Scareplane

by Elise Sax

  I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The truck was filled with huge aquariums, but they weren’t the fish kind of aquariums. They were the oh my God kind of aquariums. They flew out of the truck like projectiles, and I covered my head with my arms. The inhabitants of the aquariums slithered in the air and rained down on Larry’s car, denting the hood and the roof and cracking the glass.

  It was like a scene out of a horror movie. The world’s scariest horror movie. A horror movie that stayed with you for years in your nightmares, giving you a lifetime of phobias and making you scream in terror at random times for no apparent reason.

  “Snakes!” I shouted. “Snakes!”

  “Snakes,” Larry moaned. “I hate snakes. Why did it have to be snakes? Why couldn’t it have been grenades? Grenades would have been better.”

  There were thousands of them. Millions of them. Bazillions of them. It was like every snake in the world was attacking the car. I didn’t like snakes. I didn’t even like worms. Now, I was being buried alive by snakes.

  Buried alive by snakes!

  Being buried alive was right up at the top of my list of biggest fears, but being buried alive by snakes blew my list to smithereens. It was like a torture chamber-Gladie-nightmare sandwich.

  The deluge of slithering snakes seemed to last forever. It was a nonstop onslaught of gross. I screamed through all of it, my voice indefatigable. I was an opera diva scream queen, capable of holding a scream for hours. At least it seemed like hours. As I screamed, I watched in horror as the crack in the windshield grew longer and as the light dimmed, because the snakes blocked the windows.

  Holy hell.

  I screamed and screamed, but my screaming didn’t help at all. The snakes kept coming. I grabbed onto Larry and shook him, turning my screaming toward him.

  “Cursed. Cursed, cursed, cursed, cursed, cursed,” he moaned, his eyes unblinking. I screamed in answer to him. I couldn’t find any words, only screaming.

  Finally, finally, like waiting for Christmas for ten years straight before it actually arrived kind of finally, it stopped. Some of the snakes slipped down to the hood and down to the ground, leaving only a few dozen tenacious reptiles on the car.

  I was still scared out of my wits, but I stopped screaming.

  Spencer knocked on my door window. “Don’t open the door!” I shouted at him. “Don’t open it! Snakes! Snakes! Oh, God! Snakes!”

  “It’s okay,” he said through the closed window. “I’ll make sure you don’t touch a snake.”

  “No!” I shouted and held onto the door handle for dear life. “Don’t open the door until all the snakes are gone!”

  It took animal control forty-five minutes to clear away the snakes. The paramedics took Larry to the hospital for possible catatonia, and I finally allowed Spencer to open my door. As soon as it was open, I jumped out and onto his back, in order to avoid any possible straggler snakes that animal control missed. I wrapped my arms tight around his neck and my legs around his waist, but because my dress was a size too small, it couldn’t take the added stress.

  My dress ripped straight up from the hem, tearing the dress into two. The two pieces of material waved in the wind, as Spencer spun around, tugging at my hands around his neck to try to get air.

  “Damn, that’s a fine ass,” one of the top cops announced.

  Yep, I had made an entrance.

  Spencer had bruises on his neck. I was wearing an orange jail jumpsuit because the only women’s uniform they had for me to borrow was Detective Skinny Bitch’s, and of course it didn’t fit me. The lunch at the station had been kept warm by the caterer, thankfully, as the five top cops for the conference oohed and aahed about our town’s phenomenal first responders. That was lucky for me because Spencer wasn’t furious at me for fouling up day one of his conference.

  Our table for lunch was set in the station’s conference room. There were seven of us, a caterer, and a server. Spencer sat between two super cops, and I was relegated to a seat on the other side of the table. The centerpiece was a huge bouquet of yellow daffodils.

  I slumped down in my seat and tugged at my jumpsuit collar, humiliated. In the action, my hair had turned into a frizzball, and I had screamed off a bunch of my makeup. I didn’t look like I had planned. I was making an impression, but it wasn’t the one I wanted.

  Spencer stood and clinked his glass with a spoon. “I want to formally thank you all for coming to Cannes to attend this conference. It’s a small conference in a small town, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t important. I firmly believe that together we can come up with recommendations to improve law enforcement policies and procedures throughout Southern California.”

  “Here. Here,” the man to my right said. He had been introduced to me as Sidney Martin, a retired police lieutenant from Long Beach. Sidney was dressed like a penguin. In fact, everything about him reminded me of a bird. His lips were pursed like a beak and he was perfectly dressed and groomed in a three-piece suit, like he had pristine plumage. I figured he was in his early sixties.

  In my orange jumpsuit, I was definitely self-conscious next to his dapperness, but I was a step up from Captain Leah Wilder on my other side, who was dressed in a shlumpy skirt and blouse with a gray, long, droopy cardigan, which mirrored her long, droopy face and gray hair.

  “I’m so sorry that you had such a bad experience,” she said to me sweetly after Spencer sat down, and we were served the salad.

  “It wasn’t that bad,” I lied. In fact, I couldn’t think of anything worse. Thank goodness there was wine at lunch, but I didn’t think any amount of chardonnay was going to erase the vision of snakes coming at me like bullets from a machine gun every time I closed my eyes.

  “I’ve been in law enforcement since I was nineteen, and I’ve never seen anything like that,” Leah continued.

  The man sitting across from us snorted and chewed his lettuce with his mouth open. “Snakes. Big deal,” he said, spitting out a piece of lettuce, which landed on the table next to my glass. He was top cop Mike Chantage, from Los Angeles. I didn’t know his exact title, but it was obvious that he was in a high position. “Snakes are nothing compared to the things I’ve seen on the job,” he sneered. “If you work hard, you see more than snakes.”

  Leah crumpled her napkin and threw it on the table next to her salad bowl, as if she were upset that Mike had seen more than snakes in his work.

  “Please excuse Mike,” Leah told me. “He’s old school, but as I’ll explain to the group during the conference, I’m an expert on new law enforcement that I think will bring on better results and a better quality of life for everyone if they’re implemented.”

  “What the hell do we care about a better quality of life?” the man sitting next to Spencer roared. “We’re cops. Cops. We’re not social workers. There’s nothing better than meeting force with force. Anything else is BS.” He was Frank Fellows, and he looked like he had swallowed enough steroids to make a second person in his skin. His muscles bulged everywhere, like a grotesque version of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

  “Big talker,” Mike sneered and picked up his salad bowl and looked around. “I’m ready for the second course,” he called.

  The waiter jogged over to him and took his bowl. Then he collected the rest of the bowls, and the caterer spooned our main course onto plates. He looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him.

  Then, I did.

  The caterer was the survivor from the plane crash. Arthur Fox. The last time I had seen him, he was hopping out of the wreckage, his skin blackened from smoke and covered in cuts and scrapes. I knew that he had decided to stay in the town he had crashed in. I also knew that he had no family and had acquired a superstitious attachment to Cannes for its power to save his life. I silently prayed that he wouldn’t recognize me. I was already the snake lady; I didn’t want them to think of me as the plane crash lady, too.

  The second course was salmon, mashed potatoes, and asparagus. It was fancy fare for a police station, and it
reminded me that this conference was very important to Spencer. I tried to push back my snake trauma and forget that I was wearing an orange jumpsuit and tried to make Spencer proud of my cosmopolitan charm and sophistication.

  As we ate, I acted as a tour guide, giving the top cops thrilling accounts of the plethora of pie shops and antique places in Cannes. “My wife would have liked to do some shopping here,” the muscly Frank said.

  “That’s not all she likes,” Mike chuckled with his mouth full of potatoes.

  There was a stunned silence at the table, and Spencer and I exchanged looks. There was always one rotten apple in the bunch, and this bunch of top cops might have a couple bad apples. Spencer reached down and pulled out a file folder.

  “Here’s the rundown of our scheduled events for the conference. This afternoon and tomorrow is back-to-back presentations and discussions, but I’m sure you’ll be able to squeeze in some time after, if you’d like to do some sightseeing or shopping. The day after tomorrow, we’re planning on doing some field work experimentation, as we’ve discussed.”

  He passed around the paper, and the participants looked it over while their plates were cleared.

  “There’s a mistake here,” Joyce Strauss said, looking down her nose at the paper. She looked down her nose at everything and everybody. It wasn’t that she was tall, but just that she thought she knew more than any other human, and maybe she did. She was painfully thin, as if eating was beneath her, too. “I’m supposed to speak first. I’m sure that was made clear in the planning of the conference.”

  Spencer read the paper. “Were you? I guess that was a mistake.”

  “Obviously,” she said. She pulled a thick red marker out of her purse and slashed through the schedule, marking it with arrows. “There. I’ve fixed it. And I’ve fixed other mistakes I found, too. It’ll run more smoothly, now.”

  There was a general buzzing of indignation around the table, as everyone worried about the placement of their talks and how much time they would be given, now that Joyce had changed everything.

  Joyce clapped her hands together, like an old-fashioned school marm. “This is all very simple. Chief Bolton, allow me to take the reins, and I’ll make sure the conference runs smoothly.”

  I gulped down the rest of my wine and snuck out to the bathroom. I didn’t want to stick around to see Spencer get bent out of shape with the threat of Joyce Strauss messing up his hard work and planning. It wasn’t easy to corral five top cops with top egos. I didn’t envy him.

  I heard footsteps behind me. Sidney Martin, the birdlike man, was shuffling quickly toward me in the hall. “I wanted to get out of there, too,” he said, smiling with his pursed lips.

  “I just had to wash my hands,” I said.

  “Perhaps you could point me in the direction of the men’s room? I’m actually making an exit so I don’t have to eat the dessert. I like to cook my own meals, you see, and I have a sensitive palate. Not that the catering wasn’t bad, but it’s not what I’m used to.”

  “You cook?” I asked. Men who cooked were a rare commodity. The idea made my skin prickle with excitement, and I realized it was important. Why was it important that he could cook? Then, I remembered. My new client Cynthia wanted a man who could cook. And what else? Oh, yes. A full head of hair. I studied Sidney’s hair. It looked pretty thick to me. Then, I looked at his hands. No rings.

  Bingo.

  I had found a possible match for Cynthia without trying. I loved when work entailed little or no actual work. It almost made up for my other client, Larry Doughy and his curse. Almost.

  I came up with a plan quickly to make the match. I’d have to make an excuse to crash Spencer’s conference again and bring Cynthia to do some matchmaking. It was a perfect way for a no-pressure first meeting.

  “The bathroom is second door on the left,” I told Sidney. He shuffled past me. The ladies bathroom was in the other direction. On my way, I heard Detective Terri’s voice, and I cowardly hid in the supply closet. I didn’t want any one-on-one face time with her while she was the most beautiful woman in the world, and I was in my post-snake trauma and orange jumpsuit. I closed myself into the closet and put my ear up against the door. It must have been made out of balsa, because I could hear every word.

  She was berating Fred again. Sure, Fred probably deserved a lot of berating, but he was my first match, and he liked me, and I felt protective over him.

  Also, I hated Detective Bitchy Hot Stuff.

  “Don’t make me tell you again,” she ordered. “Process the perp and make it snappy.”

  Make it snappy. She sounded like an Irish cop in the 1920s. She should have at least said, please. Didn’t she know that she could get more flies with honey?

  “But I’m the desk sergeant. I don’t do processing…” Fred moaned.

  I wanted to jump out of the closet and tell her to leave Fred alone. But I was a coward. I was a cowardly coward from Coward Town. I was yellow. I was chicken. I was spineless. I was a namby-pamby, pantywaist fraidy cat who didn’t want to take on an armed beauty with a bad attitude who could probably put me in a chokehold before I could pull up the orange pants part of my orange jumpsuit and give her a taste of my Krav Maga skills that I had gotten during a buy one lesson get one free Groupon special…nonexistent skills, come to think of it, because I had stopped for chili cheese fries on the way to class and never actually got there or learned any Krav or Maga.

  Damn it. I was a terrible defender. I needed a dragon. A dragon could have really come in handy.

  Oh, lord. I was getting a warped sense of reality since Spencer had ordered the premium channels for my bedroom television.

  But a dragon really would have come in handy.

  I heard Fred and Detective Meaner Than Spit walk down the hallway. I opened the closet door a crack and peeked out. The coast was clear. I tiptoed back to the conference room, but suddenly Fred was there walking with a man in handcuffs.

  “You don’t have things up your butt, do you?” Fred asked him.

  “Define ‘things’,” the man said.

  My cellphone rang, and I dug it out of my purse and answered it. It was my grandmother.

  “Get home fast, dolly,” she said. “Goats.”

  CHAPTER 4

  It’s not if you win or lose, it’s how you play the game. Have you heard that, bubbeleh? What do you think about that? You think it doesn’t matter how you make a match, it’s only important if you make a match? You could be right! How do I know? Actually, I do know, and I’ll tell you how I know. I’m in the love business, dolly, and I do this for love. So do you. Make a match on a roof. Make a match through the mail. Be creative. Be boring. Make a match any way you want. But only make a match through love. Bring love to the matchmaking, and the matchmaking will result in love. It’s all about the love, dolly.

  Lesson 91, Matchmaking advice from your

  Grandma Zelda

  Spencer had a patrol car take me home. My grandmother’s house was still bustling, and the driveway was packed with cars, as was the street outside.

  “I hope the Daffodil Committee isn’t here,” Officer James said, as he stopped in front of the house. “We’ve been out all day on calls of crazy people digging up daffodils and planting other colors. I mean, who cares about daffodils?”

  I sure didn’t, but they seemed to elicit a lot of emotion in Cannes residents. “How do you like the new detective?” I asked, shameless.

  “Detective Williams? Finest looking woman I’ve ever seen outside of the JC Penney catalog, but she’s a hardass. I don’t mean her ass is hard. I mean, she’s one scary female. I try to stay clear of her line of sight. Fred’s on the front desk, so he can’t hide from her, and she’s got him looking up butts morning, noon, and night. It was nice seeing you, again, Underwear Girl.”

  “Nice seeing you, too,” I said and opened my door.

  I walked into the house to see a man in the entranceway, pointing at another. “Saboteur!” he shouted. “Saboteur
!”

  “Cool your jets. I didn’t dig up your daffodils.”

  I side-stepped around them and found my grandmother. “I can’t believe they’re still here,” I told her.

  “Tell me about it. It’s thrown a wrench into my Satisfying Singles workshop. Flowers are serious business, dolly.”

  “And there are goats, too?”

  “The goat lady. Moses. The one who does the goat ritual. She says she’s been hired to uncurse Larry Doughy. She’s here to coordinate with you.”

  “I’m not sure I want to be in on a goat ritual. I don’t have a lot of luck with animals, lately.”

  A woman in overalls, who smelled like a petting zoo, approached me. “Are you Burger?”

  I nodded. “I’m Gladie Burger.”

  “Your man Larry wants to do this tonight, but the goat won’t be ready until the day after tomorrow. Sundown. Does that work for you?”

  No. It didn’t work for me at all. And I didn’t know what the goat ritual entailed or why the goat took two days to get ready. “I don’t think Larry needs a goat ritual, but if he does, that’s his thing, not mine. I’m a matchmaker.”

  I caught Grandma smiling at me, proud as punch, and it gave me courage.

  “You’re making a mistake,” the goat woman warned me. “My goat has an eighty-two percent success rate, and your Larry has got a doozy of a curse on him. Did you hear about the snake thing?”

  “I might have heard something about it,” I said.

  She leaned forward and looked me in the eye. “That’s just the start. He’s got a creeper curse on him. You know what that means?”

  “What does that mean?” one of the daffodil people asked. They had stopped fighting over flowers and were riveted to our goat conversation.

  “A creeper curse means it creeps on the victim and grows,” the goat woman explained.

  “Grows how?” a daffodil woman asked behind me.

  “Like weeds,” the goat woman said. “Like mold. It’s a shitstorm honker of a curse.”

  Everyone stared at me like I had cursed Larry Doughy myself. Then, there was a general clearing of throats and the Daffodil Committee began to file out on the double.