Futures and Frosting (17 page)

I spend the rest
of the afternoon trying to think of ways to convince Carter I'm not going to
pressure him into marriage while at the same time making sure I don’t look like
I need thirty days in a Betty Ford Triple X Clinic.  I’ve been trying to come
up with new ideas for things I can cover in chocolate for the shop.  The
chocolate covered potato chips and crushed pretzels mixed together had been a
huge hit and are one of the main attractions lately.  I want something fun and
new to talk about in the magazine interview the next morning, so I put all
thoughts of doom aside and concentrate on what I do best.  For once, I'm not
dreading a visit from Drew.  With his appetite, I'm sure we could come up with
something spectacular.

~

“These snozzberries taste like
SNOZZBERRIES!” I yell.

In the far recesses of my mind, I
realize I was licking a scratch-n-sniff chocolate-covered strawberry sticker
that Jenny had affixed to my shirt, but I don’t care.

It smells like it tasty smells. 
Like snozzberries in a mountain of sticker glue.  Why don’t more people eat
glue?  It’s delicious.  Snozzberries should be our national fruit.

“I should cover these stickers in
chocolate and sell them,” I mumble as I continue swiping my tongue along the
bottom hem of my shirt that I hold up by my mouth.

Drew laughs and I stop the manic
sticker-licking to glance up at him.  I blink really hard and try to get him to
come into focus but it's not working.  It's like I'm looking at him through a
pair of binoculars backward.  He's really small and really, really far away.  I
can feel my head swaying from side to side and I keep making my eyes open
really wide in an effort to see more clearly.  It's not working.  Take your
hand and make a fist then hold it up to one eye.  Open your hand just enough to
let some light in and that’s the view I have right now.

Maybe that’s what the problem is. 
There’s someone walking around next to me holding their fists in front of my
eyes.

I start flailing my arms all around
my head to smack the hidden fists away until I start running into things and
knocking shit off of the counters.  I’m seventy-four percent positive the noise
I make while doing this scares those assholes with their sneaky fists away.

“This chocolate is burning my
hand!  HOLY FUCK IT’S BURNING!  WHY IS IT BURNING?!”

If I squint I can kind of see that
Drew is holding his hand out from his body and it was dripping with hot, melted
chocolate.

“Your hand looks delicious,” I tell
him as I absently bring my shirt back up to my mouth and began chewing on it.

“This was the best idea EVER,”
Jenny states as she helps Drew hold his chocolate hand over the sink so it
won’t drip on the floor.  “Everyone will love chocolate-covered Drew.  Make
sure you tell them during the interview that this was my idea.  I want street
cred for it.”

I feel my head bobbing up and down
in agreement and watch the room go in and out of focus and wonder why the walls
are moving closer to me all of a sudden.  I look down and my feet aren’t
moving.  I look back up and scream because the wall is right against my nose.

HOW THE FUCK DID THE WALL GET ON
MY NOSE?!

“Claire, stop sniffing the wall. 
It doesn’t have any flavor left,” Jenny tells me.

Stupid wall.  It runs out of
flavor too fast.

I step away from the wall and look
up at the ceiling.  There are marshmallows on my ceiling.

Marshmallows is a funny word.

“Mmmmmmaaaaaarrrrrssssshhhhhhmmmmaaaalllloooowwwwsssss. 
Who invented that word?  It’s a great word.  I wonder if they used to be called
something else.  Like
shmashmoos
.  But people couldn’t say shmashmoos
and babies were crying because they really wanted shmashmoos but couldn’t say
the word and their mothers kept giving them cookies when all they really wanted
were shmashmoos.  Babies were crying, parents were crying, the streets were
filled with people who just wanted shmashmoos.  Total anarchy, dudes.  I bet
that was the real reason for World War II.  It’s one big shmashmoo conspiracy
the government doesn’t want us to know about.”

“Claire, you are so smart,” Jenny
tells me seriously.

“I know, right?”

I should light a fire and make
S’mores.

“Quick, someone get me a lighter,
STAT!” I yell.

Drew jumps down off of the counter
and with one hand, pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and started fiddling
with the buttons while he holds his chocolate hand out from his body.

“Are you calling the cops?  Oh
shit!  JENNY RUN!  IT’S THE FUZZ!” I yell as I run in circles around the
kitchen island.

Somewhere in the distance I hear
Jenny crying.  At least I think it' Jenny crying.  It might have been me.

Am I crying?  My face does feel
kind of weird and wet.  Like a wet fish.

“Give me that fiiiiiish.  Give me
that Filet-a-Fish fiiiiish, ooooh!”

I wish McDonald’s delivered.  I
want some ketchup.

Drew steps into my path and I slam
into him.  He shoves his phone in my hand and smiles. “You’re welcome.  Now get
in that kitchen and make me some S’mores, beotch!”

I clutch the phone to my chest and
look up to thank him.  But he isn’t up anymore, he's down.  Down, down, down
like a tiny little dwarf.  I squint and bend down so I can see him better. 
He's jumping up and down, and I’m pretty sure he's trying to bite my ankles. 
He's like a little chocolate covered munchkin from the Land of Oz and he's
angry.

Why are munchkins so angry all
the time?  They’re in a club called the Lollipop Guild.  The mother fucking
Lollipop Guild!  All lollipops all the time.  Munchkins are ungrateful little
bastards.  Those lollipops died so you could be happy.  RESPECT THE LOLLIPOP!

“What in the mother fucking of all
fucks happened here?” Carter asks as he steps into the kitchen of the shop.

“Oh shit, the jig is up!  HIDE THE
COOKIES!” Drew yells as he belly flopped onto the floor and army crawls away as
fast as he could.

When my foreman
had told me I could take the night off, I didn’t even take a breath or say a
word to anyone.  My work bag is slung over my shoulder and I'm racing through
the plant before the guy even finishes his sentence.  Being two people short,
with Jim still on his honeymoon and Drew taking a vacation day, it's a rare
thing to still have enough people to send someone home.  There is no way I'm
going to give anyone a chance to change their minds.  All I can think about is
going to see Claire.

Too many
thoughts have been running through my head all week and I just want to put my
arms around her and get some reassurance that everything is okay between us. 
She’s been saying some really strange things ever since Liz and Jim’s wedding,
and I can’t stop thinking about them.

Does she really
think marriage is stupid?  Maybe her idea of happiness isn’t settling down with
someone for the rest of her life.  It’s not like her parents have given her any
kind of good examples of finding the one you're meant to be with and spending
forever loving them.  They change spouses more than Drew changes his
underwear.  But I see her get misty eyed more than once while watching a
wedding or a proposal on television when she thinks I'm not looking so I don’t
think she's completely opposed to the concept.

Shit, maybe it's
just
me
she opposed to.  Maybe she just doesn’t want to marry
me.
 
The thought makes me sick to my stomach.  Everything about her makes me happier
than I have ever been in my life.  Becoming a father overnight is something I
never thought I wanted but now know I can never live without.  Ever since the
wedding this past weekend, all I can think about is the way Claire looked
standing in the middle of the dance floor holding that bouquet of flowers she
had just caught.

There had been a
sparkle in her eyes and a smile on her face that lit up the room.  It made me
wish that it was
our
wedding we were at and that it was
our
celebration of love.  I actually reached into my pocket to pull out the ring I
always carried with me and panicked when I didn’t feel it in there.  It took me
a minute to realize I decided right before we walked out of the house that
morning to leave it at home.  I had been to enough weddings with Drew to know
that there would be break dancing and tuxedo jackets swung around and didn’t
want to chance losing the ring.  After the way she reacted when she only
thought
Drew and Jenny might be getting engaged at the rehearsal dinner, I was glad I’d
left the ring at home.  Standing there and staring at her with a wedding
bouquet in her hand had almost  forced me to do something she’d hate, and I'd
have no control over if that ring was in my pocket.

Claire seems
genuinely happy, aside from the past few days and the weird, off-the-wall
comments she makes about marriage.  Could it be that seeing her best friends
get married has made her realize she’ll never have that for herself?  She's
watching porn in the middle of the night by herself while I'm at work.  That’s
either the sign of the apocalypse or I'm just not doing it for her.  Jesus,
maybe I need to up my game.  She shouldn’t be watching porn alone unless I’m
not enough for her.

Am I not enough
for her?  WHY AREN’T I ENOUGH FOR HER?  Why can’t she be happy with me instead
of lusting after some actor on the television?  Why, God, why?  It’s not like
those men are real anyway.  Everything about them is fake, including their six
pack abs and horse cocks.  And seriously, who needs that much cock?  Maybe
she’s watching those men wishing I could learn some of those tricks.  But come
on, give me a break.  No one is that bendy or has that much stamina.  That’s
what film editing is for.  She probably thinks it’s not cheating since all
she’s doing is watching them on TV but God dammit, she’s cheating with her
MIND.

Oh my Jesus. 
I think I just grew a vagina.

I have to
believe that if Claire is really that unhappy with me or my sexual prowess,
she'd say something.  Chicks like to tell you all the time what you’re doing
wrong, don’t they?  Why would Claire be any different?  I’m acting like a giant
pussy over this.  We’re fine, she’s fine, I love her more than anything in the
world, and I WILL make this proposal happen.  Enough with the chicken shit
stuff.

I try calling
Claire on the way out of work to see if she's still at the shop but her phone
goes straight to voicemail.  When I drive through town I see that her car is
still parked out in front of the building, so I pull around back and go in
through the back door that brings me into the kitchen.

The sight before
me leaves me speechless and confused.  I really don’t’ know where to look
first.  There is chocolate splattered everywhere and as I take a step into the
room, something covered in chocolate dripped down from the ceiling in front of
me and lands by my foot with a
plop.

It's dead silent
in the room which is my first clue that something is off; Claire always has
music playing in the kitchen when she works.

Actually, my
first inclination that something isn’t quiet right is seeing Jenny sitting in
the sink crying.  My eyes pass right over Drew lying on his stomach on the
floor lapping up a puddle of chocolate like a dog.  That’s not something I
haven’t seen before unfortunately.

Since Jenny is
closest to me, I start with her.

“Hey, what’s
going on?  Why are you crying?  More importantly, why are you crying in the
sink?” I ask her as I reach in and scoop her out of the big, stainless steel
commercial sink like a baby.  It takes a few minutes to steady her once I get
her on her feet.  She clutches onto my shoulders and stares up at me.

“I think Drew
ate Claire,” she whispers.  “She was sitting here a minute ago and then Drew
said he was hungry and now she’s gone.  He ate four batches of chocolate chip
cookies and one batch of Claire.”

Jesus God
what the fuck is going on?

I gently push Jenny
away from me until her back is leaning up against the counter and I am certain
she won’t fall.  Turning around, I stare at the mess that has transformed this
sparkling clean kitchen into a chocolate nightmare.

Are those
chocolate covered Twinkies stuck to the wall?

I gingerly step
around small puddles of melted chocolate on the floor, careful not to slip and
fall, and make my way over to Drew who has given up sucking chocolate off of
the floor and is now curled up in the fetal position asleep.

“Hey, ASSHOLE!”
I yell.  “Wake up!”  I shove the toe of my shoe into his stomach and push until
he rolls over onto his back and lazily opens his eyes to look at me.

“Duuuuuuuuude,”
he says on an exhale of breath.

“Don’t
dude
me.  What the fuck happened here?  Claire sent me a text a few hours ago that
you were going to help her frost cookies.  Why does it look like a bomb
exploded?”

Drew blinks a
few times and shakes his head to clear out the cobwebs or whatever the fuck is
in his brain right now sucking out all of the functioning parts.

“Help me up so I
can think,” Drew says as he sticks his arm up towards me.

I shake my head
in annoyance, grab onto his hand and yank him up off of the floor.

“You’re hands
are so soft.  Do you moisturize?” Drew questions as he pets the top of my hand
like a kitten.

I rip my hand
out of his grip and smack him upside the head.

“Cocksucker! 
Pay attention!”

Drew rubs the
back of his head and glares at me.

“Don’t get your
panties all in a twist.  Claire is in her office.  She’s fine.  Her dad is in
there with her.”