Page 169 of A Lick and A Promise
The Kevster was Rock Chick adjacent. He was one of their friends.
Another one of their friends was Annette, who’d come to Phoenix and fallen in love. She was also a head shop mogul (as in, she had two of them, and the opening of Head Southwest was going to make it three). As soon as she got a load of our weather, our mountains and our proximity to Sedona, she decided to add to her empire.
Annette was free-spirited, fun-loving, and on the hippie scale, she settled somewhere between my vegetarian, charity-working, Grateful Dead-loving parents and my vegan sister, who thought everyone should live her way, didn’t mind sharing that, and had whole outfits made of hemp.
I didn’t know where The Kevster sat on that scale, except I knew he was almost always some level of high, and his lip sync version of “MacArthur Park” might make you weep.
(An aside: karaoke wasn’t my thing, but I was hell on wheels in a lip sync battle—my signature song was “Don’t Tell Me” by Madonna. I could even do some of the dance moves from her video. Hold up, maybe I was a cowgirl.)
To end, The Kevster probably had the clothes on his back, a collection of bongs, a Jefferson Airplane poster and a subscription to every music streaming service that existed, and as such, didn’t need a lot of room in his van (and I’d lay down money that van was a VW) to move himself to a totally different state.
At this juncture, for some reason known only to God, Marjorie stomped up to our group.
Yes, Marjorie, the office manager of the Phoenix branch of NI&S. A woman who, as far as I knew, had never stepped foot in The Surf Club.
The Kevster reared back when she horned in, and I was myself dealing with the culture clash of the hippie-grunge that was The Kevster contrasting with the severe conservative that was Marjorie.
As she forced her way into our huddle, she said, “Excuse me,” like it was an accusation.
“Uh…hey, Marjorie,” I greeted, and before I could ascertain if she knew The Kevster in case I needed to perform introductions, she spoke.
“Your boyfriend is at the office right now,” she declared like I didn’t know this.
“I know,” I replied.
“He is not medically cleared even for desk work,” she informed me.
“I know.”
“So why is he in the office?”
I looked at her.
I looked down at myself.
I looked around the restaurant.
And I looked back at her. “I’m not Knox.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“You work with Knox.”
“I’m aware of that too.”
“So why did you come all the way here?” I asked. “Why didn’t you walk down the hall and speak with Knox?”
She rolled her eyes so extravagantly, I was wildly impressed, then she blew out an irritated breath before she stated, “You and I both know these men think they’re living in an action movie. Get shot. Pfft.” She shrugged just as extravagantly. “Nothing to see here. I’m up on me feet in a day and chasing bad guys down the street by evening.”
“He actually wasn’t on his feet in just a day,” I pointed out.
“I know!” she cried crossly. “But it’s barely been a week!”
This wasn’t true. It had been nine days (I was counting).
“Chill, dudette,” The Kevster urged.
She whirled on him.
