It Happened One Fright

by Elise Sax

  Xanax or no Xanax, I had to tamper this down in hurry. I stood up. “Now, now,” I said. Nobody paid attention to me. It was like I was invisible. “Now, now!” I yelled.

  “Hiding eggs in the lake?” Josephine shrieked. “Are we giving the kids diving gear to hunt for eggs this year?” She swung around, wildly, and caught me with her bony knuckles right on my chin. I flew back and hit my head on the wall and then crashed down onto the floor.

  Lying flat on my back, I tried to catch my breath. Cannes’s high society, meanwhile, leaned over me, giving me a good look at their droopy faces and what was left of their molars. “Why did you do that?” Josephine demanded. “You threw yourself in front of my hand. You practically broke it.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. With the group finally quiet and not fighting, I took my chance to get control over the meeting. “Can’t we all be friends? We’re trying to accomplish something meaningful for our town, something to be proud of. Sure, it’s hard, but it’s worthwhile.”

  I had no idea what I was talking about. It was a stupid Easter egg hunt. Kids went around, looking for colored, hard-boiled eggs. Who cared?

  “She’s right,” Griffin said, looking down at me. “This is the biggest thing we’ve done in years. If we can’t do it, nobody can.”

  “I agree,” Josephine said and shook his hand.

  We had turned a corner. Someone helped me up, and the committee was reinvigorated with the challenge before them. The committee broke up into smaller groups. One worked on the logistics for boiling the eggs, another for the dyeing, and the last about the hunt itself. I wandered among the small groups, nodding, like I knew what they were doing. They never drafted me for a specific task, which was a plus. I just had to look like I was busy, and like that, I never actually needed to be busy.

  “You’re the murder girl, right?” one of the committee members asked me. It was Alice, a widow with an unusual amount of chin hairs. She only had three, but they were at least two inches long. Thick and black. It was hard to pay attention to anything except for her chin hairs when she spoke to me. She was part of the dyeing group, and she had suggested that the eggs be painted in three colors, patriotic red, white, and blue.

  “I’ve seen a couple murdered people. No more than the average person,” I said.

  “Are you kidding? The way I heard it you’ve stumbled, tripped, and fallen over a good dozen of them. I’ve never seen one murdered person. I’ve never even seen a murdered cat, and cats are murdered every day.”

  “They are?”

  She nodded, and I watched her chin hairs move with her head. “It’s mass murder out there for cats. Everyone knows that.”

  I didn’t know that. “Oh, sure,” I said.

  “I would never kill a cat, but it wouldn’t take much for me to kill a person,” she continued, smiling. She looked into space, as if she was visualizing herself murdering some good for nothing human. “I could do it, easily,” she explained. My arms sprouted goosebumps, and the hair on the back of my neck stood up. “Look at these muscles,” she said, flexing her arm. Sure enough, she had a big bicep. “That’s from seventy-five years of making homemade bread. So, I’d beat a man with my rolling pin. That would get him good. I probably could do it with one whack.” She blinked. “Or I could stab him to death. I have a great knife set.”

  Josephine moved closer to me and whispered in my ear. “I saw a murdered person once in a very weird place. But I never told anyone. I can’t tell you about it, but trust me, I know how you feel.”

  I moved on to the map group. They had started a new map and decided to ask the local businesses to hide eggs inside so that they wouldn’t have to hide eggs on roofs or in the lake. “It’s looking good,” Griffin told me, taking a sip from a mug. “Great coffee by the way. Have you tried Buckstars, yet? I went in, and they gave me a Caramel Buckstarsiato a day before their grand opening. It was okay. But I wanted to go in and see the drama.”

  At first I thought he was talking about the war between Ruth and Buckstars. But the gleam in Griffin’s eye was about something bigger.

  “What drama?” my nosy self asked.

  “I’m not one for gossip,” he said, and the map group leaned forward to get an earful of Griffin not gossiping. “There’s been some fooling around and cheating happening with those Buckstars owners. Kinky, scary stuff. Like that book that everyone bought, but with older people and not as much money.”

  “Fifty Shades book,” one of the map group members supplied. “Best book I’ve ever read.”

  “What about you? You like that book?” Griffin asked me, winking.

  “I need to check on the boil group,” I said, moving away from Griffin.

  Luckily, the doorbell rang at that moment, and I went to answer it. “You Zelda’s girl?” a man asked me. He was wearing a jumpsuit with Pete’s Pesticides written in red on his chest.

  “I’m her granddaughter, Gladie.”

  He put his hand out, and I shook it. “I’m Bruce. Bruce Coyle. You’re supposed to find me my soulmate.”

  I started to sweat. Big rolling beads of sweat popped out of my pores and instantly drenched me from my head to my toes. I would never be comfortable with the pressure of matchmaking. I wasn’t good with commitment or responsibility, and the idea that I was responsible for another’s lifetime of happiness or misery choked me and made me perspire.

  But this was me, my career, and supposedly I had the gift. “Of course, Bruce. Come on in,” I said and wiped my forehead with the back of my hand.

  The moment he walked in, another man appeared at the doorway. It was the sumo wrestler, and he was dressed in another finely tailored suit. “I filled out your grandmother’s questionnaire,” he told me, waving a packet of papers.

  I figured that he must have been a difficult match if my grandmother made him fill out a questionnaire. Normally, she went by instinct and at most, jotted down notes on notecards.

  “Come on in,” I said, and stepped behind Bruce Coyle. As I began to shut the door, the mayor drove up the driveway and parked. I turned toward my two matches. “I’ll meet you in the kitchen in a minute,” I told them. “Help yourself to the Danish on the table.”

  The mayor stepped out of his car, and another man stepped out of the passenger side. He was an average-sized man with a receding hairline, and a trim mustache. He was wearing a gray suit, and he carried a briefcase.

  “Gladie,” the mayor yelled, waving. “It’s me, and boy, do I have a surprise!”

  He walked into the house, and the other man nodded to me. “I’m Gregory Jones,” he said.

  “Don’t tell her, yet,” the mayor said. “I want it to be a surprise.”

  He followed the mayor inside, and I finally shut the door. “Townspeople, I have wondrous news!” he announced.

  “We’re busy. What is it?” Josephine grumbled.

  The mayor chuckled. “Oh, Josephine. You’re such a side-slapper! All right, everyone gather around. Move the chairs so you’re all looking at me. Boy, oh boy, do I have a surprise. We should have balloons,” he said, looking around, as if balloons were going to appear in the parlor. “Oh, well, I guess this will have to do. How are we doing today? Lovely morning, we’re having. Don’t you love the fresh spring air?”

  “Get on with it,” Griffin growled. “We have five hundred thousand eggs to deal with.”

  “Hear that, Mr. Jones?” the mayor said to the man with the briefcase. “We’re going all the way with this thing. It’s the most exciting world record since Evil Knievel jumped the Grand Canyon.”

  “What a moron,” Alice grumbled. “Evil Knievel never jumped the Grand Canyon.”

  “Who’s Evil Knievel?” a man asked.

  The mayor chuckled, again. “We should have a drumroll. Gladie, could you do a drumroll?”

  Everyone looked at me. “I don’t have drums,” I said.

  “You don’t need drums,” a man shouted at me. “You pretend. Haven’t you ever done a drumroll before? Are you one
of those millennials? They don’t know anything.”

  “They all got an award at Little League, just for showing up,” another man agreed.

  “You know what I got for showing up at Little League?” another man asked. “Nothing.”

  “And my mother washed my mouth out with soap if I talked back,” Alice chimed in. “Millennials don’t even know what bar soap is, and they sure haven’t ever had it in their mouths.”

  “But they should!” another woman shouted.

  “If it’s not in a video game, they don’t know what it is,” Josephine said.

  “Pretend it’s a video game,” the mayor told me. “Do a video game drumroll.”

  I didn’t play video games, and I had never been in Little League or had gotten a show-up award or any kind of award. But I didn’t think they would believe me, and I didn’t think they would be satisfied until I did a drumroll. Besides, I needed to hear the big news quickly because I had two matches waiting for me in the kitchen.

  I slapped my hands against the wall, getting faster. It was my first drumroll, and it wasn’t bad. “Ladies and gentlemen,” the mayor began. “Let me introduce you to Gregory Jones from the Paramount World Record office!”

  I stopped my drumroll. “What the hell kind of cockamamie world record is that?” Griffin demanded. “What happened to Guinness?”

  “This is better than Guinness.”

  Gregory Jones cleared his throat. “Paramount is a much better deal for Cannes. Let me explain.”

  That was my cue to duck out. I tip-toed to the kitchen. My matches were in deep conversation, while they scarfed down Danish. They were hitting it off. If only they were gay, I could have killed two birds right there and then.

  Speaking of birds, Meryl’s parrot flew into the kitchen, landed on a chair, and said something that no one could understand.

  “What language is that?” the sumo wrestler asked.

  “No idea.”

  “No clue,” Bruce said.

  “Maybe Slavic. I have a grandmother from Hungary,” the sumo wrestler said.

  “I don’t know much about birds,” I said, eyeing the bird and not making any sudden movements. “Do they bite? Do they have teeth?”

  “They have teeth, but only about four or five,” Bruce said.

  The parrot talked at me again. “No, that’s not Hungarian,” the sumo wrestler said. “Maybe it’s Hindi?”

  “Both H languages. That makes sense,” I said.

  “I’ve had a terrible time dating,” Bruce complained, changing the subject. “I need professional help. Women just don’t get me.”

  Bruce’s confession sparked a tidal wave of heartfelt confessions of their needs and desires with love. They didn’t want anything out of the ordinary, and my heart went out to them for coming to a point in their lives where they wanted love more than they wanted anything else. It was a turning point in their lives, and they had come to my grandmother for help, and now I was going to help them.

  Wait a second. What did Josephine mean by saying she found a murdered body? How did she know it was murdered? Why didn’t she tell anyone about it? And why was she telling me now?

  “She doesn’t have to be a model,” the sumo wrestler was telling me. “I just want a girl who understands my passion for sumo and who knows how to cook.”

  “She does have to be a model for me. I mean she has to at least look like a model,” Bruce insisted. “A beautiful, gorgeous woman. Perfect, thin body with a beautiful face and thick, flowing hair. Oh, and she needs to like cats. I have six cats. I love cats. If she doesn’t like cats, that’s a deal-breaker, even if she’s Gisele. You know what I mean?”

  Cats. Cooking. No fat. Sumo. I got it. Sure, there was a touch of magic in falling in love, but the bare facts, dirty details went a long way. Finding a model for Bruce would take some doing, but I was getting a good vibe about finding a sumo wrestler fan.

  The parrot squawked something unintelligible, and the men looked behind me. I turned around. A blond woman in a tall, bouffant hairdo and four pounds of makeup smiled and pointed her long fingernail at me. “You must be Gladie Burger,” she said in a thick New Jersey accent. “I’m Liz Essex. I own Buckstars.”

  “Nice to meet you,” I said. “I met your…”

  “Husband? Ford? Yes, that’s him. Anyway, I heard that this is the hub of happenings in Cannes. So, I said: ‘Liz? If you were a smart woman, you would go to that hub of happenings and hand out coupons to our new and fabulous establishment.’ So, here I am,” she announced, holding up a handful of coupons. “Do you like coffee? Hot chocolate?” she asked my matches, handing them coupons for a free hot beverage. “We’re having a big grand opening party tomorrow. Everyone’s welcome!”

  She pranced into the other room, and we followed her out. In the parlor, the egg meeting was still going on. The three groups were wrapping up their strategy session on how to manage hundreds of thousands of eggs. The mayor was giddy with joy at the town trying for a celebrity and even happier about his coupon for a free hot beverage on Buckstars grand opening the next day.

  “Hate coffee, but love new business,” the mayor said. “Coffee gives me the runs. How about you, Mr. Jones? Does coffee give you the runs?”

  The representative from the Paramount World Records organization took a step back and his eyes bugged out. It was a typical reaction to our mayor.

  “Tea doesn’t give me the runs, but I don’t like tea,” the mayor continued, not waiting for an answer from Mr. Jones. “Then there’s soda. That doesn’t give me the runs, either, but soda is supposed to give a man diabetes. Or is it shrunken balls? Yes, I think that’s it. Shrunken balls. Anyway, time to show you the Historic District to give you an idea of where the action is.”

  The poor man didn’t seem to want to see where the action was. In fact, he seemed like he wanted to flee, and I didn’t blame him. But I guessed that a job was a job, and so when the mayor went to leave, Mr. Jones followed him. When he opened the door, Bridget was there. She caught my eye, and I was immediately struck with panic.

  She was pale, like she had been punched in the gut and couldn’t catch her breath. Something terrible had happened to Bridget. I was struck with a strong fight or flight response, but it turned inside me into a protective, mama bear response.

  “Everyone out!” I ordered. “I need to clear the house! Important business!”

  There were a few complaints, but the tone of my voice was pretty definite. They grabbed their notebooks, which were full of their plans of attack and Buckstars coupons and shuffled out of the house. I closed the door and hugged Bridget to me.

  “Bridget, what’s wrong? Do you need a doctor?”

  “He’s here,” she whispered in my ear, her voice gravelly, unnatural, and full of fear. “The baby’s father. He’s here.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Communication. Without it, a couple is just two people. I don’t mean schmaltzy kind of communication and poetry. A man doesn’t have to quote Yates. A woman doesn’t have to write cards. But they have to communicate. If your matches don’t know how, teach them small talk. “Nice hat.” “Do you watch Netflix?” Stuff like that. With practice, the small talk turns big. It’s the big talk that keeps a relationship alive.

  Lesson 83, Matchmaking advice from your

  Grandma Zelda

  I sat Bridget in the sunroom next to the kitchen, and I brought her a glass of water with a tablespoon of sugar in it, just like my grandmother had taught me to do. I held her hand, and slowly the color returned to her face.

  “What happened?” I asked her, gently.

  “Gladie, I’m in so much trouble. He’s a mean, mean man.”

  “Did he hurt you? Are you okay?”

  “Do you have any liquor?”

  “Bridget, you’re pregnant. Think of Delano.”

  She pushed her glasses up her nose and squinted at me, like she was trying to gauge just where to punch me in the face. “How about tequila? I heard that tequila is fine fo
r pregnant women.”

  “Really? Okay, I can get you some tequila.” I didn’t know anything about pregnant women. The whole thing made me feel icky. I mean, how did the poor baby breathe in there? And wasn’t it smooshed between her poop canal and her pee pee area?

  I didn’t know anything about anatomy, either.

  “No!” Bridget yelled, grabbing me and giving me a good shake. “Don’t let me drink tequila! What’s wrong with you? Do you want me to brain damage my baby?”

  “No! I mean, only if you want to.” I wiped sweat off my face. Pregnant women were a minefield. I never knew what to say except for agreeing with them.

  “Gladie, I don’t want to brain damage my baby.”

  “Okay. Noted.”

  “Not that I’m judging women with substance abuse problems,” she said, earnestly. “It’s not their fault. They’re gripped by the power of mood-enhancing and mood-altering drugs. It’s not their fault, Gladie.”

  I nodded. “Uh huh. I think we might have gotten off track.”

  She blinked. “Oh, right. Bradford Blythe.”

  “Is that his name? Delano’s father?”

  “Remember that bookkeeping conference I went to? Well, there was another conference at the hotel, too. An evil one-percenter conference of…of…of…”

  “Of what?” I breathed. “Sex trafficking? Torturers? IRS?”

  Bridget took a deep breath, as if she was gathering strength to tell me how much she weighed. “Venture capitalists,” she squeaked. “And there was a bar, and he was tall, and he had an expense account. The evils of the sour apple-tini, Gladie. They’re so good going down.”

  She was right. I had never drunk a sour apple-tini, but I had danced on barrels naked once after three Long Island iced teas. I so related.

  “Most of it’s a blur,” she said, running her fingers through her curly hair, making it stand up on end. “I remember that he was a terrible kisser, but he could take my bra off with two fingers. And then there was the thing about his penis.”

  I bit my lower lip. I didn’t know if I should ask her about his penis or wait for her to give me the skinny. She wasn’t meeting my eyes. She was looking everywhere but at me. I pretended I didn’t care about her baby daddy’s penis. Think about puppies. Think about dirty dishes. Think about…her baby daddy’s penis. Nope, it was impossible to pretend I didn’t care.