“Oh, dear,” she said to the mirror when she detected a trace of movement in her forehead.
Her collagen was wearing thin, too, and she dreaded a return trip to the maxillary-facial surgeon. It had gotten to where she simply could not endure another needle stick without a heavy hit of Demerol, and for what? Nobody cared. Nobody appreciated her anymore. Maude unhooked her bra and worked her way out of it without taking off her blouse, a trick she had learned at Sweet Briar College.
“Well, that was a wasted effort,” she muttered to herself impatiently as her breasts migrated to her waist.
Sighing, she put her bra back on and changed into an attractive sheer cashmere sweater that had been several sizes too small even when she was much thinner.
“There,” she announced to the First Dog, Frisky, who was asleep on the bed inside the adjoining master suite. “You have to admit I look pretty damn good for seventy, don’t I?”
Frisky didn’t stir. He was a very old chocolate Lab and was tired of the First Lady’s talking to him endlessly. It had been going on for nine years, and Frisky believed the First Lady had looked pretty overblown from day one. Now she looked especially bad, with her frozen face and swollen lips, and he didn’t intend to open his eyes or interrupt his favorite dream of being a ball boy at Wimbledon. He silently prayed that the First Lady, for once, wouldn’t wake him up.
“Come, Frisky!” the First Lady called her sleeping dog as she tried unsuccessfully to snap her fingers.
Mrs. Crimm shimmered with body lotion and her fingers were slippery. “Come!” Her fingers snipped rather than snapped. “Let’s go down and greet our company.”
Seventeen
The blue crabs and the trout were about to have their luck change yet again. Major Trader had volunteered to dump them in the river because he had his own secret, selfish agenda. He figured he could find someone fishing and sell the fresh seafood easily and for a pretty penny, and he was scouting for a good location for the drop-off of the waterproof suitcase full of cash that he expected to get from the pirates soon.
Right this minute, Trader was driving his state car, and the bucket was sloshing around in the trunk. Neither the crabs nor the trout could see a thing in the pitch dark, and they had an ominous feeling about the trip as Trader sped and jerked the car into curves and made sudden stops at lights.
“Jiminy Criminy, he must not got a GPS,” one crab said as it knocked into another one on the bottom of the bucket. “He’s lost. I can tell.”
“How?” said the trout as he floated above crabs clashing into one another with each hairpin turn and lurching start and stop. “I think he might have engine problems.”
“You ever been in a car afore?”
“Can’t say I have,” the trout replied. “But I’ve seen them pull up to the dock, from a safe distance, when the watermen get out to fish. All their trucks and golf carts jump around and careen like this.”
The crabs tumbled to one side and landed in a pile.
“Ouch!” a crab complained. “That hurt! Get your claw outta my eye or you’re gonna catch it!”
“I’m hungry!”
“There’s neither rotted fish until we foller the water. Hold on!”
Trader drove over a curb and parked on the sidewalk, where Caesar Fender was fishing and not catching a thing.
“Hey! You just ran over my tackle box, you motherfucker!” Caesar yelled at the state car. “Who you think you are? I ain’t doing nothing. I don’t even have a car, so you got no right to pull over with your high beams on and run over my tackle box, like I was speeding or something!”
“I got fresh seafood fit for the governor,” Trader announced. “Sell it to you for fifty dollars. Bet you got a passel of hungry nidgettes at home. Bet they never had blue crabs before, and fresh trout.”
Caesar Fender was shocked by the big fat white man’s slurs. “Just ’cause some black folks is short don’t mean they’re nidgettes,” he lashed back. “And you owe me two dollars for the tackle box and another seventy-five cents for all the hooks you bent and bobbers you busted. You step one foot closer and you’re gonna knock my can of worms in the water, and then I’m gonna kick your ass!”