Barfing in the Backseat (7 page)

S
OMEONE DID PICK UP.

But it was the wrong number.

The Great Automated Voice had given me the Comfort-For-U Motel in Lubbock, Texas!

Great Automated Voice, I take back what I said.

You are not a goddess.

As a matter of fact, you aren’t very good at your job.

No offense.

T
HE NEXT TIME,
we didn’t let the Great Automated Voice dial for us. I insisted that Frankie handle the whole dialing business. When you’re calling long distance, there are a lot of numbers involved, and as I think you understand by now, numbers and I don’t get along.

When the person on the other end answered, Frankie said, “Is this the Comfort-For-U Motel in Washington, D.C.?”

I couldn’t hear the answer, but it must have been yes, because Frankie handed me the phone.

“The dude talks weird,” Frankie whispered, covering the phone so the guy on the other end couldn’t hear.

“Weird how?”

“Weird, you’ll see.”

“Hello,” I said, taking the phone and trying
to sound way older than eleven. “This is Hank Zipzer here. You might remember me. We stayed in room 319 last night.”

“
Excusez-moi
, monsieur,” the man said. “Excuse me, but I do not remember every guest and their particular room number.”

Boy, he
did
sound weird. He sounded like Luke Whitman doing his lame impression of a waiter in a French restaurant. I wondered if that accent was for real.

“Trust me, monsieur,” I said, giving him back a little of the old French accent, “we were there, and loved your establishment. And now I need a favor.”

“That is what I am here for, monsieur,” he said. “To provide comfort at the Comfort-For-U Motel.”

“I left a very important packet of homework under my bed,” I explained. “And I need you to send it to me as quickly as you possibly can…as in
now
.”

“Now is not good,” he said. “Now is lunchtime.”

“You don’t understand, monsieur. This is urgent. Can’t lunch wait a little while?”

“Snails in garlic butter sauce cannot wait. They must be eaten at the precise moment they come out of the oven.”

“So I guess a quick peanut butter and jelly sandwich is out of the question?”

“Ah, that is what’s wrong with you Americans. You don’t understand the delights of a fine French meal dancing across your taste buds, being helped down your throat with an aged wine over a slow two-hour lunch.”

“Two hours?” I gasped. “That can’t happen. I can’t wait that long. Sir, I need you to go to the post office now. I must have that packet by tomorrow morning or…”

“Or what, monsieur?”

“Or…um…America will lose out on who I could have been because my parents will kill me, especially my father. You don’t understand, sir, how important it is that I get that packet as soon as possible.”

“This is what I mean. You Americans are always hurrying someplace.”

“I’m hurrying to become the future of America. Do you want to stop my journey right here?”

“No, I want to enjoy my snails with a crisp garden salad.”

I was so frustrated, I handed Frankie the phone and started walking in a circle. Frankie dove into the conversation feetfirst, smooth as only he can be.

“First of all, monsieur, sir,” he said. “On behalf of all Americans, and I know this is long overdue, I want to thank you for giving us the Statue of Liberty.”

I stopped walking in a circle and just stared at this wonderful dude named Frankie Townsend. What hat did he pull that fact out of? How did he even know the Statue of Liberty was French?

“And second of all,” Frankie went on, “let me just tell you that my favorite food, and I know you will understand this, is the french fry—done, of course, the French way.”

“Ah, you mean
frites
,” the French dude said. I could hear his voice coming from the phone. “Crispy on the outside but soft like a feather pillow on the inside.”

“Obviously, you and I understand each other,” Frankie said. “And I need you to understand
that this is an emergency. My friend Hank has made a mistake, and you and I have the power to help him correct it. America and France, working together. Side by side. Building a better future.”

There was a silence on the other end of the phone. Frankie had the guy thinking. Then he went in for the kill.

“Tell me, monsieur, sir,” he said with big-time drama in his voice. “With the friendship of our two nations in mind, how can you not go to the post office and mail that packet as quickly as you can?”

I couldn’t hear the French dude’s answer, but I saw a smile spread across Frankie’s face.

“Excellent,” Frankie said into the phone. “And what is your name, again? Oh, Pierre Chapeau. That’s the greatest name I’ve ever heard in my whole life. So, Pierre, I guess we’re finished now?”

The smile suddenly disappeared from Frankie’s face.

“Oh right, overnight delivery is expensive. And certainly, we’re prepared to pay for it. Aren’t we, Hank?”

“Whatever it takes,” I whispered to Frankie. “Just get him to send it. We’ll figure out the money part.”

“Right, then,” I heard Frankie say to him. “Cash on delivery will be fine. Oh sure, of course you need the address.” Frankie covered the phone again. “Where should he send it? Where are we going to be tomorrow?”

“Somewhere in Virginia,” I answered. “At the bee farm.”

“A bee farm isn’t an address, dude,” Frankie said. “I need a street number, a town, a zip code.”

“Keep him on the line,” I whispered. “I’ll go ask my mom.”

Before I could make a mad dash for the gift store where my mom was doing a little shopping, Frankie grabbed me by my Mets jacket.

“Hold it,” he said. “I just remembered. I have the itinerary your dad typed up in my back pocket.”

Leave it to Frankie to, first of all, know a fancy word like itinerary. (In case you don’t know it, it’s a list of the places you’re going on a trip. I didn’t know it either until he told me.)
And second, to have his itinerary with him, where he could actually find it. My dad had made me a copy of it, too, but the last time I saw it was by the vending machines at a rest station on the New Jersey Turnpike.

Frankie read the guy the address of our next stop, which was the Buzz Haven Honey Farm and Snooze Inn.

“Mr. Shampoo,” I said, taking the phone from Frankie after he finished giving him the address. “This is so great that you’re doing this.”

“It had better be, young man,” he said, “because my snails are ruined. And by the way, the name is Monsieur Chapeau, as in hat.”

“Well, Mr. Hat, you’re all right with me.”

I hung up the phone and gave Frankie Townsend the biggest high five you’ve ever seen. This wasn’t the first time he had saved my butt, but it was certainly in the top five. There was no time to celebrate, though, because the tallest, strongest man you’ve ever seen, who was wearing a guard uniform, was suddenly standing over us. Let’s just say he was not smiling.

“How would you boys like it if someone sat
on your tonsil?” he asked.

“Now that you mention it, sir, I wouldn’t like that at all,” I said, jumping off the tonsil like it had caught on fire.

“Hey, guys, there you are!” Emily called out. For the first time in her life, she appeared at just the right time. “You can’t believe what’s in the next room. It’s a lab where you can add all kinds of flavors to 250 different candies. I made a pizza-flavored chocolate bar.”

“Hey, I’d love to talk more,” I said to the still unsmiling guard, “but we have candy to make. Science can’t wait.”

We waved a quick good-bye to him. I thought I’d give it one more shot.

“Thanks for the use of your tonsil,” I said. “Hope we didn’t give it a sore throat.”

That didn’t make him smile, either. Obviously, the guy had no sense of humor.

Frankie and I ran after Emily to go make candy. After our conversation with Mr. Hat, I felt my problem was solved, and even a pizza-flavored chocolate bar sounded good to me.

I
T WAS ALMOST DARK
by the time we pulled into the dirt driveway that led to Buzz Haven Honey Farm and Snooze Inn. We could hear a buzzing in the air as we drove up to the main house, which made the whole place seem really eerie. Like maybe swarms of alien bugs had escaped from a horror movie and were hovering in the fields on either side of the car.

Even though it was cold outside, I lowered the window to let the buzz fill the car. Emily freaked out.

“Are you nuts, Hank?” she said, leaning over Frankie and me to reach for the automatic window button. “Put the window up immediately.”

“Don’t sweat it,” I said. “The bees are happy in their hives. They won’t bother you if you don’t bother them.”

“That may be true for one bee, Hank, but we don’t know how a colony of thousands of bees is going to react. What happens if they swarm us and I’m stung about a million times and I’m rushed to the hospital but they don’t have any anti-bee-sting vaccine? Who will take care of Katherine?”

“Don’t worry about it,” I told Emily. “We’ll turn her loose and her keen iguana instincts will lead her to her relatives in Central America as she sucks flies out of the air with her long, sticky tongue along the way.”

Frankie tried not to laugh, but he just couldn’t keep it in.

“This isn’t funny, Frankie,” Emily said. “How can you laugh at the thought of Katherine, alone and abandoned?”

“You’re right, Emily, it isn’t funny,” he said.

Then he burst out laughing again, so hard this time that he sounded like he had the hiccups. I’m ashamed to say (actually I’m not), I joined in.

“Dad, tell them to stop,” Emily whined.

“That’s enough, boys,” my dad said. “Raise the window so Emily can calm down.”

By that time, we were in front of the neon sign that said Office. A tall blond man wearing a baseball cap with a yellow and black bee on it came out to meet us. I could see that he also had a bee embroidered on the front of his overalls.

“Welcome, bee lovers,” he said. “And if you’re not now, you will be when you leave.”

“We’re so happy to be here,” my mom called out. “Aren’t we, children?”

The guy didn’t seem to notice that no one answered.

“We hope you’re going to make yourself right at home here at Buzz Haven. I’m Jimmy Jim James, making sure you have a honey of a time.”

He laughed. My mom, who has the best manners of all of us, laughed, too. She reached across the front seat over my dad and stuck her hand out to greet him.

“We’re so happy to be here, Jimmy Jim,” she said. “I’m looking forward to our honey-tasting tour tomorrow. I try to promote honey usage not only in our home, but in my restaurant, too.”

“Then you and me, we’re going to be like two bees in a honeycomb,” Jimmy Jim said.
“I’ve put you in rooms 15 and 16. Go make yourselves comfortable. My wife likes to call our rooms bee-autiful. Come on down to the main house for dinner in about half an hour.”

“Excuse me, Mr. James, do you happen to have any extra lettuce and maybe a cucumber before dinner?” Emily asked.

“Sure, little cutie,” Jimmy Jim said. He must have gone momentarily blind, because of all the things Emily is, cute isn’t one of them. “I like to see a young lady who’s fond of her vegetables.”

“Oh, it’s not for me, sir. It’s for my iguana.”

Emily held up the crate with Katherine in it. Katherine shot her tongue out of the cage. She was going for Jimmy Jim, but luckily she hit the headrest and nearly stuck to it instead.

“Whoa, I’m afraid we don’t allow pets here,” Jimmy Jim said.

“Oh, Katherine’s not a pet,” Emily answered. “She’s my half sister.”

“For a while there, we thought they were twins,” I chimed in. “But then Emily grew hair.”

Frankie and I cracked up. My father didn’t.

“That’s enough, Hank,” he said.

“I promise you, Jimmy Jim, Katherine travels everywhere with us, and she causes absolutely no trouble,” my mom said, still in her charming voice.

“Except when she leaves her droppings on your pillow,” I muttered. My dad swung around, even with his seat belt on, to shoot me a world-class “Keep Your Mouth Shut” look. From the corner of my eye, I saw Frankie trying to stuff his fist in his mouth to stifle a laugh, but I didn’t dare look at him, because I knew if I did, we’d both lose it.