Love Game

I SCREAMED
and threw a bucket into the corner of the shed. I heard Grandma’s designer heels
click-clack
toward me on the stone walk.

“Don’t worry, there’s nothing poisonous in there,” she called in my direction. “Not since the end of rattlesnake season.”

I didn’t know there was a rattlesnake season in
Cannes, California. I had moved to the small mountain village only five months earlier to live with my grandmother and work in her matchmaking business. If I had known there was a rattlesnake season, I might have stayed in Denver to work on the cap line at the plastic-bottle factory for more than the six weeks I was there.

I raised the can of bug spray above my head as a warning to all the creepy crawlies in Grandma’s shed. There were a lot of them.

“Are you sure rattlesnake season is over?” I asked as she opened the door wider and peeked her head inside. She was decked out in what I suspected was a Badgley Mischka wedding dress, two sizes too small, her flesh threatening to burst out of the seams.

“Normally it’s over by the beginning of October,” she said, adjusting her lace bodice. Grandma was a lot of woman, but she had style and was never caught out of her house without full makeup and at least a fake designer ensemble. Not that she ever got past her property lines. She was a homebody, what people uncharitably described as a shut-in. It didn’t matter, though—the town came to Grandma, as she was the indispensable matchmaker and all-around yenta. And she knew things that couldn’t be known.

“
Normally
it’s over?” I asked, peering into the corners of the shed.

“The last one slithered out of here at least a week ago,” she said, certain of herself.

I screamed and sprayed the wall. “There’s spiders the size of Rhode Island in here.”

“If you don’t like spiders, don’t open your red suitcase,
dolly,” she told me, shaking her head. “There’s some nasty ones in there.”

My sweaters were also in the red suitcase. And my good coat. The weather in Cannes had turned cold with the arrival of apple season, and I had been wearing the same Cleveland Browns sweatshirt every day for the past week and a half. It was time to unpack my winter clothes, but I didn’t know if I was brave enough to fight off nasty spiders for a wool coat.

“You could borrow something of mine,” Grandma told me, seemingly reading my mind. “I have a lovely velour jacket with feather detailing that’s very warm, and it’s just attracting moths in my closet.”

“Hold your breath, Grandma,” I said. “I’m going in.” I took a gulp of fresh air and resumed spraying. I made it to the red suitcase, doused it with the last of the poison, grabbed the bag by the handle, and shot out of the shed like a bullet.

Grandma looked down at the dripping suitcase. “Yep, there are some nasty ones in there,” she said.

I TOSSED
the suitcase into the trunk of my Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme and closed it successfully after three tries. The rust had overtaken my old silver car, making it look two-tone, with large red rusty patches. I had never minded the rust, but now it had infected the lock on the trunk, making it nearly impossible to shut.

“I’ll have Dave open the suitcase,” I told Grandma. Dave was the owner and operator of Dave’s Dry Cleaner’s and Tackle Shop. He was both fastidious and a lover of bugs. My suitcase was right up his alley,
and I would have my winter clothes back clean and pressed within twenty-four hours.

But Grandma wasn’t paying attention to me. She stood in the driveway, ramrod-straight, her head raised, and her eyes closed. A cool breeze blew against her bouffant hairdo, making it stir ever so slightly.

“Something wrong?” I asked her.

“The wind has shifted,” she said, flustered.

“Don’t I know it. What a relief.” September had been chaos. The whole town had gone crazy. But now we were a week into October, and it was calm and relaxed. Cannes had settled into its Apple Days events, and apple cider and apple pie were being sold at just about every store in the historic district. Everyone was in a good mood, including me.

In fact, I was in the best mood I had been in since my three days as a cashier at a medical-marijuana dispensary in Monterey. My bank account was finally in the black, and I was starting to think I might have the hang of the matchmaking business. My last match was working like gangbusters. Even though it had been years since I’d settled down in one place for more than a couple of months, Cannes was starting to grow on me. It was beginning to feel like home.

“An ill wind,” Grandma muttered.

I turned my face to the breeze. I could smell the fires coming from the neighbors’ fireplaces, nothing else. Nothing out of the ordinary.

“Isn’t it time for the Dating Do’s and Don’ts class?” I asked.

“Nobody’s coming.”

“What?” Grandma’s house was usually Grand Central,
with no end to singles coming to her in their journey to find love.

“Not today. Nobody.”

“Did you cancel it?” I asked. “Are you feeling all right?”

Grandma ignored me and walked up the driveway to the front door. I could hear the rustle of her pantyhose as she walked, her thighs rubbing against each other. It was unusual behavior for my grandmother, and I had begun to follow her into the house when I heard a car horn.

The sound got louder, until finally the most beautiful Mercedes I had ever seen barreled around the corner and up onto the curb at the bottom of the driveway. Without turning off the motor, my friend Lucy Smythe hopped out.

“Help! Now! Come!” she shouted in my direction. Despite her panic, she was impeccably dressed, not a hair out of place, her face made up to perfection.

“Wow, is that a new car?” I asked her.

“Don’t just stand there, darlin’. Get in the car.”

“What’s the matter?”

Lucy stomped up the driveway and tugged at my arm. “No time to talk. Come along.”

“I’m on my way to Dave’s. I have spider clothes that need to be cleaned.”

Lucy seemed to notice me for the first time. My hair was tied in a frizzy ponytail on the top of my head. I was wearing my threadbare Cleveland Browns sweatshirt, torn jeans, and slip-on sneakers.

“What’s that smell?” she asked.

“Bug spray,” I said. “I might have gotten some on me.”

“You smell like citrus death.” She waved her hands in the air. “No time to change.”

She pushed and pulled me until I was sitting in the calfskin-leather passenger seat of her salmon-colored Mercedes. “My butt is warm,” I noted.

“There’s also a massage setting.” She pressed a button on what looked like the control panel of a fighter jet, and my butt started to vibrate.

“Oh, that’s nice,” I said.

“Bridget says Mercedes has made a leap toward women’s sexual independence,” Lucy told me. Bridget was our friend, my grandmother’s bookkeeper, and a militant feminist.