Take Me Out (Crimson Romance)

by Elley Arden

  He established his own private sanctuary behind the sofa, where he’d take shelter at the first sign of any disturbance, be it the ringing phone, a knock on the door, or a strange voice. Somewhere in his hard-luck past, Doc must have tried the fight or flight routine and learned the hard way that flight was his best choice.

  Maggie was facing some hard times herself. Starting over at age thirty-two wasn’t easy, but she decided to make a clean sweep of it. Addiction was a terrible thing, be it love or cigarettes, and she was determined to remove both from her life. She pictured herself stuffing a carton of cigarettes into a thick safe, followed by her foolish romantic heart. Lock ‘em up and throw away the key. She still suffered wild nicotine cravings, but love? Uh. Never again!

  Number one priority was finding a job, one that would replace her former position with Barnett & Holmes. There were positions out there for a top notch executive assistant, but the jobs dried up when she faced the human resources director’s inevitable question: “You were with Barnett & Holmes for twelve years? Why did you leave?” A truthful answer, because I went nuts wouldn’t cut it, she knew.

  After being out of work for nearly two months, Maggie could feel the teeth of the Poverty Wolves snapping at her heels. Fortunately, before she was forced to dip into “granny’s money,” a job opened up at Party World. They didn’t ask too many questions of their party balloon coordinator, a fancy job description for pumping helium gas into brightly colored balloons.

  But somewhere in the bowels of Party World corporate offices there was a sadist who decided that pumping balloons wasn’t humiliating enough. No indeed. The balloons had to be pumped by a cartoon character, Binky the Baboon, who was dressed appropriately in a dark brown baboon suit with huge, furry brown feet attached. To make it thoroughly shame inducing, Binky sported a gigantic red vinyl butt that protruded a good six inches out from the body. Each morning, Maggie had to slip into her “monkey suit,” take a quick look to make sure none of the neighbors were watching, and make a mad dash to her car, the butt bobbing up and down with a life of its own. She had to admit that the butt made a nifty little cushion when she sat behind the wheel, but God forbid she was ever stopped by a traffic cop. There had to be a law against driving while wearing baboon footies.

  On a humid Friday morning, just three weeks into her new job, she awoke to a day that started out on a depressingly low note: an empty coffee canister, a reminder of just how out-of-control her life had become. She gulped down a cup of muddy brew left over from the day before. While she struggled into her Binky suit, she fought the daily battle with the nicotine devils. The day continued spiraling downward when she got stuck in the rush hour traffic, and finally to top it off, the air conditioner in her car burped once and died. She sighed. Why did it always quit in the midst of a South Florida heat wave? Couldn’t it have given up the ghost in November? She began to itch beneath the thick fur.

  As she pushed open the door of Party World, a wave of loud music greeted her and she winced, remembering almost fondly the hushed atmosphere at Barnett & Holmes.

  “Miss Tyler.” The wrinkled old prune of a manager hurried toward her. Maggie dashed toward her cubicle, pretending not to hear, but Mrs. Owens was surprisingly fleet of foot for an old hag. She caught up to Maggie before she was a dozen feet inside the door.

  “We open at ten, sharp,” she said. “Not five minutes past ten, not one minute past ten. Ten sharp.”

  “I got stuck in traffic.”

  Mrs. Owens was having none of this. “We all have to deal with traffic, but we all manage to get here on time.” She took a second look at Maggie. “Where is your Binky Bonnet?”

  “It’s at the work station,” Maggie waved a paw toward the cubicle where she spent the day hemmed in by balloons and helium tanks.

  “You should be fully dressed when you walk through the door,” Mrs. Owens snapped. “You’re an actress, and it’s important that you stay in character. Please be sure to come properly dressed from now on.”

  Never, never, would Maggie don the Binky Bonnet and drive all the way across town, wearing the round hood with the perky ears. The bonnet covered her head so that only her face peeped out. She’d have to come in very early, find a parking space near the door, then wait for the store to open so she could tug on the bonnet and race inside. Mrs. Owens brushed her fingertips over the Binky suit.

  “The corporation pays very good money for these suits,” she chided. “Have you been using the fluffer comb we provided?”

  A fluffer comb, a Binky Bonnet … where would it end? She made her getaway, the large baboon feet slapping against the floor as she walked. This is all your fault, Andy. I’ll get you for this someday, as God is my witness.

  She approached her work station, shuddering as the recorded voice, helium high, chortled out at her. “Yippee! Just pick your colors, we’ll do the rest, to ensure your party is the very best!” followed by a shrill baboon shriek of joy. This recording played over and over all day. Coupled with her nicotine cravings, she was definitely teetering on the edge.

  She pulled the Binky Bonnet over her head and tucked in any runaway tendrils of hair. She was grateful that there was no mirror in her cubicle so she was spared the sight of her pretty face peeping out from a fuzzy baboon head. She pinned the name tag — Binky in bright orange letters on an oversize brown shield — over her left breast and fired up the helium tanks, steeling herself for another soul-crushing day.

  “Hey, gorgeous,” Billy, the twenty-year-old stock boy, greeted her as he tugged over a box of balloons. He was a tall, gangly kid, good looking, with blond hair tied back in a pony tail. She envied him his costume, modest by Party World standards: a butter yellow smock emblazoned with party hats, balloons, and grinning cartoon animals.

  He leaned against the pile of boxes.

  “When you gonna break down and come see my band?”

  “Never,” she answered. “Go find a girl your own age.”

  He leaned closer. “I like older women, Maggie.”

  She fought down the urge to rip out his throat.

  “Ya know, I’m not so bad. Lots of people think I look like Brad Pitt.”

  Just what she needed in the midst of her self-pity and misery, she thought. A horny wanna be. “You got two legs, two arms, a face … yeah, I see the resemblance. Definitely the same species.”

  “Ha ha,” he responded with a punch to her upper arm.

  “Ouch! Don’t do that again.”

  “Aw, c’mon. That didn’t hurt.”

  Mrs. Owens approached.

  “Billy, I want you out at the loading dock, right now.” She marched off with Billy in tow. He looked back and winked lasciviously at Maggie. She sighed. It was gonna be a very long day.

  The conversation with Mrs. Owens turned out to be just the tip of the iceberg. Shortly after one P.M., a trio of adolescent boys approached her cubicle. They took one look at her crimson butt and erupted into loud guffaws. One inane remark followed another. They were their own best audience, elbowing and snickering at each lame comment. Her first line of defense was to ignore them. Then one of the kids decided to ratchet things up.

  “Is that your real ass?”

  He reached across the counter and poked her flaming baboon butt.

  “Sheeit. She’s got a cushion back there.”

  They whooped with laughter. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back. She whirled around and with narrowed eyes hissed at them, “If you don’t clear out of here in ten seconds, I’m going to turn the helium on you. You ever been squirted with helium?”

  Evidently they hadn’t, and they were uncertain what — if anything — this would do. Maggie’s murderous expression was probably more frightening to them than the helium threat.

  “Let’s get out of here, man,” one of them said. “She’s friggin’ nuts.” They walked off, throwing a few more asinine jokes over their shoulders, just to prove they weren’t scared.

  Just after two P.M. she glanced towa
rd the door and a day already in the weeds suddenly got even worse. To her horror, Andy and Jennifer walked in, hand in hand. She was smiling up at him and he gazed down into her eyes in a way that Maggie had to confess he’d never looked at her. She ducked behind a wall of balloons and began frantically to inflate more. She couldn’t let them see her, dressed in the insane baboon suit, blowing up balloons. The air was thick with balloons — red, yellow, blue, green, all of them bearing cheery messages: Happy Birthday. Congratulations. I Love You. They bobbed around her in their multi-colored splendor, effectively concealing her from view. The recorded voice cackled in her ear. Then a wrinkled hand parted the wall, like Moses parting the red sea. The balloons, freed from their moorings, drifted toward the ceiling.

  “Miss Tyler,” Mrs. Owens peered in at her. She clutched wildly at the balloons that were floating upward. “What in the name of God,” she shrieked, “are you doing?”

  Mrs. Owens’s outraged voice drowned out the squeaky high-pitched recording. Andy was standing directly behind Mrs. Owens, and his eyes widened.

  “Maggie?”

  She ducked back behind the remaining balloons. She pumped helium gas into two more, trying to fill in the gap that Mrs. Owens had created. The manager batted her way through the sea of balloons.

  “Have you lost your mind?”

  Maggie was too busy inflating balloons to reply.

  “Stop that at once! Do you hear me?”

  She reached out, trying to pull Maggie’s hand away from the helium tank. Maggie shook her off and reached for another balloon.

  “You’re fired. Turn in your employee badge.”

  All her suppressed rage, fueled with nicotine withdrawal, rose to the surface. Crazy lady burst out of her inner cage and took center stage.

  She yanked off the Binky Badge.

  “You want my badge? I’ll give you my badge!” Maggie straightened out the pin and began to puncture the balloons. “How’s this for a badge?” The popping balloons, sounding very much like a mini-explosion, drew a crowd of onlookers. Maggie ripped off her Binky Bonnet and hurled it to the floor.

  Mrs. Owens backed away, as one does in the presence of a madwoman. From a safe distance, she shook her finger at Maggie. “This will come out of your final paycheck.”

  “Whatever.” Maggie swiped at two more balloons with the pin, flung the name tag to the floor, and strode through the carnage of colored latex with as much dignity as anyone wearing a baboon footie suit with a bouncing scarlet butt could muster. She held her head high as she walked past a wide-eyed Andy and the group of customers. One red deflated balloon clung to the furry baboon paw, and with a high kick, she sent it flying. It landed on the foot of a man who stood in the cluster of startled observers. He bent and removed it from his shoe, as she stormed past him. As she neared the door, one of the onlookers said, in a loud voice, “Hey, honey, whatcha got behind that big old monkey butt?”

  She whirled around, not sure which of her audience had spoken. One man stood holding a shred of balloon. He held it out to her.

  “Did you forget something?”

  “Go to hell, all of you,” she shouted, yanking the door open.

  Halfway to her car, she realized she’d left her purse in the store, along with her car keys and her cell phone. A sinking sensation took root in her stomach. How could she go back and walk the gauntlet of staring eyes? Rescue came in the unlikely form of Billy. He ran through the parking lot waving her purse over his head.

  “Maggie, wait!”

  She wanted to kiss him.

  “You forgot something,” he handed her the purse. “That was beautiful! I just wish you stuck that old bat with the pin before you walked out. You should’a seen her face, standing there knee-high in balloons. Man, it was worth a week’s pay!” he enthused.

  She sighed. “That’s what it’s gonna cost me.” She took out her car keys and unlocked the door. “Thanks again, Billy. I really appreciate it. You’d better get back before the Rottweiler comes looking for you.”

  “Hey, Mags, that’s a good name for her. Rottweiler.” He broke into wild laughter. “Can ya see the banner on the six o’clock news? Rottweiler attacks Binky in Party World parking lot.”

  “Oh, damn. She’s gonna charge me for this monkey suit, too. I wonder how much it costs?”

  She fingered the fake fur.

  “Wanna make a deal? You come to my gig tonight, and I’ll return the suit for you.”

  She laughed suddenly, with just a hint of hysteria.

  “Billy, you got yourself a deal.”

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