Page 62 of Best Served Cold

And a repetitive, uncreative threat from Jonah:

You’re going to regret you were ever born, fuckstick.

I avoid the childish impulse to respond that I already regrethewas ever born, and opt for not responding to either of them.My face is blue, and that’s the only thing I can focus on right now.

I google allergic reactions and blue faces and get a whole lot of nothing. So I try Dottie again.

She picks up this time, thank God.

“Hello, my dear. I was just thinking about you.”

“Yeah, same…I’m blue, Dottie.”

“Oh, you might not believe it, but I feel blue sometimes too. Even though life gives us wonderful gifts, it can take away things that are precious to us. But we have to focus?—”

“No, I used that cream you gave me, and now my face is blue.”

“Oh, dear,” she says. “You know, I was in such a hurry to get you my restorative skin treatment last night, it’s possible I made an error. Is there a cornflower on the label or a calendula?”

“I don’t know,” I say, trying to keep my temper under control. “I missed that day in gardening class.”

She clucks her tongue. “Why don’t you come to the tea shop? We’ll get it sorted out for you. And then I’ll make you a nice, soothing cup of tea.”

I don’t want a cup of tea. But I also don’t want to still be blue when I show up at The Missing Beat on Monday afternoon. I have a feeling the teenagers in our program would never let me live it down. I’d probably be called Blue Balls until our middle schoolers graduate high school.

So I suck it up, pull on a baseball hat that doesn’t do a thing to hide the fact that my face is blue, and roll out to Tea of Fortune.

I have to grab street parking a couple of blocks away, so I’m treated with a bunch of stares as I walk toward the tea shop. Might as well embrace it, so I grin and wave, either terrorizing or exciting a huge group of tourists speaking Italian.

They’re excited, I decide, when they start singing, “Blue (Da Ba Dee).”

A few minute later, I reach the storefront. I walk in, and dozens of eyes find me. Two older women in particular are staring at me from a table near the front of the shop.

Dottie Hendrickson, who was pouring tea for a customer in one of the booths, clucks her tongue and starts toward me, nearly beaning someone with the kettle of tea in her hand.

“Oh goodness,” she says as she reaches me. “It must have been the cornflower. My vision isn’t what it used to be, I’m afraid. Bear keeps telling me to wear some readers, but I confess I can’t keep track of them.”

“What does the cornflower mean?”

“Oh, it’s my hair dye. Homemade.”

“You’re saying I put hair dye on my face?” It makes sense, given the state of my pillowcase, but it’s certainly not good news.

“Here, sit,” she says, leading me to the table near the entrance where the two septuagenarian women are seated. There are a couple of empty chairs—one for me, apparently. “Drink some tea and try to relax.”

She turns over the teacup on my table setting and fills it with whatever’s in that kettle. I sure as hell will never know. Her cream turned my face blue; I won’t be drinking her mystery tea.

“We’ll get you sorted, dear, not a problem,” she says, patting my shoulder encouragingly. “And I must say, blueisyour color. Wouldn’t you say so, Constance?”

The older woman seated next to me looks up from her crocheting project—either an ugly sweater for a dog or a kid’s sweater gone wrong. The stitches are all different sizes, some too loose and the others much too tight. Her hair is crisply styled, her face wrinkled in a way that suggests she smiles more than it would seem based on her current demeanor. Despite the sweatershe’s crocheting, she doesn’t give off a warm, fuzzy vibe. “No,” she says, and laughs before returning to her crocheting.

Dottie gives acan’t please everyoneshrug and tells me in an undertone, “This is my Wise Women Group. Penny’s not here, of course, given she’s on her journey, and the groupdoesfeel incomplete without her. Odd numbers, you know. Still, we meet twice a week to share our wisdom. I was going to invite you to join us before you called me. It’s kismet! But let’s get your face sorted first.”

Turning from me, she raises her voice and asks the room, “Does anyone here have baby wipes? This young man has an emergency, I’m afraid.”

“Happens to the best of us,” says the woman across the table from Constance. She has dark, barely lined skin, rainbow-rimmed glasses, thick false lashes, and a hearing aid. “My friend had so many accidents he started wearing Depends. You know, in the advertisements they use fine young men such as yourself. It was the first I’d heard of it happening to young men.”

Fantastic. A roomful of women think I just soiled myself.

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