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waiting tables. So she’s going to come back to work here on Monday and Tuesday mornings.”
    “ I’m sure you’ll be glad to have her back. If the help at the Ginger Cat is any indication, good waitresses are mighty hard to come by. But that wasn’t the news I was talking about. It seems that Noylene has a beau.”
    “ Really? Who?”
    “ Meg said his name was Woodrow DuPont. He just bought Kenny Frazier’s farm.”
    “ Oh sure,” said Pete. “Wormy DuPont. He’s lived around here off and on since he was born. I went to school with him.”
    “ Wormy?”
    “ Yeah. Wormy. He got the nickname in second grade. The school nurse got on the intercom and told him he had to come to the office for his worm medicine.” Pete laughed. “I remember it like it was yesterday.”
    “ Poor kid.”
    “ Oh, he never seemed to mind,” said Pete. “Wormy is better than Woodrow anyway.”
    “ How about ‘Woody?” I offered.
    “ Never thought of it,” Pete shrugged. “And ‘Wormy’ sort of fit him, you know?”

    * * *

    I stopped by Noylene’s Beautifery and Dip ‘n Tan on my way around the square. Noylene Fabergé had graduated from an on-line beauty college and opened her salon a couple of months ago. She and her son, D’Artagnan, had invented the immensely popular “Dip ‘n Tan”—a contraption that allowed the customer to hang from a trapeze and be gently lowered into a vat of tanning fluid. Noylene’s first few attempts at getting the recipe just right had resulted in a rash of orange-colored St. Germainians, giving some substantiality to the scuttlebutt around town that we had been invaded by giant mutant carrots, or, at the very least, Yankees.
    There were three cubicles in Noylene’s Beautifery, and they were all in use. Noylene was in the one furthest from the door. The other two were staffed by a couple of young ladies from Boone—the signs on their mirrors identified them as Darla and Debbie. These name-tags were decorated with various cute personal items and complimented their officially framed licenses to practice the art of beauty in the state of North Carolina. Noylene looked up as I came in and waved me back.
    She was diligently teasing the hair of a woman I didn’t know. I smiled and nodded, trying to avert my eyes as the woman glared up at me. I had forgotten the one rule of beautiferies—a visitor is not allowed to see a woman whose coif is in a state of disrepair. If you’re there getting a haircut, that’s one thing. But you mustn’t wander in off the street without an appointment and gawk in horror. It’s bad form. Noylene didn’t seem to mind, however, and started talking to me as soon as I walked up.
    “ Man, what a day! I’m ready for a break. My dogs are barkin’.”
    “ Fridays usually this busy?” I asked.
    “ Oh, yeah,” answered Noylene, the rat-tail comb flying in her hand. “Summer’s here, and everybody wants a cooler ’do.”
    “ I heard you were going to work over at the Slab a couple of mornings a week.”
    “ Yeah,” said Noylene. “I miss it, you know. I mean, here I get to talk to folks, and this is my life’s work…doing hair…but I miss seeing the regular people. And anyway, Brother Kilroy says that we are supposed to find our gifts and use them. I have two gifts. The gift of beauty and the gift of getting your breakfast out on time.”
    “ Well, I’m sure Pete and Collette will be glad to have you back.”
    “ That’s the other thing. Collette’s got to plan her wedding. She’s going to be busy enough with that.”
    “ That’s true,” I said. “By the way, I heard you have a new boyfriend.”
    “ Wormy? Yeah, he and I go way back. He just bought Kenny’s farm you know.”
    “ I just heard.”
    “ I think he’s got big plans,” said Noylene with a smile.

    * * *

    Five-thirty in the morning comes early—especially on a Saturday—but I’d told Moosey that I’d pick him up at six and, by golly, a promise was a promise. I was ten