Dreaming of His Pen Pal's Kiss - Jessie Gussman Page 0,50
not her gut feeling. “So that you don’t have to eat takeout.”
“Takeout can be healthy. I mean you know you can get healthy takeout. The grocery store down the street lets you buy salad by the pound, and you can make it however you want to.”
She shook her head. “Stop. Just stop. You don’t wrap gifts, you can’t cook...what can you do?”
He looked at his hands. “Apparently, I can catch hogs.”
He lifted the leg that he still held and continued to scratch the piglet. The piglet kind of acted like it wanted to lie down.
“If you put that thing asleep, I’ll be really impressed.”
“I’m doing my best. I think his eyes are closed. If it’s sleeping while standing on three legs, that counts, right?”
“It has to be lying down in order for it to count. Nice try though.” She pursed her lips, blowing out through them, studying the pig. She had no idea how to wrap something that was going to be moving.
The artist in her balked at the idea, but she said, “I think the best thing to do is to just get a lot of paper out and wrap it up like a blanket with as much paper as we can get on it, throw pieces of tape on it to keep it stuck, and yell for Malley.”
“You’re calling the play again.”
She laughed. “No. But I can if you want me to.”
He shook his head. “No, you’re gonna say something like Hicks twenty-five slant back J through one. You’ll just end up confusing everyone.”
“Considering that everyone is exactly you and the pig, I don’t think that that’s the worst thing that could happen here.”
“You could be right about that. I can think of several other things that could happen that could be worse than being confused.” He looked at his hand and seemed to judge the short distance between his hand and the backside spigot on the pig.
Journee had to giggle. “It might be worse for you, but the only thing that could make my original picture better would be to have some additional...organic matter in it.”
“Organic matter sounds like a rather erudite term for something that could more basely be termed—”
Journee put her hand up. “This is a family festival.”
“I was gonna say poop.”
She narrowed her eyes at his innocent look. “Sorry. My bad,” she said sweetly.
Taking the wrapping paper, she did exactly what she said she was going to do—unrolled it, held it over the pig, and wrapped the tube around and around and around.
“You do realize you have my hand in that?”
“Was there a rule against that? I mean, was I not allowed to wrap hands along with the gifts?”
His face scrunched a little, thinking. “I guess not.”
“Well then, consider it your sacrifice for The Cause.”
“I’m kind of feeling like I should be getting a movie vibe here, but I’m not.”
“That doesn’t surprise me. I was totally channeling Gone With the Wind, but I don’t think it’s politically correct anymore anyway, so you’re probably very hip to be completely clueless.”
“Well, it’s important to me to be hip, so I’ll continue to be clueless.”
Journee groaned without taking her eyes off her work. “I’m getting ready to put the tape on. You want to call Malley? She seemed like she was more partial to you than me anyway.”
“Think so?” There was definitely humor in his voice, and she was sure he knew exactly what she was talking about.
He called Malley’s name while Journee taped the top of the pig and around the back, taping the actual paper to his arm and shrugging her shoulders at his hey-what-are-you-doing look.
“I don’t think you can let go of it, and I don’t want to cut your arm off, I’m guessing that’s against the rules, so this is the third best thing.”
“Nice. Cutting my arm off was an actual consideration. It’s not looking good for your non-serial-killer prospects.”
“Hey, you’ll come visit me, right?”
“In prison? As long as they have you in a straitjacket.”
“Doesn’t sound like you two are getting along too well if you want to see her put in a straitjacket.” Malley sashayed over to the rail. “What’s she doing to you, sweetheart? You should have requested a partner that would be a little nicer to you.” Malley put a slim hand over the edge of the fence, her bright red nail polish glistening in the sun.
Whether the pig was just getting tired of having his chin rubbed, or whether he didn’t like Malley’s voice, Journee wasn’t sure, but he