Love Game (23 page)

I felt like we had started something, and it didn’t make me panic. After all, Spencer was hot, he could be fun, and if he really was over his womanizing ways, he could make a good boyfriend.

It had been a long time since I’d had a boyfriend.
Holden hadn’t been around long enough to be a real boyfriend, and since I hadn’t heard from him since he’d left town, it was doubtful we ever would be a couple again.

Spencer had dropped me off at home and gone back to his house to sleep off the aftereffects of a bare-naked choke hold. I slept like a baby and woke up early, at six. The house was quiet.

Ruth was in the kitchen, reading the paper. “Oh, hi, Ruth. How are you feeling?”

“You mean besides the fact that I’m homeless, jobless, and carless?”

“Uh—”

“There’s a fresh pot of coffee. Your grandmother went outside to smell the wind.”

I found Grandma in the backyard, looking up at the clear sky in her blue housecoat and slippers.

“Brr, winter is coming quickly this year,” I said. “What are you doing out here so early?”

“The wind’s changing.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Changing back, I mean,” Grandma said. “Got to get ready. Lots of damage to repair.”

We were halfway into a bagel and our first cup of coffee when the doorbell rang. Doris Schwartz, Grandma’s old client, was at the door. Her eyes were red and puffy, and her bouffant hairdo had lost its pouf.

“Is Z-Z-Z-Zelda here?” she blubbered. Her nose ran, and she wiped it on her sleeve.

We sat her down in the kitchen and gave her a cup of coffee. She blew her nose on a napkin.

“Didn’t get the flu shot this year, Doris?” Ruth asked.

“Oh, Zelda, everything’s gone to hell in a handbasket,” Doris said, ignoring Ruth.

“I know,” Grandma said.

“I thought I had found love. Luanda matched me with a beautiful twenty-six-year-old model.” I choked on my coffee and Grandma slapped me on the back. “He had a lot of energy,” Doris added.

Grandma rolled her eyes. “Doris, the last thing you need is someone with a lot of energy, not with your sciatica.” Sciatica and the fact that she hadn’t seen twenty-six since before I was born.

“Doris, have you been lobotomized?” Ruth asked. “You have as much business with a twenty-six-year-old as I have.” I pictured Ruth with a twenty-six-year-old, and I giggled into my coffee.

“I’m a very vibrant woman, Ruth,” Doris shot back. “Anyway, he went with me to the barbecue at the Golden Age Senior Center. They have it every year to raise awareness for hip-replacement surgery.” Grandma nodded. “And he had too much to drink and insisted on coming home with me.”

I didn’t like where her story was going. “Maybe I should leave,” I said.

“I should have left when Doris started blubbering,” Ruth said.

“No, stay,
Gladie
,” Doris said. “I need my friends around me now.” This was the longest conversation I had ever had with Doris, but I was touched that she counted me as a friend. “So he came home with me, and, well, we went to bed.”

I squirmed in my seat. “Have another bagel,”
Grandma told me. I smeared some cream cheese on half an onion bagel and took a bite.

“And he fell asleep,” Doris continued. “Fell asleep on my face.”

“On your face?” I asked.

“On your face?” Ruth asked.

“Couldn’t get him off me until he woke up this morning to throw up.” Doris started blubbering for real, big heaving sobs that made her nose run even more and melted the lipstick off her lips.

“That’s rough,” I said.

“I’m not done,” Doris said. “There he was, equidistant between the bathroom and the kitchen, and he chose the kitchen. Threw up all over the kitchen sink. Grossest thing ever. Zelda, I’m matched up with a sink puker!”

“A sink puker,” Ruth said. “I wonder what he does in the toilet.”

“A sink puker,” Grandma repeated, shaking her head. “That fraud Luanda. Look at the damage she’s done!”

After a few more graphic details about the sink-puking, Grandma promised to take over Doris’s love life and gave her permission never to date the twenty-six-year-old sink puker again.

“The worst thing is that you got no sleep last night,” I said.

“Oh, that’s nothing new,” Doris said. “I’ve been an insomniac all my life. I never sleep at night.”

Grandma and I locked eyes. I knew what she was thinking, because I was thinking the same thing. The solution came to me like a bolt of lightning. “Harold Chow,” I mouthed, and Grandma nodded.

Doris would be perfect to make sure Harold the sexsomniac didn’t run through town in his sleep, naked and on the prowl.

I felt a sense of accomplishment, knowing Doris and Harold would find happiness together, even though it wasn’t officially my match. The day was progressing well, and I was in a better mood than I had been in weeks.

After I had showered and dressed, Ruth insisted that I drive her on her errands, since it was my fault her shop had been destroyed. I was starting to believe it really was my fault. Besides, I felt sorry for her, even though she was a mean old woman.

“I have errands to do, too,” I said. “We can make a day of it.”

“I DON’T
see why we have to do your errands first,” Ruth complained. We were driving back from Dave’s after I had dropped off my bag of bear clothes. He promised to do a rush job with my shearling coat. The weather had definitely turned cold.

“Keep an eye out for Luanda,” I said. “I think I’ve figured out a way to get her to lay off Uncle Harry.”

“If you’d let me go at her with my Slugger, she would lay off the whole town. Take me to Tea Time now. You think you can do that without driving the car into it?”

“I wasn’t the one driving!”

A GROUP
of construction workers was waiting for us at Tea Time. I parked carefully across the street,
and we walked over to meet them. Ruth inspected the contractors like a general with her troops. She didn’t seem to be overly pleased with them.

“Not a day over two weeks to complete the job or I don’t pay you, and you work around me. I’m opening up today,” she said, without even introducing herself.

She handed the head contractor a check, which must have had enough zeroes to soothe his concerns, because, without saying a word, he pocketed the check and ordered his men to start working.

Ruth stepped through the rubble into her shop, and I followed her. Inside, it was Iraq circa Shock and Awe. The wall had exploded inward. Most of the tables and chairs were destroyed, and china cups and saucers littered every surface.

“How can you open up?” I asked. “There’s no wall here. Most of your stock is gone.”

“I don’t care,” she said. “I want my life back. I’ve had enough of your kind.” Ruth didn’t explain what my kind was exactly, and I didn’t ask. I was happy she was reopening Tea Time and getting back to normal. It was another sign that the wind was changing back.

“Starting tomorrow you come here, not to Cup O’Cake,” she told me. It was an invitation, a request in command form.

It was hardly a sacrifice to give up Cup O’Cake. Even though they had great stuff to eat, I was starting to get a stink off them, and I was ready to go back to my regular coffee place.

“Can I order my usual?”

“Latte?” she asked, clearly affronted. She thought about it a moment. “Goddamned coffee drinkers. When will you realize tea is the way to go?” She kicked at a piece of rubble. “All right, fine, but don’t expect me to like it.”

“I’m sort of relieved, Ruth. I don’t think Mavis and Felicia like me anymore.”

“That family is weird,” Ruth said.

“Family? Mavis and Felicia are related?”

“No, Mavis and Arbuthnot. By marriage.”

MY SHEARLING
coat was done when I returned to Dave’s an hour later.

“You sure get your share of wildlife,” Dave said.

“I used to be a member of Greenpeace.”

“I have a customer who’s a PETA member. His clothes smell like cat, but you’re my first bear customer.”

I slipped the plastic off my coat and tried it on while Dave attended to other customers. “A crazy bitch threw spaghetti sauce all over my shirt,” one customer explained. “Soul mate, my ass.”

Three women were in tears over their silk shirts. “He wanted me t-t-to—” one cried.

I stepped closer, trying to hear what he wanted her to do, but I couldn’t make it out through the crying. The other two women were horrified by whatever she said, and they added their dating nightmare stories.

“Excuse me,” I said. “May I ask you if you were matched by Luanda Laughing-Eagle?”

“That woman! If I ever see her again, I’m going to wring her neck!”

The man with the spaghetti sauce turned toward me. “I’ll give you twenty bucks to tell me where she is. I have a score to settle with her.”

Grandma was right. There was a lot of damage to be fixed. Luanda had left disaster in her wake.

“Aren’t you the Burger girl?” one of the women asked me. “Related to Zelda?”

“Yes.”

“I should never have fired her. She knows what she’s doing. Luanda is a hack.”

I smiled. The day was getting better and better. Everything was falling back into place where it should be. Like magic.

I DROVE
through town, intent on enjoying some Apple Days ambience now that the wind had changed. It had been a shame to miss even one day of what the town did best.

I parked on Main Street. The construction workers were busy hauling rubble away from Tea Time. Ruth was hanging a
YES, WE
’
RE OPEN
sign on the lamppost outside her store. I waved at her, and she sneered back at me. Everything was back to normal.

I called Bridget and Lucy from the pay phone outside the drugstore and invited them to Saladz for lunch. Lucy jumped at the chance to go out, but Bridget took some convincing.

“I don’t know, Gladie,” she said. “The men are out there.”

“No, the men are in your phone, Bridget. You need to turn off the phone.”

I sauntered down the street toward Saladz. I passed the apple-head-doll store, the pub, which advertised apple wine, the home-goods store with the apple-scented candles and soaps display in the window, and the jewelry shop, which specialized in silver charms shaped like apples.

Daisy from the ice cream shop was sweeping in front of her store, getting ready to open. “Hey, Gladie,” she greeted me. “Haven’t seen you in a while. I’ve got delicious apple ice cream with a crumble topping just waiting for you.”

“I’ll bring Bridget and Lucy after our lunch,” I promised her.

“Good. You, I welcome. But no more couples. We’ve seen the most bizarre dates lately. Tragic.”

I was early for lunch, so I decided to take a walk in the little park on Main Street. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and my shearling coat was protecting me from the cold. I took a seat on one of the park benches, and movement in one of the bushes caught my eye.

I jumped three feet in the air, maybe because I’d so recently had a run-in with a bear. But it was doubtful a bear had made it all the way into town and was hiding in a bush in the park.

The bush kept shaking, then a swath of lavender material peeked out. “Oh, my God,” I breathed.

I pushed the leaves of the bush aside. There, hiding with her butt in the air, was Luanda Laughing-Eagle.

“What are you doing in here?” I asked.

“Hiding. What the hell do you think I’m doing?”

I grabbed hold of her hips and yanked as hard as I could. “No more hiding for you, missy,” I said. “We need to talk.”

She held on to the bush for all she was worth. “Please, Gladie, don’t. They’re after me.”

I managed to extract her from the bush. She looked horrible—dirty, sweaty, and molting. Her feathers had migrated south, sticking to her filthy clothes.

“Of course they’re after you. You made terrible matches. It’s bedlam out there.”

“I did what the spirits told me to,” she said, sniffling.

“Your spirit-talking days are over, Luanda. You suck at spirit talking.”

Luanda wiped her nose on her sleeve. “That’s not true. I’m going to prove it. You’ll see.”

“Are you going to lay off Uncle Harry now?”

Luanda’s eyes rolled back in her head, and she moaned. “I have found Harry Lupino’s soul mate. I cannot stop true love,” she said in a haunting baritone voice.

I dug through my wallet and took out a hundred dollars of Harry’s money. Sometimes you have to pay to play. Sometimes it takes money to make money.

“Here, spirit talker.” I handed her the money. “A hundred dollars. It’s all I’ve got. Lay off Harry.”

Luanda grabbed the money and stuffed it in her cleavage.

“Fine,” she said in her normal voice. “The spirits are telling me Harry’s not ready for love.”

“Smart spirits.”

Luanda crawled back into her bush.

“You can’t stay in there forever,” I said.

“Just until I turn this around. Go away before you draw attention to my bush.”

WE TOOK
a seat at a table by the window. Lucy was impeccably dressed, without a hair out of place. She was the picture of poise and class, but I knew her well enough to sense her tension below the surface. Days of anxiety over Uncle Harry, two car accidents, and a kidnapping had taken a toll on her.

Meanwhile, Bridget’s sojourn in Pervertland had completely altered her appearance. She looked like she had been run through a car wash and hung out to dry. Her skirt and blouse were more wrinkled than not and buttoned on the wrong buttons, making her appear lopsided. Her hair was poufed out on one side and flat against her head on the other. I doubted she had slept last night.

Bridget took one last phone call as we sat. “No, I don’t mind fudge packers. I’m a big chocolate lover. Would you like me to sign you up for the National Organization for Women? Hello? Hello?”

“No luck yet?” I asked.

“No wonder women earn only eighty cents on the dollar. Men are pigs,” she said.

I ordered an Apple Days Cobb salad and an apple iced tea. Lucy ordered the Chinese chicken salad, and Bridget the pancakes.

“I have news,” I announced when we got our drinks. “Something to toast.” We raised our glasses. “Luanda has given up on Uncle Harry. He is officially free from the witch and her spirits and never again has to contemplate marrying Ruth Fletcher.”