Previously on A STRANGER IN TOWN: Dan the Dry is nearly assassinated by a giant late-model Blue Buick, whose driver we did not see. He lays, injured perhaps beyond repair, croaking what may be his last words to the Pretty Wife he can never call his own, while his fevered mind wonders if even _he_ would be able to get out the blood stains blossoming on what had been his perfectly pressed Tuesday blue oxford.
"Girl, Girl," Dan "the Dry" Dry Cleaner Drysdale croaked. "Your husband isn't dead. Your husband is," he swallowed, "Your husband is--"
Girl again screamed for Old Neighbor to call 9-1-1 while Dry gasped to get his breath.
"My husband," she prodded, pulling his head into her lap and violating every First Aid maxim ever written. "What about him? Oh, Dan!" She sobbed.
The blood on his shirt turned darker in color.
"You have no husband," Dan said, and his breath wheezed, in a death-like exhale. "When they take me away," he stressed, "you'll just tell yourself that it was my fevered brain talking, but it _isn't_. You have no husband, and that husband _has_ no dry cleaning. _No_dry_cleaning_."
And he passed out. Girl did not pretend to herself that she could ascertain his meaning at all, so she decided instead to give in to picturesque tears; for Dan, for herself, for the world where such a thing could occur by a car as elegant and American-made as a Buick.
The ambulance arrived later than she thought it should have, and Girl had never realized how hard it was to cradle a dying man in your lap while hugging Junior to your side, all in the middle of a street in your suburban development where only last week at the tenant's neighborhood watch meeting you had suggested that they install larger speed limit signs.
"What happened, ma'am?" Chief EMT asked as they took Dry from her, and a trio of other EMTs began installing several IVs and other medical-looking paraphernalia on Dry.
"It was a hit-and-run..."
"Well," Chief EMT told her, "we'll take him for now, the blood makes it look worse than it is. Stay here. The police will want to interview you when they get here."
"Looks like they were already here, Chief," one of the trio EMTs crossed over from Dry's gurney as they were loading it into the squad. Dry had not regained consciousness.
"How's that?" Chief EMT asked, and in reply was shown Dan the Dry's wallet.
Girl saw the same item as Chief EMT did. A badge--a shiny brass Metropolis Detective badge--clipped opposite a Police photo ID, its picture unmistakably of Dan the Dry, her Dry Cleaner. The engraved badge number was as clear to her as day, 2-5-3-6, the same number of the dollar amount Dan had been charging her for dry cleaning for nearly as long as she could remember. It had always seemed high for only a pair of shirts or a couple of slacks without special needs.
"I need to--" she forced Junior into Chief EMT's arms, put her hand to her head. The number 2-5-3-6 was etched to the inside of her lids, and they wanted to close so she could see it again. "I need to call my mother." And with that, she fainted.
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...to be continued...
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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
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