Matchpoint (22 page)

“Not just yet, but I promise to do my best for you.” It was good to finally be honest with her.

Belinda sat back in her chair. “That’s fine. I know you’re doing your best. I trust you.”

My breath hitched. I was overcome by her belief in me and my abilities, and I was gripped with a desire to run as fast as possible away from her trusting eyes and her need to rely on me to make her happy in life.

At least I could give her some good news. “I don’t think you have to worry about the police anymore,” I told her. “I think they’ve ruled you out as a suspect.”

“Really? Gee, thanks, Gladie. You work quick,” she said, genuinely pleased, but not quite as much as if I had told her I had found her the perfect match. I made a show of looking for something in my purse, as my eyes had misted in the emotion of taking care of another soul.

Ruth plopped a tea tray onto the table and sat next to us. “I’ll join you,” she said. She had brought a teapot, three cups, and a mysterious bottle without a label. She poured tea for Belinda and me but filled her own cup with a brown liquid from the bottle.

“Private stock,” she explained. “I’m not saying the wackos have me beat, but they got me weary.”

I downed my diet tea in one gulp and extended my cup for her to fill with her private stock. “Good girl!” she exclaimed, filling it to the brim. It burned like hell going down.

“What is this? Battery acid?” I choked.

“Only partly,” she said. “What’s your story?” she asked Belinda.

“I don’t have a story,” Belinda said with an edge of regret to her voice, but then she thought about it a moment
and her face brightened. “I talked to a donkey yesterday.”

Ruth slammed back some more private stock. “I have lived a long time, but I have never seen a donkey with as much bitchitude as the mayor’s Dulcinea.”

I finished my drink, and Ruth poured me another cup. “I fixed up Belinda with the mayor,” I admitted to Ruth. “They went out yesterday.”

“No greater fool ever walked the earth on two legs,” Ruth said about the mayor. “Not off to a good start in your grandmother’s business, I see.” She wagged her finger at me. “Crazy woman says you have her gift. So much for her third eye.”

Ruth had begun to slur her speech, and I realized with surprise that I was seeing double and feeling no pain.

“I love you,” I said, and hiccupped. Ruth refilled my cup.

Belinda took my defense against Ruth, telling her how hard I was working, and hinted that my grandmother was a witch. My focus was elsewhere. Through my hazy eyesight, I thought I recognized a man sitting nearby. I got up and clutched the table as the world spun around. After a moment, it slowed down enough for me to manage to stumble over to him.

“Hey, you,” I said, falling onto the chair next to him. “Penis Pipe Guy, you made it. I had my doubts. Are you still, you know, in one piece?”

The last time I saw him, his penis was wedged in a silver pipe, and Cannes’s rescue professionals were about to hack it away with an industrial grinder. I peeked down at the bulge in his pants. Medium-sized, but two bulges. I rubbed my eyes to clear my vision and get his bulge down to one.

“Hey, Underwear Girl!” he said, smiling. “Yeah, it was a hairy pickle, but they freed old Winston. He’s a
little bruised, but he’s breathing easy now. I’m not wearing any underpants,” he added with pride.

“Old Winston!” I shouted, and exploded into laughter. My body heaved with uncontrollable giggles. I slapped the table and tried to catch my breath. My hair flopped over my face, and I brushed it to the side with my hand. The penis-pipe guy leaned back as if my head had caught fire and he didn’t want to get burned.

“I drank some tea,” I explained. “I might be a little eneeb—eneeb—eneebiated.” I snapped my fingers. “Eneebiated? That’s not right,” I said. “Eneebeeted. Eanie Meenie ated? Nope. Hey, is it hot in here?”

“Maybe,” he said, tugging at his collar.

“Drunk!” I shouted. “That’s the word.” I scooted my chair close to him and leaned in. “So, tell me, Peter,” I said, tapping his chest with my finger. “What makes Peter, Peter?”

“I don’t know. My name’s Tim,” he said.

“Are you sure?”

Tim scratched his head and seemed to think about it.

“Why did you stick your penis in a pipe?” I asked.

“It wasn’t my fault!”

I patted him on the back. “I understand. I understand. Things are crazy!” I waved my hands wildly to show him how crazy things were. “Did you see the donkey flying in the sky?”

“A donkey?”

“And that’s not the craziest. I saw a face,” I told him. “I saw it after I didn’t see it. It wasn’t where it was supposed to be. Neither time.”

Belinda tapped me on the shoulder. “Gladie, are you coming back? Ruth kind of fell asleep.”

I turned around. Ruth had slumped backward on her chair, and she was snoring loudly through her open mouth.

“Wow, that tea packs a wallop,” I said. “Must have been the steeping.”

“I think it was Ruth’s private stock. Your face is all red,” Belinda noted.

“Huh, that’s funny. I feel all red. You’re not red. You’re orange. Peter, doesn’t Belinda look pretty in her giant orange flower?” I palmed the flower on Belinda’s sweater, accidentally cupping her breast. “Firm flower,” I said.

Belinda jumped back like she had been electrocuted, and more or less fell onto the chair next to me. If my thinking was foggy, Belinda’s was crystal clear. Her eyes locked onto Tim’s ringless hand and she recovered quickly, her focus sharp and her mind one-track, like it was riding on rails.

“I’m Belinda Womble. Never been married.” She put her hand out and waited for Tim to take it. There was an awkward moment where he seemed to debate the wisdom of shaking her hand, but he came out on the side of optimism and grabbed her in an energetic handshake, baring his teeth in a wide smile.

“Hi there, Belinda. I’m Tim.”

Grandma was right. Sometimes clients decide to match themselves. I couldn’t blame Belinda for taking matters into her own hands, since I was doing a miserable job as her matchmaker. Still, something—a feeling, an instinct—told me that Tim was not the man for her.

“Tim stuck his penis in a pipe,” I said. “It swelled up, and they had to cut him out with a big machine.” I scissored the air with my fingers to illustrate my story.

“It wasn’t my fault!” Tim yelled.

Belinda caressed his arm. “I’m sure it wasn’t. I work in the medical field. Maybe I can help.”

Ugh. Belinda was giving him big cow eyes, and he seemed to like the attention. I slapped the side of my head. It must have been the word “swelled” that got her.
“I’m the light-bulb-eating champion for the lower Southwest,” Tim boasted to Belinda.

“Excuse me?” I asked.

Belinda batted her eyelashes. “Fascinating. How many did you eat?”

“Only one. It’s a speed contest. I did it in less than thirty-three seconds.”

I belched flame. Chinese diet tea and Ruth’s private stock were a lethal combination. “Did the aliens make you do that?” I asked.

“I eat all kinds of things,” Tim explained. “I could eat at least a dozen of those silver teaspoons they got here. But light bulbs are tricky.”

“I bet,” Belinda gushed. I had to hand it to her. I would have run screaming, but she was sticking it out, holding out hope that Tim would wind up being half decent. But enough was enough.

“He was out in the street for all the world to see with his
shmekel
in a pipe!” I explained to her, thinking that would be a deal breaker for any relationship.

“It wasn’t my fault! It was the cult.” Tim stood up and pointed to the sky as if the cult had flown in and had done the dirty deed to him.

I stood up, too. I stuck my finger in his face, and then it hit me. My insides rolled and pitched like it was the
Titanic
all over again.

“Holy crap!” I yelled, and ran for the bathroom.

“Oh, good!” Belinda called after me. “The tea hit! I told you we needed to steep it!”

I don’t know how long I was in the bathroom, but when I came out, Belinda and Tim were gone and so were the rest of Ruth’s clientele. Outside, the sun was setting. I was a little light-headed, but my jeans were noticeably looser.

I sat at Ruth’s table, and she opened another bottle of her private stock.

“Oh, no,” I said. “I’ve had enough. I’ll stick to tea. I’m still a little tipsy.”

“Your grandmother called. You’re going to need to get good and drunk.”

“Why?”

“Trust me,” Ruth said, and poured me a drink. Ruth’s eyes were bloodshot, and her hair was standing up on the right side of her head. She clanked her glass against mine. “Down the hatch,” she toasted. “Don’t spit in the wind. Don’t sit on frozen toilet seats. Don’t crap where you eat.”

She looked at me expectantly.

“Uh,” I said, “don’t eat light bulbs and don’t stick your penis in a pipe.”

We downed our shots, and Ruth refilled my glass. Then the door blew open, and in walked Trouble.

Trouble Weiss ran the chocolate shop just outside the historic district, and that’s the only reason anyone spoke to her. Her chocolate was to die for. But Trouble herself made you want to kill yourself.

“Gladie Burger, I have been looking all over town for you. If I didn’t know better, I would say you were hiding from me.”

When she spoke, it was like fingernails on a chalkboard, her voice was so unnaturally high and squeaky. It resonated painfully in the brain.

I caught Ruth staring at me, a sly smile on her lips. “If I knew I should be hiding, I would have,” I mumbled in Ruth’s direction.

Trouble was annoying in every way except for one. She made the best chocolate on the planet. I heard her hot chocolate gave the widow Frances MacDonald an orgasm at her shop’s counter in the middle of the afternoon on a Tuesday. I stayed clear of her shop. For one, I couldn’t afford it, and two, if I was going to break my diet, I was more than happy with a Hershey bar.

“Come along, Calamity,” she screeched, pulling her daughter in tow. Calamity Weiss was a twenty-something girl who worked in her mother’s shop and, as far as I could tell, had never uttered a single word. Her hair was fire-engine red, straight, greasy, and falling in her face. She wore blue-and-white polka-dotted pajama pants and a T-shirt with
NOTHING
’
S SWEETER THAN TROUBLE
emblazoned on it.

She looked miserable. I half expected her to shout
“Help!”
at any moment.

“Time is ticking away,” Trouble continued. She had a habit of sniffing when she spoke, as if everyone smelled distasteful to her. “We have to get the bridesmaids’ dresses made pronto. They don’t make themselves, you know.” She pulled a tape measure out of her purse and charged me like a rhino.

I yelped and tried to make a run for it, but Trouble was strong and caught me by my collar and yanked me up, almost knocking the table over.

“Easy, Trouble,” Ruth scolded. “You’re like a bull in a china shop. Always was. Just like the rest of your family. I wouldn’t even let your mother, Tragedy, in here. Crazy woman nearly ran me over one day, riding a backhoe through town.”

Trouble squeaked, sounding like an organ grinder’s monkey. “Old woman, I have a wedding to organize, and I don’t have time to speak to crones with uncombed hair.”

It was an odd thing to say, considering the state of her daughter’s hair. Ruth ran a self-conscious hand over her head and poured herself another drink. Trouble pulled at me, getting my measurements. My brain was in a thick, alcoholic cloud, and it took me awhile to understand what was going on.

“Am I Calamity’s bridesmaid?” I asked.

“Maid of honor,” Trouble said, sniffing. “Not my first
choice, of course. But your grandmother won’t leave her house for anything, even though I explained to her that this wedding would be the finest Cannes had ever seen. Do you know how hard it is to put on a first-class wedding when every crazy in the country is wandering our little lanes and walkways, shouting about aliens? You would think your grandmother would put aside her phobia and come to the event of the decade. The matchmaker should be the matron of honor. It’s just the done thing.”

I had never heard of the matchmaker being a matron of honor, but Trouble had her own way of looking at the world. Calamity was looking at the ground, and I thought I heard her moan. I wondered who Grandma had set her up with.

“Your waist is a lot bigger than I imagined,” Trouble said, shaking her head in disapproval as she measured me. “The least you could have done was get in shape for the wedding. Haven’t you given a thought to how you would look in your dress? In Calamity’s wedding photos?”

Actually, I hadn’t given it any thought.

“Gladie is in shape, you freak,” Ruth said. She was slurring her words pretty good now, and I could barely make out what she was saying. I realized that I was half in the bag, too, because I wasn’t the least bit tempted to punch out Trouble.

SLOSHED UP to my eyeballs, without Belinda, my cellphone, or good sense, I asked Trouble to drive me to the lake for my seven o’clock appointment with Holly. I wedged myself into her Smart car between Calamity and the passenger door. I sucked in my stomach and made myself small, but the door handle stuck into my side, making an indelible impression. I caught Trouble
staring at me, as if my struggling to squeeze into her Oompa-Loompa car was proof that I was an obese ogre and would be an eyesore in my maid-of-honor dress.

The traffic grew heavy as we got nearer to the lake. Whatever was going on was drawing a huge crowd. I wondered how many actually expected to see aliens and how many were just hoping to see if another donkey would fly.

“This is as far as I can get you,” Trouble announced, sniffing. We were caught in traffic about a half of a mile away from the lake. There was a steady stream of humanity walking toward it. It wasn’t unreasonable for me to join them.

I managed to open the passenger door and tumbled out onto the asphalt.

Calamity’s face peered down at me from inside the car as she silently closed the door behind me. Not a word.

I was lying there for a moment to get my bearings when I recognized familiar orange legs walk by.