Cry Uncle by Judith Arnold Page B

few close
friends—although in Pamela’s case, the only locals who could pass
for friends—not close ones, at that—were Joe, Kitty, and Lizard.
But the event should have had at least a modicum of
class.
    Tears dampened her lashes. She hastily wiped
her eyes before Kitty returned to the back lot to fetch her. “Come
on,” Kitty whispered, as if anyone could have heard her over the
din in the main barroom.
    Pamela let Kitty lead her inside, down the
back hall and through a door. Jonas’s office was a small room taken
up with an old, chipped desk, an even older-looking swivel chair, a
tattered sofa, and a few file cabinets. Crayon drawings decorated
the walls, and a cardboard carton in a corner held assorted toys.
Pamela peeked inside and saw a tricorn hat, a rubber knife and what
appeared to be a cheesily constructed prosthetic hook.
    “ That’s Lizard’s stuff,”
Kitty explained the box. When Pamela dared to pick up the plastic
hook, Kitty added, “That’s part of her pirate costume. You should
see her when she gets all decked out as a pirate—the eye patch, the
peg-leg, the gun... It’s adorable.”
    I can imagine, Pamela thought wryly. “Why does she store her toys
in Joe’s office?”
    “ So she’ll have something to
play with when she’s hanging out here.”
    “ Here? What on earth would a
little girl be doing in a bar?”
    “ Well, it’s not like she’s
knocking back a few,” Kitty explained. “But if Joe has a
baby-sitting snafu or something, he brings her along with him. She
used to spend lots of time here when she was younger. He had a
little port-a-crib set up in here for her to sleep in. Although
sometimes it was hard to get her down with the juke box going, or
if there was an especially rowdy crowd, so we’d bring her into the
main room—”
    “ The bar?” Pamela couldn’t
believe it. An innocent, defenseless little girl spending her
evenings in a bar ?
    Then again, innocent and defenseless weren’t
appropriate words to describe Lizard. In a brawl among a group of
drunken brutes, Pamela would bet on Lizard to land the most
punches.
    “ Everybody in the bar loves
her. Me and Lois, even Brick. And the customers. And Joe, of
course, most of all. It’s not like he wants to bring her here, but
he’s got to earn a living and he can’t just leave her home alone.
His mom was supposed to be Lizard’s baby-sitter, but sometimes she
didn’t come through. Great lady, but less than a hundred percent
dependable. And now she’s off in Mexico digging up
bones—”
    “ Bones?”
    “ That’s the rumor.” Kitty
swung out the door, calling over her shoulder, “I’m gonna see if
we’re ready to roll.”
    Pamela sighed. She wasn’t ready to roll. She
wondered if it was too late to bail out of this charade. Surely
people had been stranded at the altar with far less cause. And
there wasn’t even an altar at the Shipwreck.
    But if she didn’t marry Joe, where would she
go? She was tired of running, and she’d literally reached the end
of the road. And even if Joe’s child-rearing strategies included
bringing Lizard to the bar, he deserved to keep his niece.
    Pamela wasn’t a quitter. She followed through
on things, finished what she started and obeyed the dictates of her
conscience. Right now, her conscience was telling her she couldn’t
jilt Jonas Brenner.
    Kitty returned to the office, smiling
brightly. “It’s show time,” she announced. “Brick’s got the boom
box set up, the judge is here, and you’re about to tie the
knot.”
    Swallowing a lump of emotion—part rue, part
dread, part sheer panic—Pamela straightened her shoulders and
joined Kitty at the door. They tiptoed out into the hall as a tinny
rendering of the Wedding March resounded through the small speakers
of a portable stereo atop the juke box.
    As Kitty had promised, the barroom had been
spruced up. The tables, pushed to the perimeter of the room, were
all draped in white paper table cloths, and white satin