"You really have," Lola said through laughter. "That's a very nice offer, young man, but I'm afraid I'm a little old for you. I may have to stick with the statue contests."
"I'm Noah," the boy offered, and, with great certainty, added, "No one is too old for ice cream."
"Well, that's true. Is there a good place for ice cream around here?" Sam asked. "I'm Sam. This is Lola."
"There's an ice cream parlor next to the movie theatre," Noah said with great authority. "A jerk works there."
Lola had forgotten how random conversations with small children could be. Fighting down another laugh and trying to smooth the sound of it out of her voice, she said, "That's unfortunate. Perhaps your mother should complain to the management? Is he only a jerk to you?"
"No, not that kind of jerk. A Coke jerk? He makes ice cream sodas, oh asodajerk!" The kid simultaneously lit up at remembering the right word, and cringed at himself for having forgotten it in the first place. He looked, Lola thought, like Calvin from the old cartoon strips, defined by his emotive ability.
Aside from that, though, was the astonishing news that Virtue had an ice cream parlor bold enough to employ a soda jerk. "I'll be da—rned," she said, becoming mindful of the small child halfway through the word. Noah looked at her like he knew perfectly well she'd been going to saydamned, but he didn't call her on it, and Lola went on with, "I think the last soda fountain in Virtue closed when I was about nine. That's wonderful. Next to the movie theatre, you said?"
"Yeah, but…" The little boy eyed her suspiciously. "I thought you said you didn't live here."
Sam coughed on a laugh, and Lola tried to remain solemn. "I don't, but I did grow up here."
"Oh! Did you know Old Miss Brannigan? She was my great-great-aunt. I live at her house now. They said she was really old before she died. Like you, I guess."
"Doris Brannigan was at least twenty years older than I am," Lola said dryly. "It's not polite to comment on peoples' ages, Noah."
He squinted. "People comment on my age all the time."
Lola, flummoxed, looked at Sam, who was doing a terrible job of not laughing at the forthright little boy. "The older you get, the less polite it becomes. But you might be right and people just shouldn't comment at all."
Noah sighed deeply. "There are a lot of rules about life, aren't there?"
"There are," Sam agreed solemnly. "But there are some good things, too. Like the fact that I'm going to take Lola here over for an ice cream soda now, and I'm going to tell the soda jerk there that I'm paying for one in advance for one Noah—Brannigan?—whenever he wants to come by and have it, as thanks for letting us know the parlor is there."
The little boy's eyes went round and he managed to squeak, "Thank you!" before rushing down the sidewalk and tearing up toward the massage therapy clinic, bellowing, "MOOOOOM!MOOOOMMMM!!!!Mr. Sam is gonna buy me a SODA!!!!" as he went.
Lola threw her head back and laughed, nearly losing her hat in the process. "I think you've got a friend for life, now. You were wonderful with him. Your foster kids were very lucky."
"What a character," Sam said through his own smiles. "He must keep his parents on their toes. Well, may I buy you an ice cream soda? If I remember our teen years, canoodling and whispering secrets over a diner meal was actually a pretty good way to talk."
"That sounds so much less intimidating than going back to Charlee's to Talk," Lola agreed, imbuing the word with a capital T. "Honestly, Sam, I just want to be near you. The rest…"
"Almost doesn't matter?" he asked softly as she tucked her arm back into his and they made their way around the square, following the wide sidewalk. "That's what I thought when I saw you. We can catch each other up, but…it doesn't feel urgent. Except one thing that I really do need to tell you, and can't in public."
"My curiosity is piqued." Sudden alarm shot through Lola. "Wait. Sam. You're not ill, are you? It's nothing bad?"
"No! No, I'm healthy as a horse, if horses lived to be my age. No, it's just…" He paused. "Weird."
Relief swept Lola as quickly as the alarm had risen. She tilted her head against Sam's shoulder a moment, smiling. "Weirder than that mole on your hip?"
Sam sniffed, trying to sound injured. "It's not that weird!"
"The mole, or what you have to share with me?"
"The mole!"
"So it is weirder than the mole on your hip. I just needed a baseline." Lola smiled up at him, and Sam chortled as they made their way to the ice cream parlor, which had a chrome-plated sign across the top that saidSilver Dollar Ice Cream Parlor, complete with a three-scoop ice cream outlined in silver. "This is a terrible idea," she said as they went in. "It's cold out."
"But it's great! Wow, look at this place! There's a Silver Dollar Diner out on the other side of town, and they have a soda fountain, now that I think about it. It opened…a while ago." He made a sudden face. "I'm sorry. I just realized that at my age, 'a while ago' could mean thirty years and I'm not sure I'd think it was more than five or ten. This getting old thing reallyisn'tfor sissies. Anyway, they must be doing well enough to expand. I should keep up on what's going on in town better," Sam added, that last bit mostly to himself, as Lola, delighted, took in the parlor's decor.
It was unabashedly retro, 1950s style with chrome fittings, red plastic booths, and a checkerboard floor. Best of all there was a genuine soda fountain that clearly mixed not just the usual popular sodas, but could mix up a host of others, including ice cream sodas from the short but fascinating list of ice creams hand-written on a chalkboard. "I'm going to need a chocolate cherry bomb ice cream soda. Is the ice cream chocolate cherry, or is it chocolate with a cherry bomb soda, or…?"
She spoke to the young man behind the counter—presumably the, or at leasta, soda jerk that Noah had mentioned—and the kid flashed a grin. "It can kinda be any combination of those, honestly. I got chocolate ice cream, cherry ice cream, chocolate cherry bomb ice cream?—"
