Baby, Would I Lie?

36

The tiny container of Mace that Sara kept in her shoulder bag was about the size and shape of a lipstick, which made it very convenient to carry but a little tricky to find in the dark in the middle of the night, with somebody coming through the motel door. On the other hand, this time it was just as well she came up with the wrong tube in her haste and panic, because she was already aiming the thing and pressing the top of it with a shaking thumb when Jack’s voice said, “Is that you? Are you awake?”

Sara lowered the fatal lipstick. “Jack? What are you doing here?”

“Okay if I turn on the light?”

“I think you’d better.”

Lights burst into existence, causing Sara to squint and to shield her eyes with the hand holding the lipstick. And there was Jack, with his suitcase and some sort of dumb grin, saying, “So that’s what you wear when I’m not with you. I like that shorty kind of stuff.”

“Do you.”

Peering more closely at her, at her hand, he said, “You’re putting on lipstick in the dark?”

“I was trying to Mace you. From now on, call first.”

“Mace me with a lipstick?”

“Oh shut up,” she said, and turned to put the lipstick back in her bag; there was the damn Mace. And when he ran a hand up inside her shorty nightgown, she irritably slapped it away. “Don’t scare me in the middle of the night.”

“I thought you’d be pleased to see me.”

Then she was. All at once, she remembered how her last thought before falling asleep was how much she missed having Jack in the bed beside her.

Which didn’t mean she wasn’t still mad at him for scaring her. Forgiving, and not forgiving, she turned and said, “What are you doing here at this hour, anyway? What hour is it?”

“A little after one.”

“What are you— How can you get here this late?”

“This time,” Jack told her with an almost boyish eagerness, “we can get the Galaxy on a number of felonies, with people who would be very happy to prosecute. Hiram wanted me here to set it up. It was too late to make a connection to Springfield, so I drove down from St. Louis.”

“And didn’t pass a single telephone along the way.”

“I wanted to surprise you.”

“You succeeded. Leave Sunday morning, come back Monday night — that’s fairly surprising.” All at once, Sara wrinkled her mouth like a rejected page of copy and said, “Uk. What’s that?”

“What’s what?”

“That taste, it’s like — I don’t know what it’s like.”

He looked at her with real concern. “It just hit, just this second?”

“No, it’s—” She made a series of disgusting mouths, with sound effects; he looked away, not wanting to know this. She said, “It’s been building the last few days. I didn’t notice, really, but waking up just now it hit me; it’s” — smack-smack — “salty, nasty, kind of — not rancid, exactly...”

“Wait a minute,” he said. “I’ve been getting it, too. You know, you don’t pay attention, but you’re right.”

They both went smack-smack, tasting their mouths. Jack said, “Is it something in the water?”

“No, it’s... I almost remember; it’s—” She stopped, mouth and eyes wide open, and stared at Jack. “Bac-O Bits!”

“What?”

“Bac-O Bits! You know, that fake bacon stuff. You shake it out; it’s like coarse pepper, only it’s — what color is that? Cordovan!”

“Cordovan? And it’s a food?”

“Kinda.”

“This,” Jack said, “is a part of Americana I don’t want to know.”

“Bac-O Bits,” Sara repeated, then nodded and tasted some more. “It’s the redneck’s garlic,” she said. “They put it on everything; we’ve been getting it in every meal. They put it on the eggs in the morning, on the sandwich at lunch, in the salad at dinner.”

Jack, belatedly wary, hunched his shoulders and said, “I had a Bloody Mary.”

“Bac-O Bits!”

“Does it build up in the body,” he asked,“like PCBs?”

“It builds up in the mouth,” Sara said, and turned toward the bathroom, saying, “Excuse me while I brush.”

“Me second.”

In the bathroom doorway, she turned back to say, “What did Binx want?”

“Oh, it’s great,” Jack assured her, chortling. “Wait’ll you hear. Binx has pulled the greatest caper; he’s home and dry, you’ll be proud of him.”

“Tell.”

He studied her, eyes gleaming. “Just as soon as you brush your teeth and I brush my teeth, and just as soon as I complete my exhaustive study of that appealing garment you’re wearing, I’ll tell you all about it.”