Your Chariot Awaits

The thought hit me again that what I knew about Jerry was like the blurb on the back cover of a book: enough to intrigue, not enough to give away the whole story.

By the time we got up near Wal-Mart, where the traffic was the heaviest, I knew how the long-tailed cat in a roomful of rocking chairs feels.

At my level of sixtyish, boyfriend seems a much too adolescent term, but I suppose it’s as accurate as any.

Sometimes I think Jo deserves a medal for her sunny attitude. Sometimes I’d like to turn her upside down and shake her and yell, “There’s a bad side to everything. How come you can’t ever see it?”

“Drive off?” I considered the scenario with dismay. “It’s not a particularly heroic-sounding plan.”

“You know the old saying. He who sleuths and runs away, lives to sleuth another day. You want to be a dead hero or a live sleuth?”

It was one of those do-everything-but-prophesy-the-future kind of phone, and I knew he kept a lot of information on it.

“Did you name the boat the Miss Nora?”
“No, the old guy who owned it before me named her.” He laughed. “Not some love of his life, if that’s what you’re thinking. Miss Nora was his cat. Meanest, worst-tempered cat you ever saw. She’d growl when you fed her. Had a rigid no-purr policy.”