Losing Penny

by Kristy Tate

Penny studied Shep. Cream puffs, snickerdoodles, and lollypops are sweet. Bloodthirsty dogs are not.

  “No? Well how about Wolfie here?” Nelly led her down a narrow walkway. The dog cages reminded Penny of the prison cells she had seen on TV. Some dogs stood nose to chain link fence to watch her walk past, most barked, a few wagged their tails with excitement, some just lay on a scrap of towel looking forlorn and forgotten, but Wolfie jumped to attention when Nelly stopped in front of his cage.

  Penny took one look into Wolfie’s big brown eyes and fell in love.

  Nelly opened Wolfie’s door and he bounded out. Before Nelly could stop him, he jumped up and placed both of his paws on Penny’s shoulders and gazed into Penny’s face.

  Penny’s eyes met his, and in them she recognized true love and devotion.

  “Sorry about that.” Nelly grabbed him by the collar and hauled him away. “Goodness, he’s almost as tall as you.” She clicked a leash on him, straightened, and tried to look in control. “Airedales can be very rowdy! They need exercise like a duck needs water. Do you have a large yard?”

  Penny nodded, watching Wolfie buck on the leash as Nelly dragged him toward the play yard. “We’ll be spending the summer up in Washington on the beach.” She tried not to think about Wolfie in her tiny Laguna apartment after the summer.

  “Wolfie needs to be trained, and he needs an owner who knows how to be Top Dog.” Nelly looked Penny up and down, sizing her up. Penny stood straight and tall, emphasizing her entire five-foot-four stature.

  “You’re a tiny thing,” Nelly said.

  Even though Nelly didn’t mean it as a compliment, Penny flushed, warming toward Nelly. Penny had been chunky all her life and she’d been called many things—tiny was not one of them.

  “An Airedale may have dominance challenges toward family members he sees as submissive,” Nelly warned. “Wolfie will be happy to please you if there is nothing more interesting going on. Airedales are avid hunters, and believe me, you are not as interesting as a chipmunk or another dog.”

  Since Penny was used to not being as interesting chipmunks or other dogs, she knew she and Wolfie would get along great.

  “Can I pick him up next week?”

  ***

  The next morning Penny woke to a knock at the door. Her heart sped and then slowed. Knocking wasn’t the Lurk’s mode of operation. He left her flowers, wrote her love notes, and delivered gifts. He didn’t knock. Penny shuffled into her robe and slippers and opened the door for her aunt.

  “I’m sorry to come so early, but I have tragic news.” Aunt Mae limped into the apartment and sat down with a “humph” on the sofa. Penny trailed after her.

  “Tragic?” Penny thought of planes crashing, bridges falling, and burning asteroids.

  “Richard and Rose had a fight and Rose wants to postpone the wedding, but Richard says that he’d rather call it off than postpone.” It all came out in a rush. Penny let the words wash over her, devastated for her brother, yet so grateful that she didn’t have to wear the ice cream cone dress. She settled down on the sofa beside her aunt.

  “Where’s Richard now?”

  Mae shrugged. “He’s gone to that cabin of his in Alaska to sulk.”

  Penny groaned. “That’s stupid! How is he going to reconcile with Rose if he hides in Alaska?”

  “I’m not sure he wants to reconcile.”

  “I don’t believe that.” Penny stood quickly and went into the kitchen. “Do you want a muffin?”

  Aunt Mae raised her eyebrows. “I thought this place was a muffin-free zone?”

  Penny pulled open the fridge and started piling ingredients on the counter: eggs, almonds, oranges, and cranberries. She stuck her head around the corner and smiled at her aunt. “I can make sugar-free, fat-free, and even flour-free muffins.”

  “I think this situation calls for high-octane muffins,” Aunt Mae said.

  Penny shook her head. “No, then we’d be only sad with 400 calories on top.” She grabbed a bowl and cracked an egg into it with too much force. Frowning, she tried to remove all the pieces of shattered shell with a fork.

  Penny wanted to ask why Richard had confided in her aunt, and Mae must have read her mind, because she said, “I saw the text from Richard this morning. He must have sent it last night. I bet if you check your phone, you’ll see you got one too.”

  Penny slammed the orange on the counter. “This is not something you text! This is something that should be shared face-to-face.”

  “You know Richard isn’t a spill-your-guts kind of guy.”

  “I have to talk to him.” Penny dumped all of the ingredients into a mixing bowl and attacked the batter with a whisk.

  “You know there’s no cell service or Internet at that hole, or cave, or wherever it is that he stays.”

  “So what do we do now? Try and talk to Rose?”

  “Not if we want Richard to still love us when he crawls out of hiding.”

  Penny hunched her shoulders in defeat as she poured just enough batter to fill two muffin tins.

  “Just two?” Aunt Mae squeaked.

  Penny nodded.

  “But they’re tiny!”

  So was Penny, thanks to a wedding that almost was.

  ***

  The first thing Penny did when she got Wolfgang home was get out an electric shaver and buzz his fur. Then she turned the scissors on herself. Her head felt light as her hair fell into the sink. Contemplating her new curly, chin-length do, she winked at Wolfgang. “We sort of match,” she told him.

  Picking up a box of hair dye, she read the instructions while she slipped on the gloves. When she mixed the dyes together, Wolfgang ran from the room to avoid the smell, or perhaps he was worried about his own fur. Half an hour later, Penny’s strawberry blond was a deep auburn. She slipped on a pair of sunglasses and considered her reflection in the mirror.

  A brand new Penny. A new life…well, summer. She hoped that by the time she returned the Lurk would have lost interest and moved on.

  ***

  Penny pointed Phoebe’s car at the distant Mount Shasta. She could make a Mount Shasta Lake Cake. But no. She was supposed to be in Europe. She’d have to save the cake for when Phoebe hit the Alps. An Alps Cake. No, she didn’t like the sound of that. The Batterhorn? Maybe. Devils food, shaped like a mountain with a rich, cherry liqueur filling and creamy white frosting. Then she’d put a hole on the top and fill it with dry ice to turn it into a smoking volcano. She’d never look at Mount Shasta the same again.

  Beside her Wolfgang whined. “We’ll stop in Medford,” she told him. “If you can be good while I tour the Harry and David factory, then when we get to Tillamook, I’ll get you some cheese. You’d like that, right?”

  It made her sad that Wolfgang’s food had to be so strictly regimented. She had learned the hard way that any deviation from his steady diet of dried kibble resulted in a mess of vomit…or worse. How tragic to spend a lifetime eating just kibble and itty-bitty bites of cheese when there was an entire world of culinary pleasures just waiting to be tasted.

  But Wolfgang, with his ears blowing in the wind, didn’t look the least bit sad. Penny smiled at him as they crossed over the blue mountains, the Volkswagen convertible racing down the slope toward their next stop. Harry and David’s kitchen.

  Free chocolates at the end of every tour.

  Chapter 12

  He knew that he must leave, but as of yet he hadn’t recovered the strength. Or so he said. But how could he return to his father’s great hall and admit to the loss of his men? How could he face the sadness and questions in his mother’s eyes? How could he leave the gentle warmth of Ingrid?

  From Hans and the Sunstone

  The stars and moon twinkle—

  No, that sounded too much like “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” Drake fiddled with his pencil and looked out the window at the moon’s reflection on the Sound while trying out his newborn sentences.

  Clouds full of menace fill the sky. Winter’s violen
ce looms.

  How will the Vikings make their way across the Northern Sea when each day is grayer than the last? No. Wait. Wasn’t that Melville?

  Hans watches the sky for a break in the clouds. He fingers the pouch hanging from his waist. It holds the key to his home and heart: the Sunstone.

  Drake wasn’t even sure what a sunstone was. The wind whistled through the cracks of the back porch windows. Drake listened to its moaning for several minutes before booting up his computer. He typed Viking sunstone into the search engine.

  In the Hrafns Saga it says: "The weather was thick and stormy…The king looked about and saw no blue sky…then the king took the sunstone and held it up. The sun beamed from the stone."

  The crystal cordierite can be found on the coast of Norway. Its birefringent and dichroic properties, change color and brightness when rotated in front of polarized light. With an adequately cleaved crystal it is easy to tell the direction of skylight polarization: its color will change (e.g. from blue to light yellow) when pointing toward the sun.

  Huh.

  Drake looked back out the window at the wispy clouds shrouding the moon. Opening up a new Word document, he typed—Clouds full of menace fill the sky. Winter’s violence looms. A sailor braces against the mast, his feet planted on the slippery deck. Long nights and shortened, dark days, Hans watches the sky for a break in the clouds and fingers the pouch hanging from his belt. It holds the key to his home and heart. The Sunstone.

  Chapter 13

  Good exercise clothes and shoes are invaluable. This means that you need shoes that fit well, socks that won’t cause blisters, bounce-less bras that do their job, shorts/pants that don’t creep into forbidden territory, and fabrics that wick sweat.

  From Losing Penny and Pounds

  The turnoff was little more than a breather between blackberry bushes. If not for the mailbox it would have been easy to miss. The Lurk would never find her here. After all, she’d almost missed it even though she’d been coming here nearly every summer since her parents’ death.

  Penny’s heart swelled with gratitude. “Thank you, Auntie Mae,” Penny whispered as she nosed Phoebe’s Volkswagen down the mud puddle-pocked drive leading to the beach house. She owed Aunt Mae for not only this summer, but for all the summers spent here. Time with her aunt at the beach house, away from her hyper-protective brother, was a breath of fresh, salty air.

  Penny had only been ten when her parents had died, and at twenty-two Richard hadn’t been ready to be a parent. But when all his peers had been partying at frat houses, Richard had moved back into his parent’s house to take care of his baby sister. During her teenage years, when Richard’s hovering had driven them both crazy, he’d invented the Watchdog: a wristwatch that coupled as a homing device. Penny designed the watches in a variety of hip styles, and Richard patented the idea.

  “This is it,” Penny told Wolfgang, gathering her suitcase from the back seat and opening the door. Wolfgang jumped out, trotted a few feet onto the grass, then turned to look at her.

  She shrugged, unsure herself. Balancing suitcases, dog food bowls, and a camera case, Penny crossed the dandelion-strewn lawn. She really did love this place, but it had been a few years since she’d last been able to come. Without her aunt to take charge and keep her company, Penny didn’t know what she’d do with herself. She couldn’t spend all day every day writing a cookbook.

  Her aunt had told her about a new café in town, Helene’s, where the owner used food medicinally. No one took the claims seriously, but the café had been written up in the Seattle Times and had caused something of a sensation. And then there was the supposedly haunted house. That was new. Plus, Charlotte Rhyme’s niece had opened an art gallery.

  Penny stooped to unlock the door, but it swung open. Odd. The house looked exactly the same as always, except that it was—and this must have been her imagination—cleaner. It smelled faintly of ammonia and air freshener, but she remembered it smelling of the ocean. Penny dropped her things on the sofa and went to look out the window at the Sound. A smudge stained the window, as if someone had pressed against it.

  Penny loved the weathered wood floors, the large picture windows overlooking the Sound, the white slipcovers on the sofa and chairs, the big rocking chair next to the stone fireplace, and the large oil painting of seascape that dominated one wall. Time had stood still here, and she was once again that chubby ten-year-old girl, devastated by her parent’s death. Her world had crashed around her when her parents, her pillars that had held everything together, had gone.

  She gathered up her things and took them up to the red room. Wolfgang followed, his toenails clicking up the stairs, and his tail beating against the wall. Penny dumped her suitcase on the bed and rifled through it, searching for her bathing suit.

  Cross-training had been an important part of her weight loss plan, so even though she knew the water in the Pacific Northwest would be brutally cold compared to Laguna Beach, she wasn’t about to stop swimming. The room was suffocating hot as Penny slipped into the polka-dotted suit. After fetching a worn towel from the linen cupboard, Penny and Wolfgang headed for the beach.

  Chapter 14

  Stars and moonbeams shone through the window and landed on Ingrid’s fair shoulder. In the flickering firelight, she looked beautiful. Her shape hidden beneath rugs and furs, his imagination filled in what his eyes could not see. She murmured his name in her sleep. He had never heard a more hypnotic sound.

  From Hans and the Sunstone

  Melinda smiled at Drake over her cup of coffee. “I’m embarrassed to read this out loud, but I know that whatever I write, you’ll make it brilliant.” She looked down at her iPad, chewed her lip, and flashed her smile at him again.

  “Just go ahead,” Drake urged. He leaned his elbows on the table, fighting sleep.

  “Just remember I’m not a writer. That’s why I hired you.” Melinda cleared her throat and began. “Sitting in the dying Seattle summer’s sun, and as I look out over the city, I’m reminded that Don Marx’s influence is everywhere in the Pacific Northwest. From my place on top of the Space Needle, I realize that even from this great height, most can never hope to reach the heights of Don Marx’s success.”

  Drake’s head nodded. His chin bumped against his chest. He willed himself to stay awake.

  “From here, I can see his movie theatres and the Don Marx Community College that he built with $100 million of his own money.” Melinda paused. “Is it bragging to mention his money?”

  Drake’s mind raced when he realized she had asked him a question. It was a yes or no question: fifty-fifty shot. “Ah, no, I don’t think so,” Drake said. He swallowed and wiped his mouth. He always drooled when he slept.

  “Oh good,” Melinda breathed. “I was worried that it might be considered gauche to talk about how much money daddy has spent in building up the community. I don’t want anyone to think I’m bragging.”

  “No, of course not.” Drake took another drink of his coffee. The caffeine swam slowly to his brain, not with its customary jolt, but like fish swimming through Jell-O.

  Melinda smiled and continued. “I see the Marx Motor Parks, his TV station, and his baseball field. In the harbor, his yacht is overrun with Vikings. Holding the sunstone to the sky, the crepuscular rays—”

  Drake’s sleepy brain told him Melinda wouldn’t know the word crepuscular, but he no longer listened; he was lost in a dreamland filled with the Norse.

  ***

  He started with one hour in Geared and fifteen minutes on board the Helga, but the fifteen minutes crept into hours before he gave up. Vikings and Don Marx received equal time. After all, they weren’t so different. He could argue that Don Marx was only a modern day Viking—conquering small businesses, pillaging local economies, roaring his way into the hearts of blond milkmaids, just like Hans.

  Drake looked up from his work and flexed his fingers. He used to write everything in long hand, his stories messy sprawls of cursive and loops, but since Blair
had left, taking her nimble fingers with her, he had resorted to writing on his laptop. And he didn’t like it. But typing about Hans, the sunstone, and blonde milkmaids was much more entertaining than the fiscal achievements of Don Marx. He wrote Geared on the laptop and The Sunstone by hand.

  He could slog through two more pages of Don Marx. If he could read fifty pages describing the Paris sewer system in the unabridged Les Misérables then he could laud the praises of Don Marx.

  A flash of red caught his eye: a woman on the beach in a red and white polka dot bathing suit. She had curly hair and curves like a milkmaid. Generally, he disapproved of redheads wearing red, but he liked the white belt circling her tiny waist. She dove into the water. She was either brave or stupid. A dog with brown, curly fur ran along the sand, barking. He ventured a few inches into the water then returned to the shore. Smart dog.

  The woman didn’t bolt back to the sand shivering as he would have expected, but cut through the water with an easy stroke. After a moment, she rolled onto her back and looked up at the house as if she could feel him watching. She called to the dog who seemed to waffle between loyalty and common sense. Common sense won.

  Drake wondered where this mystery girl was staying. He didn’t think she was staying with Melinda. Melinda wasn’t the type to have girlfriends, although she did have an assistant—a mousy girl with horn-rimmed glasses and mishmashed teeth.

  Drake returned to his story. Ingrid tightened her belt around her tiny waist and called to the errant goat. Drake smiled.

  Chapter 15

  When a jogger takes few laps around the track, that jogger is only moving his or her body through air. A swimmer, on the other hand, self-propels through water, a substance about twelve times as dense as air. That means that every kick and every arm stroke becomes a resistance exercise, and it's well known that resistance exercises are the best way to build muscle tone and strength.