Bunny Finds a Friend

by Hazel Yeats

  Inge stuck out her tongue to Alice, then turned to Cara. “So how are you, baby Sis? How’s the search for Jude?”

  Myra, who had been busy trying to remove a stain from her collar with a wet napkin, was now all ears. Her eyes grew wide. “Jude? Who’s Jude?”

  “Nobody,” Cara said. “The search is off.”

  “Jude Donovan,” Inge explained. “Also known as Hot Santa.”

  Myra had never looked more surprised. “Jude Donovan?”

  Inge nodded. “Do you know her?”

  “Not the Jude Donovan?”

  Oh God, Cara thought. I was right. It was on the news. She killed herself. She was found in an alley, starved to death. Cara had long since abandoned the thought that there might have been anything incriminating in the documents she had delivered to the woman. If this was never going to be more than a fantasy, then she might as well make it a good one, where Jude was a hot saint rather than a hot criminal. Her feelings had gone through this weird transition since that fateful day at the store, from angry and offended to caring and compassionate. Their encounter was like a fan fiction story now, where the actual event had been rewritten into something it never was, and was never supposed to become. It was taking on a life of its own.

  “What do you mean, the Jude Donovan?” asked Inge.

  “Duh!” Myra said. “The famous American children’s book writer.” She stared at three pairs of raised eyebrows. “The Bunny series. Seriously?”

  “I am now officially an illiterate,” Alice complained. “First Kinsey Millhone, and now a Bunny whose fame has apparently eluded me.”

  “Bunny Goes on a Trip. Bunny Has a Baby Sister.” Myra shook her head at their ignorance. “It’s literature for toddlers! It deals with life’s issues in a way they will understand and respond to.” She was looking as proud as if Bunny were her own creation. “The twins’ absolute favorite is Bunny Has a Boo-Boo.”

  Inge burst out laughing. “They should totally make a grown-up version!” She hollered. “Bunny Has a Really Bad Hangover.”

  Alice smirked. “Bunny Fakes an Orgasm.”

  “Thank you guys,” Myra said, casting them an angry look, “for ruining that for me. I will never look at Bunny the same way again.”

  Cara still hadn’t spoken. She was dumbfounded.

  “But is this Jude the same person as Cara’s Jude?” Inge asked.

  “We can find that out right now.” Myra picked her giant purse off the floor, groping about inside. “If I’m not mistaken, I happen to have here…” To everybody’s surprise, she presented a children’s book with a giant, white rabbit on the cover. “Ta-dah.”

  “You carry those with you even when the kids aren’t around?” Alice looked at the book in disgust.

  “Sure,” Myra said. “Being a mom isn’t like a nine-to-five job, you know. It’s a round-the-clock commitment.” She pointed to the purse. “I’m sure I have a bib in there somewhere. And a pacifier. And a stuffed giraffe.”

  “Honestly.” Alice stole a look at her own Birkin bag. “I don’t know how you can live like that.”

  “Gimme.” Inge yanked the book from Myra’s hand. She turned it over and found what she was looking for. A picture of the author.

  “Wow,” she said. “She is hot.”

  Cara was afraid to look. She wanted to think of Jude only in private, not share her like this. But her eyes strayed, and before she knew it, Inge was pushing the book in her face.

  “Is it her?’ she said. “Was Santa quite so…Mediterranean looking?”

  Cara stared at the picture, realizing that it was impossible to tell, without the Santa outfit, if the dark-haired, olive-skinned woman in the picture was the one she’d been arguing with all those weeks ago. Whether she was or not, there was every reason to keep staring at her photo as long as she could. Cara smirked. Maybe she should ask Myra if she could take the book home. After all, what better way to go off to dreamland than reading a good story?

  “What’s that look?” Inge asked suspiciously. “It’s her, isn’t it?”

  Cara shook her head. “I honestly don’t know,” she said, handing the book back to Myra.

  “You don’t know?” Inge’s head nearly fell to the table. “How can you not know?”

  “I only saw her for a minute, okay?” Cara said defensively. “She was dressed in a Santa suit, with a beard and a mustache, fake eyebrows, a hat, white gloves, and a cushion strapped to her stomach—the only real part of her that was actually visible were her eyes.”

  “Also,” Alice said, sounding slightly bored, “what does it matter if she’s the same woman or not?”

  “Cara needs closure,” Inge said simply.

  “Okay!” Alice banged her fist on the table. “Enough now! I have been extremely patient with you people. You are my beloved almost-sisters, and I was confident that you were bound to see the light sometime, but I guess I was wrong.”

  Cara frowned. “What are you talking about?”

  “I have a question,” Alice said. “Or rather, a riddle. Picture four women—young, urban, educated women. They are having lunch at what is considered to be a reasonably upscale restaurant in the city. They get to talking. They want some information. They spend hours debating their issue, they stare at a picture on a cardboard children’s book, endlessly.” She lifted her hand in the air. “Now, here’s my question. And mind you, we’re talking the twenty-first century here, not the nineteenth. What inexhaustible source of information are these friends forgetting to consult?”

  “The…uh…Internet?” Cara said.

  “Yes, the Internet!” Alice hit the table again. “For God’s sake, Google the damn girl already!”

  “Good point,” Cara admitted.

  “And welcome to our digital abode,” said Alice, bringing out her phone, “my dear Neanderthals.” She took a minute to enter the name. “Here.” She looked smug as she handed the phone to Cara.

  Inge leaned over to look at the tiny screen. “Wow,” she said. “There’s like a million hits.”

  “Told you she was famous,” said Myra.

  Cara opened the writer’s official website.

  “Look at her bio page,” said Inge. “Maybe there’s something there about her personal life.”

  “She has a partner,” Myra said.

  “A partner?” said Inge. “Is that not the closeted lesbian’s word for girlfriend?”

  “Ms. Donovan lives,” read Cara from the screen, “in the Hollywood Hills with her longtime partner and their two dogs.”

  “Hollywood Hills?” Alice said. “So what’s she doing in our little country by the sea?”

  “She lives here now,” Myra said. “She traveled to the Netherlands to meet her European fan base and then a year or so later she moved here. Well, half moved here. She spends a few months of the year in California.”

  “So why Holland? Why Amsterdam? Why not Paris? Or London?”

  “Because,” Myra said, “she fell in love. That’s why.”

  Cara stared at her. “In love? Who did she fall in love with?”

  “With all of us!” Myra stuck her nose up in the air. “She adores us. She adores our countryside and our sea. She loves our canals and our windmills. Most of all, she loves our quaint, yellow light when the sun sets. She says it makes her want to take up painting.”

  Cara grabbed her sister’s arm. “Myra,” she said, “what the hell? Do you know her? Like personally?”

  Myra shrugged. “Sadly, no. I just read up on her. And I YouTubed her to death for a while, to be honest. There’s something about her that makes me wonderfully drowsy, as she talks in that cute American accent of hers about kids and being an artist and what it’s like to live in two different worlds. She’s…what’s the word…soothing. Jude Donovan puts me to sleep the way her books do my kids.”

  “So what about
the partner?” Cara wanted to hold Myra upside down and shake the information out of her.

  “I don’t know anything about that,” Myra said. “I guess she brought him with her when she moved here. That would seem logical. Then again, maybe she left him behind in the Hollywood Hills. She doesn’t talk about personal stuff much.”

  “So you have all this completely irrelevant information about her, but you don’t know if she’s gay?” Inge said.

  “Why would I? How was I supposed to know my baby sister would get the hots for her?”

  “I thought the word partner was used mostly by forty-year-old women who are uncomfortable using the term boyfriend,” said Alice.

  “Nonsense,” Inge said. “She’s definitely gay.” She took the phone from Cara and looked at the photo gallery again. “I totally see it now.”

  “How can you see something like that?” Alice asked. “I can never tell, not unless they have crew cuts and wear flannel shirts.” She paused. “And keys on chains. I nearly fell off my chair when Arend told me about Cara. How could she be…you know? The way she looks?”

  “Why?” Cara said. “Because I’m blond?”

  “Well…no.” Alice shrugged. “You know very well what I mean. It’s the way you carry your blondness—it’s those damp tendrils of hair around your ears, your subtle makeup, your long-leggedness. It’s that whole delicate, feminine, chiffon vibe you send out.”

  “Chiffon vibe?” Inge turned to Alice. “What the hell—“

  “First of all,” Cara said, “thank you, I think. Second of all, you guys are a bunch of horrible bigots, and finally, it makes no difference what she is. She could have a thing with Bunny himself for all I care.”

  “Bunny is a girl,” Myra said to nobody in particular.

  Inge turned to Cara. “Aren’t you curious?”

  “I thought I was responsible for getting her fired,” Cara said. “For rendering her homeless and starving. Now that I know she’s famous and filthy rich, I can stop worrying about that. I’m letting it go. Closure has been had.” She handed the phone back to Alice. “Now let’s talk about something else.”

  “Right.” Myra got up. “Something else indeed. I need to use the restroom.” She looked at Cara. “Come with me, okay?”

  “That always weirds me out,” Alice said, “women going to the bathroom together.” Inge shrugged, picked up her knife, stuck it in a slice of brie, and put it in her mouth.

  Once they were in the restroom, looking at their faces in the mirror above the sink, Myra turned to Cara. “Look,” she said. “I don’t know what the hell is going on with you and Jude Donovan, but if you really want to know who she is, you can find her at De Paddestoel tomorrow—the children’s bookstore. You know where it is, right? It has this wildly decorated window full of balloons and garlands and stuffed animals.”

  Cara nodded. “What’s she doing there?”

  “Duh! She’s promoting her new book.”

  “Don’t tell me.” Cara cocked her head. “Is it…Bunny Solves a Murder?”

  “Actually,” Myra said, “it’s Bunny Finds a Friend.”

  Cara didn’t know what to say to that.

  “The store opens at four. I didn’t want to tell you in front of them.” Myra nudged toward the door. “Inge seems to be coming on a little strong today.”

  “Will you be there?” Cara pointed to Myra’s bulging belly. “Considering you’re the chief producer of Ms. Donovan’s fan base?”

  Myra shook her head. “We can’t fit it into our schedule. Saturdays are a bit crazy. In fact, the whole day is one long rush hour.”

  “I see,” said Cara.

  “Make no mistakes about this, Cara.” Myra wiggled her finger in Cara’s face. “This woman is like a God to anybody under the age of six.”

  She was early, but even so, there was a line waiting, outside the children’s bookstore, that meandered all the way down to the Spiegelgracht. There were dozens of kids, screaming, holding Bunny books. They carried bags that no doubt contained drawings and papier-mâché rabbits for the person Myra had referred to as their God.

  From the end of the line, the bookstore was nowhere near visible. Cara’s heart sank. How long would she have to wait before she was inside? And how would they even be able to fit all these people into the store? It didn’t seem that large from the outside—long but narrow. She left the queue and walked in the direction of the bookstore until she was facing it from across the street. She stood for a while, staring at the Bunny-themed window and the cardboard cutouts of Jude Donovan’s lovely face. It was pretty impressive. But now what? She wasn’t going to spend her day standing in line here. And even if she did, wouldn’t it be weird that she was there alone? Shouldn’t she have borrowed one of Myra’s kids?

  Maybe she could wait outside the store until later, she considered, hoping to meet Jude as she came out with a big fat check in her hand. She felt ridiculous when she remembered how worried she had been about Jude starving after being fired from her gig. She hadn’t been fired, of course—her performance had probably been a one-time thing. She might have made a tour, visiting random malls throughout the country. A present to her doting audience, to the parents of her fans, who knew, but had to keep secret, that their kid had actually sat on Jude Donovan’s lap without even knowing it.

  She saw one of her coworkers from the pizza place whizzing by on his bike. He waved, and a thought struck her. She should distinguish herself from the common people somehow. She should gain access to the store by delivering something. Something without which Ms. Donovan’s performance was going to end in disaster. She thought long and hard—what was it that any reading for children couldn’t do without? Children, naturally. A bomb threat? She dismissed this, for obvious reasons. She started pacing up and down the sidewalk, then stopped to think, leaning against a giant, plastic ice cream cone outside a snackbar. She stared at the little bookshop across the wide street, the noise of the traffic washing over her. She realized that she wasn’t exactly the world’s most inventive person. All she could think of was actually delivering a pizza. But she didn’t even know whether the slender Jude ever ate pizza. Maybe she lived on green tea and soybeans. If only she had Alice’s phone now, so she could consult the bio page to see if it said anything about her diet.

  She considered that she might be going insane. She knew that somewhere in her conscious mind, the question why she was so desperate to meet Jude Donovan was demanding to be answered, but she chose, for now, to ignore this.

  Precious time was being wasted. She’d simply have to risk it.

  She ran to catch a tram.

  CHAPTER 4

  It was almost three thirty, and the store was still closed. Through the window, Cara saw an old woman with her hair piled up in a bun, busy stacking Bunny books in a helix shape. Cara tapped on the glass door with her fingernail. The woman looked up, but she shook her head. Cara tapped again, a little louder this time.

  “We’re closed,” the woman mouthed. But she walked up to the door anyway. “Were you sent by the agency?” she shouted through the closed door.

  Cara didn’t know what that meant. She shook her head and put down her bag on the sidewalk. She fished a napkin and a pen out of her pocket, wrote the word delivery on it, and held it against the window. The woman with the bun unlocked the door and opened it about an inch. As if on cue, the waiting children began to howl and push each other forward.

  “Hey!” Cara said. “Back off! If you don’t stay where you are…” She considered telling them that she had the power to throw Bunny under a bus in the next volume, but she reconsidered. “Quiet!” she shouted instead. “It’s almost time! The quieter you are, the sooner this door will open!”

  “It’s okay,” she heard one parent say to another, “she’s with the store.”

  In the meantime, the woman with the bun had closed the door and walked back to
her books. Cara tapped on the glass again. The old woman was clearly getting agitated. She shook her head, touched her hair bun, walked back to the door, and opened it once again, only slightly.

  “What is it?” she said. “Can’t you see we’re closed?”

  “I have a special delivery,” Cara said, pointing to the plastic bag, that she now realized looked far more like an ordinary delivery, and that inconveniently carried the logo of the pizza place.

  “Pizza?” the old woman said, pointing to the bag. “We didn’t order any.”

  Cara fished a fake bill out of the bag and looked at it. “This is for a Mr. Donovan.”

  “A Ms. Donovan by any chance?” the old lady asked.

  Cara looked at the receipt again. “Sorry, yes,” she said innocently. “Ms. Donovan. Is that you?”

  The old woman brought her face so close to the door that her considerable nose stuck out of the opening. She sniffed. “Ms. Donovan is our guest at the store today. I’m Mrs. Beldam, the store owner. As you can see there are quite a few young readers looking forward to seeing her. I find it hard to believe that Ms. Donovan would order a pizza no more than half an hour before her performance.”

  “You know what stars are like,” Cara said. She shrugged. “Elvis used to have twenty hamburger menus delivered to his dressing room before he started a show.”

  The expression on Mrs. Beldam’s face turned from annoyed to startled.

  “Not that I want to compare Ms. Donovan to Elvis, of course,” Cara hastened to add. “She’s much…well…thinner. Also, I’m pretty sure she can’t sing.” She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. “Not that I’ve actually heard her sing—I mean, I don’t want to jump to conclusions here. She could have a great voice for all I know, and I’ve never been a great fan of Elvis myself—there was just something about him that never…” She looked pleadingly at Mrs. Beldam, sensing that something cosmically important would go wrong if she didn’t let her in. “It was the suits, I guess.” She blew a strand of hair from her forehead. “So white. And then all those fringes and tassels—”