The Cherry Cola Book Club - By Ashton Lee Page 0,64
wore dresses that looked like she’d wrapped a fabric bolt around herself. I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if she won Miss Home Ec because she ate everything she cooked in class. That always made the teacher look good, you know.”
Then it was time for the ritual. Mamie opened the yearbook and gestured to her classmate while locating the senior pictures of the dear departed. Both Locke and Miss Voncille moved around behind the sofa to take them in. “There they are. Both on the same page in the W’s. Don’t they look young as spring deer? Weren’t we all back then? Ah, for the good ole days!”
Miss Voncille couldn’t resist. “Yes, indeed! When we were all alive, each and every one of us!”
Locke gave Miss Voncille a playful nudge. “Let’s see you, Voncille. Come on, Mamie, find her for me.”
Mamie flipped a few pages and zeroed in on the picture with her index finger. “There you have her. Miss Voncille Deloris Nettles. I’ve always said you were a looker, Voncille.”
Locke leaned down for a closer look and wagged his brows. “That you were, my dear. Of course, you still are in my book. Is Deloris a family name with that unusual spelling?”
“I doubt it. My parents just liked to be different. He was Walker Nettles, and she was Annis Favarel, and I have no idea where their first names came from.” Miss Voncille finally exhaled dramatically, having survived the ordeal of Morbid Mamie and the yearbook yet another time. “Well, we’ve paid our proper respects now. Locke, why don’t you see what the ladies will have, I’ll get out the card table, and we’ll play some bridge.”
For the first time in their fledgling relationship, Miss Voncille and Locke were having a disagreement over something other than picking through the party nuts or which wine to have with dinner. A somewhat trying two hours of bidding, finessing, and drawing trumps had crawled by, but from Miss Voncille’s point of view it had all been worth it. She’d gotten the freshly departed Crumpton sisters to agree to attend the Mockingbird meeting and even check out a few books in the interim for lagniappe. Mission more than accomplished.
“You were as obvious as they were clueless,” Locke kept insisting. “It’s true that I’ve never been your bridge partner, so I have no point of comparison. But I find it hard to believe that someone could renege, mismanage trumps, and overbid so many times in the same rubber. I wonder if they were wise to you but let you play on like that anyway. A win is a win is a win.”
He began imitating her voice and gestures. “ ‘Oh, my goodness, I thought I had completely drawn trumps. Where did that come from, Mamie, you clever rascal!’ And, ‘Did I double your contract, Mamie? I wonder what I could have been thinking of with the hand I had?’ And my absolute favorite, ‘I shouldn’t have bid a slam in no-trump without a stopper in spades.’ Mamie ran the entire spade suit against us in that one. The only good thing about it was that I was dummy and didn’t have to stay in the room to watch all the carnage.”
“I had no idea you were such a sore loser,” Miss Voncille said, watching him fold her card table and put it away in the hall closet.
He had an impish grin on his face when he emerged from his task. “And I had no idea you would go to such lengths to stay on the good side of your Morbid Mamie and her mousy little sister who only opened her mouth to bid. At least come clean and admit you played like a college student on a drinking binge.”
She put her hands on her hips and turned her nose up. “I never drank when I was in college. Besides, what happened here this afternoon was only a game.”
“Which you won, despite appearances to the contrary.”
She finally gave in. “Very well, then, Locke Linwood. That was indeed the most atrocious rubber of bridge I’ve ever played in my life. But it got results, didn’t it? I know Mamie Crumpton like the back of my hand. She loves nothing more than feeling like she’s on top of the world, alive and kicking, while the rest of us are dropping like flies and playing beginner’s bridge. This was the perfect afternoon for her—two senior pictures to shed crocodile tears over and two bridge opponents to trounce—with