“No, I don’t want you to do that. Today is not a good day, period. I wouldn’t be able to be gone long enough for us to enjoy a nice leisurely lunch. Maybe we can go one day next week. My toy man is supposed to come this afternoon and show me his catalogue with all the play-pretties his company is offering for Christmas. And I got other vendors coming in this week that I need to meet with if I want everything delivered on time. If I ain’t got enough merchandise for folks to buy for Christmas, it won’t be a merry Christmas for me.” I laughed.

“Oh, okay then. Before I forget, when do you think we can give that money to Yvonne and Milton? I was hoping we’d do it this week.”

Just thinking about the extra money that was going to them dogs made me sick to my stomach. I had to hold my breath and count to five in my head to keep myself from exploding. “We’ll give it to them this Friday when we both get paid.”

“Oh? You’re going to go with me so we can give it to them before you go to your daddy’s house?”

“Naw. I’ll swing by the house and drop off my part of the money. You can take it to them. I don’t want to go over there because you know how long-winded they can be. I like to drive to Daddy’s house before it gets dark.”

“Okay. Oh! Before I let you go, Milton said something about seeing us again tomorrow. I told him I wasn’t sure.” Joyce chuckled. “He said that if we didn’t come over there, they might come see us.”

“I’d rather go over there,” I said dryly. “The less time they spend in our house, the better.”

Joyce let out a long, loud breath. “Odell, don’t be too hard on them. They can’t help how crude they are. They haven’t been home a week yet, so they must still be in shock. Please be a little more sympathetic.”

“Joyce, they got other friends besides us. You act like we need to be babysitting them. I don’t feel that way. For all you know, they don’t neither. The last thing we need to do is make pests of ourselves. Milton probably wants to spend some time alone with Yvonne. And I think that’s what he would have been doing since they got out, if they didn’t need the money so bad and had to host a bunch of drunks every night.”

“That’s a good point.”

“We’ll visit them again tomorrow, I guess. If you can donate twenty dollars out of your paycheck without it hurting, I’ll add thirty. Fifty dollars should be enough. You can give it to them on Friday.”