When the press conference was over, Adelaide shoved Dallas Jean into the passenger seat of her own hot pink VW bug and climbed into the driver’s side, slamming the door.  Waving to reporters, she backed down the street and zoomed off toward the highway.

“Why are you driving my car?” Dallas Jean Lee asked, annoyed.  “I like to drive my car.”

“Because I need you to focus,” Adelaide replied.  “Dallas, what are you going to do?  Do you have any kind of plan at all?  What made you want to do this?”

“I’ve got a bet with Grayson,” Dallas Jean chirped.  “If I win, he sends me to Europe, with a limitless credit card.”

“If he wins?” Adelaide asked.

Dallas Jean frowned.  “I have to play the part of the perfect mayor’s wife and be bored out of my skull.  So we can’t lose.”

Adelaide sighed and rubbed her temples.  “I don’t need to be a psychic to tell this isn’t going to go well.”

“What do you mean?” Dallas asked, offended.  “I’ll be a brilliant mayor.”

“It doesn’t matter whether or not you’d be good at it,” Adelaide argued impatiently.  “What matters is winning.”

“Of course I’ll win,” Dallas Jean preened, fluttering her thick false eyelashes.  “Everyone loves you.”

“Yes,” Adelaide pointed out.  “They love you because you’re funny and over-the-top.  People don’t want a funny mayor.  They want a mayor to fix potholes and lower taxes.”

Dallas Jean rolled her eyes.  “That’s boring,” she moaned.  Her eyes flickering, she tapped her chin.  “Unless we painted the pot holes pink…or maybe put potted plants in them….”

“Dallas, I’m serious!” Adelaide yelled, banging her hands against the steering wheel to get her attention.  “We’ve got to do something if you’re going to avoid being a Stepford wife.  People want to see more than flower potholes.”

“You got to admit, flower pot holes would be cute,” Dallas Jean laughed.  When Adelaide merely stared at her, she rolled her eyes.  “Ok, ok.  Where do we start?”

Adelaide shrugged.  “Beats me.  You’re the one who coyly told the press, “I’ll make sure no one is lonely again.  Wait and see,” she mimicked.

“And I meant it,” Dallas Jean insisted.  “Loneliness is a terrible thing.  I never want anyone to be lonely.  Like all those elderly people without spouses…”  She sniffed, a long tear streaking down her face and coursing through her makeup.

Adelaide nodded.  “I know.  But how do we make people unlonely?  We can’t give out baskets of kittens like we did to the old folk’s home.  Some people are allergic to kittens.  And a lot of older folks are on a fixed income.”

“I did adore those kittens,” Dallas Jean cooed.  “They were so precious with those big eyes…”  She shook her head.  “We need to think.  We seriously need to think.”  She glanced at Adelaide, a sly smile stretched across her cheeks.

Adelaide grinned, not even having to look at her.  “Pie.”

“A la mode,” Dallas Jean added.

Zipping Dallas Jean’s car around the curves of the highway, Adelaide skidded to a stop in front of a tiny cottage labeled, “Mrs. Maisy’s Pie Shop.”  Leaping out, she zoomed in front of Dallas.  The two women fought to enter the small shop first, grunting and shoving in their eagerness to stare at the vast pie display.  After shoving an elbow into Adelaide’s gut, Dallas Jean burst in first with a triumphant grin.

Mrs. Maisy shook her snow white head behind the counter, her eyes rheumy and large behind her thick glasses.  Although she looked fragile, Mrs. Maisy was one of the toughest old women Dallas ever met.  You couldn’t run a successful pie shop in a small Texas town and not be tough as nails.   “You two have been acting that way since you were little.”

“She started it,” Dallas Jean and Adelaide replied, each pointing to the other and collapsing into giggles.

Mrs. Maisy grinned, revealing dentureless gums.  “What is it today, girls?”

“Well, we have some serious thinking to do,” Adelaide admitted to Mrs. Maisy.  “We knew we needed one of your pies.”

“We need lots of your pies,” Dallas Jean corrected.  “At least three or four.”

“You know, you’ll probably have to go on a mayoral campaign diet,” Adelaide muttered, poking Dallas Jean’s voluptuous curves.  “Better leave the pie eating for me.”

“In your dreams, Twiggy,” Dallas Jean snarled, pinching Adelaide’s noticeably thicker waist.

“Being mayor requires some serious thinking,” Mrs. Maisy replied, her lips twitching.  “How serious?”

“Chocolate cream,” Adelaide told her.

“Speak for yourself!  I’m needing some peanut butter pie with a thick chocolate topping….and maybe a piece of caramel pie too…” Dallas Jean mused, pressing her nose to the pie display.  Drool snaked down her chin, dripping between her rhinestone encrusted heels.

“And some of that butterscotch pie,” Adelaide added, licking her lips.  “We have a lot of thinking to do.”

Mrs. Maisy toddled to the back for pie plates.  “Pie is brain food, girls.  It’ll help you think when nothing else will.”

“Delicious,” Dallas Jean breathed, drool dripping from both corners of her mouth.

Mrs. Maisy returned with cheerful red pie plates.  Her wrinkled hands carefully pulled out each pie, slicing a hefty slice deftly onto the red plates.  Handing two plates each to Dallas and Adelaide, she shuffled to the back and returned with a pitcher of milk and two glasses.

“If you don’t mind me asking, what do you girls need to think about so hard?”

“My campaign,” Dallas Jean replied, taking a bite of the peanut butter pie and raising it to her lips.  She moaned with pleasure.  “Mrs. Maisy, will you teach me to make pies?”

“You have to come work for me,” Mrs. Maisy replied, her wrinkled face serene.  “But if you become mayor, I might make an exception.”

“All the more inspiration,” Dallas Jean sighed, taking another sinful bite.

“You see, Dallas promised that she would focus on animals, the elderly and children during her campaign,” Adelaide informed Mrs. Maisy.  “Then she told a bunch of reporters her first action would be to make sure no one was lonely.  And we have no idea how to do that.”

“I still like the baskets of kittens like we did at the nursing home,”  Dallas Jean muttered with a scowl.  “Gave the kittens a home and the old folks a friend.”  She froze and glanced up at Mrs. Maisy, the fork pressed to her lips.  “No offense, Mrs. Maisy.”

Mrs. Maisy grinned.  “I received a basket of kittens when ya’ll did that.  It was wonderful.  They live at my house now.  I named them all after pies–Praline, Cherry, Pumpkin, Grits…”

Grits pie from foodnetwork.com

“There’s a grits pie?” Dallas Jean interrupted, her eyes wide. “That’s fascinating.”

“Oh yes,” Mrs. Maisy nodded.  “I have one in the back.  Would you like to try it?”

“Do you have chicken pot pie too?” Dallas Jean asked, tapping her fork against her lips.

“Sure do.”

“I’ll buy both for dinner.”  Staring at her pie, Dallas Jean sighed.  “I think Adelaide’s right.  I think I got myself into more I can handle this time.”

“She acts like I’m not psychic,” Adelaide muttered, shoving a piece of chocolate cream into her mouth.

“Then why didn’t you predict it, smartie?”

“The energy wasn’t right,” Adelaide snapped.  “Is it my fault that your aura is off?  With all those cinnamon rolls you ate, it’s changing colors faster than a Democrat in Texas.”

“I love cinnamon rolls,” Dallas Jean agreed, licking her fork.  “I love this pie.  I love everything.”  She sighed, looking down at her spandex pink pantsuit.  “That’s the problem, Adelaide.  I want to help all these folks, and I have no idea how to do it.  There’s so many lonely people in the world…I just wish I could shove them in my house and feed them and love them and smother them…”

“If you feed them with your cooking, they wouldn’t last long.”  Adelaide ducked as a fork flew over her head.  Dallas Jean Lee looked mournfully at her pie, then at her manicured fingers.

“It seems to me you’re making this too hard,” Mrs. Maisy replied, pulling an fork out of her apron and handing it to Dallas Jean.  “I mean, the best way to cure loneliness is love.  And there’s all types of love:  the love of a friend, the love of an animal, romantic love, love of a mother or brother, aunt or uncle….”

“Pie…” Dallas Jean whispered, staring at the nearly disappeared peanut butter pie in front of her.  “There’s love in pie.”

“Well sure,” Mrs. Maisy replied.  “Anything you make with your hands, with your heart, is love.  My children used to draw me the most wonderful pictures, make me these little ashtrays out of clay…”

“Pie and love,” Dallas Jean repeated, her smile growing wider and wider.  “Pie, love and loneliness.”  Popping the last piece of pie in her mouth, she twirled her fork in the air.  “We got it, Adelaide.  We have a plan now.”

To be continued…

Stay tuned, Invisible Friends!  Tomorrow we have a new Land of the Flowered Bed tale!  Next week, we have more Miss Pickles, more Dallas Jean Lee and more recipes and fun goodness!  Stay tuned!