Home Country by Slim Randles

In the week before Valentine’s Day, Mar­vin Pin­cus had two new cus­tomers for his (free of charge, of course) love advice and fly-tying con­sul­ta­tion ser­vices. He tied up a midge for one client, a salmon streamer wrapped in lead for another, and wished them well. This was his busy time, of course. He knew another would come in mid-May, in des­per­ate antic­i­pa­tion of June weddings.

“Marge,” he said, sip­ping cof­fee and look­ing out at the snow, “I think we need a vacation.”

Mar­jorie Pin­cus smiled. They’d both been retired and on per­ma­nent “vaca­tion” for years now.

“I’ll go if it means I don’t have to make the beds or do the dishes,” she said.

“The only thing is, what if some­one needs the fly tying love advice ser­vice while we’re gone?”

This both­ered Mar­vin. A man who spent more than 40 years being depend­able every day can’t be expected to just turn it off like a faucet.

“Honey,” Marge said, “maybe you could des­ig­nate some­one to be on call? Like a doc­tor does? You know?”

Mar­vin thought about that and but­tered some toast. “Only one I can think of who could tie flies well enough would be Del­bert McLean, our cham­ber of com­merce. Know­ing him, instead of giv­ing love advice, he’d talk them into start­ing a busi­ness here.”

“You have a point,” Mar­jorie said, laugh­ing. “But what would be wrong with just going away for a week and let­ting peo­ple fig­ure out their own love lives for a while?”

Mar­vin sat qui­etly and Mar­jorie looked at him and thought how maybe she should be his cus­tomer. She was under no illu­sion about her looks. She was old. Old and wrin­kled. She was hop­ing Mar­vin wasn’t just mar­ried to her because he was used to it. She stud­ied his face, and strangely, didn’t really notice his wrinkles.

Mar­vin smiled at Mar­jorie then. “Any vaca­tion ideas?”

She shook her head. He saw in her the years of love and friend­ship, and he saw, right in front of him, the same gor­geous, sexy young woman he was once ready to kill for. She hadn’t changed a bit.

He took her hand. “How about we drive for a hun­dred miles, get a motel room, watch old movies and eat take-out pizza?”

“You’re on!”

———

Brought to you by A Cowboy’s Guide to Grow­ing Up Right, for young peo­ple of all ages. Read a sam­ple at www.slimrandles.com.w

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