Love Over Moon Street

by Saxon Bennett

  “What will I tell them when they return?” Sparky had asked Milton anxiously as they worked.

  “We’ll worry about that later,” he’d said. That had been fine then. But it was now later.

  “Got any ideas?” Sparky said, ripping duct tape off one of the outlets in the apartment. When she was nervous it helped to do something.

  “Two of them.”

  Sparky balled up the pieces of tape. There was a lot of it. What was the woman afraid would come through the outlet? People were usually paranoid for a reason. She and Wesson had lived in a duplex once where a herd of sugar ants had taken up residence, using the outlet as a portal from their world into the house. Perhaps something like that had happened here. Sparky hadn’t seen any traces of an insect infestation though.

  “Two options—that’s great,” Sparky said, as she ripped a fourth layer of duct tape off the outlet. Having a choice of actions was promising.

  “We can tell the truth or we can lie,” Uncle Milton said.

  Those didn’t seem like great options. “How much truth? How big a lie?”

  Uncle Milton smiled. “A girl after my own heart.”

  “But what are we going to do?”

  “We’re going to do what my grandmother did whenever she needed to work something out.” He pulled a pack of cards from his shirt pocket. “We’re going to ‘gin-rummynate.’”

  “Let’s go up to my place. I want you to see it. Maybe you can give me some decorating tips. It’s a little sterile looking at the moment.”

  When Uncle Milton saw the apartment, he didn’t exactly wave his hands about in delight as a gleeful queen would, but he did become quite animated. He suggested throw pillows. “Something in brown and sage green in ultra suede and a couple of larger vases on either side of the fireplace, which I absolutely adore, by the way. You’ll want to put something on the mantel, a few objet d’art that say something about you—you know, to impress the ladies. You are going to date again, aren’t you?” he asked, looking concerned.

  Sparky shrugged. Milton sat on the couch and Sparky sat across the coffee table from him on the ottoman that went with the leather chair that was on order and soon to arrive. “I’m not saying that you should date anytime soon. I’m just saying you shouldn’t let it go too long. You get set in your ways and it’s hard to let someone in.”

  “Someday maybe. If I found the right person and she didn’t already have a person. Even though I don’t think her person treats her very well and I would do a far better job. Then I’ll date. But I’m off women at the moment.”

  “Who is she?” Uncle Milton said, his voice conspiratorial.

  “Did I say there was someone?”

  “You inferred.” He shuffled, dealt out two hands of ten and picked up his cards. “Well?”

  “She lives down the hall.”

  “How convenient.”

  “But she has a live-in girlfriend whom I’m pretty sure is cheating on her. And anyway, as I said, I’m off women at the moment.”

  “Things change,” Uncle Milton said, drawing a card and laying down a meld of three eights on the table. Sparky laid down a king, queen and jack of clubs.

  Sparky won three games. Uncle Milton was a terrible card player. Why he carried cards around and played all the time mystified her. At least he never played for money.

  “So do we have a plan yet?” Sparky asked, knowing full well they didn’t.

  “I think we’re going to play it by the seat of our pants and hope for the best,” Uncle Milton said, putting the deck back in his shirt pocket.

  “That is not a plan,” Sparky said.

  “It’s the best I got. I have to get back. Joleyn will be pitching a fit. I’ve been out of the office all of two hours.”

  Joleyn Pfister was the organizational brains behind McAlester Electric. A plump redhead with a penchant for loud flower prints, she looked like she belonged in a botanical garden in a bed of hibiscus. She’d worked at the company for as long as anyone could remember.

  Sparky tried to keep the panic out of her voice. “This is terrible. Mom’s going to kill me.” She had reason to be nervous. Adele was capable of putting the fear of God into the Almighty himself if it suited her.

  “Here’s a better idea,” Milton said. “Let’s wing it instead.”

  “That’s your idea? ‘Winging it’ instead of ‘playing it by the seat of our pants’?” Sparky felt her blood pressure rise. “What does that mean?”

  “It means that whatever Adele decides happened to her front yard emporium will be what we go with. If she thinks it got stolen, we shrug. If the city took it, we smile and nod. If angels on high did a drive-by and saw a better purpose for it all, we agree.”

  Sparky sighed. The wrath of Adele would just have to be endured. “What do I say about the ‘Wesson Problem’?”

  Uncle Milton stroked his chin and stared at her. “What happened with her? Really?”

  It was Sparky’s turn to be uncomfortable. How was she supposed to answer something like that? We had one too many fights and I just got sick of it? I was afraid one of us would kill the other? I used to have fantasies that she would die by the hand of providence and it was all too awful, living that way?

  He patted her shoulder. “It’s all right. You don’t have to say.”

  “But what do I tell Mom?”

  “That it’s over. You’re a grown-up and it’s your affair. And if that doesn’t work, tell her Wesson cheated on you.”

  “But she didn’t.”

  “That you know of. If Adele ever talks about it to Wesson she will of course deny it. Which will make her look all the more guilty. See if that doesn’t make things better,” Milton said.

  “Is that fair?”

  “Sweetie, who ever said life was fair?”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Pillow Talk

  Vibro closed her eyes and held the pillow to her face. She inhaled deeply, letting her olfactory cells work their magic. The evening came back to her. Frankenfurter, root beer floats, listening to Fleetwood Mac and the smell of Sparky. She exhaled slowly and inhaled deeply. She and Sparky had had a buddy date. They’d watched The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Afterward, they’d made floats and listened to vintage Fleetwood Mac on vinyl. Vibro had an old Pioneer turntable and a rather respectable record collection.

  Jennifer was off with her latest “best friend.” She and Vibro were barely speaking to each other since the softball rebellion, as Vibro had taken to calling it. So Vibro went down the hall to see if Sparky had plans. Sparky had smiled at Vibro with obvious delight. It had been quite a while since Vibro’s presence had prompted a smile like that. Sparky told her she needed to shower and she’d be right over. She’d been painting downstairs in the apartment she was remodeling. She had white paint speckles in her hair. Vibro suppressed the urge to pick them out. They weren’t at that point in their relationship, she thought pragmatically. Not yet.

  Long story short, the night had been spectacular. She was head over heels for Sparky; the very thought of her made her ecstatic. There was a fly in the ointment, however. Jennifer. It would be better if she didn’t already have a girlfriend. Much better. Jennifer was definitely a complication.

  “Vibro?” Mary Lou said.

  Her voice broke the spell. “Huh, what?” She’d forgotten she was at work.

  “What’s with the pillow?”

  Looking around, Vibro discovered that Dolores, The Chink and Mary Lou had been staring at her as she inhaled the scent of Sparky from her couch pillow. Their date had been Saturday night. It was now Thursday. She’d been hauling the pillow around since Monday. Sparky’s scent was fading, which was why she had the pillow with her in the first place. She didn’t want to miss a moment of olfactory delight. Vibro had the sniffer of a bloodhound. She could smell anything and retain the olfactory memory. Her nose was a catalog of scent. If there had been a television show called “Name That Scent” where contestants were blindfolded and asked to identify smells
, she would win hands down every time.

  This talent wasn’t something she talked about because she’d discovered over the years that people not only found it odd but also slightly repulsive. Vibro bit her lip. She would have to lie. “I just really like this pillow.” She hugged it to her.

  “Isn’t that, like, a couch pillow?” Mary Lou said. She reached out to poke it.

  Vibro snatched it away. “Don’t touch it. You’ll contaminate it.”

  The Chink studied her. “You need some time off—maybe see a special doctor?”

  “No!” Vibro said, sniffing the pillow again. Sparky smelled so good, she thought. Scent of Sparky—a new line of perfume. She’d have to figure out what Sparky did to smell so good.

  Dolores, in her no-nonsense way, stated the obvious. “It smells like your lover.”

  “It smells like vagina?” Mary Lou said, getting closer.

  “It does not. It smells of lavender and oranges and sandalwood. It smells like her essence, not her vagina,” Vibro said, indignant that they would think otherwise.

  “Oh, I see,” The Chink said. “She in love, she big in love. Okay, sniff all you want. Write nice fortunes, fortunes for lovers.” He nodded. He bowed and went back to raking the Zen garden. Kubla Khan, a giant ginger and white tabby with enormous furry testicles, had pooped in the middle of it again. He had a litter box but preferred the Zen garden.

  Dolores was not so easily put off. “Who is she and what do you propose to do with Jennifer?” She sat down at her desk and glared at Vibro, who’d set the pillow down. Vibro hoped this would put an end to the pillow talk.

  “She moved in down the hall and I don’t know about Jennifer…yet, not exactly.” Vibro picked up a pen and scribbled a poem: She smells of oranges and drinks of sunshine. My heart is a pillow filled with her scent.

  “Don’t play her,” Dolores warned. She savagely poked at her keyboard.

  “She’s the one playing me,” Vibro said indignantly. “Have I shown you this?” She waved the computer printout of her phone bill. “It’s eighty-five pages long.”

  “I think something is wrong with the bald cypress,” Mary Lou interjected, peering at the bonsai stand. A recent addition, the cypress did look droopy.

  They all leapt to their feet and went over to the bonsai forest, as they called it. It was an essential part of their workaday world, tied to the writing of good fortunes. As The Chink had told them, “To make bonsai you must have much patience and much dedication. Just like writing fortunes. Bonsai forest stand for harmony and peace and prosperity. We must care for them with love.”

  The damn bald cypress with its neatly trimmed kidney-shaped lobes was looking even balder now, having shed some of its needles. Christ-on-a-bike, Vibro thought, did I do this with my lustful thoughts about Sparky? Is the universe punishing me?

  The Chink stuck his finger in the pot. “Oh, not good.” He then did the same to the rest of the pots, making little noises as if he were conferring with each plant on a primal botanical level. He studied the pots more closely. There was orange stuff around their edges. “We must call in the doctor.”

  Dolores was petrified. She loved the bonsai forest. “Are they going to die? Is this a sign?”

  “No, I think it a fungus,” The Chink said.

  “A fungus?” Mary Lou said. “Oh, my poor little things. Don’t worry, the doctor will get you all fixed up.” She gently touched one of the cypress lobes, which tinkled off like the needles on a Charlie Brown Christmas tree in response.

  They all stared. “I call Dr. Choo right now,” The Chink said.

  Dolores sat down at her desk and put her head in her hands. “It’s my fault. God is punishing me for that Jesus and the fish thing. I just know it.”

  “What are you talking about?” Vibro said, still pondering whether her lustful thoughts about Sparky could have somehow altered the cosmos. “The Jesus and the fish thing?”

  Dolores looked up at her. “I wrote an article for the New Christian Times about Jesus being a time traveler and how he used a portal to feed all those people. He went to Maine in the twentieth century, bought fish in bulk and passed it back through time.”

  “Where’d he get the money to pay for it?” Mary Lou asked.

  “He borrowed it from the men in the temple. He gave them a cut of the fish.”

  “I thought he was against all that?” Vibro said.

  “He had to feed the hungry,” Dolores said.

  “What about the bread?” Mary Lou said.

  Mary Lou was evidently a better Bible scholar than Vibro. She’d forgotten about the loaves.

  “He made a deal with the Wonder Bread people,” Dolores said.

  “I can see where God could get a little hinky with you over that, but I don’t think he’d kill the bonsai forest for your transgressions,” Vibro said. “I mean, wouldn’t he just have you run over by a bus or something?”

  The Chink came out of his office. “The doctor on his way. No worries. Do not write any fortunes until we get this fixed. Take break.”

  Vibro grabbed her pillow and sat on the couch. Dolores pulled out her rosary and sat next to her. Mary Lou put lotion on her tattoos.

  “Eighty-five pages,” Mary Lou said, apropos of nothing.

  “Yes, they’re all her texts to her new best friend. See, I’m not bad. All I did was watch a movie with a friend.”

  Dolores rubbed her beads. “But you like this woman a lot.”

  “I do. I won’t lie.”

  “You have to get rid of Jennifer,” Mary Lou said.

  “She’s right,” Dolores said. “Jennifer is like the proverbial bad egg and she’s given your heart egg rot.”

  “That’s deep,” Mary Lou said. “I think the bonsai forest is going to be all right. Our poetic natures clearly have not been lost.”

  “Is that a new tattoo?” Vibro asked, pointing to an elaborately scripted “Bruce” on Mary Lou’s shoulder.

  “No, he was the last one. I’m dating Dave now. I’m waiting on the tattoo. I’m beginning to wonder if getting a tattoo is like the kiss of death for the relationship.”

  Dolores cocked her head. “Ya think?”

  That’s what I need, Vibro thought. The kiss of death. Not literally, of course.

  The buzzer rang. “It’s the doctor!” The Chink vaulted across the room like a ninja and was at the door in seconds. Vibro wasn’t sure he hadn’t flown. The Chink always surprised her.

  “Ah, Dr. Choo, so glad you could come, please this way,” The Chink said, guiding the doctor by his elbow.

  The doctor nodded gravely. He stared gravely. He took out a pencil and a pad gravely. Vibro wouldn’t be surprised to discover that he had the same expression on his face when he took a dump. What he didn’t do, however, was speak gravely. In fact, he hadn’t yet said a word. The Chink didn’t appear to find that odd.

  The doctor poked and prodded the soil around the ailing bonsai, his enormous eyeglasses giving him the look of a praying mantis. Then he tapped at the leaves, put a sheet of paper under one tree and scraped at the underside of its leaves. Then he yelled something Vibro couldn’t understand—was it Mandarin?—and they all jumped. “Vine weevils. You have vine weevils.”

  “Fine peoples, you are fine peoples.” Was that what he’d said? Vibro wondered. Well, they had all tried to do their best by the bonsai. She’d loved them from the start. When she’d interviewed for the job, she’d walked in and seen the collection of miniature trees artistically placed across the window side of the loft, a hundred and fifty of them in all. She felt like she’d entered the forest of the fairies. Now, however, the doctor telling them that despite them being “fine peoples,” it was dying.

  The Chink clutched his chest and screamed. Vibro thought he was having a heart attack. The doctor slapped him. “It not like before. Now we have Bio Provado.”

  “We need bravado?” Christ-on-a-bike. Now the guy was speaking Spanish?

  Mary Lou had her iPhone out and was fiddling
with it.

  “I don’t think now is the time to be reading your email or Facebooking.”

  “I’m not. I’m Googling. I think he said we have vine weevils.”

  At this The Chink screamed again. The doctor slapped him again. Vibro felt like they were in some B-movie with a lot of slapstick.

  Dr. Choo reprimanded The Chink. “You stop that this instant or…”

  He said something in Chinese that sounded like “Or I will bite your balls.” It must have been something similarly terrifying. The Chink stopped screaming, slumped to the floor and buried his face in his hands.

  The doctor looked at Vibro and jabbed his long, creepy-looking finger at her. “You, you listen. I not have all day to deal with Mush Man here.” He opened the black valise he brought with him and pulled out a box of pesticide—the infamous Bio Provado Vine Weevil Killer. He thrust the box at Vibro. “This for larvae. Drench soil and put stuff on. Read box instructions. For adults you must pick off bugs by hand.”

  “You’re kidding, right?” Vibro said.

  He glared at her. “Like this.” He reached for the nearest plant and, spotting a white bug with a red head, plucked it off and smashed it between his fingers. Vibro winced. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Dolores gag.

  “Um, isn’t there a more humane way to kill them?” Mary Lou asked.

  “Humane?” he screeched at her. “You call this humane?” He stretched out his arms to indicate the forest. When he said “humane” it sounded like something on the menu at a Chinese restaurant.

  “No, sir,” Mary Lou said, looking chastised.

  “Put them in a plastic bag and run over with your car. It quick and deadly. Okay, I go now. Send bill later.” And he left.

  The Chink was still in a puddle on the floor, weeping.

  Vibro took charge. “Mary Lou, please make him some green tea and get him some tissues.”

  Dolores read the instructions on the box of Bio Provado. “We’re going to need some things—several buckets, rubber gloves, gallon-sized Ziploc bags to put the bugs in, and lots and lots of time. Do you realize how long this is going to take? I’ll get sandwich fixings too.” She grabbed her purse and headed off.