The Traveling Vampire Show

She gave me a quick grin. “This’ll be mine,” she said, and took a bite. A blissful look on her face, she started to put the remaining three-quarters of the slice on the fourth patty. Instead of letting it go, however, she brought it quickly back to her mouth and snapped off another quarter of it. “Gotta even up the sides,” she said through her mouthful. Then, reaching through the smoke and flames, she neatly set the remaining strip in the center of the patty.

By then, the cheese on the other burgers was starting to melt. “These are going to be great,” Slim said.

“Yeah.”

“But you know what?”

“What?” I asked.

“I’ve been thinking about Rusty.”

“Uh.”

“He really wants to see the Vampire Show.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“I’ve been thinking, it might not be so easy for him to get out of his house tonight. They probably won’t let him out, and he won’t be able to sneak out in time if they’re keeping an eye on him.”

“Maybe it’s just as well,” I said. “It might be better if we all miss it.”

“He really has his heart set on it, though.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“He’d be so disappointed,” Slim said, and looked at the grill. Melted Velveeta was starting to spill down the sides of the patties and drip into the flames. “Uh-oh.” Quickly, she stabbed the spatula underneath one of the burgers, lifted it off the grill and slid it onto a bun.

“Should we go to Rusty’s rescue?” I asked.

“I think we’d better.” Slim scooped off another burger.

“I thought you liked it better without him around,” I said.

“I do,” she said. She flashed me a sly smile, then transferred another burger from the grill to a bun. “But he’s still our friend.”

“Yeah.”

“More appreciated in his absence than in his presence….”

I laughed.

She took off the last burger, the one with half as much Velveeta. “This one’s yours,” she said.

“Okay.”

“I’m kidding,” she said. “It’s…”

“No, really, I’ll take it. I’d rather have that one.”

She laughed softly and shook her head. “If you want it that much, you can have it.” She set the top of the bun in place and pressed it down with her open hand. “She’s all yours.”

Chapter Thirty-one

The sun normally would’ve been blazing in our eyes at this time of the evening, but it couldn’t get through the heavy clouds. Though the air felt muggy, a breeze came along every so often. A warm breeze. It felt pretty good, anyway.

We sat at the picnic table near the back of the lawn. It was painted green and had benches along both the long sides. Slim and I sat across from each other.

The cheeseburgers tasted great but they were very messy to eat. Juices and Velveeta dripped off their sides, ran down our chins, dribbled down our hands and fell onto the table. After just a few bites, I ran into the house to get napkins.

We’d finished our beers and needed something to drink with our burgers. So I went to the fridge. I half intended to grab a couple more beer bottles, but couldn’t bring myself to do it. I took out a couple of Pepsis instead.

Then I hurried outside.

Watching me, Slim said, “Ah, Pepsi.”

“If you’d rather have more beer…”

She shook her head. “This is just what I wanted.”

I put the cans on the table, gave Slim a couple of napkins, then sat down.

“Anyway,” she said, “we don’t want Rusty’s parents to smell beer on our breath.”

“Why are they gonna smell beer on our breath?”

She gave me a whimsical, tilted smile. “We drank beer.”

“I know that, but…”

“And we’re going over to Rusty’s house when we get done eating.”

“We are?”

“We want to rescue him, don’t we?”

“I guess so.”

“Well, we can’t exactly go in and kick butts, you know? I mean, this is Rusty’s family.”

“Right.”

Her smile spread. “What we’ve got to do is kiss butts.”

When she said that, I suddenly remembered the wager about Valeria. Rusty had suggested that the loser would have to kiss Slim’s butt. And I’d imagined myself doing it. I imagined it now, too, and my face went red.

“That’s a figure of speech,” Slim pointed out.

“I know.”

“Anyway,” she said, “if we were literally going to kiss their butts, we wouldn’t need to worry about beer on our breath.”

“We’d have bigger worries.”

We both had a pretty good laugh, and then we went on eating. When we were done, we carried everything into the house and cleaned up. Slim washed the spatula, knife and platter. I dried them and put them away. Soon, every trace of our supper was gone except for the two empty beer bottles.

“What’ ll we do with those?” I asked.

“Find a sack. We’ll take them over to my place. We’ll put them with my mom’s empties, then grab a couple of fresh ones and bring them back here.”

I grinned. “Good plan.”

“Elementary, my dear Thompson.”

My dear.

She only said it to make a play on Sherlock Holmes, but the words gave me a warm feeling, anyway.

“We’d better take care of that, first,” she said. “Get it out of the way before we try to liberate Rusty.”