Bingo (Runnymede, Band 2) - Softcover

Brown, Rita Mae

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0553380400 ISBN 13: 9780553380408

Verlag: Random House Publishing Group, 1999

Inhaltsangabe

In the sequel to her beloved Six of One, Rita Mae Brown returns with another witty tale of passion and rivalry in the small Southern town of Runnymede, Maryland. Newspaper editor Nickel Smith is scrambling to save the local paper from corporate extinction, even as she is engaged in an affair that would shock the town as much as it amazes Nickel herself. Meanwhile, her mother, Julia, and her aunt Louise, the infamous Hunsenmeir sisters, who’ve set the town on its ears for decades, keep an eagle eye on Nickel. No matter that she’s a grown woman and that they’re going on ninety; they need someone to gossip about! Not even the town’s weekly bingo games can keep Louise and Julia out of trouble when Ed Tutweiler Walters, an eligible newcomer, arrives in town—and has the sisters fighting over him like schoolgirls. A telling look at the foibles of modern relationships, Bingo is full of wisdom about the comforts, trials, and absurdities of small-town life and especially of our own nearest and dearest.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Rita Mae Brown is the bestselling author of the Sneaky Pie Brown series; the Sister Jane series; A Nose for Justice and Murder Unleashed; Rubyfruit Jungle; In Her Day; and Six of One, as well as several other novels. An Emmy-nominated screenwriter and a poet, Brown lives in Afton, Virginia.

Aus dem Klappentext

d author of Rubyfruit Jungle and Six Of One retums to Runnymede, Maryland, for an outrageous, poignant, and surprising story of passion, rivalry, and small-town fun. Straddling the Mason-Dixon Line since before the Civil War is Runnymede. And it seems that ever since then, most people in the town have been inherently split: between good and bad, or love and sex, or male and female, or politics and sobriety. Nicole ("Nickel") Smith is in such a dilemma herself--here she is, an avowed lesbian, having an affair that would shock Runnymede as much as it shocks Nickel herself. And her work seems to be going to the dogs, too, when the beloved newspaper where she is an editor is put up for sale. Thank goodness the weekly bingo games still go on, though Nickel is a little weary of playing referee there for the flamboyant Hunsenmeir sisters, Louise and Julia. Nickel's momma, who is now pushing ninety

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Chapter One


Flying a Kite

WEDNESDAY . . . 25 MARCH, 1987

Run faster.” “I’m running as fast as I can.” I was too. “Mom, call off Goodyear and Lolly Mabel. I keep tripping over them.”

“Don’t blame it on the dogs. You don’t know how to fly a kite.” Mother did, however, order the dogs to sit by her.

Goodyear, a huge, black male Chow Chow, was originally called Jet Pilot but he grew fatter and fatter, and hence the name Goodyear. Lolly Mabel, his gorgeous red daughter, was my dog, a gift for my birthday two years ago. Lolly and Pewter, my cat, were bosom companions but Pewter didn’t like Goodyear. Not that Goodyear wasn’t the world’s second-best dog, Lolly Mabel being the first, but Mom had taught him to howl and play dead at the mention of her sister’s name, Louise. We had to be careful to call Louise “Wheezie” or “Wheeze” in front of the dog lest Louise discover yet another of her baby sister’s blasphemies. Well, one day I forgot. Luckily, Aunt Louise wasn’t around but Pewter was. When the dreaded name Louise escaped my lips, Goodyear screamed bloody murder, then flopped down “dead.” Pewter, appalled, ran under Mother’s front porch and it took a good hour to coax her out.

The kite shuddered in the air but wouldn’t rise. “Dammit!” I continued to pump my legs.

“Gimme that.” Mother grabbed the string and ran across the lawn. At eighty-two, Julia Ellen Hunsenmeir Smith could still run, and the kite fluted upward. Mother walked backwards now, jerking the string, urging the red kite, with the tail’s many bow ties, higher.

A screech around the corner snapped us away from the graceful sight of the kite to the less graceful sight of Louise taking the corner on two wheels.

“I thought I was going to pick her up. You can’t let her drive.”

“She does what she wants.” Juts observed Louise’s lurching halt in front of her house.

Aunt Louise drove a 1952 Chrysler. Her deceased husband, Paul “Pearlie” Trumbull, hated General Motors, hated the auto business, and hated Detroit. He used to declare that they were nothing better than Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves and every year they’d jack up the price on cars. As it happened, he was right. “If you want to get back on your feet, miss two car payments” was one of Pearlie’s favorite expressions. Well, he never missed a payment, because he drove his Model A Ford until it died around him, but during those decades he saved and saved and then he went out and bought three identical 1952 Chryslers. He drove the one, intending to use the other two for parts, and he figured that if he took good care of his car, which he did, that Chrysler would be driven by his grandchildren and Detroit be damned.

Except for the tires, which Louise wore out with alarming frequency, the black Chrysler looked spanking new. The door opened and shut with a thud. Louise emerged in her blue-haired glory.

“Well?” she demanded.

“Well, what?” Mother replied.

“Do you like it?” Louise stood motionless like a geriatric Greek statue.

“Like what?” Mother was paying more attention to her kite than to Louise.

“You getting cataracts, Julia? My hair! Do you like my hair!”

“Looks like it does every Wednesday when you hit up the Curl ’n Twirl.”

“It does not! You are blind. Nickel, what do you think?”

On the spot, I fibbed. “I like it fine. It’s a little shorter and more youthful-looking.”

“Thank you. At least someone around here has the courtesy to pay attention to me even if it is only my adopted niece. Blood sister doesn’t pay attention to anyone but herself. What are you doing out here flying a kite, anyway? You’re too old for that stuff.”

“It’s your birthday, so I’d lay off the age jokes.”

“You haven’t even wished me a happy birthday!” The shadow of a pout hung on Louise’s cerise lower lip.

“I was going to wait until the party.” Juts reeled in her kite.

“What’d you get me?”

“Wait until the party.”

“Give it to me now. I don’t like presents in front of strangers.”

“Strangers? You’ve known most of the people who’ll be at your party for over eighty years.”

“Not Mr. Pierre.”

Mr. Pierre owned and operated the Curl ’n Twirl. His hair was tinted a delicate shade of lilac. Mr. Pierre was big on tints. “The girls” zipped into his shop on Runnymede Square and zipped out like so many pastel Easter eggs. Mother and Louise had only known Mr. Pierre for perhaps thirty years. Behind his back Mother called him “the bearded lady” but she did love him. When his companion of twenty-eight years died of throat cancer in 1981, all three drew closer together, since each was widowed. Apart from his passion for tints, Mr. Pierre was a good influence on the girls. He insisted they lower their cholesterol, he fought valiantly against refined sugar, and he encouraged them to wear shorts in the summer, old age be damned.

“Aunt . . .” I paused and looked at Goodyear, whose ears pricked up in anticipation of his trick. “. . . Wheezie, let me drive you all over to your party.” Goodyear’s ears drooped a little.

“No, I’ll drive. I might want to stay later than you do.”

Mother and I glanced at each other and decided the fight wouldn’t be worth it. Everyone in Runnymede, both North and South, knew the 1952 Chrysler and they scooted off the road when they saw Louise coming. Visitors quickly learned to do the same. The novelty of a town’s being divided in half by the Mason-Dixon Line drew a small stream of tourists, like ants to a picnic. Once they saw the perfect town square, the statue of the Yankee general astride his horse on the Pennsylvania side and the statue of the Confederate soldiers on the Maryland side along with the cannon, they usually had a sandwich and homemade ice cream at Mojo’s and then left—unless they encountered Louise behind the wheel, in which case they left immediately.

Mother put Goodyear and Lolly Mabel in the house. Usually she took Goodyear over to Saint Rose of Lima’s Catholic Church, the site of her once-a-week, hotly contested bingo games and the site of tonight’s birthday party. However, as the assembled friends, acquaintances, and enemies would undoubtedly sing “Happy Birthday, Louise,” Goodyear would fall into his faint after the hideous howl, so Mom thought better of it.

Aunt Louise, excited to get to her party, revved her motor as Mother and I slammed the doors of my Jeep. Before I could hit the ignition, she was leaving rubber on Lee Street.

“Crazy girl,” Mother said. “I’ve tried to get her to slow down. She won’t listen.”

“She’s amenable to money if not to reason. We could bribe her.” I let up on the clutch and we were off.

“Yeah—with our many millions.” Mother laughed.

By the time I pulled into the crowded parking lot at the church, Louise, her turquoise cape fluttering, was stepping through the back door.

After I parked the Jeep, Mom and I trotted through the parking lot. Wheezie, in her haste, had left her motor running. Mother reached in, turned off the car, and pocketed the keys. She shook her head and then sailed past me into the warm bosom of Saint Rose of...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Random House Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1999
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0553380400
• ISBN 13: 9780553380408
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 368
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Penguin Random House Ireland; https://eu-contact.penguin.ie; ; Morrison Chambers, 32 Nassau Street; Dublin; D02 YH68; Irland