Lizz Lund - Mina Kitchen 01 - Kitchen Addiction!

by Lizz Lund

  “Ummm… I think you should keep this appointment, Mina. After all, you also need your foot examined.” She winced at me and walked away.

  I looked in the mirror. Yup, the swelling was down – no more pregnant forehead. In its place was a large, dark purple circle that was ringed in red and green like a bull’s-eye. I gazed down at my stubbed toe, the cut on my foot and the spot where Auntie’s stilletoed heel pierced me. Each was a wonderful shade of eggplant, delicately trimmed in pink.

  Aunt Muriel and I turned as we heard gnawing sounds from downstairs. I figured it was the terrier eating my furniture again. “Whose dog?” I asked.

  “Do you have a dog?” she asked, pulling a plastic grocery store bag over her head in preparation for getting dressed.

  “You know I don’t have a dog. I’ve got Vinnie,” I said. “By the way, where is Vinnie?” I asked nervously. Aunt Muriel pointed her grocery bag encased head toward the bed. Vinnie lay sleeping on his side mumbling, with one paw covering his snout and the other clutching a half gnawed piece of pepperoni. “Oh good grief,” I said. No wonder he hadn’t encountered Fido in the living room. He had a pepperoni hangover.

  I patted his belly and a lethal ‘poof’ pooted out his south end – the silent but deadly kind. Aunt Muriel still had her head in the bag. “You might want to stay in there,” I warned, holding my nose. She nodded, and I headed back downstairs to settle the score with somebody else’s dog.

  I got Fido away from more rocker gnawing by bribing him with Apple At’ems cereal. He took the bait and trotted happily behind me into the kitchen. There I made a pot of coffee and heard the front door open. It was Vito.

  “Hey, Toots, how’s your head?” Vito smiled as he ambled toward the kitchen, carrying a white paper bag. “I got yous and Muriel some jelly donuts. I figured yous could use them…” He trailed off as I faced him, giving him full frontal forehead. He stared disbelievingly at my bruise and gulped. “Boy, that was some whack, huh?”

  I shrugged, took the bag from him and set some plates and coffee mugs on the counter. We helped ourselves, and chewed quietly.

  Vito looked down and finally registered the furniture crunching Terrier. This was because the dog was sitting pretty for Vito’s jelly donut. “When’d you get him?” Vito asked.

  “I have no idea.”

  “Gee, I always wanted a dog,” Vito said wistfully. “Hey, if he doesn’t belong to anyone, can I keep him?”

  “Better check around first, Vito, just in case.”

  “You’re right. Jeez, ya never know what walks through an unlocked door,” Vito said.

  I looked meaningfully at him. “Yep, one never knows,” I agreed.

  “By the way, Mina, if yous thinks you’re going into work today, could you take this for me?” Vito asked, holding up his perpetual gym bag of dry cleaning.

  I sighed. “Sure.”

  Aunt Muriel came down and shushed me upstairs to get ready to have my head examined. I got dressed, Vinnie still lay sprawled out on my bed, snoozing and pooting in bachelor bliss. I fed Marie, went back downstairs and left Kitty Cookies in Vinnie’s bowl.

  “Where’s Vito? And the dog?” I asked.

  “Vito took him for a walk to find his owner,” Aunt Muriel replied. “Come along, Mina,” she called after me. I trotted obediently behind.

  We got to the doctors’ and I signed in. Before long, a nurse called out, “Mina Kitchen?”

  “That’s me,” I said.

  She backed away. “Uh, just step over here so we can, uh, weigh you…” she trailed, keeping a good distance away from me. I sighed. Why is it when you feel like crap you have to get weighed? What good is that? You’re there because you feel bad, right? So you have to feel guilty, too? I accepted her unacceptable weight reading and went inside an examination room where I perched on a bench and waited.

  A few thousand years later, a guy I’d never seen before popped his head into the room. “Good afternoon, I am Dr. Singh,” he sang.

  “What happened to Dr. Dahler? Or Dr. Senz?” I asked.

  “They are out of town at a very impressive conference, for which they will gain invaluable knowledge about the cosmetic medicines,” he beamed. “I am their replacement for today’s patients,” he finished. Great. Leave it to me to get a temp. “So, what is the condition of which you would like to complain?” I looked at him questioningly. He’d got to be kidding. Where should I start? And how much time did he have? “Do you have a physical malady for which you wish to be cured?”

  Oh. That stuff. “I suppose,” I began, and explained about the konk on my noggin and mutilated foot.

  “Oh, this is very, very bad,” Dr. Singh said, shaking his head. “It is terrible to live with such pain. But it is this which will gain us the moral strength.” He smiled at me. Oh good grief. I got a doctor of philosophy. “Here, please to let me examine your head,” he continued, and invaded my personal space by stepping in-between my thighs. After that he proceeded to peer so closely into my eyes with his scope thingy that I felt his eyelashes flicker against my cheek. Oh well. At least he hadn’t eaten pepperoni.

  He stepped back and picked up my foot. I yelped politely at him. He looked at me and shook his head, tsking. He let my foot down and started to write in my file. Then he wrote something on a prescription pad. “Firstly, let me say this to you: you are very much in very much pain,” he said. “Your foot has the contusion and has been lacerated with a wound, and also appears a bit pierced. And your head has suffered quite a blow by a round, heavy object.” How observant of him. “I see from your file that you have not had a tet-a-nish shot in your recent personal history with this practice, yes?”

  I gulped. “No…”

  “Good!” And he beamed at me far too brightly. “Then we will have a registered nurse administer a tet-a-nish shot! As for your head, though, I am afraid there is not much we can do for it.”

  “That’s pretty much the family consensus,” I quipped. Dr. Singh stared back at me blankly. Clearly he thought more damage had been done than he’d assessed. He shook his head and ripped a sheet off his prescription pad.

  “This is a small but helpful prescription for your pain,” he said, handing the paper to me. I reached for it, and he withdrew it. “It is not to take during working or driving or eating or sleeping hours,” he admonished.

  “Oh, okay,” I said. Must be just for playtime, then.

  “And please to read all of the instructions accompanying this medicine, which will come forthrightly from your neighborhood pharmacist,” he finished. He pressed a button on the wall and left the room. I shrugged and waited around for my tet-a-nish shot.

  A short, round, snarling bleached blonde nurse shuffled into the room. I cringed. She opened my file. “Well, what do we have here?” she drawled at it. Obviously my input wasn’t necessary. “Oh, you’re the tetanus shot. Well!” She smiled at me. I cringed some more. “We’ll just fix you up right here!” she said, and pulled a large syringe from her pocket. She wiped my arm with an alcohol swab and uncapped the syringe. This revealed something that looked like a large knitting needle with a propeller on the end. I winced. “Oh, this won’t hurt a bit!” she jibbed, then jabbed my arm. “Now, this might feel hot later on. And it might cause a bump. And a little bruising. And you might have a headache. And some nausea. But nothing to be worried about,” she concluded and handed me the charge sheet to take up front. I wondered why I needed the tet-a-nish shot, since I already had bumps, bruises, nausea and a headache? I sighed and wandered up front to ransom myself from the doctor’s.

  Ninety-five dollars later – inclusive of my discounted co-pay – we were back inside Auntie’s Lexus and headed for the drug store, and then back to my place for Vito’s forgotten laundry bag. I was going to have to start writing things down. I blackmailed Auntie into chauffeuring all this. If she didn’t, I told her I’d bring Vito back to St. Bart’s. She agreed. We got my prescriptions filled, picked up Vito’s laundry
bag, and finally she dropped me off at the Chestnut Street entrance to EEJIT. That was where I met all the other occupants of the Armstrong building milling and seething on the sidewalk. Of course Lee spotted me first.

  “Nice of you to join us today, Mina,” she sneered. “Too bad about your head. Guess it made some dent in your memory, huh?” she smirked.

  Bauser came over and stepped between us. “I think Howard’s looking for you, Lee,” he said.

  Her cheeks flushed red. “Really? Where?”

  “Oh, I think over by the courtyard entrance,” he said, and pointed. Lee swaggered away from us, then broke into a full jelly roll cantor as she wobbled around the corner. My head throbbed.

  “Why’s Howard looking for her?” I asked, afraid to find out I was being replaced as we spoke.

  “He’s not. I fibbed,” Bauser said.

  “Really! Good for you, Bauser!” I congratulated. Even though he was from Lancaster, I figured he had to be capable of the occasional white lie. After all, his dad was from Hoboken.

  “You alright, Mina?” He looked at me warily.

  “Yeah, I just look kinda bad right now.” I explained about my weekend.

  “Jeez, you’d have been better off staying here,” he said. We looked at each other and winced. Clearly things were not exactly as they ought to be for my social life.

  Bauser went on to fill me in about the power shortage and the aftermath. “Well, the thing is, I dealt with the power. No parts to replace, no shortages, no nothing. So I just hung around until the power came back on. About seven o’clock,” he said.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Not exactly.”

  “Huh?”

  “The fire started in our server room – seventh floor.”

  “What fire? I thought this was a drill?”

  “No such luck,” he responded.

  He led me around to the corner opposite our building. From this angle, I could see the billows of smoke hurdling up into space from EEJIT’s seventh floor offices. Oddly enough, it made me feel a little happier. I smiled contentedly and looked at Bauser. He looked puzzled. “All I can get from the firemen is that it’s contained to the server room.”

  Crap. How-weird would have a field day pinning this on Bauser. And me. Especially since I wasn’t with Bauser in the server room yesterday. My happy feelings went up in smoke.

  “Don’t worry,” Bauser said. “I could do with a break. Collect some unemployment; have an extended vacation…” His eyes glazed over at the thought of endless nights on the Internet with endless mornings of sports shows.

  I shook him. “Bauser, get real! If Howard pins this on you, it’s not like getting laid off! It would be fired for cause!” I hissed. Bauser’s glaze continued in its reverie. “You won’t be able to collect unemployment!” I said.

  That made him snap out of it. “Oh crap,” he said quietly.

  Just then we saw several fire marshal types gather groups of employees from various companies and shuffle them over to the courtyard. Bauser shrugged. “Now or never,” he said, and I nodded.

  We plodded our way back across the street, and gathered with the masses. I saw How-weird grouped with Lee and – yikes – also Myron Stumpf. And worse yet, what appeared to be a client. I hung my head.

  The fire person held up a bullhorn and attempted to make some semblance of the carnage. “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m afraid that your offices will need to be shut down for the remainder of the day,” he said. A few hundred employees from various businesses cheered and texted ferociously, while their supervisors cast accusatory glances and took mental notes. He went on, “I’ve met with the managers from each floor. With the exception of EEJIT,” he added a bit tersely. Bauser and I exchanged cringes. We looked toward Howard, Lee and Myron, who were smoldering in a corner. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I hate Mondays.

  I shrugged at Bauser, and headed off toward Howard. “Your funeral,” Bauser called after me.

  “Remember me kindly,” I called back.

  I stood in front of Howard.

  “Geez, what is that thing? You got a hickey on your forehead?” Howard asked. Lee and Myron smirked.

  “No, Howard. This is a wound I got after I nabbed the mook who broke into my house,” I responded, projecting a mental tongue out at Myron and Lee. You can take the girl out of Jersey, but not the Jersey out of the girl. Can I lie, or what?

  Howard paled and stepped back a few paces. “Well, then,” he started, and pretended to chuckle, then continued, “hope you can help find out who the bad guys are here, Super Woman.” He thwacked Myron across his waist; Myron bent over and coughed, while Lee coddled his back and sent accusatory looks my way. Howard and the Suit exchanged smirks.

  “How’d this happen, Howard? Any thoughts?”

  “Yes! Yes! I have thoughts!” Howard exploded. “You were supposed to be here with Bauser yesterday when the power went out! AND YOU WEREN’T!” he finished triumphantly.

  “Yes, Howard, that’s correct,” I said. “I was unable to be here with Bauser during the power shortage because I was UNCONSCIOUS.”

  “Oh,” Howard said. I looked at Lee and Myron. They stepped back a couple of feet. “Well, the fire marshal wants you to go through and show him all the office permits, safeguards and insurance and engineering records for the server room,” he said.

  “Howard – you established the office permits, safeguards and set up the insurance and engineering records for the server room, long before I started here.”

  “Yeah, well you know where they are,” he answered. “Myron, Dick – looks like we can get that golf game in after all, gentlemen!” Howard smiled, slapping Dick the Suit’s back. Dick coughed and spluttered a grin.

  “I play too!” Lee exclaimed.

  Howard smiled at her and replied, “Of course you do, Lee, of course you do.” Then he, Myron and Dick the Suit chuckled off. Lee and I stood rooted amidst our mutual disdain for each other, but outflanked by our common contempt of corporate Dicks.

  Lee huffed off. “Well I’m outta here. I got better things to do.” And off she stomped.

  Bauser sidled up. “That’s what she meant by the memory dig. Dick Fellas, from Buy-A-Lots, was scheduled to visit. Lee was bragging about it in the Ladies’ Room last Friday,” he said. I squinted at him. “I heard her through the air ducts. Next to the Men’s Room. It’s pretty clear if you’re standing on a urinal with your ear next to them, too.” I shook my head. “So what’s he want you to do now?”

  “Escort the Fire Marshal through a few thousand pounds of paper.”

  Bauser sighed. “I’ll help.”

  “You don’t have to do that. You’re not on the hook.”

  “Yeah, but you weren’t even here when that paperwork was put in place.”

  “I should have been here with you yesterday.”

  “What? You and your cranial offspring?”

  I shrugged. We found the Fire Marshal, and got ready to view the charred remains.

  Archie Daley has the unenviable position of being investigating Fire Marshal for Lancaster. To that end, he is not cheerful, convivial or anything that might mislead anyone into thinking he particularly likes people or helping them. If you didn’t know better, you’d think Archie cheered each time a Lancastrian’s property was ignited.

  “Can’t turn the elevators back on until we know they’re safe. Walk up,” he ordered.

  The thought of walking up seven flights did not thrill my throbbing foot. Or forehead. Or my newly stabbed arm. And the prospect of possibly having to resuscitate the sea lion hulk of Archie D. huffing and puffing up the stairs ahead of me didn’t help, either. So I promised myself that if Archie passed out on the staircase, my foot would accidentally get lodged in his hind quarters and shove him down all seven flights of steps. It made sense to me; in case of emergency, break ass.

  We reached the seventh floor huffing and puffing. Bauser and I gaped at th
e propped open glass doors. If How-weird knew about this security breach he’d bust a gasket. Smoke still hovered around the server room, thanks to the building’s hermetically sealed windows. Some fans were set up to blow the smoke into the lobby. This made for a great Halloween effect but didn’t seem to be exactly OSHA friendly.

  “Over here, boss. Think I got it,” a guy labeled ‘Volunteer Fireman’ called.

  Daley sauntered past Bauser and me and met the guy outside the server room. Together the two inspected some smelly smoldering remains. “Oh, for crying out loud,” Daley muttered.

  Bauser and I joined them. “What?” I asked.

  “This wasn’t an electrical fire after all,” said Daley.

  “What do you mean?” Bauser asked.

  Daley held up a charred bag of some supremely stinky stuff. “Found this in your server room,” he gasped, waving his hand.

  “Huh?”

  “Someone set a bag of dog crap on fire in your server room. Guess someone doesn’t like you.” He and the volunteer fireman chuckled.

  “Geez,” the volunteer said, “just when you think you’ve seen it all.”

  “But that’s impossible!” Bauser yelped. “I was the only one here! And the door was closed behind me!”

  I cringed. Not only was this another proverbial nail in the Bauser coffin, courtesy of How-weird, it was definitely not good for me. I envisioned Howard’s eyes lighting up at being the ‘hero’ for catching the ‘hostile employees’ responsible for further delays to Buy-A-Lots’ new Lancaster store opening.

  “Look, there has to be a logical explanation,” I began, walking behind Bauser and into the server room that now doubled as a turkey smoker.

  “Well, this here’s your cause. We’ll write it up for you, so you can take care of your insurance,” the volunteer said with a grin. “Actually, arson’s a lot easier to claim than electrical malfunction,” he added. Well, at least that was good to know. And it was very nice of him. But he was obviously from Lancaster, too.