Trouble in Dos Bayou

"Can I help you?" a high-pitched woman's voice asked from the back of the building. Greg turned in the direction of the sound. "Yes, ma'am. I'm Greg Robertson. And you?" A short, slim girlish figure emerged from the dark end of the room. As she approached, Greg could not avoid noticing her sleeveless red and white striped cotton shirt knotted above the navel, tattooed arms, a bright yellow skin-tight mini-skirt, black eyeliner, heaps of blonde hair in a beehive, and well-worn Nike sneakers. Her flawwless, peachy complexion gave the appearance that the sun had seldom hit her, and her flaming-red lips were constantly puckered. She looked and dressed like she should be tossing a baton at a college football game, or entertaining a john in a back room. She held a lighter and a pack of Marlboros in her left hand as she smiled broadly and reached out to greet the man she had heard so much about. "Hi, I'm Tilly Cloud," she said pumping Greg's hand. "I spend moost of my day like out on the back porch, you know, with some Cokes and a pack of cigs, okay? Glad to make your acquaintance." Greg's first impression of Dos Bayou City Clerk Tilly Cloud was the way she enunciated certain words on the first syllable, a sure giveaway that she not only grew up south of the Mason-Dixon line, but south of the Alabama line. "For me," Tilly said without encouragement, "the best thing about knowing Mayor Garrison is like I get to keep on working. He told me like, I mean, a lot about you, you know. I get bored when I just sit around all day in the trailer park or like a bowling alley. Know what I mean?" She did not wait for a response. "I get bored, sure enough. I was born and raised at Molino just up the road like north of here toward Alabama. All my twenty yearzs on this good earth I've constantly, you know, had to be doing something, well, like something, you know? "Like I've got to be cleaning, doing this, doing that, dating him, dating them, or dating the whole team. What the hell. I like to party, you know. I have fun. Damn, do I have fun. Especially with Mayor Garrison. it has nothing to do wigth fame or like being with someone famous, or eating out, you know, in swanky restaurants like Pascali's over at Pensacola. "Now, Greg, irregardless of hos you cut it or like who pays for a fifty-dollar bottle of wine, or my shopping trips to the mall and Dillard's, that's just totally awesome, you know? "Know, like, where I'm comin' from Greg? Like, I mean, this whole thing is, like, supercalifragilistic." Her inflection this time--for effect--was on the word, "comin'." When she talked, Greg noticed, she had a rather gently piercing, softly pouting and eerily empty gaze.