“Oh?” Bertie asked.
“We were kicked out,” Chester muttered.
“And banned,” Willie said.
“Why?” Bertie asked.
Willie mumbled.
“I’m sorry, could you say that again?” Bertie asked with extra sugar on top.
“We were throwing balls of yarn at each other and broke a display stand.”
Bathin barked out a laugh from where he stood next to the sunglasses display.
“There are other coffee shops in town,” I said.
“Banned.” Chester nodded.
“Same reason?” Bertie asked.
“Some variation of it, yes,” Willie said. “The details aren’t important.”
“Then you have two choices.” I gave them each a hard look. “You can either move your club meeting times to different days so you can both use this space and enjoy the last coffee and pastries available to you in this town, or you can both move your operations to a different space.”
“But we were here first,” Willie said. “We should get to keep our time, keep our place, and they should just get out of our mohair for once.”
“Is that a possibility, Chester?” I asked.
“We always meet at nine o’clock,” she grouched. “Some of us have things to do later in the day.”
“No one wants to hear about your genealogy research, Chester. Find somewhere else to meet. Like the library.”
“Can’t have food and drink there. Crocheters need coffee too. And we tip higher.”
“You don’t even drink coffee. You use the same tea bag and reload hot water for four hours.”
“Like you know anything. I drink the chai tea now, so get off my feathers, Wilbur.”
“Oh, shove off, Cheater.”
“I’m not going to stand here all day, ladies,” I said. “Make a choice. Either you change the day the C.O.C.K.s meet up, or you change the time the K.I.N.K.s get together.”
They glared at each other for long enough, even their gang members behind them got tired of waiting and started working on their projects again, needles and hooks and fingers and thread.
Seriously, why couldn’t they get along?
“I could move our bowling time to later in the day on Friday,” Willie offered. “You could get all the C.O.C.K. you needed in the morning and have time for a nice nap before we met up with the girls.”
Chester was still frowning, her face pinched and doughy, but the offer seemed to ease her scowl, though it would take an iron and steam to tell. “You said bowling is sacred time. You haven’t changed our alley time in the last twelve years.”
“Fourteen.”
“So Friday. I could do C.O.C.K. andballs?”
“What more could a woman ask for?” Willie said with a smile.
Chester snorted. “All right, then. Fine. You can have Thursdays. It was interfering with my hair appointments anyway.”
