Wrapped in Rain(18)

Dixie never skipped a beat. She had dealt with this kind before. Maybe even enjoyed it. Mutt slouched further in the seat and almost forgot that people might be looking for him. Dixie picked up the glass, sniffed it, sipped a hefty mouthful, and swished the tea around her cheeks like mouthwash before swallowing. She wiped her lips on the sweatband covering her right wrist, and her stance changed from a tall and slender greyhound to a stout boxer. Dixie closed her eyes, smiled wider, slapped the table, and drew deeper on her Southern drawl. "Tastes good to me, honey." She set the glass in front of the woman, turning her own lipstick stain outward.

Missy was aghast, her jaw and shoulders dropping. She picked up the glass with two fingers and pitched it over the railing. After the splash, she turned to the man on her right. "Rocco!" she screamed. Rocco, wearing the best hair implants money could buy, was reading the menu and probably thinking about the alligator tail appetizer. Her high-pitched bark, though usual, was unwelcome. His pink silk shirt was unbuttoned down to his navel, where a dark carpet of chest hair spilled out and rose up to his neck. A thick gold chain, about the width of a dog collar, hung around his neck, and a diamond-studded Rolex accentuated his wrist. Mutt noticed that their watches matched. He wondered if Rocco had given it to her before or after he hung the rock on her finger that looked like something out of the Jurassic period.



Rocco looked up from the menu, took a deep breath, eyed the waitress, and made use of his extremely deep voice. "What's the problem, lady?"

Dixie stuck her red pencil through the middle of the red bun on top of her head, slid her small pad into the front of her apron, put her hand on her hip, and looked from Rocco to Miss Implants. She leaned over, letting her cutoff jeans ride a little too high up her thighs, and rested her elbows on the table. "Down here," she said with a sweet Southern smile and pointing straight down through the table, "iced tea is not a drink. It's not even a refreshment. And it's certainly not something that causes you to fall backwards into a pool." Dixie looked around and whispered in Rocco's direction, "It's a religion." She stood up, shrugged her shoulders, and said, And you either practice or you don't. Down here, there's no such thing as `unswate tay.' That's a myth propagated by people who don't come from 'round here. You can ask for it, but one of us might give you a funny look before we write you off as nothing but a couple of Yankees. Down here," she said, pointing again with both index fingers, "tea comes one way. `Swate. "' She eyed Rocco again and gave a nudge. "Like us." She put her hand on Rocco's shoulder and gently brushed his ear, making sure to dip the end of her finger just slightly into his ear canal. She said again, "Like us."

That got Rocco's attention, and a smirk slowly replaced his best mafioso impersonation. Dixie looked to Missy and continued, "On average, the best mixture is one-third sugar and two-thirds tea, but"-she looked to Rocco again-"like most things, the exact amount varies by locale and who's doing the sweetening. True sweet tea does not come in a powder or a plastic container with a screw-off cap. It comes in little bags that are boiled in hot water, then steeped for three to four hours in syrupy sugar water.



"It's the steeping that's the secret." At the thought of syrupy, sugary water and several hours of steeping, Rocco sat up, ran his fingers around his waistline, and gave Dixie's freckled legs and faded jean shorts another look. Dixie continued, "When dark enough, it's then mixed with more water from the faucet, maybe even a spigot or a hose, but"Dixie eyed the bottled water, stained with bright pink lipstick, sticking conspicuously out of Missy's purse-"never a bottle." She stood next to the table and pulled down both legs of her shorts. "Then it's poured into a plastic pitcher that doesn't need labeling and returned to its rightful spot in the refrigerator next to the milk jug."

Missy's jaw dropped, showing the pink lipstick that had smeared across her top two bleached-white teeth. Her eyes batted twice and, in doing so, unhinged the inside corner of the fake eyelash on her left eye. Dixie smiled, pointed discreetly to Missy's eye as if it were a secret only the two of them shared, and said, "You two probably need a few minutes. I'll come back."

Dixie walked off, and Rocco's eyes followed every seducing, shorts-hiking step. Missy, who had won his affection by playing the very same game, grabbed him by the dog collar and got a handful of carpet in the process. Mutt couldn't hear everything, but he did hear, "She'll never work here again." Rocco responded with a muffled and not so low "Uh-huh," but his eyes never left the waitress station where Dixie was rolling silverware. He unconsciously smiled when she looked his way and then licked the paper tab that fastened the napkin around the silverware.



While Missy chewed on her leash, Dixie returned and stood at the end of the table-this time a few inches closer to Rocco. Before Rocco had a chance to look up, Missy saw her chance, crunched up her face like a Boston terrier with a sinus infection, waved her hand over the porch toward the kitchen, and said, "You probably serve those nasty little grits, don't you?"

Without batting an eye, Dixie looked over each shoulder, leaned on the table, and whispered as if telling a wellkept secret, "It's really pretty simple. Years ago, somewhere down here, some corn farmer lost all his teeth and with them the ability to eat corn. So he just dried the corn, ground it into bits, boiled it into a soft, gummable mash, sprinkled it with salt and pepper, stirred in two tablespoons of butter, and called that `grits.' Minus butter, it's actually quite healthy. Now, truth is, there's nothing wrong with grits. They won't hurt you. And if you don't like them, that's fine with most Southerners. Just means more for us." She smiled and gently bumped Rocco in the shoulder with her hip. She wrinkled her nose, waved her hand across the table, and said, "But, honey, don't turn your nose up before you've had a plate. Most of us are eating sushi now and liking it, so anything's possible." Dixie looked out over the dock at the people fishing and said, "And I never thought I'd be eating bait." Dixie smiled at Rocco, dipped two fingers into his tea glass, pulled out a piece of ice, and stuck it in her mouth. She then tapped him on the end of the nose with the same wet finger.