by: AAB

NOTE: Previously on A STRANGER IN TOWN ('cause suddenly this is being broadcast on the WB?), Pretty Wife did some shopping, bought fabric for Junior's Halloween Costume, and encountered the long-dead love of her life in the close, boxy quarters of her mostly-paid-for silver Volvo. She attempted to frighten him away with the skillful honking of the horn until, like a woman, she realized she wanted nothing more than to talk to him about--everything. Dead Boy left though, in that near-magical way he has, vanishing at just the moment anyone is ready to call him into account over the fact that he is dead, so very dead, yet walking around Town Falls like he's not at all the man he so strongly resembles.

Now, on an all-new A STRANGER IN TOWN...

Pretty Wife--Girl to her friends--stepped out from behind the wheel of her Volvo to meet Fabric Store Betsy and allay the shopgirl's fears. "Only the panic button," Girl quipped, lying, "I mistakenly sat on the darned keychain!" She laughed hollowly. "These European-engineered luxury autos, I told C.H. to buy American." Betsy and she laughed the near-encounter with danger (for surely the Look-alike was dangerous) off.

"Oh," Betsy said, before returning to the fabric store, "you asked me to remind you to stop by the dry cleaners. You said you had something important to pick up."

"Right, right! I had almost forgotten C.H. asked me to pick up for him."

Betsy smiled and asked curiously if Girl was crushin' on the cleaner, the handsome Dan "the Dry" Dry Cleaner Drysdale.

Girl was momentarily confused. What would make Betsy ask such a thing? Or give her such a salacious idea about Pretty Wife, dedicated mate of Consolation Husband and mother/caregiver to Baby Heir? Hadn't she and C.H. just spent hours together last weekend re-pouring the foundation to the garage? Love like that doesn't allow room for silly schoolgirl crushes--or does it?

"It's only," Betsy apologized for what she had seen as only a throwaway remark, "that you seem to be dropping off or picking up something there everyday lately."

As Girl got into the car to head out to the dry cleaners, she realized that Betsy was right, only she, Girl, hadn't seen it. The Cleaners was the only commonality--well, that and the fact she spoke with her mother each day--that joined the past days of her life with the run-in with the Look-alike. She had been expressly sent by Consolation Husband each of those days to the Dry Cleaner to either pick up or drop off. And C.H. always demanded the receipt slip for each item, "for safe keeping," giving it back to her only just before asking her to pick something up, as though she could not be trusted to keep track of the slip herself.

Something wasn't right here; there was a man prowling around, frightening her, that looked and spoke and even swallowed like the husband she had long ago given up for drowned; her husband didn't trust her, Pretty Wife and high school valedictorian, to keep track of a dry cleaning slip, and there was a dark, long-repressed part of her that had begun seeping into her baby-powder fresh days as a wife and loving mother, and she sure as all heck was NOT going to get all the way through Part Ten without finding out some answers, and she was sure Dan "the Dry" Dry Cleaner Drysdale had at least some of them.

As she pulled into the Dry Cleaner's parking lot, she saw his messy tufts of bleached-blond surfer hair crest over the counter as he handed a customer a helpful leaflet on getting out ink stains using only common household chemicals. His sharp, light hazel eyes darted to the window and caught hers as she closed the Volvo's back door. Betsy was right, the Dry was handsome. She marveled that she had not noticed it before. She licked her lips and pressed together her 12-hour sure-fire no-fade lipstick. Well, she was Pretty Wife, after all, and if using that to get some answers was going to be a help, she was up to it. And more...

.

...to be continued...

.


Disclaimer: This fiction is intended as parody only; the characters, plot, etc., are the intellectual property of its authors. This story is not in any way affiliated with the Lifetime Channel, Lifetime Television, or the Lifetime Original Movie franchise.


by: Neftzer and friends (AAB, TRVMB, JMG, KLS) (c)2003
Feedback Appreciated!
Check out royaltoby.com/shack for Neftzer's OutBack Fiction Shack