Read Online The Glass Is Always Greener by Tamar Myers - Free Book Online

and what better way to kill it than at a coffee shop? There is something about purchasing a cup of overpriced java and sipping it on the premises that makes it feel like a mini-event, rather than a first-rate rip-off—which it is. I, for one, like to imagine that the folks hunched over their laptops are serious novelists and that if I affect a distinctive set of mannerisms while sipping my brew, I might just show up in a book as part of a character.
    “Why are you twitching, Abby?”
    Holy crap, I thought, what did I do to deserve this? “Mama,” I exclaimed. “Where did you come from?”
    “The ladies’ room. You know what caffeine does to me, dear.”
    “Where are the others?”
    “Wynnell is getting her upper lip waxed just up the road from here and C.J. is still in the ladies’ room. Apparently there was some graffiti in one of the stalls that read something like: ‘I’m being held prisoner; call me at blah, blah, blah.’ She’s taking it seriously. You know how she is.”
    “Oy vey,” I said. “What are we going to do with the big galoot?”
    “Love her; that’s all we can do. She’s not dangerous, and she can clearly function on her own. What is her IQ anyway?”
    “One sixty-five. I think that’s part of her problem. It’s kind of lonely up there at the top, so she invents these stories to amuse herself.”
    “Speaking of stories, dear, you’ll never guess what the latest one is that’s making the rounds.”
    “That I took an emerald ring off a dead woman?”
    Mama wears a string of pearls given to her by Daddy decades ago. She has never removed them—not once. Not even to shower. The fact that the gems look as splendid as they did the day that Daddy lifted them from the blue velvet box and hung them around Mama’s alabaster neck, is, in my humble opinion, every bit as miraculous as the images of Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus that appeared on Grace Wilder’s cornbread when she took it from the oven on the stroke of midnight, December 24, 1966.
    At any rate, when Mama gets agitated she pats her pearls. When she’s very excited she twirls them. Until then, I had never seen her stroke them like one would stroke a kitten.
    “Mama, what’s wrong?”
    “That’s exactly it, Abby; that’s the story.”
    “So how did you hear?”
    “That awful Mrs. Goldburg. She called the hotel just before we left. She said to tell you that unless you give it back, she’s going to call the police.”
    “So let her. Of course she won’t; she already made that threat to me. Besides I didn’t take it.” I shuddered. “Mama, that would be macabre; removing something from the finger of a dead woman.”
    “Shhh, dear.”
    Oops. She’d been right to shush me. In my agitation—lacking pearls to pat—I’d spoken far too loudly. Apparently nothing pulls in an audience quite as well in a coffee shop as talk of robbing the dead. One of the keyboard pounders actually changed seats, moving to the one just behind me. Either he really was a novelist in need of a plot, or I was being followed.
    “And then I put the bomb inside a frozen turkey,” I said, “which I shipped by Bactrian camel to his summer house in Uzbekistan.”
    Mama’s fingers tapped a rapid rhythm on her mollusk secretions. “Abby, honey, you’re not making a lick of sense.”
    I rolled my eyes. “Behind me,” I mouthed. “What’s up with the guy sitting behind me?”
    Mama sighed. “Maybe Toy was right; I do need to get my hearing checked. First you practically break my eardrums, and now I can’t even hear you. I used to think I’d be a good lip-reader, but I can cross that off my list of accomplishments; I mean surely you wouldn’t prattle on about the gentleman sitting behind you.”
    “Mama!”
    “Now I hear that; nice and loud too.”
    “I give up.”
    “Please don’t,” the man behind me said. “If you do, my story will be too short.”
    I stood, which frankly doesn’t make me a whole lot taller than when I’m sitting;