oh, honey, you could count on getting a good story. I sat down on a stool at the island.
Myra continued. “One time me and Carl went to a Valentine’s Day dance at the Moose lodge. Well, I looked as pretty as a picture . . . had on a sparkly red dress with an A-line skirt and a white crinoline underneath so that when we danced I could spin around and show my crinoline instead of my butt—I’d done practiced it in front of the mirror and everything.”
“Good thinking,” I said.
“I know. I’d thought of everything,” she said. “Anyway, Carl didn’t have any reason whatsoever to have a straying eye that night, but he did. That old Mary Breedlove was there with a hot-pink minidress on that was cut down nearly to her belly button. While I was worried about people seeing my butt, she’d apparently been worried that people wouldn’t see hers . . . along with everything else the good Lord gave her. And one of the things He’d given her was apparently a push-up bra, because otherwise her boobs would’ve been down there at her belly button with the neckline of that dress.”
I giggled. I had no clue who Mary Breedlove was, but Myra was obviously still mad at her and at Carl for whatever indiscretion he’d made, even though he’d been dead for five years.
“Well, you will absolutely not believe what Carl Jenkins did,” Myra said. “He asked that trollop to dance! Oh, yes! It wasn’t bad enough for him to ogle her, he actually asked her to dance. And, of course, she did. Old home-wrecking hussy.”
“So, what did you do?” I asked.
“I got up and sashayed over to Will Pennington. He’d always had a thing for me, and his wife was dead. He’d showed up at the Moose lodge to look for love in all the wrong places, I reckon, so why Mary didn’t set her cap for him instead of my Carl is beyond me. ‘Will,’ I said, ‘I’d like for you to take me home, please.’ Well, his eyes lit up like . . . like . . . like two big porch lights, and we left.”
Like two big porch lights? Oh well, no one could accuse Myra of using too many clichés. “You didn’t tell Carl you were leaving?” I asked.
“No, indeed, I did not tell Carl,” she said.
“What did he say when he got home?” I asked.
“I don’t know, because I wasn’t there.”
“You weren’t there?” I asked. “You were actually out with Will?”
“Yes, I was. Once we got in the car, I said, ‘Will, I’d really rather not go home just yet. Why don’t we go see a movie?’ And that’s what we did. In fact, we saw a double feature,” Myra said.
“Are you kidding? What time did you get home?”
“About one in the morning,” she said.
“Was Carl still up or had he gone to bed?” I asked. Or had he left home? was what I was really wondering.
“Oh, yeah, he was up,” Myra said. “He was sitting there in his recliner as mad as an old one-horned bull. I asked him if he and Mary Breedlove had enjoyed themselves at the dance. He said he’d felt like a fool when he came back to our table and I was gone. I said, ‘You looked like one out on the dance floor with that trashy Mary. It’s a wonder your eyes didn’t pop plumb out of your head and into that push-up bra of hers.’ ‘What about you?’ he asked me. ‘One of the—’ Mooses . . . moosers . . . meese . . . ?”
“Lodge members,” I suggested.
“Yeah, one of them. They’d told him I’d gone off with Will Pennington. At first, Carl figured I’d just gone out into the parking lot to spite him—although he’d known me plenty long enough to know I can spite a whole lot better than that—so he came outside and looked around for a while. Then he drove around town looking for us. He even drove over to Will Pennington’s house!”
“Did you tell Carl where you’d been?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Myra said. “I didn’t want him to beat the tar out of poor old Will. Didn’t want him to divorce me either. I even showed him the tickets to convince him we’d been at the movies and that nothing had happened. He pouted around at me for a day or two, but he never danced with another woman again. And if he was ever