Free Poison Ivory by Tamar Myers

sorry,” I mumbled. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have come. In any case, I should be going now. Thanks for seeing me, Lady Bowfrey.”
    “You’re leaving?”
    “I really need to get back to my shop.”
    “But you can’t go—not just yet. I mean, I don’t often get visitors; not ones I like, at any rate, Abby…may I call you that?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “You have a lot of chutzpah, but you’re not Looney Tunes like your friend from Shelby. And I don’t mean to sound like a whiner, Abby—I eschew self-pity—but life can get very lonely for us shut-ins. Because of my income level I can’t even get Veal on a Wheel to come out and serve my meals. Abby, sometimes I feel like I’m in solitary confinement.”
    “Veal on a Wheel? I know you’re only joking about the name of a fine organization, but please,do not associate it with veal. Do you know what terrible conditions veal calves have to endure just to be on someone’s dinner plate? They’re taken from their mothers as newborns; they’re never allowed to sit or lie down, run or even walk, so that their meat remains tender; and they’re fed an iron-poor diet so that they become anemic in order that their meat will be a pleasingly pale color.”
    “Oh, I know all that. But consider this: those calves would never have even been born in the first place were it not for the purpose of becoming veal on our dinner plates. So which is better for them, not to have lived at all, or to have lived with a few restrictions? And bear in mind that these calves have no expectations.”
    “I believe the same thing was once said about human beings born into slavery.”
    “You see, Abby, you are so delightfully gutsy. I think I’ll keep you.”
    “I beg your pardon?”

9
    A s a friend. One can never have too many friends, can they?”
    “It sounds like you collect them.”
    When she laughed, Lady Bowfrey’s eyes disappeared altogether, and her jowls shook. With her mouth open that wide, I noticed for the first time that she had the tiniest teeth I’d ever seen on an adult woman. To be brutally honest, they reminded me of the front teeth of a kitten, the ones found between the incisors.
    “Abby,” she sputtered at last, “but you and I are collectors, are we not?”
    I felt the need to get out of the house. Without as much as touching me, Lady Bowfrey was beginning to suffocate me.
    “My companion is waiting for me outside,” I said.
    “ Her? Late her wait; she was rude to me. Remember?”
    “C.J. is rude to everyone, and then you get used to her.” I inched back toward the elevator.
    “Well, I doubt that I ever could. Besides, don’t you want to know what I said to the management of Gold Tiger Exports about them buying and selling banned ivory?”
    “Yes, of course.” The elevator doors were still open and I stepped gratefully back onto the platform.
    “Abby, please don’t go!”
    “I really have to.”
    “You’ll make me angry if you go.”
    “Ta ta, cheerio, and all that sort of rot,” I said breezily, whilst exercising my false bravado.
    But when I finally got back to the safety of my car, my hands were shaking like those of a drunken televangelist come Judgment Day.
     
    “Abby, I have an idea.”
    C.J. and I were seated on the deck at Coconut Joe’s on the Isle of Palms. A sheet of clear plastic protected us from the winter wind, but it wasn’t cold enough to warrant the management turning on the outdoor heaters for the noon lunch crowd. I will admit that I’d been staring judgmentally at a smattering of tourists, but understandably so. Tourists cavorting in swimsuits on the beach in South Carolina in February? Come on, give me a break. We’re not Miami!
    “They’re going to freeze their nipples off,” I said.
    “That’s nice, Abby. Did you hear what I said? I have an idea.”
    “Unless maybe they’re from Canada. Remember when—before gas prices got to be so ridiculous—it seemed like half the tourists used to be Canadian?