One Ghost Per Serving (11 page)

Despite a house full of unpacked boxes, Willa was focused on one thing: ripping her husband a new one. She met him at the front door.

“What do I hate?” she said, standing between the Rhododendron bush and a broom, hands on her hips.

Without hesitating, Eric ticked off a list on his hands. “Non-air conditioned places, especially the outside. Camping. Long-winded conversations and conversational niceties. People who can’t be direct. Laugh tracks. Staying overnight at other people’s houses, especially when you can’t control the thermostat.”

She jiggled a heel in impatience. He hadn’t hit it yet, so he just had to keep going. “Slow walkers. Overly religious day planner inserts. Fried things. Going to the grocery store –”

Willa put out her hand to halt him there. “And what have I sworn to never do again?”

“Go the grocery store,” Eric said without hesitation.

“So why are you doing this to me?”

“I’m doing this for Taffy! If I can get this for her, maybe – maybe you and Taffy will – maybe we’ll be together again. What else can I do?”

Willa looked baffled. “You think having my grocery delivery stopped will bring our family together? How, by forcing us all to shop for groceries together?”

Eric didn’t say anything for several seconds. “Wait, what does your grocery delivery have to do with the contest?”

Willa put her hands to her temples, elbows akimbo. “What contest? The one from the paper?”

“The contest I’m going to win for Taffy so she’ll stop disliking me intensely.”

“Taffy doesn’t – look, here’s the thing,” Willa said. “I can’t get groceries delivered because all of a sudden, Dad’s house is outside the delivery area, even though he’s had groceries delivered from the same company for years. I thought that you had it stopped out of spite. Over the house, and, other stuff.”

Eric laughed and Willa’s eyes flashed a warning. “I couldn’t stop our grocery delivery even if I wanted to, which of course I don’t.”

She exhaled and nodded. “I shouldn’t have thought you were responsible. That was petty of me.”

“I hate to say it, but you were giving me a little too much credit,” Eric said. “It’s probably just a mix-up on their side. Software upgrade or something. I’ll call for you.”

Willa smiled, and Eric felt a flash of a good mood, the warming rays of the sun through the clouds on a freezing day.

“At least I didn’t have to make Taffy’s lunch this morning,” Willa said. “She asked for money to buy it at school, said she likes it better there.”

“They must have pizza on the menu every day,” Eric said, feeling hopeful and anxious because they were having a normal conversation.

“I should go back inside.” Willa rubbed her arms and shoulders. “Let me know about the delivery situation. I’d feel bad about sending Taffy to the store every week to do all the grocery shopping.”

Eric shivered and hurried back to the Princess. He wanted to get back to buying the yogurt. It was the only thing keeping him from curling up into a fetal position in his bus. But he took some time first to make a few calls, including one to Sammy, who had some liability issues. He arranged a small advance from Sammy in exchange for more free legal work – the kind that didn’t require a licensed attorney. He also placed a call to Holt’s, and promised to make a few free home deliveries of tools and pastries in exchange for a favor. Finally, he called his friend Jimmy, who worked at Argosy Foods, which had a nice wine section.

After unloading another haul of yogurt on the floor of the Princess, Eric opened his big white freezer to start transferring.

The freezer was empty.

He opened the smaller freezer, then the mini fridge. Both empty.

“REX!”

The spirit looked over his shoulder from the driver’s seat. “I’m trying to read.”

“My lids are gone.” Eric was perfectly still.

“Is that street slang?”

“They’re gone. They were here, and now they’re not.”

“Maybe Taffy borrowed them to make an alien communication device.”

Eric tilted his head.

“You’re actually considering that, aren’t you?” Rex phased out then phased back in, incredulous.

“I wouldn’t put it past her.” Eric waved his hand back and forth. “And stop doing … that.” He sat down on the small sofa across from the smaller freezer. The only explanation was that one of those other people who wanted the yogurt broke into the Princess. He would have to take extra precautions against his competitors in the Amass-and-Win contest.

He opened a small locked safe and took out his laptop. “I need a bigger safe,” Eric said.

“Duh,” Rex said.

“And I need to start keeping just the tops. I’ll transfer the yogurt to plastic containers or baggies so I can keep eating it. It seems so obvious now.”

“In your defense,” Rex pointed out, “why would you ever think that your yogurt collection would be stolen out of your preposterous bus?”

Eric sat with the laptop on the sofa. “Because there’s a horde of ravenous yogurt-zombies single-mindedly pursuing the same prize?”

Rex came closer and sat on the freezer across from Eric. “You’re sure they’re after the prize?”

“I’m not sure of anything,” Eric said.

Eric hadn’t had much luck getting the grocery delivery problem fixed. He took Taffy to Quantity Market to get the week’s groceries, not for the first time, because Willa’d be damned if she was going to do it. And Eric was fine with that. His wife’s intense and abiding hatred for going anywhere near, let alone into, a grocery store, was to be respected.

Taffy gave Eric a list and kept another for herself. Taffy would say that her grocery list was a marvel of strategy and logistics, resulting in an equal marvel of tactics and efficiency. But Eric never understood her strategy, which he found bewilderingly nonlinear.

Eric didn’t want to disappoint Taffy. Little things added up, until one day, Taffy would be calling his back-stabbing ex-friend Mark Bollworm “Dad” and forgetting Eric’s birthday and why Eric was around and how she was even related to him. And his ex-friend – he couldn’t even say his name inside his head – would replace him in the family with ease.

Starting at the produce section near the front, Taffy’s plan was that they would split, visit the aisles on their respective lists in a specific order, then meet at the checkout when they were done. Eric looked at the list again. Between the seemingly random order of items and three annotated diagrams, her list was anything but simple. After they split, Eric tried to cross paths with Taffy as much as possible. When she got frozen vegetables, he got frozen breakfast, but he had to make sure that he wasn’t violating the list, and that it was reasonable or at least not inexplicable that he was in the same aisle. Mentally, it was exhausting.

“So, how’s school?” Eric said, talking fast, but removing frozen waffles from the freezer display slowly, like they were corroded sticks of dynamite.

Taffy unloaded box after box of frozen spinach from the cabinet into the cart like a professional discus athlete. “Tolerable at moments, but unpleasant overall.”

“Any more trouble with Miss Farman?” Miss Farman was Taffy’s homeroom teacher, and Willa had to intervene when Taffy refused to participate in a reading program out of principle and out of her scorn of the works on the list. Willa knew how much Taffy disliked being, as Taffy phrased it, ‘dragooned into diktats.’ After a battle of wills, Willa and Miss Farman reached a compromise that allowed Taffy to customize her own program.

Taffy moved onto the broccoli, and tossed the bags into the cart. Eric thought of a fishmonger this time, because the bags were bigger. “There’s always trouble, Dad. Miss Farman doesn’t have a brain in terms of an organ. She has nerve nets running through her body and a surface that’s both mouth and anus. When she goes to the faculty lounge between classes, it’s like a bacterium joining other bacteria to form a biofilm.”

Taffy took a running start and rode the back of the cart down her aisle, a tiny, blonde, fluorescent-orange-high-top-wearing soapbox racer. Eric could hardly stand it. He loved her so much he half-expected to shatter.

Eric grabbed a few more things from the list, then managed to intercept his daughter again in the cereal aisle, where she was stretching up to get boxes of her favorite cereal, Original Zombits, then again for her second favorite, Honey Crunch Golems.

“So, Miss Farman’s still giving you a hard time?” Eric said, ready to storm into her teacher’s office the next school day.

Taffy hopped, her fingers straining. Eric wanted to help her, but knew from experience that she hated that and would just swat him away. Eventually, she knocked one box of Honey Crunch Golems over and caught it before it dropped.

“Her lessons are dogmatic and superannuated.” With that said, Taffy was off again, this time pushing off in a crouch, arms straight out, cart barreling forward without sight or mercy. A woman in her twenties jumped out of the way, and Eric nearly crossed himself with gratitude that the only other person in the aisle was quick and fit.

Eric’s next task was pudding and plastic wrap. He got the plastic wrap, then picked up a multi-pack of butterscotch pudding. He considered it, then put it back. Then he picked up another multi-pack, a custard-flavored pudding.

“Do you suffer from diarrhea?”

Eric looked to his left and saw a tall man with more gadgets clipped and roped to him than a home contractor. He was examining a tub of tapioca, and Eric thought he looked vaguely familiar. He was as tall as Eric, very clean-shaven and dressed in expensive fabric. His strawberry-blond hair was neatly combed back, and he smelled like a new car.

“Who, me?” Eric looked around.

“Because that pudding is for those afflicted with
diarrhea
.” Gadget Man said the last word like an evangelical preacher, flashing his blue eyes wide with a hint of an unnerving smile.

“Oh.” Eric looked closer at the multi-pack.

“But I highly recommend it. It’s the best-tasting pudding you can get, diarrhea or not. It’s made by Nidus.” He smiled, and it made the hairs on Eric’s arm stand up. “A family company.”

Gadget Man liked saying ‘diarrhea’ a little too much. Eric put the pudding in the cart to avoid further discussion. “In case I get it,” Eric said. “These things happen.”

“Excellent choice,” Gadget Man said. “It’s a family company, you know.”

“Great,” Eric said, unsure what kind of response Gadget Man was expecting from him. “A family company.”

“Dad.” Taffy tapped him on the back like he was a sugar maple tree and she wanted to bore a hole in him.

“Ow!” Eric rubbed at his back.

“Oh, is this your daughter?” Gadget Man said.

“I don’t have diarrhea,” Taffy said. “But listeriosis can cause diarrhea. I wouldn’t go to the deli counter, if I were you.”

“She’s charming,” the man said.

Taffy gave him one of her looks. “I gave you a food safety tip even though I don’t know you,” she said, eyes narrowed. “That’s a favor. You should be grateful, not condescending.”

Gadget Man smiled, the corners of his thin lips becoming even thinner. “Excellent point, young lady.” He held out his hand for her to shake, but she was already heading in the other direction. The man then angled to the left and Eric shook his hand.

“You have a lovely family. It’s nice that you and Taffy can do this for your wife,” he said, and left with his basket, his loafer soles quiet on the glossy floor.

Eric didn’t move. His skin prickled. Taffy circled back around and stood next to him.

“How did he know that?” Eric said. “How the hell did he know that we were shopping so Willa wouldn’t have to?”

Taffy looked up at him.

“Oh my God,” Eric said, heat spreading to behind his nose. “How did he know your name?”

Taffy shrugged. “A lot of people know my name.”

But Eric made her stay with him until they got back to Ed’s house.