Heart Song Anthology by Carolyn Faulkner (summer reads txt) 📗

car in front of him, and let all the assholes and idiots on the road cut in front of him. Why didn’t he use the horn more often?

When I pointed out that Neil had never had an accident or a ticket in his entire life, Janet laughed.

“Don’t be so naïve, for God’s sake!” she hooted. “Cops don’t ticket other cops, dummy, not even for overtime parking. Even if it does happen, now and then, the stupid ticket gets fixed in a flash. Accidents are handled the same way, of course. Some loyal brother in blue is always on hand to change the report around before it goes to the insurance company and raises his pal’s rates.”

Neil didn’t open his mouth, but as he stared straight ahead at the road, I could swear there were small wisps of steam coming out of his ears.

In a desperate effort at keeping my husband from doing what I knew he wanted to do – slow down just long enough to shove Janet out of the car and headfirst into a snow-bank – I fought back with a steady stream of mindless chatter about anything I could think of that might distract her. Not an easy task, with someone who already knows everything there is to know about everything.

By the time we were halfway to the cabin, I realized with a sinking heart that Neil had been right. Janet was a gigantic pain in the ass. Janet was probably the most annoying human being in the hemisphere – maybe in both hemispheres. After the first hour, her whiny voice and phony eastern-seaboard inflection began sending shivers down my spine, like someone scraping all ten fingernails across a dry blackboard. Like the idiot I was, though, I continued smiling, and offering Neil endless cups of hot coffee, like what he really needed was more caffeine to jangle his already raw nerves. After that, I began praying for a convenient flat tire. Even better, two flat tires. Maybe a creek could overflow its banks and close the road. Maybe a blizzard could show up. Anything to stop us from reaching the cabin, and being forced to inflict Janet Kellerman on our best friends, and on poor, lonely, unsuspecting Charlie.

My standing with the Almighty apparently wasn’t all that good, though. Probably because of all those Sunday mornings when I lied to my mother about going to Sunday school, then skipped out to the Quik-Shop, instead, to sit on the floor and browse the newest scandal magazines. Whatever the reason for my fall from grace, though, my heartfelt prayers went unanswered. The last fifty miles to the cabin were tortuous, with heavy snow, ice on the road, and visibility falling like a rock. The whole time, Janet was giving unwelcome advice, virtually without pause. Driving slowly in the fog was more dangerous than driving fast; someone could rear-end you. Deer weren’t stupid enough to just stand there and let you run them down. They’d move at the last minute, if you simply called their bluff.

Two hours late, we finally arrived safely, having run down no deer, and avoiding rear end collisions. We pulled up in front of the cabin mere seconds before I lost it completely and dumped a Thermos of cold coffee over Janet’s head, ruining the winter hat of “genuine, first quality Russian sable” that she’d boasted about buying at a “real steal” on one of her “most recent” trips to Moscow. The stupid hat looked like what it was – a highly dead animal laying on top of the head of the sort of person who’d slaughter a beautiful, innocent creature to wear it as a hat. The hat had these cutesy little earflaps that made Janet look like a portrait I’d once seen of Ivan the Terrible, and I was trying to think of the rudest way to tell her that when I noticed that Joe’s Cherokee was parked in front of the cabin, between Sandy’s little yellow Honda and an old, green pickup. It was too late to turn back, then. All of the clowns were in the center ring, now, and the circus was about to begin.

While Neil unloaded our luggage from the back of the car, grumbling audibly the whole time, Janet and I started up the short, icy path to the cabin. Janet was still yammering, now about how dumb Joe and Sandy had been to waste money on a tacky, isolated log cabin so far from the main highway, when they could have invested in a new condo in the towers, instead, close to shopping and the ski runs. What I was thinking as we trudged through the snow, though, was how much I wanted to stuff Janet’s big, stupid hat into Janet’s big, stupid mouth, between her surgically puffed lips, and how the hell I was going to ever be able to apologize to everyone inside the cabin for the long, hideous weekend I had planned so carefully.

But then, just when I thought God had forgotten about me, He gave me something to really worry about. A sudden gust of icy wind and sleet hit us in the face, and behind me, I heard Neil swear explosively as the trunk lid slammed down on his hand. The blizzard I had been praying for was announcing its arrival, which meant that the hideous weekend was going to be even more hideous than expected. We were all going to be snowbound, now, in a shrieking blizzard, with Janet and my husband at one another’s throats. The weekend was also going to be a hell of a lot longer, and from the sound of my husband’s growl as he staggered up the path after us, I knew I might not be sitting down for most of it.

We had barely gotten up onto the porch when Sandy flung open the door to greet us. I guess there was something about my expression, or maybe it was the string of expletives emanating