Rude Awakening by Susan Rogers Cooper Page B

mojito and then inhaled half of it. There’s something familiar about this guy, he thought. But Dalton was sure he didn’t know him from Adam.
    â€˜Dalton,’ the man said.
    â€˜Seat’s saved . . . How’d you know my name?’
    â€˜Dalton, you need to concentrate here,’ the man said.
    â€˜My girlfriend’s gonna be back any minute,’ Dalton said. ‘Well, she’s not exactly my girlfriend – not yet anyway – but she’s gonna . . . Who are you?’ he asked, signaling to a waiter for another round.
    The man pulled Dalton’s hand down. ‘I think you’ve had enough.’
    â€˜Whoa now!’ Dalton said, jerking his hand out of the man’s grip. ‘Don’t you go grabbing! I want another drink!’
    â€˜I think you’ve had enough to drink,’ the man said.
    â€˜Who are you, the drink police? Where’s Sarah?’ Dalton asked, trying to stand from his chair but not making it all the way up.
    â€˜I’m right here, Dalton,’ the man said, swinging Sarah’s extra-large purse up onto the table.
    Dalton looked all around but couldn’t find the girl of his dreams. ‘Where is she?’ he whined, staring at Sarah’s purse. ‘What did you do with her?’
    The man touched Dalton’s hand where it rested on the table. ‘I’m right here,’ he said again, pulling a strawberry-blonde wig out of the oversized purse.
    Dalton jerked his hand away. ‘Huh?’
    â€˜I thought you understood!’ the man said, tears in his eyes. ‘I thought you knew what “trannie” meant!’
    â€˜Wha—?’ Dalton said, shaking his head. ‘Transmission? Yeah, I know what it means! Makes the car go!’
    The man took a deep breath and then let it out. Finally, he said, ‘No, Dalton, it means men who like to dress up like women.’
    â€˜Huh?’ Dalton said again.
    The man sighed and held out his hand, ‘Hi, I’m Geoffrey.’
    MILT
    It was kinda nice having the house to myself on a Saturday, even if only for a couple of hours. More than that and it would probably get lonely. It’s funny how fast you can get used to the carryings-on of a four-year-old. I can’t believe I went almost sixty years before becoming a daddy. Something I shoulda done at least thirty years ago. Except then the mama woulda been my ex-wife LaDonna, which is a whole ’nother ball of wax.
    I called Virgil Wynn down at the Exxon station, set up an appointment to get the Jeep looked at on Monday and to get a ride to the sheriff’s office, then wandered back outside to my new garage.
    There was a time when this cleared section of my property had a small stable and a fenced-in area for horses, except that when I bought the place, I didn’t have any horses. Then a tornado knocked that down, and my sister and her kids were still living here and I thought maybe I’d build a pool. But before I got that notion totally clear in my head, my sister up and married and moved her and her kids to Bishop, on the other side of the county. So then when me and Jean got married, and we knew we were having a baby, she – I mean we – decided a pool wouldn’t be a good idea. That’s when I had the garage built. Not only is it a garage, it’s a workshop, too. Fits two cars and a boat, if I ever get one, and has a room all along the back set up for woodworking and general manly messing around. And it has an air conditioner. So I wandered out there and put my tools in alphabetical order.
    My cell phone rang when I was on the ‘D’s – drill, drill bits, Dustbuster, drummet. I picked it up and said, ‘Hello’.
    â€˜Did you find him?’ Clovis Pettigrew demanded.
    I sighed. ‘Not yet, Ma’am. But he’ll call in soon, I swear.’
    She hung up loudly in my ear. Which I felt was better than having to listen to