Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

I’m Pink Lady Apple Yeggs and my friend, and brother-in-law, Deviled Yeggs suggested that I record each project that I set up in the hopes of reforming the people who continue to work for Lily the Pink Enterprises.  If for no other reason, it would show how God is at work.

Emmett Dalton entered my office.  “Dad said you wanted to see me?  What have I done wrong?”

I tried in vain to stifle a laugh. “Young man, people do not have to do something wrong in order to get invited to my office.  It is not like I am the principal at your school.  I’m just wondering where your head is right now.”

Emmett shrugged, “Where it always is, between my shoulders.  I’m just a freshman in high school, Ma’am.  I don’t know much more than that.”

I groaned, “Don’t give me that freshman in high school that is lost and floundering at sea.  I pictured you, Emmett, as someone who had everything together.  You had a call to the ministry.  You have a lovely girl for a girlfriend.  You are making great grades in school, but then again you are a year older than the rest of your class, a little maturity factor there, I think.  And you have this marvelous gift for playing jazz saxophone.  You have been doing research that have the botany people at the university very impressed.  And I hear you are researching how to care for llamas.  Yet, when I see you around the campus here at Lily the Pink, the smile is gone, and there seems to be a constant stare, what they call the thousand-mile stare.  Have you bit off too much or is something bothering you?”

Emmett shrugged again, “I don’t know, Ma’am.”

I sighed, “Okay, first, you are calling me ‘Ma’am’, and that title makes me feel old.  Most people have picked up on ‘Mommie Tinkie’ but you can join your girlfriend and call me ‘Aunt Pink.’  Now, second, I will not accept the teenaged ‘don’t know’ routine.  Let’s start with your call to the ministry.  How did that happen?”

Emmett said, “Well, my folks have three children.  I am the oldest, then comes my two sisters, but I was supposed to run the farm.  Then the flood destroyed the farm.  We did not have flood insurance and we were wiped out.  So, me growing up to run a farm that did not exist made me question why I am here.  Then I wondered how we even survived.  Then, what was my purpose in surviving the flood?  I prayed about that a lot, and I felt God was calling me to the ministry.  Then, you hired Mom and Dad.  They had me helping take data, that thing the botanists at the university worked with me on.  I dreamed up the idea from just the idea of learning the best environment for each plant, but the professors started guiding me once they knew that I was already ahead of the curve on what they wanted to do.  We’ve worked well together.  So, then I started thinking that I might have gone full circle and now growing plants should be my thing to do.  But then, when the disaster relief money came in and then the university paid for my folks’ land, Mom and Dad bought the land on the county line with Stout County.  And then the llamas fell into our lap.  Now, what do I do?  Was it a true call to be a minister?  Or should I become a botanist?  Or should I go into farming and raise llamas?  I’m just confused.  And teenager or not, I just don’t know.”

I smiled and nodded.  He had won round one.  I asked, “So, I have not heard you going to the Snazzy Taz to practice, and your last gig was a few weeks ago.  Has that gone sour?”

Emmett finally looked in my general direction, but still with no eye contact, “Aunt Pink, do you know what groupies are?”

I swallowed, “I have heard of rock ‘n roll groupies, but jazz?”

Emmett said, “I have a collection of bras.  The band mates suggested that I put a tag on each bra with the date it was thrown onto the stage.  I get about five or six each time I perform.  Well, every time since the first when Sophie was front row center.  And you adults keep asking questions and getting evasive answers from Sophie.  I think she likes tying y’all up in knots, but I told the club that to feel comfortable, I wanted someone I knew on the front row at the table in the center.  That is all it took.  Since she was spying on a murder suspect at the time, everyone has come up with all kinds of cloak and dagger ideas.  But I would not play without someone I knew there and Sophie and Margie were available and the club manager was in a bind since it was one of the big nights for the band and the saxophonist was sick.”

I asked, “But what about the kiss?”

Emmett shrugged, “I had written the song about how she looked pretty in pink because I knew she refused to wear pink unless absolutely necessary.  No offense.”

I sighed, “None taken.  She’s my niece.  She can get away with it … to a point.”

Emmett finally smiled, “Yeah.  And when the song was over, I kind of had an out-of-body experience.  Something caused me to jump down from the stage and kiss her, and once the kiss started, neither one of us wanted it to end.  I don’t know if that was the moment or if that was love, but Margie was laughing about how we had been a boy and a girl who were friends, and that status was definitely over.  But to be honest, there have been a dozen naked groupies in the dressing room that the band mates disposed of.  I don’t think they killed them, but they were encouraged to not come back since I was underage.  But seeing Sophie in her pink bikini and only on the water slide or on the water polo team, and that is as far as we have gotten.”

I cleared my throat, “I do not allow that kind of thing here.  There was a no nudity policy even when this was a brothel.  Why give the customer a free peak?  It gave me some pushback on Baldwyn and gave the ladies here some dignity.  So, do not expect me to condone you trying to take her clothes off.”

Emmett laughed, “No ma’am.  I was just saying that Sophie and I had that one kiss and we have not really connected since.  We spend time together, but I can tell she is distracted.  She has good reason to be.  She is the head of the codebreakers.  She is one of your rogues.  She works off and on in Aunt Tensie’s lab.  She spends a lot of time with Menzie and Missy.  And most of the time that Sophie is with me is when Menzie practices.  Menzie’s full set at the Taz will be my next gig there, even if there are two saxophonists.  Menzie keys off me.  But that’s it.  Sophie is there watching both of us when we practice, and it sometimes seems like she is there as Menzie’s friend instead of mine.  And I do not know if I like being Fritz Brenner.”

I laughed, “At least you weren’t Theodore Horstmann, Nero Wolfe’s orchid guy on the roof.  GrandPa is still upset about that.  But aren’t you being too hard on Sophie?  Both of you are very busy.”

Emmett nodded, “That’s what I thought at first, but we just seem to be comfortable at arm’s length.  And I don’t know if I like that.”

I leaned across the table.  “One of you has to get inside that arm’s length to find out if anything is still there.  That’s all I have for you today, Emmett.  I just wanted to know what was going on.”

Two days later, Kanok was playing in the play area.  I was watching her play.  I really had no thoughts of Lily the Pink operations at that moment.  The door suddenly burst open.  It was Sophie, my niece.

“Aunt Pink, what on earth!  What on earth did you talk to Emmett about a couple of days ago?!”

I turned to her and smiled.  She was angry, red in the face, and breathing really hard.

I smiled, “Oh, if it is not my darling teenaged niece, Sophie.  If you would kindly leave the room.  Then knock before re-entering.  And use a sweet tone of voice with your question after you have given a proper greeting, please, dear.”

Sophie growled, but she did as requested.  When she reentered, she asked, “Aunt Pink, I have heard through the grape vine that you talked to Emmett Dalton two days ago.  His behavior has changed in the meantime.  I am here to inquire as to the nature of the conversation.”

I batted my eyelashes as if I really had any, and I said, “Well, fiddle-dee-dee, that is confidential information that I cannot divulge.”

Sophie slapped her forehead.  “Please, Aunt Pink, I have to know if this is him doing this or if it is you putting him up to it.”

I shrugged, “Sophie, I do not know anything about what has happened between you and Emmett within the past forty-eight hours.  If you enlighten me, then I might be able to confirm or deny.  At this point, I am totally lost.”  I tried smiling some more, but Sophie was not buying it.  Then she caved.  This is her first person report.

Sophie said:

Okay, okay.  Yesterday, I was helping Menzie with some of her homework in the Crystal Mountain near the beach volleyball arena.  Emmett walked up and asked if he could speak to me in private.  I told him “no” in that the Lily the Pink rules require boyfriend / girlfriend interactions at spots that are covered by the security cameras.  Since the picnic table was one of those spots, whatever he had to say could be said to both Menzie and me.

Then he asked if I could at least stand up.  He said, “We had one romantic kiss at the Snazzy Taz that people still talk about.  I have had about a dozen girls show up in the dressing room naked, so I could kiss them.  But the band members cart the groupies off.  I have a huge collection of women’s bras.  They just throw them on stage.  But here, you ignore me half the time, and then it is a friendly peck on the cheek otherwise.  I want to know, Sophie, are we boyfriend and girlfriend or just friends?”

I said, “We are just freshmen in high school, but I consider you my boyfriend.  I thought we were taking it slow.”  He then grabbed me and kissed me like he had done at the Snazzy Taz, but then I felt something and I backed off.  “What was that?!”

Emmett said, “I think you know what that was.  I love you, Soap, and when we kiss, my body responds.”

I asked, “Was that a boner?!  You poked me with a boner?!”

Menzie said, “Yep, and it’s a nice one.”

I was angry.  “Emmett Dalton, we are not going to be having sex for a long time and if you do that again, we may never.”

Emmett said, “Soap, I just wanted you to know that I am getting to the point, umm, that age, where those kinds of things just happen.  I don’t have to think it into happening.  I am just saying that I want to hold you, to kiss you, to take you to the top of the Crystal Mountain and have us watch the sunrise or sunset together, that is if you don’t have a fear of heights. I do not wish to bed you until after we are married, if that ever happens, but I am one hundred percent committed to you.  Believe me.  With all the groupie requests, I have options.  None of them are nice options.  None of them are anything as nice as you, but I want you, not a peck on the cheek when you have the time.  So, now, when have you ever kissed me and used all your passion in doing so?”

I said, “We just kissed!”

Emmett shook his head.  “No, that was me kissing you.  If you really want to be part of this relationship, you have to kiss me with everything you’ve got.”  I went over and planted the biggest kiss I could manage.  And I ground my thigh and groin into him to get a big boner, but nothing.

He finally pulled away, “Sophie, you can’t get a boner going by humping my thigh.  I turned my body so you couldn’t feel the boner.  And if that is what a passionate kiss is to you, maybe we are finished.  Sophie, I want to be a preacher someday.  Messing around in the bed with a girl in high school would not work well in that scenario.  But I had to know that you could be as passionate toward me as I know that I feel for you.  And I want to hire you, or maybe Missy will hire you.  Because of the groupie problem at the Snazzy Taz, I want you to be there for each performance once Menzie starts singing.  You can be her bodyguard or green room assistant, whatever title you want.  But maybe there will be less bras being thrown and less naked women in the dressing room after the performances.  My Dad and Missy have decided to both be there to pick us up at the stage entrance to the club.  Missy in full uniform might scare the crazies away.”

Then Menzie said, “In looking at his pants, Emmett had a big boner during your kiss.  So, you have a way with him, girlfriend.”

Emmett and I then sat down next to Menzie.  We both helped her with her homework, and while she was working out the math problems, Emmett and I kissed and talked.  He wants to keep playing the sax, but he might do that in a worship band.  He might start arranging Christian music.  And if he becomes the youth minister at a church in town, he can still do the farming as his main source of income.  We’d never have to move away from Tracy.  So, that works with my career goals.  He had this plan that was the best for him and me, but it was all after the two of you had a private meeting.

Now her story was over.  Sophie asked me, “So, did you put him up to it?  Did you help him work out the details of our life together?”

I laughed, “Sophie, I asked him why he was moping.  He said he had no idea what he wanted to do.  Was it preaching?  Playing the sax?  Working high up in the Crystal Mountain? Or running a farm out at the county line?  And as for you, he was worried that an arm’s length relationship was not working out for him.  My only suggestion was that the arm’s length barrier needed to be breached by one of you two if it was going to work.  Sophie, all those plans were in his head, and he finally got them organized.  That young man is a keeper, and you should not ignore such a wonderful thing as that.”

Sophie smiled, “Thank you, Aunt Pink.  Sorry I barged in earlier.  You are the best aunt I ever had.”

I grumbled, “I have heard about Scrammie’s first wife, and your compliment is not saying much.”

Sophie laughed, “She had run off and even was sent to prison before I was even born.  You are the only aunt I ever had.”

I smiled, “Then, I will accept the role of best aunt ever graciously.”

Sophie then went over to play with Kanok.  Kanok loved playing with “Soapy”.

Credits

Nothing that I think I could call a Credit in this one.