Free Welcome, Caller, This Is Chloe by Shelley Coriell Page A

told my parents. “And it’s not going to get better.”
    The day after the Mistletoe Ball, Mom and Dad invited Grams over for a giant spread of twice-baked potatoes. To her credit, Mom tried to put a positive spin on moving out of the Tuna Can, calling it a new and exciting episode, and she put many options on the table: a live-in aide, a roommate of Grams’s choice, an assisted-living facility.
    Grams lobbed her potato in the garbage.
    War ensued.
    At one point during winter break, it got so bad that Grams and Mom refused to be in the same room. They sent messages to each other through me. My mom has a medical degree and Grams has eighty years of life lessons, but I swear I was back in junior high. This was the type of stuff that kept me snowed under during winter break.
    Since that time, I’d been stewing over an idea, but I figured Mom would shoot it down. But if I could tackle a radio show, I could take on anything, right?
    “Grams could live with us,” I said to my shoes. I held my breath, half expecting my mom to explode.
    Instead, Mom’s shoulders bounced in a silent chuckle. “Isuggested that long before the incident at the beach. I told her with your brothers gone, we’d move you downstairs to the den, and she could have the entire second floor.”
    This would restore life to the black hole. I jumped up. “Perfect.”
    “She told me to shove all eight rooms up my heinie.” Mom sighed and reached for a clipboard on the door to the CICU room. “Now, why don’t you stop by and see how she’s doing? You’re the only one who can make her smile these days.”
    Grams smile? After a day of looking at assisted-living facilities? I’d have better luck getting Clementine to braid my hair. Again I thought of that nasty, very Brie-like look on Clementine’s face and shivered. But Mom was right; Grams needed a dose of Chloe cheer.
    As I pulled out of the hospital parking lot, plotting witty and highly entertaining ways to pull Grams out of her funk, I spotted a metallic green bike on the side of the road. A lone figure hunched over the duct tape—dotted frame, a wrench in one hand, an oily bike chain in the other.
    I punched the gas and pulled up next to him. “You look like you could use a little help from a girl with a big heart.”
    Duncan sat on his heels and stared at the night sky. In the moonlight I could see the circles under his eyes had darkened. Grease streaked his jeans and blood seeped from a knuckle on one of his hands. He threw the chain to the ground. “I could use a new bike.”
    “Can’t help you there, but how about a ride?”
    Duncan’s forehead lined, as if he didn’t understand my offer. Or didn’t want it. I recalled the KDRS staffers saying he didn’t need any help. Duncan was a person used to going it alone. Even at the radio station he held himself distant. Apart. An outsider among outsiders.
    He stared at the bike, then at the hospital, rubbing his hand across the bridge of his nose and leaving a grease spot. “Yeah. I’m late.”

 

“PLEASE TELL ME THAT’S NOT A DECOMPOSING RAT.” I HELD Duncan’s scarf over my nose and mouth and tried not to breathe the air in the executive break room of Schnepf and Stromberg Accounting. It stunk so bad Duncan’s ruddy, wind-kissed cheeks were tinged green.
    “It’s not a rat.” Duncan spoke without taking a breath. “I’m pretty sure it’s a sub sandwich. At least it was a sub sandwich.” With a dust pan, he scooped a six-inch oozing brown mass from a bin marked Cans Only and dropped it into a small plastic bag he plucked from his trash cart. He wrapped the decomposing blob in two more bags and shoved it deep into a bin on his cart. With a spray bottle marked Pine Fresh, he cleaned the bin and doused the air. “Got it.”
    “And the crowd goes wild.” I threw my hands in the air and made mass cheering noises. “Another garbage crisis deftly dealt with by . . . Trash Man!”
    Duncan winced as he pushed his cart into the