outside.
As it turns out, he tried to enter when he
heard the yelling but could not get in due to
his expired Arctic driving license.
So, knowing there was work to be done,
Total wandered home. Where he ensconced
himself in WHATT headquarters and
prepared to meet his brother by sending him
a faxed greeting.
And when I find him, I give him my
news.
“My dad can’t find my script,” I tell him.
“We looked everywhere, but it’s not there.
It’s not anywhere. My film is doomed.”
My bear takes a moment to digest the
news.
And then hands me his.
A fax from his brother.
Which was short and to the point.
“We are in the eye of a terrible storm,”
I tell my former business associate. “This
sometimes happens.”
So I sit on his lap and he holds me.
And we ride out the storm together.
The next day at school is not pretty.
“So before we get started on our math
problems this morning,” says Mr. Jenkins,
“I thought maybe we could spend ten min-
utes talking about the film project. How is it
going?”
Tom John John stands. “Poorly, Mr.
Jenkins.”
“How so?” my teacher asks.
“Timmy is being difficult.”
“Why? What’s going on now?”
“You told us to cooperate,” answers Tom
John John. “And Timmy’s not cooperating.
He disrupts rehearsals. Harasses the actors.
He won’t even budge on the script. He’s really
not a team player, if I can be frank.”
Mr. Jenkins walks over to my desk.
“Is that true, Timmy?”
“No,” I answer.
“It’s not?” asks Mr. Jenkins.
“Not anymore. Whatever Tom John John
wants to do is fine with me.”
My classmates turn their heads and
stare.
“That doesn’t sound like the Timmy I
know,” comments Mr. Jenkins.
“Yeah, well, it’s the new Timmy,” I reply.
“Just give me whatever job you want to give
me on the film. The smaller the better.”
“Well, no hard feelings on my part,”
offers Tom John John. “I have my own
script, anyway.”
“And I’ve been helping with it,” adds
Scutaro. “It’s quite compelling.”
“Timmy,” says Mr. Jenkins, “are you
sure you want it to be this way?”
“Yes,” I answer. “I’m sure.”
“Okay, then,” replies Mr. Jenkins.
“You know,” adds Tom John John, “if he
wants, we do have one small job available.”
“What’s that?” asks Mr. Jenkins.
“I need someone to bring me my coffee.”
With both the script-writing and bear-
finding projects on hold, Total and I give
the extra bedroom a new purpose, that of
therapy room.
A place where we can commiserate.
Which we aptly call:
Or WHO for short.
But the phone won’t stop ringing. For
there is no rest for the hardly okay.
So I pick up the phone.
“Happy holidays from Failure, Inc.,” I
answer. “But we are no longer in business.
So please call another detective. Whoever it
is won’t be as good, but tough tooties for
you.”
“Timmy, it’s me, Rollo.”
“Oh,” I answer, snapping out of my
professional voice. “What do you want,
Rollo?”
“Sorry about calling on the Mr. Froggie
line. I didn’t want to call and hear that
annoying computer sound.”
“Fax.”
“Yeah, fax.”
“The fax machine has been put away,
Rollo.”
“Oh. Well, I just called to see what’s
going on.”
“With the fax machine?”
“No, not the fax machine. With you.
The film. I wanted to ask you at school, but
figured you didn’t want to talk about it
there.”
I appreciate his discretion.
“The script is gone,” I confess.
“Gone? What happened?”
“Foul play, I suppose. In a bar. My dad’s
bar.”
“Your dad has a bar?” asks Rollo.
“Yes.”
“He lives here?”
“Yes.”
“And you met him?
180
“Yes.”
“And—”
“For crying out loud, Rollo, what is this,
the Spanish Inquisition?”
“I don’t mean to ask you so many
questions,” says Rollo. “It’s just that—”
“The point is that somebody stole the
script, okay?”
“Stole it?” echoes Rollo. “Why do think
that?”
“Because I left it in a bar. And bars are
full of riffraff. Not to mention traitors and
turncoats.”
“But who would have taken it?” asks
Rollo.
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?
You’re the detective.”
“I used to be a detective,” I tell him.
“Remember?”
“Well, who was there?” he asks. “At the
bar. Who did you see?”
“Does any of this really matter?”
“Yes, it matters. Who’d you see?”
“Fine. I saw Old Man Crocus there.”
“Mr. Crocus? Our old teacher? Do you
think he would steal it?”
“No. He has far too much respect for me
to steal from me.”
“He hated you, Timmy.”
“We had professional differences, Rollo.”
“Well, who else was there?”
“An elf.”
“An elf?”
“The one the reindeer kicked in the
head.”
“You know, I think Elmsley’s fired that
guy,” says Rollo.
“So?”
“So maybe he had a financial motive,”
says Rollo.
“Great. So you’re the detective now. Get
yourself a trench coat and you’re all set.”
“Was there anyone else suspicious?” asks
Rollo.
“Just the owner.”
“Who’s the owner?”
“Her name is Dundledorf.”
“Dundledorf,” replies Rollo. “Why does
that name sound familiar?”
“I have no idea, Rollo. Really. But can
we stop now? This is stupid. For all I know,
it was some other customer or Tom John
John or Santa himself.”
“It probably wasn’t Santa,” says Rollo. “I
don’t think he’s a felon.”
“Yeah, well, then maybe it was my dad,
okay?”
Rollo pauses.
“Your dad?” he says.
I remain silent.
“You think your own dad would do
something like that?” he asks.
But before I can answer, there is a knock
on the office door.
“Hi, Timmy. You working on your mov
ie?”
“Not right now, Husband Dave.”
“Well, whatever you’re working on, do
you mind if I check my e-mail on the
computer?”
“I’m afraid I can’t let you in at the
moment, Husband Dave.”
“You can probably just call me Dave.”
“Okay, Dave.”
“Listen, Timmy, I know your mom gave
you the room to use. But other people get to
use it also.”
“Yes. But not at the moment.”
“Why? What’s going on in there?”
“No.”
“No?” asks Dave.
“WHATT is not going on in here,” I
tell him. “We’re closed for business.”
“Who’s closed for business?”
“No. WHO is open,” I tell him.
“What?”
“Closed.”
“Who?”
“Open.”
I can tell the poor man is confused.
“I have to go now, Dave.”
But the knocks on WHO’s door never stop.
“Timmy,” says my mother, poking her
head into the room, “don’t tell me you’re not
even dressed.”
“Of course I’m dressed,” I answer. “Do I
look nude to you?”
“You know what I mean,” she says.
“Dressed for our holiday party. Our relatives
will be here any minute.”
“I am not in the mood for festivities,” I
inform her. “Tell the holiday season to go on
without me.”
But she is a mother.
And so I soon look like this:
“Why are you wearing your clip-on tie?”
asks my mother, never short of complaints.
“Because I don’t know how to tie a tie.”
“I told you Dave can help you.”
“Dave doesn’t know, either,” I tell her.
“He does so.”
“Yes, well, I tried to help him,” interjects
Dave as he passes us carrying a Jell-O ring.
“But he wouldn’t let me.”
“It felt like an attempted strangulation,” I
reply. “I began to lose consciousness. So I
defended myself.”
“He did some weird karate pose,” adds
Dave.
But before I can answer, the doorbell
rings. And I am swarmed by people in funny
hats.
“Timmy! It’s so nice to see you! We
missed you!”
“Yes,” I reply. “Greetings to you and
yours. Now can I please be put back down
on the floor? You’re upsetting my delicate
constitution.”
“Did you miss us, too?” asks Larry.
“Will you put me back down if I say yes?”
“Sure.”
“Then yes,” I answer. “Maybe.”
She puts me back down.
“Uh-oh,” says her sister, my cousin
Merry. “It looks like someone’s standing
under the mistletoe and can now be kissed.”
My life thusly threatened, I flee.
And frightened and cornered, I spend the
rest of the time doing a karate pose near the
Christmas tree.
And then I see a chicken.
“Oh, good God!” I shout. “What fresh chaos
is this? What is happening in this house? Are
the holidays just an excuse for every manner
of depravity?”
And then I see someone I know.
“Hiya, Timmy!”
It is Dave’s nephew, Emilio Empanada, a
one-time intern at my detective agency.
“Hi, Emilio.”
“Sorry about the chicken,” he says. “It’s
Edward Higglebottom the Third. Do you
remember him?”
I do.
Emilio adopted him on our trip to Key
West with my mom and Husband Dave last
summer. And he was smaller then.
“Well, it is refreshing to see you, Emilio
Empanada,” I tell him. “For this party is
filled with ravenous loons and jiggly Jell-O
rings. Though I’d ask that you put your
chicken on a leash. As you know, I’ve been
attacked by one before.”
“Well, I don’t have a leash, but I can hold
him,” says Emilio Empanada, lifting the
chicken to his chest. “So how is the detective
business?”
“I am retired,” I admit. “You catch me at
a particularly low moment.”
“What happened?” he asks.
“If you don’t mind, maybe I can tell you
later. I have to go check on somebody.”
“That’s fine with me. I’ll go say hi to
Dave.”
So Emilio wanders off and I wind my
way through the strange people in funny hats
until I get to the back door of the townhouse.
And once outside, I climb the lattice that
hugs the back wall.
And atop the roof, I find the other
creature enduring a particularly low
moment.
“Anything?” I ask.
Total shakes his head.
My former business partner has been
depressed ever since getting that fax from
his brother. So to cheer him up, I told him he
could wait on the roof for Santa and his
reindeer, and that if the reindeer came close
enough, he could eat one.
But Christmas is still a couple weeks off.
And there are no reindeer.
And even if there were, he’d probably
just make friends with them.
So I put my arm around his big furry
shoulder and tell him that everything is
going to be okay.
And it is a moment of yuletide respite.
Shattered quickly by a cacophony of
voices.
“Holy sleigh bells!” I cry. “Does this
holiday offer no refuge for the weary?”
So I crawl down the front pitch of the
roof and crane my head over the edge of
the roof gutter, where I see something
profoundly disturbing.
Two caroling snowmen.
The two of them proceed to mangle the
song once known as “Hark! The Herald Angels
Sing.”
Making me think that there aren’t any
angels at all, because if there were, they
would fly down from heaven and drop a tree
on these two.
And when the song mercifully ends, I hear
my mom say, “Thank you,” and shut the front
door on the snowmen.
Who then look up.
“Timmy, we came here for you.”
There are many scenarios I have envisioned
for how I would one day meet my end. But
none of them involved a snowman.
“Are you an assassin?” I shout down from
the roof.
“No,” they each answer.
Reassured, I climb down from the roof
and run to the front of the townhouse.
Where I quickly find that one of them is
headless.
“Molly Moskins! How do you even know
where I live? We just moved here.”
“School directory,” she says. “The school
directory knows all.”
“Well, what are you doing here?”
“She’s here for the same reason I’m here,”
sa
ys the other snowman, removing its head.
Revealing not an assassin.
But worse.
“First you sabotage my film, and now you
disturb my most cherished time with
relatives?” I cry to Corrina Corrina.
“You hate the holidays,” says Molly.
“You complain about them all the time.”
“I will not be contradicted by a
snowman,” I tell her. “Especially a headless
one.”
“And you don’t like your relatives,
either,” adds Molly.
“Okay, that’s enough,” I answer, spin-
ning around and marching back toward the
townhouse. “I have a refreshing eggnog
waiting to be enjoyed with friends and family.”
“We want to help you make your film,”
says Corrina Corrina.
I stop.
“Is this a joke?” I ask, looking back.
“No,” she says.
“You? Help me?” I ask. “Please. Don’t
waste my time.”
I continue toward the townhouse.
“I think I know where we can find your
script,” adds Corrina Corrina.
I stop on the front porch. “What do you
know about my script?”
Corrina Corrina smiles. “The bar, Old Man
Crocus, the angry elf. I know more than you
think.”
“You talked to Rollo,” I say, placing my
hands on my hips. “So what? He knows only
what I told him. And it wasn’t much.”
“Yeah?” says Corrina Corrina. “Well, I
know about Dundledorf.”
I pause.
“What do you know?” I ask.
“She was your therapist. Your mom sent
you to her. It was embarrassing and you
hated it. Hated her. She didn’t much like
you, either. And you left a script in her bar.
Right there for the taking because you didn’t
remember who she was. And your script
disappeared.”
Timmy Failure It’s the End When I Say It’s the End Page 6