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  “I’m loving that Chatter, Margaret,” he said. “Are they still howling about food?”

  The first shot had been fired that Monday, when a newcomer to the city called in to complain about the paucity of salads in local restaurants.

  Dear Chatter: Only in Selby does a vegetable plate include macaroni and cheese and mashed potatoes with gravy. No wonder we have so many doctors in this town—you’re all doing a great job giving them business. Spinach salad, anyone?

  Dear Chatter: Y’all don’t like the food down here? Just go on back to New Jersey or wherever you come from. God gave man fire to cook. Cows eat raw greens. I went to Atlanta and saw “Cats” last week, and if that’s Yankee entertainment, well then, y’all can just have it because it was just about the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen.

  Dear Chatter: I’ve got a bucket of used chewing gum. Has anybody got any use for it? It’s gotta be good for something.

  “I was wondering,” Margaret said. “Should I keep the ‘y’alls’ or write ‘you all’?”

  “Keep it raw and real,” he answered, “just like you’re doing. That’s the charm of the column.”

  “You don’t think it parodies the natives?”

  “What’s not to parody?”

  “Be nice,” she said.

  “Be real,” he countered.

  Randy seemed to have an addiction for throwing the final volley in a conversation, and though everyone else in the newsroom would quickly disengage from him with a “Yes, sir,” a verbal shutting of a door on his face, Margaret would often counter his remarks because she thought that someone had to tame and corral this man, and the Southerners were too polite to do so. Randy seemed out of control, brilliant but wild and arrogant, and Margaret enjoyed watching him exhaust his oral firearm, shot by shot, until the only bullet he had left was an “Okay, then” that would humbly trickle from his lips.

  But not now, Margaret thought. At this very minute, she had a cat stranded more than thirty feet up a sweet gum tree in her backyard on Kimes Place, and she wanted to quickly key in the last of the typesetting commands, send her column to the copy desk for editing, run by Kroger for gingerroot and fennel bulbs, then get home and try, again, to coax him down.

  “Yes, sir,” she said to Randy.

  Two

  Dear Chatter: I don’t believe one word of that story in the Reflector that talked about pig guts bein’ just like human guts. Maybe your editors need to read the Bible more. God created Adam, and it’s Adam’s job to eat that pig. Remember that.

  Dear Chatter: I just wanna say thanks to the man who told me I left my eggs on top of my car at FoodMax. God bless you. Those eggs are expensive.

  Suzanne opened the door to find John David swinging a grease-spotted white bag of Krystal hamburgers. “I’m here to tempt you, Suzanne,” he said. “How ’bout an early lunch?”

  Suzanne looked at her silver Bulgari watch, which she had bought two weeks earlier at Neiman Marcus in Atlanta. “It’s ten-forty, John David. We can’t eat lunch right now.”

  “But it’s not too early for a highball, is it, Suzanne?” he asked, raising his eyebrows and looking at the glass in her hand.

  “I’m working extra hard, you know that, John David. This house has got to be perfect for Boone’s office Christmas party, and I’m copin’ the best way I can.”

  “And we’re gonna eat outside,” he said. “On the patio.”

  “No, John David, we’re not eating outside. They’ll see us.”

  “I know.”

  Suzanne already had started back toward the kitchen.

  “I want mine in a Waterford tumbler just like yours,” he yelled after her. “And get us some napkins, too. You know how messy Krystals are.”

  John David had shown up almost daily since the roof work began on the addition next door. For the past seven days, three young men with broad, tanned backs had been working to shingle the steep, plywood slopes of what would soon be the largest home in Red Hill Plantation, ten thousand square feet. With the addition of the third story, the house was so tall it required a crane, which cast a shadow that throughout the day crept across Suzanne’s property like the hour hand of a clock.

  The tag on the truck indicated the crew had come from Marietta, and it was obvious this was their first Selby job. The unwritten rule for service workers in Selby, even the young men who cut the grass, was that they wear a shirt on the job.

  Suzanne and John David sat on the patio, eating the burgers and drinking vodka and ice from their tumblers.

  “I don’t care what you say, John David, I think it’s awful.”

  “If that’s awful then you’ve got problems, girl.”

  “I’m gonna call the number on that truck and complain.”

  “Suzanne, if those roofers put their shirts back on I’m leavin’, and you’re gonna be here to drink this luscious Ketel One vodka all by yourself.”

  He took a drink. “Look at those backs, Suzanne. Brown and hot! Don’t you think they look like loaves of bread fresh outta the oven?”

  “I think it’s tacky, John David.”

  “I’ll bet you butter would melt on those backs.”

  The roofer John David had named Sven looked down, and John David gave a wave.

  “Y’all are doin’ great work up there!” he shouted, holding his glass in the air in a toast. “Keep it up!”

  He turned toward Suzanne. “I want Mr. Mediterranean,” he said. “You can have Sven.”

  “John David!”

  “Oh don’t get your panties in a wad, Suzanne.”

  “John David,” she said, “we gotta talk about the master bath and that tub. You gotta find me a claw-foot tub with Jacuzzi jets.”

  “What do you want a Jacuzzi for, Suzanne? You’re too uptight for a Jacuzzi.”

  “There’s gotta be a way to get one.”

  John David took a drink of his vodka. “I’ve told you there’s no way to hook up a freestanding tub to Jacuzzi jets, there’s just no way,” he said, his eyes focused on the roof. “Besides, Jacuzzis are tacky. When are you gonna learn that?”

  John David popped the last corner of a Krystal burger in his mouth and followed it down with a wash of vodka. “Did you get the wallpaper up in the foyer?” he asked.

  “Ronnie didn’t show up today,” Suzanne said. “He said his momma was havin’ a coughing fit, and that he might could do it tomorrow. I do not want to sleep another night in this house with that old wallpaper.”

  “It’s not even a year old, Suzanne.”

  “But it’s not right, John David. It’s never been right since the day it went up.”

  John David had seen this before; Suzanne would pick a new bed or painting or carpeting or wallpaper and be satisfied with it until she saw something she liked better in a catalog or store or someone else’s house. When she decided it was time to replace something, the older version immediately repulsed her, and the once-cherished item suddenly became as undesirable as a stinking vagrant asleep on the front porch.

  John David had anticipated this passionate and urgent desire to redecorate, fueled, in part, by the castle rising next door. (Until the renovation of this house, Suzanne’s had been the largest in the subdivision.) There also was the feature in Metropolitan Home of her new next-door neighbors from California. The San Francisco row house with wooden floors was sparsely decorated with Persian rugs, Mexican antiques, and a combination of Louis XIV and Bauhaus-inspired furniture. John David’s favorite feature was the collection of different-sized, perfectly round, Calder-red rugs whimsically placed around the house. It looked as if a giant had cut his finger and bled in random spots.

  John David was inspired, Suzanne was repulsed, and she dreaded the outcome of the renovation taking place in the California couple’s new home in Red Hill Plantation. She was not alone. John David, who decorated most of the homes in Red Hill, had noticed that the women of the north Selby neighborhood had been slowing down as they passed the house in their Suburbans and BMWs and Me
rcedeses, scrutinizing the fruits of demolition piled in front—splintered wood, appliances, shower stalls, tile, carpeting, and Sheetrock broken into pieces like giant soda crackers. Passing by one day in her black Lexus sedan, Suzanne was moved to the point that she felt compelled to call John David.

  “You are not gonna believe what’s layin’ outside Claire Penrose’s old house,” she told him. “All those gorgeous window treatments piled up there like dirty clothes. Just tossed out with the trash!” (Hidden by the dark of the following night, John David and his housemate, Terrance, snatched them all up and stowed them in his garage.)

  Unbeknownst to Suzanne and his other clients, John David had grown weary of the Southern, let’s-pretend-we’re-in-England decor that had paid his bills for so long, and Lord help the next woman who asked him to find another oversized gilt mirror, or to paint another dining room red, or to commission one more portrait of the lady of the house, or to purchase one more lamp with a monkey or pineapple on it. John David had begged Suzanne to let him loose on her house. He’d had a vision of something he called Spouthern, a combative, Spartan-Southern elegance that mixed Scandinavian minimalism with French antique furniture and gold and floral accents. He’d pictured Suzanne’s mahogany French-Colonial bed flanked by cylindrical, brushed-chrome nightstands.

  Yet she and her peers would not budge. No one dared stray from the Southern School, adding ornate to the already ornate, layer upon layer of tassels and pillows and rugs and brass and gold-leaf until the home felt like a Baroque chandelier.

  After reading the feature in Metropolitan Home, Suzanne had Virgil, her hired man, install two new weather vanes on the garage roof. She added gold bows to the front-porch topiaries and hung another set of framed botanical prints in the foyer. She found two life-size brass pineapples at Big Peach Antiques and set them on each side of the parlor entrance.

  John David refilled his tumbler with vodka. “If you wanna get your home in Selby Magazine, you gotta get brave,” he said. “You’re puttin’ on lipstick, Suzanne, when you need plastic surgery. Let me put those chrome cabinets in the kitchen.”

  “You know Boone won’t go for that, John David. He doesn’t like that modern look.”

  “Oh, Boone can go to hell.”

  “John David!”

  “But you suck his little Boonie enough and he’ll let you do whatever you want.”

  “John David!”

  As her laughter melted away, Suzanne lay her head back and slowly swayed it back and forth with eyes closed, reminding John David of Ray Charles. She breathed in then exhaled sharply, as if to wake herself from a trance.

  “I gotta get dinner thawed, John David.”

  “What casserole are we havin’ tonight?” he asked.

  The biggest fund-raiser for the Selby/Perry County Museum of Arts and Sciences was the frozen casserole sale held every September. Suzanne would buy thirty casseroles, the maximum number allowed. She then would give money to John David and Virgil to buy thirty more apiece, and all of these would go into the deep freeze in the garage, where they would hibernate until pulled out, then thawed, microwaved, and paired with a tossed green salad from a bag.

  “Boone likes the one with noodles and cream cheese,” she said. “Maybe I’ve got another one of those left.”

  John David stood up from the table. “None of that cat vomit for me, Suzanne. I gotta go.”

  “Are we still goin’ to Atlanta tomorrow?”

  “Why?”

  “You said you’d take me to the merchandise mart to find that lamp.”

  “I’m way too busy tomorrow, Suzanne.”

  “John David, you promised.”

  “Suzanne, I gotta spend all day with Mona Beckner.”

  “Mona Beckner!”

  “You got a problem with Mona?”

  “Is she doin’ that dining room over? ’Cause I could have told her beforehand you just don’t paint a dining room yellow. That’s tacky, anybody knows that.”

  “I’m doin’ the master bath.”

  “Doin’ what?”

  “Doin’ it all. They’re even gonna have a steam shower.”

  Suzanne, still sitting, poured herself another finger of vodka.

  “What kinda countertops is she gonna have? Granite?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  John David pulled his keys from his pocket and started dropping them from hand to hand, back and forth, as someone plays with a Slinky. He had keys to some twenty upscale Selby homes, including Suzanne’s, and they occupied a ring as big around as an orange.

  “I gotta go,” he said. “Where’s that throw pillow you want me to take back to Jeppeson’s?

  “Are you sure I don’t need it?”

  “I told you what I think, Suzanne. You need to work a fourth color into that living room, and that blue pillow is perfect.”

  “But it’s just so plain, John David. Can’t you find one with fringe or tassels or somethin’?”

  “Damnit, Suzanne, not everything in the house has got to look like Cinderella’s ball gown.”

  “I just don’t think Boone’ll like it.”

  “That’s bullshit, Suzanne. Boone doesn’t care a thing about this house.”

  “You don’t have to get ugly with me, John David! I’m just askin’ for tassels and fringe.”

  She stood up to walk him to the front door. Unlike the plumber and the exterminator and the other service workers, John David always used his clients’ front doors. He would park his Toyota truck in the driveway instead of the street and was even known to pull into the garage if there was a space.

  Having watched his truck disappear around the bend of Red Hill Drive, Suzanne walked into the foyer, shut the door, and leaned back against it. When she opened her eyes, she flipped on the chandelier overhead and glared at the walls, which had been stripped of all adornment in preparation for the project. Had Ronnie Dipson shown up as promised, these would now be covered by a Schweitzer print of magnolia blossoms on vanilla background, ninety-eight dollars a roll.

  Suzanne walked up to the wall and felt for a seam. With a red-painted fingernail she picked at the line until she pried an edge loose. Suzanne then pulled, expecting to remove from the wall a large scroll of old paper, but instead tore off a disappointing two-inch scrap. She continued to pick at this unwanted scab on her house, piece after tiny piece, until a pile of paper formed at her feet.

  ***

  “Do you like your dinner?” Suzanne asked.

  Boone wiped the corner of his mouth with a cotton napkin, golden fleur-de-lis on a burgundy background.

  “You already asked me that, Suzanne. Yes, the dinner’s fine.”

  They each sat at an end of the dining room table, separated by ten feet of polished mahogany that held a long, scarlet silk runner, two lit candles in sterling-silver holders, and a porcelain serving dish filled with something named Tokyo Surprise, which was a mixture of soba noodles, canned water chestnuts, baby corn, cubes of chicken, and cream of mushroom soup. Suzanne had found the casserole on the table marked “foreign.” She had wanted to avoid this table but was late arriving at the sale, and most of the traditional fare had already been sold. Not all of it was awful, however; Boone had enjoyed the dish named Mount Olympus that she served one day the previous week.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m not sure I like it. What kinda spaghetti is this?”

  “You made it, Suzanne. Don’t you know?”

  “Maybe I put in a wrong ingredient or somethin’.”

  Boone rarely finished a meal in less than forty-five minutes. To slow herself down, so she would finish after him, Suzanne would watch her husband and try to match his pace. He cut his food in the steady, methodical manner one would expect from a neurosurgeon, setting the knife down on the edge of the plate—clink—after every cut. Thanks to vigorous scrubbings each day at the hospital, Boone’s hands were immaculate and pale pink, the color of cooked salmon. His fingernails were trimmed and filed into perfect crescent m
oons. Boone engaged in no activity that would endanger his hands. He would not pick up a hammer or try to open an obstinate jar of pickles.

  “I see the dogs of Red Hill are at it again,” he said, setting down his goblet of water. “Didn’t you call the pound?”

  “Are they doin’ it again?” she asked.

  “There’s another spot down by the mailbox, Suzanne. I don’t see how you could miss it.”

  It seemed as if every house in Red Hill Plantation had one or two purebred hunting dogs, and shortly after moving to this part of town, Suzanne discovered that few people actually trained or disciplined these dogs, let alone hunted with them, so they roamed in packs, like bored teenagers in a mall, through the curvy streets and cul-de-sacs of Red Hill Plantation.

  A group of Labradors had begun using Suzanne and Boone’s front yard as a bathroom. The turds were bad enough, but what bothered Boone even more were the more permanent, random yellow stains from the urine. “It looks like we don’t take pride in ourselves, Suzanne,” he had said. “Please find a way to get rid of those dogs.”

  Obviously, she could not call animal control; these creatures belonged to her neighbors. After calling Chatter to leave a complaint, Suzanne tried simple verbal intimidation at first. Then, when no one was looking, she would pelt them with the brick samples she’d been carrying around in the trunk of her Lexus. Exasperated, Suzanne finally placed behind the potted dogwood topiary a tastefully aged-and-green copper bucket that held squirt guns filled with gasoline or Tabasco sauce. The problem was, the dogs would saunter in, do their business, and be on their way before she could even get to the front door.