elephants? She would never do anything like that.”
Jaye’s heart just about melted. “Thanks, Eric,” she said.
Not that he was right, mind. If the money were good enough…
“Oh yeah?” said Olive. “Then who was she talking to all through dinner? All those nonsensical things she said? She was bugged, just like I was.”
Jaye started laughing. She couldn’t help it.
“Let me see your ears,” said Emerson, unsmiling.
“Now wait—” said Eric.
“No, it’s fine,” said Jaye. She lifted her hair.
There was a long pause as Emerson inspected her ears. “There’s nothing there,” he said. “But she could’ve taken it off when she ran out. Let me get my metal detector…”
But the metal detector beeped on nothing but a pocketful of change.
“Then who were you talking to?” demanded Olive. “Do you have Tourette’s? Or schizophrenia? Oh, I’m shouldn’t have asked that, I’m so sorry. But do you?”
“No,” said Jaye, stuffing her change back into her pocket.
“Then who were you talking to?” Olive asked.
Well, all in all she didn’t actually know, but that wasn’t a good answer. “Do we have to go into that?” said Jaye. “It’s…it’s complicated. I don’t think you really want the truth.”
“Goddamn it!” yelled Olive. “Everyone always says that to me! I want the truth and I want it now!”
“Okay,” Jaye squeaked. “Okay. I just don’t think you’re going to believe me and you’ll think I’m totally nuts and lock me up because it’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever heard – ”
“Try me,” said Emerson, dry as gin.
“Inanimate objects talk to me,” said Jaye. “Inanimate animal shaped objects give me orders. Your doves told me to ‘Mend the rift’ and your brooch wanted me to ‘Take a chance on me,’ which I guess meant take a chance on you, which I guess I’m doing, entirely against my will, although it is kind of intoxicating to finally be honest.”
A long, long pause.
“Jaye?” said Eric.
“I tried to tell you,” she said.
“Not the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard,” said Emerson.
“Really?” said Olive. “Because that’s one of the weirdest things I’ve ever heard. That weirder thing of yours, Emerson, is it somehow related to Ned and Chuck and their allergic not-touching thing and the fact that the three of you are always having those stupid little chats in the back while I’m running around pouring coffee?”
“No comment,” grunted Emerson.
Randy tugged at Olive’s elbow. Olive looked down at him, and blinked in surprise, as if she hadn’t noticed standing up and scowling. “Maybe this isn’t the best time to talk about you and your pathological secret-keeping,” she said to Emerson.
“No,” said Emerson. “It isn’t. We’ve got a whole different brand of crazy to deal with.”
“I’m not crazy!” Jaye shouted.
“You just said you hear voices,” Eric pointed out, a little strangled.
“I’ve told you that before,” she snapped.
“Always listen when your women tell you their neuroses,” said Emerson.
“So you believe me?” Jaye asked.
“Not really,” said Emerson. “But the police are rolling up the smuggling operation, and I’ve never heard your name before and as I’m the best PI in Papen County I figure I would have run across it if you were anyone important - " Jaye, despite everything, had to bite back indignation over being called unimportant - "and I have a date with Simone in fifteen minutes.”
“And Simone’s got him whipped,” said Olive.
“Shut your mouth, Itty-Bitty,” said Emerson, good-humored. He straightened his fuchsia tie and knocked snow off his hat. “You two pay for your pie,” he said. “Or I’ll track you all the way to Buffalo and eat you for breakfast.”
The bell over the door chimed as he left.
There was a long and awkward silence. Eric shuffled through his pockets for money to pay for the pie. (Jaye usually argued about who paid for what but right now she didn’t want to open up the avenue for him to speak to her about anything.) “So,” said Randy. “You hear messages from the other side?”
“From somewhere.”
“Because I’ve always wanted to talk to my pet dog,” he said. “You said you hear animals talk to you? Dead animals?”
“Inanimate animal-shaped things. I guess taxidermy counts? Didn’t someone say you’d taxidermied your dog?”
“Yeah,” Randy sighed. “But he got stolen.”
Olive squeezed his hand, and held out her free hand sternly to accept Eric’s money. “That’s too much,” she said. “I’m only charging you for the first slice of pie.”
“Considering we got held at gunpoint,” said Jaye, indignantly, but Eric silenced her with a scowl.
“Thanks for the pie,” he said. “But keep the extra.”
There was another awkward silence. Then Jaye turned and left, and she heard Eric say goodbye behind her, and the door chimed one last time as he walked out behind her.
They walked in silence for a while. The snow had stopped, the stars were cold, the cars were scarce, and Jaye couldn’t think of the words to cut the silence. She wished they’d parked closer to the Pie Hole. She wished the Pie Hole were closer to a Greyhound station so she could get the hell out of here and never have to face Eric again.
Eric – her savior – started the conversation. Eric – who drove her crazy – picked absolutely the worst topic. “Jaye,” he said. “About these voices.”
“It doesn’t matter anyway,” said Jaye, kicking the snow. “Given that we’re breaking up.”
“It does,” he insisted. “It does matter. Even if we’re breaking up. Are we breaking up?”
She couldn’t look at him. “Well, duh,” she said, and speeded up.
She didn’t realize that he wasn’t walking with her until the snowball connected with her shoulder. “Hey!”
“Why are we breaking up?” he asked.
“Because I’m crazy?” said Jaye. “And evil. Let’s not forget evil.”
“You aren’t evil,” said Eric. “You’re a good person.”
“I'm not - okay, fine. Fine then. There’s still the crazy,” said Jaye. “You never know when a kitschy teddy bear key chain will tell me I need to feed you to a killer whale.”
That merited a tiny pause. “I don’t care,” said Eric. “Because—”
“Because you don’t believe me.”
“Because I love you, and—”
“That’s actually not enough to overcome schizophrenia,” said Jaye. “Just FYI.”
“—and when I see any sign that you’re out of touch with reality I’ll tell you, but at the moment I think you’re using the voices as an excuse because you’re too damn chicken to love me.”
“I am not! Chicken! I mean. I do—” Oh God, she couldn’t say it. “Why don’t you think I love you? Aside from all of the incredibly unloving things I do, like that thing about Heidi, which I didn’t mean – I mean I did mean it – but not in a mean way – you’re the one who’s so big into trust, why can’t you just trust that—” I do love you. No, couldn’t say it. She could barely believe she’d thought it. “I’m really sorry, Eric.”
“For what?” Eric looked like the world’s saddest puppy.
“Um,” she said. “Can I get back you on that? Because I feel like compiling the list of things I’m sorry for might take a couple decades and possibly an album of emo power ballads. And I’m not very musical. I used to make Aaron cry on long car trips by singing in his ear.” Eric looked unconvinced. Jaye began to feel panicked. Talking was such a bad habit. Why couldn’t she break it? “I’m just sorry. Insert anything you think I should be sorry for here.”
“I don’t think you should be sorry for anything.”
“Fine then.” A car swooped by, its headlights glittering on the falling snow. “Then let’s get back to the crazy. Every time I bring up the fact that my life is being arranged by voices inside my head you change the subject, and I feel like that could be a serious barrier in the way of any serious relationship because I’m seriously fucked-up and, you know, you always want to talk about everything else.” Jaye tightened her scarf, pressing her face into it. “I’m just saying.”
“What do the voices make you do?” Eric asked.
“Help people,” Jaye spat.
Eric started to laugh.
“It’s not funny!” Jaye cried. “They do! It’s terrible! They’re overriding my will! Left to my own devices I would be as mean as Attila the Hun’s evil lovechild!”
“You wouldn’t,” said Eric. “You’re a—”
"I am not a good person!" cried Jaye. "Aren't you listening?"
"You want to be a nice person," says Eric, "You just don’t have the guts to do it without someone else to force you."
Jaye was momentarily lost for words. "Well, if you want to be mean about it."
“Just being honest.”
“You honestly think I’m that afraid of…of...everything?”
“I wouldn’t have guessed you were a coward when I met you,” said Eric. “But if the shoe - ”
“It doesn't fit!” Jaye insisted.
“Prove it,” said Eric.
Goddamn, why’d he have to up and grow a backbone now? Jaye gagged slightly, cleared her throat, fiddled with her gloves, and then fixed her eyes on some far distance point in the snowstorm and blurted, “Eric, I love you, and I probably should tell you that more often, or, you know, ever, but I don't want to say it because caring about other people means they can hurt you. And I'm afraid of the voices partly because I think maybe I'm crazy but mostly because they make me keep doing kind things for other people, and it may become a habit, and being nice to other people gives them a chance to hurt you because you're all open and icky and vulnerable.” She paused to catch her breath. “Are you happy?”
“Are you?”
Jaye’s mouth twitched and twisted and would not, no matter how she worked at it, form an answer to the question. Too much honesty for one night. Too bad there wasn’t a stuffed penguin around to bully her. “Do we still have to break up?” she asked.
“I never wanted to break up,” said Eric.
Oh. Right, she’d been trying to preemptively break up with him because it was always so much easier to be the dumper than the dumpee. Maybe she should apologize for that too.
Eric pasted her with a snowball.
“Hey!” Jaye cried, brushing the snow off her coat
“Loser pays for the hotel?” Eric said.
Jaye scooped a handful of snow off a post office box and hurled it at Eric, and the two of them raced down the street throwing snowballs.
They were having so much fun that Jaye hardly noticed when she nearly knocked over a girl in a red knitted hat pulling a Radio Flyer wagon with her boyfriend. Maybe if the contents of the wagon – Randy’s taxidermied dog, with a blue kerchief and a guitar – hadn’t been covered by a sheet, she would have stopped.
The girl in the red hat watched in silence as Jaye caught up to Eric, and Eric tangled his bare fingers in her hair and they kissed. And then the girl in the red hat smiled up at her boyfriend, and pressed her mittened thumb against his gloved hand; and Chuck and the Piemaker walked back to the Pie Hole to give Randy back his dog.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-11-10 09:34 pm (UTC)I really love Olive's character and agree with her that people should just quit keeping secrets and tell her stuff already! I'd hate for other people's attitudes and problems to mess up her (adorable) relationship with Randy, so thanks for dealing with that here.
Also, I really liked the Jaye/Eric resolution of snowball fights and kissing!
I will probably bookmark this and rec it out to a few friends, great fic!
no subject
Date: 2009-11-11 05:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-10 11:20 pm (UTC)Heeee! She is like a sawed-off shotgun of secrets that could go off at any minute!
no subject
Date: 2009-11-11 01:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-11 05:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-11 05:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-12 12:30 am (UTC)Anyway, I thought it was super entertaining and really, really well-written. Fic that can entertains someone who doesn't know the fandom must be pretty good, right?
no subject
Date: 2009-11-12 09:47 am (UTC)You haven't seen either Pushing Daisies or Wonderfalls? But...but they're awesome! And not too long, because they were both prematurely canceled, because tragically many people didn't notice they were awesome.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-12 11:07 am (UTC)It was totally easy to keep the characters apart! They were all very clear characters. The only thing I don't know, of course, is all their backstories, but within the context of this story, they were very distinct and easy to know.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-08 07:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-08 09:42 pm (UTC)