Danger, Sweetheart

  “It is?” Fucking better not be. Sweetheart was going and Heartbreak was gonna be gone soon, too. Well, not so much gone as made into a much better thing. A much much much better thing. “Everything is fine” was not the goal here.

  Tarbell waved an arm to indicate the general area. “This isn’t here, you know. I’m not here, either.”

  “Uh, what?” It was warm, temps in the high seventies, but not that warm. Garrett, mindful of where he was stepping

  fucking shit,

  followed Blake into the barn. “Sorry, I didn’t get that.”

  “I’m bleeding out at the bottom of a train wreck.” Blake grabbed a wheelbarrow, plunked the pitchfork into it, pushed it to the stall at the far end, then opened the stall and started forking the soiled straw into it.

  “What. The. Fuck?” It was the only thing Garrett could think to say. Crissakes, it was true. Blake Tarbell, millionaire douche, was living on Heartbreak and working the place. Of his own free will, apparently. Or maybe not; maybe there was a bad guy around who had stuck the barrel of a gun in Shannah Banaan’s mouth (which could only be an improvement) and said … what? Muck out stalls or the old lady gets it?

  “None of this is happening,” Blake explained with puzzling good humor. “You’re not real.”

  “I am too real!”

  “Sorry. You are not.” Both men heard an agitated whinny from just outside and Blake at once turned to yell in that direction. “You will get your apple pieces after I have cleaned up all eighty pounds of your shit, Margaret of Anjou! So it will be some time, as I’m certain you are aware! Plus I have to cut the fruit into tiny pieces because it would be a terrible loss to the world if you were to choke and die!” He turned back to Garrett. “She has recently allowed me to groom her, but I suspect it’s because she enjoys the humiliation I feel when I have to brush her gigantic belly.”

  Garrett couldn’t manage words, could only feel incredibly puzzled and freaked out. He finally found his voice and went with the obvious question. “Why are you here?”

  “The stall, alas, is not going to muck itself out. Also, my mommy has taken away my allowance.”

  Garrett stood, watery brown eyes

  (fucking allergies)

  watering from the dust

  (fucking dust),

  and recalled reason eight thousand why he fucking hated fucking barns. Buildings built, literally, to house dirt and filth and smelly animals. The fucking things were dusty and smelly in February, crissakes, which this wasn’t; it was late spring and there was as much mud as grass. “But why are you here?”

  “Have we met? I think not, stranger who has come to a farm to take an unsanctioned poll, apparently. My name is Blake Tarbell,” he said with exaggerated formality. He stripped off a glove and extended a hand filthy despite the glove. Garrett looked at it, appalled, until Blake shrugged and put the glove back on.

  “Christ, your hand! What have you been doing? Punching cactuses?”

  “Cacti. And no.” He examined his hands and added, “Margaret of Anjou did not take kindly to her new bridle. The good news is, the pain lessens when I pass out. And you are?”

  Garrett shook himself like a cat pissed off after a bath. Or a land developer after getting disturbing news about what was supposed to be a sure thing. “Sorry, we’ve only spoken on the phone.… Garrett Hobbes.”

  “Ah.” A nod. “Yes, I recall the name.”

  “Just wanted to swing by, say hi.”

  Blake cocked an eyebrow, which would have been all debonair and everything except he was slinging shit at the time. “Just to meet and greet? No curiosity as to what I’m doing here? I commend your restraint.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Farewell, restraint. And that.” He paused and forked up more shit. Dumped it into the wheelbarrow. “Is the question.”

  “Yeah, I know. Are you maybe gonna answer it?”

  “I am here to make amends. And possibly become a better person. And try to form a love for a specific patch of land, because some parts of the planet have greater sentimental value than others. News to me,” he added with a shrug. “I live in a desert.”

  “But all the other farms have been taken over.” Love for a specific patch of land? Become a better person? What. The. Fuck? “It’s just Heartbreak left now, and Putt N’Go needs it for the water table.”

  “Poop-scented golf balls,” Blake muttered, because the fucker was clearly losing his mind. “Now I get why she found that so amusing.”

  He ignored the mumble and stayed focused. Like a laser! “Without this farm, Putt N’Go can’t build.” Without this farm, I’m trapped.

  “I sympathize,” Blake replied with an utter lack of sympathy, “but the goals of the Putt N’Go corporation are irrelevant to me.”

  “But not to me! Look, a lot of people are counting on this going through!”

  “Excuse me,” came the polite reply, “but it’s been brought to my attention that the opposite is true.”

  Garrett restrained the urge to kick the nearest stall. Probably get splinters and tetanus and fucking die right there. Get a grip, Hobbes. Just because Grandpa and Great-Grandpa died on farms—and they weren’t farmers!—doesn’t mean you will. “All right, I’m counting on it going through.”

  “And I am not, nor is my mother, nor is most of the town. Which raises the question: Why would you broker a deal if you didn’t control all the property you were offering the buyer?”

  “And let one of the farmers steal my deal? Once people heard about the golf course they’d have dug in and the whole thing would get way out of hand or—worse!—scrapped altogether. And because they gave me a car and an advance, you stupid shit!”

  “And that…” With a nod toward the dooryard, where Garrett’s awesome fucking car was parked. “… should have been your first clue that you were in cahoots with soulless corporate denizens who seek nothing but despair. That is the most unfortunate-looking convertible I’ve ever seen.”

  “The car’s great and the deal’s great!”

  “Do you shout often? You’ve done almost nothing else since you parked your awful car in the drive. You’ll hurt your throat if you keep it up.”

  “What are you talking about?” he screamed.

  “A helpful tip, Mr. Hobbes: wait until after you’ve gone to bed, then scream into your pillow. Not only does it release stress; you’ll sleep like a baby.” He flexed his gloved hands, grimacing. “Works for me.”

  A crazy man. That’s what he was dealing with. Vegas Douche was crazy. Maybe always; maybe Sweetheart had done it to him. Didn’t matter if the result was the same: a crazy man was slinging shit on Heartbreak and fucking up his future awesome life.

  Hobbes tried to come up with a reasoned rebuttal, but all he could think was that the deal would be saved by whatever means necessary and Vegas Douche would have to be killed, or at least run over.

  “Listen up.” Sure, Blake was big and dirty and looked capable of shoving Garrett’s teeth into his nostrils, but Garrett knew how to play rough, too. “I’ve been trapped in this fucking town for four fucking generations. I hate the town. Relatives who weren’t farmers have died on farms in this town. I hate farms. Not only will this deal get me the fuck out of Sweetheart and into the heart of Manhattan, which is the opposite of a farm; I’ll leave rich.”

  Vegas Douche was now leaning on the pitchfork and staring at him like Garrett was the freak weirdo covered in shit, with scratched hands. “Why in the world would you tell me any of this?”

  “To explain. You were on board before.”

  “Stop that.” He’d finished mucking out the stall and was now carrying bags of feed from one end of the barn to the other, for some idiotic fucking reason. “Stop talking in italics.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about? Are you gonna keep your word or not?”

  “Of course I’ll keep my word.”

  “Oh.” Sweet relief flooded him. Garrett almost sagged against the filthy wall.
“Good.”

  “Oh. Not to you. My word to my mother.” Then, like Garrett would actually give a fuck, Blake added, “I owe her, you know. And I didn’t give you my word about anything. We shared a few business transactions.”

  Garrett did not want to talk about Shannah Banaan right now. “Yeah, but you’ll get it if I assumed that once you sold me the other farms you’d also sell me the last farm!”

  “And you’ll get it if I remind you that erroneously representing yourself as the controller in land speculation was likely going to be problematic.” A demanding whinny and Vegas Douche turned to the sound like a flower to sunshine, or something equally fucking poetic and weird. “All right, Margaret of Anjou. I have finished cleaning up your leavings, and I have your apples right here.”

  Vegas Douche grabbed a small brown paper bag and walked out the back. Garrett followed, because anywhere in the world was better than the inside of a barn.

  Outside smelled better at least, though, since they were downwind, not much better. At least he’d gotten Roger Harris’ pig farm on the chopping block, or it’d really stink. Word was losing his family farm sent ole Roger right into Crazy Fuck Land. That he was living at the B and B with his last pig, no less!

  Here was a small corral, all white bars and no gate, and inside the corral was the fattest, butt-ugliest pony Garrett had seen outside of horse porn.* The closer he and Vegas Douche got, the more the pony extended her thick neck and shook her head and showed her big square teeth.

  “Jesus fuck.”

  Vegas Douche frowned while rummaging in the bag. “That’s ‘Jesus Fuck, Your Majesty.’”

  Sure, pal. Hold your breath and wait for that to happen.

  Unlike any other pony Garrett had seen, this one retreated from food. Vegas Douche set three slices of apple on one of the posts and took a careful step back.

  “Look, you gotta see reason on this one, Veg—uh, Mr. Tarbell.”

  “Oh, after enduring your vulgar rants I feel you should call me Blake.”

  “Blake. It’s not just me, it’s Christ!”

  The pony had come close, sniffed the apple, then let loose with a kick and booted the apple right off the pole. Garrett had to make a conscious effort not to cringe back and run like the wind. Couldn’t show fear in front of Vegas Douche. Who was, if anything, pretty calm given that the reason the bitchy pony was so fat was because she probably devoured her handlers in the night.

  “I am aware it’s not to your exact liking, Margaret of Anjou!” he snapped, getting way more upset at the pony than he was at Garrett’s deal getting fucked. “I didn’t have time to sprinkle cinnamon sugar on them. It’s naked apple slices or nothing.”

  The pony thought that sucked, if the squeals and snorts and kicks and gnashing of teeth were any indication. Vegas Douche sighed and closed the bag Garrett assumed was stuffed with naked apple slices. “Well, I’m certainly not giving you a treat now. You’ll have to stay in your corral and think about what you’ve done.” Then he turned and walked back to the barn. “Tough love,” he muttered to Garrett, like he gave a ripe fuck.

  “I don’t give a ripe fuck!” At Vegas Douche’s snort, he fell back on what was, to him, the simplest most obvious argument to get the guy back in line: “You were on board before.”

  “Yes, well.” He put the bag back and started rolling hose. Garrett only then realized the floor was as clean as barn floors ever get. Which meant Vegas Douche had quit Vegas to shovel shit and hose down barns. He felt like his brain was getting a cramp; it was all too strange to wrap his head around. “I was an asshole before. I am trying to atone.”

  “I could care less!”

  Blake flinched. Ha! Garrett straightened and smirked. Got him on the run, mess with the bull and get the horns, probably not used to anyone actually giving him the business.

  “No, Mr. Hobbes. You stated you could care less when in fact you meant the opposite: you could not care less. I loathe when people do that. It tops my list of grammatical pet peeves, along with ‘nauseous’ getting mixed up with ‘nauseated.’”

  “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

  “‘Nauseous’ is when you make other people feel nauseated. If you say, ‘I’m nauseous,’ what you mean is that there is something about you that makes other people feel nauseated.”

  What. The. Fuck? Garrett nearly bit his tongue in half. “We had a deal!”

  “In fact, you and I did not. You may have had a deal with, er, who was it? Golf and Barf?”

  “Putt N’Go, you forgetful fuck!”

  “You were much nicer on the phone.” Vegas Douche had the nerve to sound fucking wistful.

  “You were giving me what I wanted over the phone!” Ugh. Probably should rephrase, if Blake’s snicker was any indication.

  “Ah, if only my twin was here. He’d drown you in a chorus of jokes heavy with sexual innuendo.”

  Oh, fuck. There were two of them; he kept forgetting. No one had seen either of Shannah’s crazy brats before now. Her parents hadn’t even kept pics of them.

  “Our deal”—how fucking annoying, the douche was still yapping—“was for the farms in foreclosure. Heartbreak wasn’t in foreclosure just then—”

  “It would have been!”

  “—and, as must be obvious to you by now, it’s off the market, hopefully for good.”

  “You know we need them!”

  “In fact, I did not know that. No surprise, given your policy of dealing everyone out.”

  “There’s no deal without Heartbreak!”

  That,” Blake replied, pausing to take a deep swig from a water bottle that looked like a pony had stomped on it, and Garrett bet he knew which pony, “is not my concern.”

  “You’re gonna be a fucking migrant worker for fucking Heartbreak instead of living in Las fucking Vegas?”

  “Apparently.”

  “What the fuck?”

  “Was your father a minister?”

  “Fertilizer salesman,” Garrett replied shortly. “Dead now.”

  Blake blinked like an owl, Garrett had noticed. Slowly. Next the guy’s head would swivel around and he’d hoot at the treetops. “I had that same thought: What the fuck indeed. It’s not what I was expecting at all when I Martianed my mother.” At Garrett’s bulging eyes (which indicated not just confusion but killing fury) he added, “It’s a Tarbell thing from a book our mom read. It means being overbearing and sexist while convincing the lady in question your overbearing sexism was for her own good.” He turned in the direction of the town and shook a gloved fist. “Are you happy now, Mom? When will you release me from this hellhole?”

  Hellhole? Yes! Garrett could work with hellhole. For the first time that day, he and Vegas Douche were on the same page. Vegas Douche hated the work and hated the farm and wanted out but was too chickenguts to stand up to his mommy. Garrett could fix everything with some phone calls and paperwork. “You can release yourself, y’know.”

  The hose had been rolled and put away. “It’s not that simple, Garrett.”

  “Wrong, Vegas D— wrong, Blake!” He was almost hyperventilating with relief. “Took me a minute to catch up—”

  “Only a minute?”

  “That you need help. You’re stuck and you don’t know how to get out— Blake, I invented that!” Maybe he’d shake Blake’s hand on the way out. He’d do a lot of stupid social things to see Heartbreak back on the chopping block. “We can get through the paperwork in a day.”

  “No.”

  “All right, two days, but only because the only notary’s a bitch and she’ll find ways to stall, so we have to go one town over.” If there was anyone he loathed more than the Banaan clan, it was Natalie “my shit don’t stink” Lane. Who’d also, if the rumors were true, been hanging around Heartbreak a lot. But she’d always had a soft spot for the shithole. And it wasn’t like the bank was going to need her much longer. “You’ll get out, I’ll get out, Heartbreak will get flooded and then buried in golf balls, and
Sweetheart Fertilizer can finally die.”

  “Sweetheart Fertilizer?”

  Garrett gritted his teeth. Hadn’t meant to let that slip to the one guy in two hundred miles who didn’t know what he did for a living. “Family business.”

  Yes. His family had been in the business of peddling shit (natural as well as man-made) for generations. The company motto (“We’ll Take Your Crap!”) was cross-stitched on pillows all over his parents’ house. They lived and breathed fertilizer, which was as horrible as it sounded. The business had killed his grandfather; a Sweetheart Fertilizer truck sideswiped his bicycle. Ironically, he was on a bike after losing his driver’s license for too many DUIs.

  “There’s much more to fertilizer than what most people assume,” Vegas Douche was telling him, like Garrett didn’t know shit about shit. “It’s not just animal waste; it’s peat and sewage sludge, not to mention—”

  “I know!”

  “And the craze for all things organic could only help that side of your business.”

  “I don’t care!”

  Thank God his father had finally croaked. The geezer would never have allowed any of this. Garrett’s mom didn’t like it, either, but fuck her—most days she had pudding for brains anyway. Fucking Alzheimer’s: it made the patients a zillion times more irritating while taking years to actually kill them.

  Garrett sucked in a breath to calm himself. Out of the shower less than an hour and he could feel his shirt getting soaked under the arms. This meet ’n’ greet hadn’t gone at all the way he’d thought it would. Happy place, where the fuck is my happy place?

  Anywhere but here, that’s where. “Listen. Listen to me, Blake. Sweetheart fucking sucks. You know this. I know this. Everyone except the farmers knows this, and they don’t know shit because all they can smell is shit.”

  “This is fascinating, and somewhat obscene.”

  “No, listen. You and me, we’re exactly the same.”

  “You and I.”

  “Right! I’ve been trapped on this prairie for generations and I’m not taking over the family biz. I always knew I was gonna do better, and I am. I’m the guy who set this whole farm foreclosure/death of Sweetheart in motion. And thank God! Hay season aggravates my allergies, I fucking hate livestock of any kind, horses are useless except in New York City for those stupid handsome cab ride things for tourists—”