It Happened One Fright

by Elise Sax

  The key to solving my problems was to win Terri over. Somehow, I had to make her like me.

  “What the hell is that?” Terri asked staring down the street.

  It was the shoe salesman Jonas Finklemeyer driving a motorized couch down the street. At this point, as a resident of Cannes, not much could surprise me. Sure, I had never seen a motorized couch before, but I had seen stranger.

  “I don’t know,” I lied.

  Terri seemed to brace herself for impact. She stared at the two-seater motorized couch with orange and black upholstery. Finally, I had a way to ingratiate myself with her. I opened my door and stepped out.

  “Let me help you,” I said.

  “I don’t want your help.”

  “Yes, you do. You just don’t know you do. Believe me, I can help with this.”

  “I don’t want your help.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “If you help me, I’ll shoot you.”

  I laughed. “Oh, Terri. You slay me.”

  I walked into the middle of the street and waved my hands at Jonas Finklemeyer. “Jonas! Stop!”

  “Hello, Gladie!” he called back. “How’s Zelda?”

  “Oh, you know,” I yelled over the hum of his couch’s motor. “Fine. You think you could stop?”

  “Probably not. The brakes aren’t working.”

  The couch continued to roll down the street, picking up speed as it reached an incline.

  “What did he say?” Terri asked me.

  “He said he can’t stop.”

  “The hell he can’t. I’ll shoot his ass if he doesn’t.”

  Terri took her gun out of the holster and aimed it at Jonas.

  CHAPTER 3

  We are a hungry people and getting hungrier every day. There’s a lot of supersizing going on, bubbeleh. This is called biting off more than you can chew. It’s dangerous business, dolly, and we all do it. More, more, more. Sometimes more isn’t more. I mean, it’s more, but it’s too much. And then we choke. So, when you’re matchmaking, take it one step at a time. One step at a time. Don’t choke.

  Lesson 102, Matchmaking advice from your

  Grandma Zelda

  My heart pounded in my chest. I didn’t want to see Jonas mowed down with bullets on Main Street. He was a nice guy. He regularly gave me thirty-percent off floor model shoes in his shop.

  Of course, if he died, there would be a hell of a clearance sale, and there was a pair of suede boots I wanted to have.

  Hell. I was so going to hell. I was weighing a man’s death with my need for discounted suede boots. I was no better than Terri. But I didn’t want to go to hell. I wanted to be a nice person. I needed to save Jonas.

  “This is for your own good,” I told Terri and rammed her like I was a linebacker for the Pittsburgh Steelers. She was fit, but she couldn’t have been more than one hundred and ten pounds. I knocked her off her feet, and the gun flew out of her hand, up into the air, and landed on the sidewalk across the street.

  I had successfully saved Jonas Finklemeyer. I had done a good deed. I wasn’t going to hell.

  “Oh my God!” Terri shouted and shielded her face. At first I didn’t know what she was shielding herself from, but then I realized that the couch was coming fast, and she was about to be run over.

  “You better move!” Jonas yelled. “This couch has a mind of its own!”

  “I’ll save you, Terri! Gladie to the rescue!”

  Like David Banner turning into The Incredible Hulk, I grabbed Terri’s hands and yanked her up, tossing her like a shot putter in the Olympics.

  But good intentions aren’t always the best, and my aim was off. Since I wasn’t really David Banner, I only managed to move her a few feet, which turned out to be the exact distance to Jonas’s motorized couch.

  I watched in shock and horror as Terri flew onto the couch. “What the hell is happening?” Terri shouted.

  “We’re going to crash!” Jonas answered, screaming.

  He wasn’t wrong. A few seconds later, the couch rammed into a light pole. Somehow, Jonas managed to hold onto the couch, but little Terri Williams flew like an eagle past the pole, flapping her arms wildly until she made contact with a stop sign and fell to the ground.

  “Well,” I muttered. “That didn’t work out exactly as I had planned.”

  I crossed my fingers and prayed that she was okay and wouldn’t shoot me. Miraculously, she stood up and focused her anger at Jonas.

  “You better have a permit to drive that thing, or you’re going to be in so much trouble!” she shouted at him while she flipped her ticket book open.

  “You probably don’t want me here,” I said, tiptoeing back to my car. I got in and started it up fast. “It was nice seeing you again, Terri,” I said in a whisper and drove off.

  It had been my first effort to make Terri like me, and it didn’t exactly go perfectly, but at least I wasn’t in jail, and she could still walk.

  I parked in front of Tea Time. Next door to the tea shop, there was some kind of construction going on, and there were construction guys coming and going. I had about five minutes to get home before the Easter egg hunt committee arrived. I couldn’t let my grandmother down.

  I opened the door to Tea Time. It was packed to the rafters. The tea shop was housed in an old saloon with real bullet holes in the wall and the original bar still intact and shiny. The shop was owned by an ornery octogenarian named Ruth, who despised coffee drinkers, but she made the best lattes in the world. I had struck a deal with her for free lattes for a year.

  “Latte, Ruth!” I called, pushing my way through the crowd to the bar. “Make it a large, pronto.”

  I slapped my hand on the bar counter. Ruth rounded on me with a teapot in her hand. “Don’t you see that I’m busy with real customers?” she asked. “This world of twittering and bookfacing has turned every half-decent person into a card-carrying Ayn Rand pain in the ass. You think you’re better than a hard-working member of the AFL-CIO. Cutting in line like you own the place. Fascist coffee drinker. What kind of coffee do you want? Hazelnut Atlas Shrugged freshly ground from Nazi Germany? Huh? Huh?”

  “Ruth, the only words I understood were ‘pain in the ass’ and ‘cutting in line.’”

  “Excuse me, ma’am, my tea, please?” a man asked, nicely, leaning against the bar.

  “I’m getting to you,” she screeched at him. “You see that I have your teapot in my hand, ready to give it to you.”

  “I see that, but I thought you forgot about me because you’re talking with this woman,” he said.

  She threw up her hands. “That’s it. That’s it. Even tea drinkers have gone to the dark side. Now you’re going to have to wait for your tea while I make her a latte. You have no one to blame but yourself.”

  “But you’ve got the teapot in your hand,” he pointed out, wisely. Fool. It didn’t pay to be wise with Ruth. It was better to just suffer her abuse and get served, preferably with homemade chocolate chip scones.

  “You better sit down if you ever want to taste tea again,” she told him between her clenched teeth. “Now, tell me what the hurry is, Gladie. Does this have something to do with your grandma?”

  At the mention of my grandmother, emotion choked me, and I could only nod, yes. Ruth laid her hand on mine. “That woman has been gorging herself on junk food since she learned to open her mouth. If that hasn’t killed her, a little heart business sure isn’t.”

  “The doctor said it was just a heart event,” I said. “Not a heart attack. So, you think she’ll be okay?”

  I didn’t know why I was asking Ruth, but I guessed I was looking for assurance wherever I could find it.

  “That woman hasn’t butted into the life of her last victim, yet. She’s much too much of a buttinski to give up the ghost,” Ruth said.

  She had a point. My grandmother was a major buttinski. She would have done anything to keep sticking her nose into everyone’s lives. “She’s not a buttinski, Ruth. You take that back. And get
me my latte. I’ve got an Easter egg hunt committee coming any minute.”

  “Holy crap, Gladie. You better wear a bullet-proof vest for that. Have you heard what they want to do with that crazy hunt?”

  “No, what?”

  She didn’t answer me. She looked past me, and her face dropped. I turned around. A man in a red hard hat had entered and was marching right toward her.

  “What now?” she demanded.

  “We broke the water main. We should be able to get it back online by the end of the day.”

  “Oh, you will, will you,” she said, her voice chock full of menace. She brandished a tea towel like a weapon and walked around the bar, in order to get into the construction worker’s face, which was about a foot above hers.

  She barked at him about coffee, and I realized I wasn’t going to get my coffee in time. I would have to handle the Easter egg hunt committee.

  I went home, coffee-less.

  I was late. The committee had already arrived, and without the steadying force of my grandmother, the house was filled with chaos and mayhem. I heard them before I opened the door. Despite my strong desire to run away, I took a deep, healing breath and opened it.

  “World record!” Mayor Robinson shouted.

  “Has your last screw gotten loose?” a woman asked him, shaking her fist at him. She would have probably punched him, but Spencer was standing in between them, ostensibly to protect the mayor. “You want us to hide five-hundred-thousand eggs?”

  “Five-hundred and one thousand, in order to clinch the record,” the mayor told her.

  “I don’t have that many pots to boil eggs,” she screeched.

  “This will put us on the map. The map! And they want to put me on TV. I’m getting a facial peel and my teeth whitened for my appearance.”

  “How about we all sit down?” Spencer asked. “It’s better to discuss eggs while sitting down. I can’t believe I just said that,” he added, running his fingers through his thick hair.

  The door opened behind me, and the committee members noticed me for the first time. I waved to them like an idiot. “Gladie what do you think about this idea to put Cannes on the map?” the mayor asked me.

  “Uh,” I said.

  The familiar scent of expensive perfume wafted up my nose, and one of my best friends, Lucy Smythe, walked up behind me and put her arm around my shoulder. “What did I miss? Please tell me I didn’t miss anything. I heard that the town was going to hard-boil every egg this side of the Mississippi.”

  Ahead, Spencer mouthed “help” to me. I was on. I stepped into the parlor and pretended I was Grandma.

  What would my grandmother do? It was a philosophical question, but one I should have been able to answer since I had been watching her for a good chunk of my life. There was no way I could be my grandmother. Despite her saying I had the gift, there was no evidence of that. But I could pretend that I was her. I was good at pretending.

  I plastered a serene Zelda smile on my face and sat down on one of the folding chairs. “How many eggs do we normally use in an Easter egg hunt?” I asked the mayor. Spencer’s face was the picture of relief, and he ducked out of the parlor at the speed of light. I wanted to go with him, but somehow I was cursed with a burst of maturity, which kept my butt in the chair. Lucy sat down next to me, and unlike mine, her smile was real. Nothing made her happier than Cannes craziness.

  “Two hundred,” one of the committee members answered. Her name was Josephine, if I had remembered correctly. “Two hundred eggs. It’s not like we’re bursting at the seams with children here, you know.”

  She was right. Cannes wasn’t children-centric. We got influxes of kids with the tourists, but we didn’t have roving bands of Mommy & Me classes or anything.

  “I’ve got that worked out,” the mayor said, smiling. “We’ll invite children to come to the world’s biggest Easter egg hunt. We’ll have a celebrity guest, games, and prizes.”

  It didn’t sound half bad. Normally, the mayor was dumber than spit, but somehow he managed to work out a good idea, as far as I could make out. “That sounds like a lot of fun,” I commented.

  “Is that Zelda’s official position on this whole thing?” Josephine asked. “Are you speaking for her?”

  I was supposed to be speaking for her, but I had no idea what her official position was. I didn’t want to make waves. If I had been smart, I would have walked upstairs and asked her. But I didn’t want to pester her about hard-boiled eggs, and I had promised to give her a break for ten days. Was that so much to ask? Well, yes, of course it was a lot to ask, but I didn’t want to let her down, and I didn’t want to look like a wimp in front of the Easter egg hunt committee.

  “Yes,” I heard myself say. “I speak for my grandmother, and I think it’s a lovely idea. The world record for largest Easter egg hunt. Lots of children and prizes and a celebrity. Why not?”

  Josephine threw her hands up. “Okay, then. Hear that group? We have logistics to deal with.”

  It was a moment of victory for me. I had managed my first challenge like a pro. I hopped up and a down a little in my seat and almost clapped my hands in glee. Lucy leaned over and whispered in my ear.

  “Easter Sunday is in eight days, Gladie.”

  My head whipped around to her. “Are you joking?” What did I know about Easter? I barely knew about Passover.

  Lucy shrugged. “Eight days, darlin’. Five-hundred-and-one-thousand eggs, boiled, dyed, and hidden. Someone should warn the chickens to get to work.”

  I swallowed, but I found it difficult because my throat had gotten thick. The mayor was deep in conversation with Josephine, suggesting that they boil the eggs outside to save time. All of a sudden, it dawned on me that I had just agreed with what had to be the dumbest man in Cannes.

  “I haven’t had coffee, yet,” I explained to Lucy.

  “You probably shouldn’t do that, again, darlin’. I mean, go to a committee meeting before you caffeine up.”

  It turned out that breaking the world’s record for biggest Easter egg hunt was a crazy undertaking, and it would have to be all hands on deck to get it done. The rest of the meeting dealt with logistics, planning, and schedules. I was no help, and after about twenty minutes, I made an excuse about Grandma and matchmaking and snuck upstairs with Lucy.

  Bird and her team were finishing up my grandmother’s beauty treatment, and Meryl the librarian had shown up to make sure Grandma would take a morning nap and then eat lunch with her in the bedroom. Spencer had brought his television into her room and hooked it up. It had to have been a huge sacrifice for him. No Family Guy or Simpsons during his vacation, stuck at his girlfriend’s grandmother’s house without a thing to watch while she convalesced from a heart event.

  “Thank you,” I mouthed to him, as he turned the television to home shopping, which was Meryl’s favorite station. Spencer handed her the remote control.

  “The committee meeting is going over logistics,” I reported to my grandmother. “How are you feeling?”

  “Ready for a nap,” she said. Her face was pale and ashen.

  “Is the doctor coming today?” I asked.

  “Two o’clock. Meryl, remind him to bring eggs. Gladie, let Josephine know that Walley’s has a special on eggs this week.”

  Her eyes closed. “Okay, Grandma,” I whispered. I hugged myself, trying to bear the worried feeling I had for her. Spencer put his arm around my waist and pulled me into his side.

  With my grandmother drifting off, everyone left the room, except for Meryl, who sat next to the bed and watched a woman sell hangers on television. Spencer closed the bedroom door, gently. Bird waved goodbye and went back to her salon with her team.

  “I guess we could go to lunch,” Spencer suggested.

  Lucy took my hand. “I get her first. We’re lunching with Bridget.”

  “We are?” I asked.

  “Yep.”

  Spencer’s face dropped. “You don’t want a handsome man tagging along?”

/>   “Oh, darlin’. That sounds like a real treat, but wouldn’t you prefer to watch the fight on the big screen with Uncle Harry?” Lucy asked.

  Spencer’s face brightened immediately. Uncle Harry was Lucy’s new husband, and despite the name, wasn’t related to her except by marriage. “Does he have hoagies?”

  “No,” Lucy said. “He’s got a guy coming over to grill some thick ribeyes. How does that sound?”

  “I’ll get my shoes,” he said, kissed me, and ran back to our room.

  “Men are so easy to please,” Lucy said. I had recently discovered that Lucy used to be a high-priced call girl, so I assumed she knew exactly what it took to please men. Now she was retired and only had to please one man, but she still had charm up the wazoo for everyone else.

  “I think I have matchmaking to do,” I told her.

  “Gladie, everyone’s got to eat. Besides, we have to catch up.”

  “You saw me yesterday.”

  “Exactly. I helped you pack for your romantic vacation, and now, here you are. So, you have to update me.”

  “Oh.”

  “And we have to get Bridget out of her house and into Saladz for a good lunch. I’m worried about her.”

  Our friend Bridget Donovan was seven months pregnant and a bookkeeper in the last week of tax season. She had been working nonstop.

  “Can we stop for coffee first?” I asked Lucy.

  “Of course! But we should take the long way around the Historic District. You won’t believe what I saw on Main Street.”

  I would have bet it had something to do with a motorized couch, but I decided to keep Lucy in the dark about my participation in that particular disaster.

  We drove off in Lucy’s Mercedes, and it wasn’t until we were parked and standing at Tea Time’s door that I remembered about the water main. Ruth had stuck a sign to the front door. Closed because of corporate devils, who are taking over the world with their craptastic coffee.