turned his back to her. “Maybe I could take y’all for dinner.”
“Aren’t you sweet. That would be lovely! Why don’t I take your card?” she said and set the envelope against his back.
Sam nudged me. “Wanna see her pets? She got pets!”
As Orin bent forward, I came under his nose and opened my paper bag. A couple dozen glistening thumb-sized bugs leapt and flew.
I dropped the bag and shrieked as they smacked against my face and Orin’s. Crawling on my forehead, in my hair. I screamed and spun in circles.
As Orin laughed and swiped the big bugs off our faces, my mother dropped the cash-fat envelope into her purse and pulled out a second identical envelope, which she’d already signed.
Sam cackled and smacked his thighs like a cartoon character. “Ha! She’s crying! Big baby, big baby!”
I ran behind Marlene, batting my hair. “You’re mean,” I said to Sam. “I’m not your friend any more.”
The idea that I would withhold my friendship always cracked Sam up. He laughed in character, though, and it gave me the creeps, as if his real self had gone away and wasn’t coming back.
Once the bugs were gone, Orin turned and squared his back for Marlene again, still burping a few yucks as he caught his breath.
My mother signed the envelope. Then she turned and let Orin sign against her back. “My brother’s office will be open till 6 p.m. Are you sure you don’t mind doing this?”
“My pleasure,” Orin said. He slipped the envelope she gave him into the inside breast pocket of his sport coat and then gave the pocket a pat as if to say the cash is safe now.
Later, looking out the back window of Sam’s Cadillac, I waved to Orin as he stood in the parking lot and watched us drive away.
“Run away, you big green weasel, run away and steal all my loot,” Marlene said into the rear-view mirror.
She didn’t believe for a second that Orin would show up at the address on the business card she gave him. He was a bigger crook than all of us put together, the way she and Sam figured, and soon he would open the envelope and find nothing but a bunch of cut newspaper.
In the passenger side, my father’s head lolled out the window. “So long, you big dummy,” he said, Farmer Lug–style.
“Stop it!” I turned around to face my father. “You talk normal. Right now.”
We had chocolate layer cake that night too. We picked up Fat Freddy at the motel and then Sam took us for dinner at a place that seemed very fancy to me. I wore a pink dress and black patent-leather shoes and Sam teased me with his half-wit voice all evening. I kicked him under the restaurant table, told him again that I wasn’t his friend any more, and then he and Fat Freddy laughed themselves stupid. I couldn’t figure out the joke.
Marlene told Freddy how brave I was. Freddy insisted I tell him the whole story, especially the part about the palmetto bugs—the flying cockroaches. “Were you scared? How big were they? Like this?” Freddy spread his palms a foot apart.
I brought his hands a little bit closer together and then explained how they got into my hair and on my face. Freddy shivered dramatically and told me that I deserved the biggest piece of chocolate cake in the restaurant. “Double-decker,” he said, “with cherry filling!”
“How come she gets cake?” Sam asked Freddy. “She threw away all them pets I give her.” He turned to me. “You even threw away Jerry. Jerry was the little guy with the hunting cap. He was a helluva nice bug, Jerry. He was married to Trudy, the one that had the blue shoes on.”
Marlene giggled, and the more details Sam added, the harder she laughed. Sam grabbed her hand and kissed her knuckles. Freddy checked his watch.
“When are we going to Disney World?” I asked.
Before we moved on to the next town, Marlene and Sam took me, just like they had promised. All I remember about that day was being held in the arms of a giant mouse in red pants. I petted Mickey’s fuzzy black arms and his snow-white gloves. Staring into the hard rubber smile, I thought I loved him.
That night Marlene said, “That crazy mouse didn’t want to put you down. You nearly ran off with Mickey Mouse!” She gave me a big smack of a kiss. “I got you back, though. Promise you’ll never leave me