That evening, Carol brings Daryl a plate on watch again, a little later than she did the last time. She had Cody over as a guest for dinner tonight, as promised, and it wasn't easy getting him ushered out the door. While Daryl wolfs down his food, she asks, "Are we still on for the furniture run the day after tomorrow?"
"Why the hell wouldn't we be?"
"I just…I got the impression Jefe objects."
"Well Jefe ain't the one got to live with that gaudy ass grandma furniture, is she?"
"You didn't seem to mind before I mentioned it." Jefe's right. Daryl isn't doing this out of some interest in interior decorating.
"Yeah, well, you did mention it. And now all I can think 'bout every time I sit down in that damn armchair is my grandma's old lady perfume smell. And those ancient candies she used to have in that dish."
"The dinner mints," Carol says. "And those ones that are wrapped in paper that looks like a strawberry."
"Yeah! How'd you know?"
"All grandmothers had those. Mine did, too."
"I mean, I ate those mints." He shrugs.
She chuckles. "Did you like your grandmother?" She hopes he has one good family memory, at least.
"She used to read to me," he says. "Had this tiny cabin, 'bout quarter mile from ours in the same neighborhood. One bedroom. Some nights, when things got…the way they got with my dad…I'd just walk there. Show up. Wouldn't even have my shoes on or nothing. She'd call me her little Huck Finn, say get in here, boy, you'll catch your death."
Carol wonders why she didn't call CPS on Daryl's father. Surely she must have suspected the abuse. But perhaps she'd been an abused wife or child herself. Carol's in no position to judge, given the fifteen years she spent with Ed.
"Then I'd sit on the couch," Daryl continues, "and she'd read to me 'til I fell asleep. And she'd drape that old lady blanket over me, what's it called?"
"An afghan?" Carol ventures.
"Yeah. Brown and gold. But she died when I was nine."
"Sounds like you loved her."
"'Course I loved her. She was my grandmama."
"What did she read you? Besides, I assume, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn?"
"Adventures of Tom Sawyer."
Carol smiles.
"Tales of Uncle Remus. Treasure Island. Jungle Book. Call of the Wild. Shit like that. We didn't have no books at our cabin. But she taught me to read when I was four. Said Hugh Weedon Mercer public elementary probably wasn't gonna teach me jack shit and I oughtta learn something 'fore my mama sent me there for the free daycare."
Below the watch stand, Cody rumbles a flashy red moped to a purring stop at the iron gate. The vehicle looks like something one might use to putt around the streets of Paris in a romance movie. "There's a thrasher, you know," Cody calls up from where he sits on the bike. "It's almost to the gate."
"Shit," Daryl mutters.
"I've got it." Carol raises the rifle he handed her when he took the plate and sees, through the scope, the walker lurching up the dirt road. It was previously obscured by a small cluster of trees halfway between the stream and gate. When it wound its way there unnoticed, she can't guess, but probably on the last man's shift. She brings the creature's head into her crosshairs and squeezes the trigger smoothly. The kickback is harder on Daryl's Winchester .308 than on the AR-15 she's been practicing with, but still her aim is true: the walker's head explodes.
"Damn good shot," Daryl says.
Carol feels a swell of pride at the compliment. "I've been practicing."
Daryl walks closer to the right rail of the platform. "Hell you doing out?" he calls down to Cody. "Ain't you still healing up?"
"I'm fine," Cody replies. "Dr. S. just says no heavy lifting for six weeks. But it's easier to get around on my bike than it is to walk."
"Man, don't call that thing a bike."
Cody ignores the comment. "I just rode down to check something out of the warehouse and saw the thrasher coming. But I'm heading home now. Thanks again, Carol, for dinner. It was really good!"
"You're welcome!" Carol calls.
"Dinner?" Daryl asks as Cody does a U-turn and purrs off toward his trailer.
"I had Cody over for dinner. Don't worry, we have plenty of food because you were gone those four days and didn't take anything with you."
"You asked him over for dinner?"
"You're the one who suggested I pity fuck him, remember?"
Daryl looks horrified. "Didn't take me seriously, did you?"
She laughs. "I did not have sex with Cody. I just fed him."
"Phew!" he whistles.
"Why phew?" she asks.
"Just…ain't nice. Cody would think it meant something."
"Hmm. Well, we've established that we're just going to be good friends. Which I think disappointed him, but the dinner helped make-up for it. Cody really likes my cooking."
"Just remember, I liked you first."
She smiles. "My cooking, you mean?"
"'S what I said."
It wasn't quite what he said. "I think Cody liked me first, actually. You, on the other hand, took a while to warm up to me. But you have warmed up to me, right?"
"Hard not to." He extends her his empty plate and reaches for the rifle.
With a smirk, she asks, "Does this mean you're ready for me to go down?"
"Stop."
She chuckles, relinquishes the rifle, takes the plate, and heads back to the cottage.
[*]
One more night until they leave on their private shopping trip. Not that Carol's thinking about how awkward it might be. To be alone. Overnight. With her secret crush.
Stop it. Daryl is not your secret crush.
She's just enjoying practicing her harmless flirting skills, she assures herself, the ones she could never use for fear of Ed. She's used the same skills on Cody, after all. And on Ryan. Even on Garrison a little bit, now that she knows he can take no for an answer. Of course, none of those other men have ever left her smiling like a silly schoolgirl, but that's beside the point.
So when Daryl goes to see Dr. Eastman this evening, and Sophia comes home after finally defeating Ivan at a game of chess and goes straight to bed, Carol assures herself she's not staying up to wait for Daryl. No. She just needs to relax and read a little before she can fall sleep.
Now that it's September, it's slightly cooler in the evening, cool enough that she won't be sweated out if she lights a fire for reading light and opens all the windows. So she does, and then she curls up on the loveseat, her back to the open windows of the porch.
She hears Daryl return, smells the familiar smoke of his cigarette through the open window, but he doesn't come inside right away. He mutters, "Here you go. Six cigars. As promised."
Then Carol hears DeShawn's voice. "And bring it back with a full tank."
"Is it full now?"
"No, but that's part of the deal."
"Will if I can. You know half that shit's spoiled now. But I'll see what I can find."
The rocking chair creaks. DeShawn must light up one of those six cigars now, because peppery sweet tobacco smoke drifts in and mixes with the scent of Daryl's cigarette.
"Why can't we go inside?" DeShawn asks.
"Carol don't like the smoke inside."
DeShawn chuckles. "You're letting your sponsee tell you what to do?"
"Like you don't?"
"It's different. Nadia's my girlfriend. You were wrong, you know. She wasn't just saying yes to get me to renew. We're a couple. We even told Ivan at dinner last night."
"A'righty then."
"You were wrong," DeShawn repeats. "You can never admit it, can you? When you're wrong."
"Happy to be wrong," Daryl says. "If that's what you want."
"For you to be wrong?"
"For Nadia to be your girlfriend." There's a pause and then, "Ain't you a little old for a girlfriend?"
"Jesus, Daryl. Why do you always have to harsh my mellow?"
"They call me mellow yellow…" That's another voice Carol hears now, singing as it nears the porch stairs. "They call me mellow yellow," Garrison sings again, his voice growing closer. "Quite rightly! They call me mellow yellow…" He abruptly stops singing and asks, "Can I have one of those cigars?"
"You got your own," DeShawn replies.
"Not on me though, and don't you want to extend me one in congratulations? As you might have heard, I've recently been promoted to outer circle."
"How could I possibly have heard?" DeShawn asks. "You only mention it twenty-seven times a day."
"Well," Garrison replies, "I just came by for my celebratory shot of whiskey. Carol said you'd give me one, Daryl, when you got back from hunting. On account of my promotion."
"You got your own damn whiskey," Daryl tells him.
"I know, but Carol insisted she had a very generous sponsor. She said, and I quote – Daryl is an exceedingly generous man, and he would absolutely want you to stop by and have a shot of his whiskey to commemorate your promotion."
Carol covers her mouth so her laughter won't be heard through the open window.
"Carol said that?" Daryl asks.
"While we were pike cleaning together."
"Fuck you, man. Carol don't talk like that. Exceedingly. Commemorate. Hey!" Daryl's voice is very close to the window now. Carol turns in the loveseat and sees his face is in the open window. "You hear that? You tell Garrison that?"
"Not exactly," Carol replies, a little embarrassed to be suspected of eavesdropping. She wasn't, really, not this time, anyway, but it's impossible not to hear them out there.
"Didn't think so."
"Do you want me to bring out the whiskey anyway, though?" she asks him.
Daryl sighs. "Fine. And four glasses."
She supposes the fourth glass must be meant for her. Daryl opens the door for her when she kicks it, because her hands are full, the bottle tucked under her arm. He's finished smoking his cigarette—she can see the stub crushed out on the porch—so his hands are free to take the bottle and one of the glasses from her. DeShawn and Garrison each take a glass. Daryl pours about two ounces in each and then sets the bottle down on the porch.
DeShawn stands from the rocking chair. He holds his smoking cigar down in one hand and raises his glass in the other. "To Garrison, in honor of his promotion. It couldn't have happened to a more worthy man. Except maybe Salvador."
"Or Cody," Daryl says. "Or Jorge."
"Colton maybe," DeShawn adds.
"C'mon, guys, stop busting my balls here!"
DeShawn laughs. "Seriously, brother, it's about damn time."
"Yean," Daryl agrees. "Congratulations, Gare."
And then the men are clinking glasses, and Carol awkwardly joins in.
The men shoot half of their pours in one satisfied hiss, but Carol takes a tiny sip to start and winces when it burns her throat.
"Oh, Carol, I'll finish that for you if you don't want it," Garrison tells her. "I'm always happy to be of assistance."
"Ain't yours," Daryl tells him. "It's Carol's. If she wants to sip on it all night long, that's her damn business."
"All right," Garrison tells him, taking a step back. "I just hate to see good whiskey go to waste, is all."
When the men finish their whiskey, Carol collects the glasses—hers, which is barely touched, in one hand, and their three empty ones held together by the fingers of her other hand. Garrison opens the door for her and smiles, and, before she turns, she sees his eyes flit down to watch her ass as she walks in.
She puts the empty glasses in the sink and leaves her unfinished glass on the counter for Daryl to drink later, because she is not finishing that straight-up, slow sipping or not. It must be 120-proof. When she settles back on the loveseat and picks up her book, she can hear Daryl urging the men off his porch because "unlike you assholes, I got to get up at the ass crack of dawn to get some hunting done 'fore I go on this run."
He doesn't come in when they leave though. He comes in a few minutes later. He rounds the back of the loveseat where she's sitting, stands beside the hearth, and waves a 12-ounce glass bottle of Coca-Cola he must have fetched from the root cellar. "Prefer your whiskey with Coke?"
"I'd love it with Coke."
He goes over to the kitchen, pops the cap from the bottle against the counter, and pours about four ounces of the Coke into the whiskey glass she's left there. Then he balances the bottle cap back on top of the Coke and says, "Let Sophia have the rest for breakfast."
He lifts the glass and swishes it with a motion of his wrist as he brings it to her. He also brings an empty glass for himself and pours a little more whiskey from the bottle before sliding down into the armchair, putting his dirty boots up on the coffee table, and cocking his head to look at the book in her hand.
"It's not Denim Dreams," she insists. "It's a biography of Eleanor Roosevelt."
"She was hot."
"Eleanor Roosevelt?" Carol asks, laying the book aside on the empty cushion of the loveseat.
"Wait, nah, no I'm thinking of that other president's wife. Kennedy's wife?"
"Jackie Onassis? Yes, she was attractive." Carol takes a small sip of her cocktail. It's delicious with the Coke, and there's very little burn anymore.
"Who's the hottest U.S. president?" he asks.
It's a strange question, she thinks, coming from him. "Umm…Kennedy, I guess. Or maybe Bill Clinton."
"Clinton? Looks like Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer."
"Actually, on second thought, Obama." Obama had just been elected a little over a year before the world ended. It probably never occurred to him that he would be the last president of the United States.
"Nah, ain't any of those three."
"You have an opinion about the hottest U.S. president?" she asks skeptically.
"Ain't my opinioin. 'S a fact. Read it in this book of facts I got from the library up in the mansion. Was about all the U.S. presidents. Had forty-three pages. One for each of the presidents. Had pictures, too."
"Hotness is a matter of opinion," she insists, "not of fact." The fire crackles in the hearth and sends up a spark as a log shifts. It's getting warm, even with the windows open, but the light illuminates the living room in a soft glow that enables them to see one another.
"They polled a bunch of historians. Seventy percent of 'em answered the same damn thing. So it's a fact."
"That's not a – never mind. Who, factually speaking, was the hottest president?"
"Franklin Pierce. They even called 'em Handsome Frank."
Carol contemplates this answer as she takes another sip of her cocktail. "I have no idea what he looks like," she admits. "I don't even know when he was president."
"1853."
"Well he probably doesn't look good now."
Daryl snorts.
"Do you still have the book?" she asks. "Can I see his picture? "
"Returned it already. Jeeves is a damn stickler 'bout due dates. He'll fine your ass."
"Does he have the authority to do that?"
"Nah. Not really. He just bitches 'bout it, and listening to him bitch is worse than a fine." Daryl takes another slow sip of his whiskey. He's not shooting it like he did with the boys. "Think Garrison wants in your pants."
"I'm aware. He may have attempted to invite himself over while you were on that bear hunt."
"Ryan. Garrison. Cody. You're just the toast of the town, ain't ya?"
"I get the impression just about any fresh blood is the toast of the town around here. All I had to do was show up and be single."
"You didn't have him over, though?" Daryl asks. "Garrison? While I's gone?"
"Would it bother you if I did?"
"Just wouldn't want him eating m'food. Tracking his muddy boots all over my floor."
She smiles. "Or putting them up on the nice clean coffee table I just dusted this afternoon?"
Daryl swings his boots off the coffee table, leans forward to dust the dirt from its surface onto the floor, and then sits back in the armchair.
"I did not have Garrison over," she tells him. Then, just to test his reaction: "But maybe I should sometime. He's kind of cute in a way. And he has a nice signing voice."
"Wouldn't go there if I were you."
"No?" she asks. "Why?"
"'Cause I think Garrison's fucked Bonnie a time or two. And I know Bonnie fucked Merle. And Merle got the clap on occasion."
"So you're only looking out for my health?" She says her next words in a teasing tone: "And here I just thought you might be jealous."
"Pfft." He drains the rest of his whiskey quickly. "I best get to sleep. I'll be back from hunting when you get off your warehouse shift, and then will roll." He stands. "It's fucking hot in here."
"I'm about to put the fire out," she assures his retreating back.