He scrubbed his fork. Hadn’t much felt like eating tonight, but he’d done it anyway. Seemed like something that would’ve been on Anna Grace’s schedule for him.
“Maybe it’s time you figure out what she needs instead of what she wants.” The sound of pins getting bowled over echoed through the phone.
“Anything she needs, she goes out and gets for herself.” He dried the fork, then dropped it into his silverware drawer, right in the spot in his silverware holder labeledforks.
“Maybe she doesn’t know what she needs. Flo, you go on and pass me by. Still gonna kick your hiney even without this frame.” Mamie lowered her voice again. “So tell me, sugarplum, you want to be her hero?”
He didn’t answer.
He was too busy trying to piece together how he was supposed to be smarter than Anna Grace to figure out what she didn’t know she needed.
Conundrum, that’s what it was.
“If you can’t say yes to that, I reckon you ain’t cut out to be that hero she needs.”
He was thinking she might be right about that. Chapped him in places he didn’t like being chapped. “What’s she need, Mamie?”
“What do you need?”
More pinsplink-plunked. Jackson felt like the whole bowling alley was lined up in his chest, the old Misses taking shots at knocking down his heart. “I need her to love me back,” he said, sounding as pathetic and unmanly as every man inlove he’d ever met.
“Oh, sugarplum, she does. You trust old Mamie on this one. She does.”
“Not so sure about that.”
“Ophelia, this boy ain’t got the sense God gave a plucked rooster when it comes to women. You go on and give him a talkin’ to before he breaks my heart.”
Jackson went back to the sink of soapy water. Miss O’s deep voice came on the line. “How far’d your mamie get with you, hon?”
“’Bout run me up the wall talking in riddles.”
“Alrighty, then, listen on up. Miss O’s gonna tell you a secret.”
If she gave him her recipe for Miss O’s Magic Mallow-bomb shots, he might have to accidentally on purpose drop his phone in the water. “Hanging on your every word, Miss O.”
“You want her, you make her number one. Above your dog, above your job, above yourself. You can do that, you’re worthy of her. If not, you don’t love her enough to keep on bothering her. That clear enough for you, honey pie?”
It was clear.
He didn’t know whether it helped, but it was clear.
The RMC building was cold.Not heater-not-running-right cold. With the unseasonably warm December, the heater wasn’t necessary.
It was more like an unwelcome chilly, and Anna couldn’t tell where the chill was coming from.
Could’ve been the odd looks that she may or may not have imagined from her coworkers as she walked to Shirley’s office at 7:56 a.m.
Could’ve been the steel-blue walls, walls that two weeks ago had been a warm, welcoming shade that soothed Anna’s soul but today threatened to suck her joy meter empty.
Or it could’ve been fear.
Plain, simple fear that no matter what she did, no matter how hard she worked on this contract, the government might terminate her own contract in as few as three short months.
What incentive would RMC have to find her a new position in the company?
What incentive would Corporate have to keep this branch open?
How would she finish her damn degree and get a stupid technical jobthen?
