by Elise Sax
I wasn’t totally sure what was going on, but Fanta came out of the bedroom after them wrapped in a sheet, and I figured it out. “You bitch! You broke my finger!” she screamed.
“They were naked,” Matilda told me. “And they were doing it. Rockwell was on top. He told me that I have to be on top because he has a bad back. I guess his back isn’t that bad!”
She picked up a knick-knack from the coffee table and threw it at Rockwell. He ducked before it could make contact.
“I want a divorce!” Matilda yelled.
Rockwell flinched. “It’s nothing, my love. Don’t you see how much I love you?” He embraced her. Matilda tried to push him away, but he was holding her in a death grip. “You’re my soulmate. Fanta means nothing to me. We belong together.”
I was frozen in place, unable to move, unable to say a word. Rockwell continued a long monologue about soulmates and how much they loved each other. He was very convincing, even though he was naked and the woman he had been naked with was standing two feet away, wrapped in a sheet with an afterglow on her cheeks.
I had no idea on what side Matilda was going to land. It was hard to throw away a man who claimed to love you. But she was thinking clearer now, and I hoped that extended to her marriage. I could have kicked myself for not listening to my grandmother from the beginning. I should have pulled Matilda out of her apartment and marriage the first moment that Grandma told me to. It was time to do my job and be responsible.
“Matilda, let’s go,” I said.
“Mind your own business,” Rockwell growled.
Matilda managed to finally extricate herself from his embrace. “I’ll take my clothes and leave,” she said.
“What clothes?” Fanta asked.
“Be quiet,” Rockwell ordered. His voice was steely cold, and it scared me.
“She doesn’t have clothes here, anymore. You know that,” Fanta insisted.
“You got rid of my clothes?” Matilda asked. She was eerily calm, as if the answers clicked into place for her, even if they were hideous and traumatic. “Come on, Gladie. Let’s get out of here.”
We walked toward the door, but Rockwell pulled Matilda back. “You’re not going to leave me,” he threatened. “You’re crazy. Everyone knows that. You tried to kill me, throwing things at me. I’ll see that you’re put away forever if you try to divorce me. Do you understand? You better change your mind now, or your life will be hell.”
Matilda yanked her arm away. “My life’s already hell,” she said, and we left her apartment.
We walked to my car without turning around once. I drove two blocks away and pulled the car to the side of the road.
“Are you okay?” I asked Matilda. “I mean, I know you’re not okay. But are you okay with not being okay?”
“He got rid of my clothes. He got rid of me. I guess I should be glad he didn’t chop me up into little pieces like Fanta did with her husband.”
“Yeah, I guess so.” Boy, marriage was a tough racket. I was trying not to take it to heart. After all, Spencer wasn’t Rockwell.
But I was a lot like Matilda.
Matilda got a glint in her eye, and I recognized it. The look. The murder look. I had been accused of getting it every time I stumbled over a dead person. “Fanta’s husband,” Matilda breathed, looking over my shoulder. I turned around, but there was no one there. “Gladie, we have to prove that Fanta killed her husband. We found his wallet, remember?”
“And the boxes. Don’t forget the boxes.”
“Yes, the boxes.”
We didn’t get back to my grandmother’s house until late. With her life in the toilet, Matilda was determined to prove that her husband’s mistress had murdered her husband. I was up for proving it, too. Because of the week’s distractions, I hadn’t had a chance to think about Fanta’s husband, but now with Matilda on the hunt, I wanted to get to the bottom of those boxes as fast as possible.
We drove to Cannes Smiley Auto Wrecking, but it was closed. “Look at that,” Matilda said, pointing to a small sign attached to the fence surrounding the business. “Cannes Smiley Auto Wrecking was sold. I’ll bet you that Fanta sold it out from under her dead husband. Fanta is getting rid of her husband in more than one way.”
We were at a dead end with Chris’s death, but we were going to have to give the investigation a twenty-four-hour hiatus while I got married. “I’m going to divorce his ass Monday morning at nine o’clock sharp,” she said, as we drove back through town.
The irony of a matchmaker enthusiastically supporting a match’s divorce just before she was getting married wasn’t lost on me. I wasn’t exactly going by the book.
Cannes was in total darkness because of the power outage. I parked in front of Fussia and changed out of the uniform in the car. Wearing shorts and a tank top and carrying the uniform, I knocked on the fence, but the dictator didn’t come out. I was relieved because I didn’t want to see him. I draped the uniform and hat over the fence and finally went home.
I tossed and turned in my bed, but I couldn’t sleep. The house was unbearably hot, and Spencer was still at his stag party, making my bed a lonely place. Or it could have been my impending wedding that was keeping me up. In only a few hours, I would be wearing my great-great-grandmother’s wedding dress and walking down the aisle in front of the entire town to commit to Spencer until I died.
Yeah, it might have been the wedding that was keeping me up.
Downstairs, the front door opened, and I heard heavy footsteps on the floor. “Just a few more steps, little brother,” I heard.
I got up and went downstairs. Peter was holding Spencer up. The love of my life was plastered and only half-conscious.
“Do you need help?” I asked Peter.
“I got this, little sister,” he said and lugged Spencer upstairs. In my bedroom, Peter plopped Spencer onto the bed, and we worked to take off his shoes.
“She’s so beautiful,” Spencer moaned with his eyes closed.
“He’s been going on like this for a while,” Peter whispered to me. “Gladie this. Gladie that.”
“Me?” I asked.
“Her hair says, ‘I’m Gladie’s hair!’ It yells just like that,” Spencer continued, talking into his pillow. I touched my hair. He was right. My hair had a mind of its own and probably a mouth, too.
“I love watching her. Not in a kinky stalker way. All right. All right. Yes, in a kinky stalker way. I love how she bites her lip when she’s concentrating. And Peter, she blushes all the time. All I need to do is smile at her, and her face turns red. How sexy is that?”
Peter smiled at me, and I blushed.
We had managed to remove Spencer’s shoes, but his clothes were more difficult. Spencer was a big man, and he was more or less dead weight in his current condition, lying on his stomach. Peter and I stood over him, but Spencer obviously wasn’t aware of where he was or that I was in the room.
“When I’m not with her, I’m thinking about her,” Spencer continued into his pillow. “Ever since the first moment I saw her on that telephone pole, I wanted to see more of her. And she makes me crazy! I love how she makes me crazy. Crazy with the murder mystery thing. No woman in the world has stumbled over more dead bodies than the woman I love. And I love her, bro. I love her. I ache with it. When she’s in my arms, it’s like the world’s a good place, you know? And we both know the world’s a miserable place, but not with Gladie in it. Not with my Pinky in this world. The world’s a fucking utopia with my Pinky in it. I love my Pinky.”
“He means me,” I whispered to Peter.
“I know,” he whispered back.
“My whole life,” Spencer continued. “I’m going to spend my whole life with the most beautiful, wonderful woman on the planet. What did I do right in my life to get so lucky?”
My eyes filled with tears, and I choked up with emotion. Spencer often told me he loved me, but it was a gift to hear it this way, when he didn’t know I was there to hear it.
“When I’m
not with her, I want to be with her. When I’m with her, I never want to leave her. It’s not just sex, bro, even though she has the finest ass. The. Finest. Ass. But it’s more than bumping uglies. It’s about her, Peter. It’s about her.”
“She’s special,” Peter said, smiling at me.
“If anything happened to her, I would die. Bro, I can’t let anything bad happen to her. I can’t. It took so long to get her. Losing her would kill me.”
“You won’t lose her,” Peter told him while looking at me. I nodded. Spencer wouldn’t lose me. I was his forever.
CHAPTER 17
A matchmaker’s goal is making a love match. The love is the happy ending. The marriage, the wedding are something different. A wedding can be the culmination of a true love match. It can also be the culmination of a woman’s dream to have a big party and a pretty dress. So, we don’t mess around with weddings. We don’t push marriage. We push love. I’m not knocking marriage, bubbeleh. I’m not saying that weddings can’t be wonderful. I’m not saying that at all. Emes, my hand to God, sometimes a wedding is the emblem of love. Such a great love that it must be shared with friends and family. When two people come together under the chuppah and they face each other, they become one in that very moment. The rabbi or the priest or the justice of the peace are just icing on the cake. The vows are secondary. The standing together is the main thing, dolly. It’s the showing up. It’s the being there for each other. It’s the looking into each other’s soul and claiming it, promising to honor, cherish, and protect that soul with all the love in your heart. When you find a match who will do that honestly and willingly…well, then, it’s the happy ending of happy endings.
Lesson 136, Matchmaking advice from your
Grandma Zelda
I woke up with a start and a hand over my eyes. “Don’t look. Don’t look,” I heard my best friend Bridget tell me.
“What’s going on?”
“It’s your wedding day, and you and Spencer aren’t allowed to see each other, or you’ll have bad luck. I don’t believe in the patriarchal mythology that binds a woman in servitude to a man for the rest of her life. And I definitely don’t believe in hocus pocus wedding traditions. But this is so romantic! Don’t peek!”
I heard Spencer struggling. “Ooph! Ugh!” The bed bounced up and down.
“Don’t struggle, or I’ll pound you one,” a man said in a gruff voice and a thick New York accent.
“Listen to him, Spencer. I brought three of my guys with me. You don’t have a chance in hell against them.”
“Is that you, Uncle Harry?” I asked with Bridget’s hands still plastered over my eyes.
“Hey there, Legs. Cute PJ’s. Lucy says Spencer can’t see you until the wedding, so that’s what we’re doing.”
The bed bounced around, and I heard the unmistakable sound of knuckles against flesh. “Stop struggling!” another man shouted.
“Ooph! Ugh!” Spencer cried, again.
Crack! From the sounds, I could tell that punches were being thrown, willy-nilly. Spencer seemed to be giving as good as he got, even though he probably had the world’s worst hangover.
“Sit on him! Sit on him! Stick a knee in his kidney!” one of Harry’s goons ordered.
“Ooph! Ugh!” Spencer cried, again.
“Maybe you should just let him up,” I suggested. “He won’t peek. I don’t think you have to fight him into submission.”
“It’s personal, now, Pinky,” Spencer said. His voice was barely audible. Between the beating and the hangover, he was a shell of a man. I was secretly relieved. This way, he wouldn’t be prettier than I was on my wedding day.
“Don’t mess with that shit,” another man yelled. “Uppercut the dude and do it fast.”
Crack!
“Mazel tov!” Uncle Harry cheered. “Isn’t that what your people say, Legs?”
“I’m not sure they say it under these circumstances,” I replied.
“It’s almost over,” Bridget told me. “They’re carrying him out of the room now.”
“Did they knock him out?”
“No, he’s just tied up and gagged. It’s all good.” The door clicked closed, and Bridget removed her hand. “It’s your wedding day,” she gushed. “I’m so excited.”
“Where’s baby Jonathan?”
“Home with Jackson. I’m part of the pre-prep patrol.”
I sat up in bed.
“What’s the pre-prep patrol? Is there a prep patrol?”
Bridget counted on her fingers. “First there’s the pre-prep patrol to make sure you wash and eat, but that you don’t eat too much. The pre-prep patrol is me and Zelda. Then comes the prep patrol. That’s Bird and her employees to buff and polish you. Then, comes the moral support patrol. That’s me, again, and Lucy. She’s worried about sweating, so, she’s coming at the last minute. Then, it’s the words of wisdom patrol, which is Zelda. And then, we head off to the wedding area, and you come last in the limo.”
“That’s a lot of patrols. There’s a limo?”
“I forgot about Dave. He’s dressing you.”
“Who’s Dave?”
“Dave’s Dry Cleaning and Tackle shop.”
“Oh, that’s right,” I said, remembering. “Dave.”
The morning went by in a haze. The windows were all open, but there wasn’t a breath of fresh air to be had. It was like Cannes had been sealed into a sauna dome. But with all the heat, I wasn’t uncomfortable. I wasn’t sweating. Instead, even without much sleep, I felt totally refreshed.
Bridget gave me a box of old-fashioned lavender-scented body powder to use after my shower, and when I stepped out of the bathroom, there was a new silk robe waiting for me. Bridget kissed me on the cheek.
“I love you, Gladie,” she said and wiped a tear from her eye under her glasses.
“I love you, too.” I hugged her hard. “You’re the best friend I’ve ever had.”
We stood for a long time, embracing. There was something magical about being loved and cared for, and in that moment, I felt both so acutely that I didn’t want to let the moment pass without relishing it a little longer. A little more intently.
Downstairs, my grandmother was waiting in the kitchen. This morning, there was no big spread. No feast brought in by Grandma’s friends to celebrate my wedding. It was just Grandma, Bridget, and me having our regular breakfast.
My grandmother was dressed in her blue housecoat, and her plastic slip-on slippers that clacked on the linoleum floor as she walked. “I’ll make the coffee, bubbeleh,” she told me. “You put the bagels in. Matilda left early to go hunting, she said.”
We made breakfast, just like we did every morning, except we used the gas oven instead of the toaster and the gas burner to make coffee the old-fashioned way. While the bagels were toasting, I took the orange juice, milk, and cream cheese out of the refrigerator. Bridget set the table. Then, we sat down and looked at each other. Grandma took my hand and brought it to her lips, kissing it, gently.
“My favorite granddaughter,” she said.
“My favorite grandmother,” I said and kissed her back. It was a lovefest morning, and nothing could ruin the mood.
“Open this damned door! I can’t stand here all day, you know! I haven’t had cartilage in my knees since Carter was president. That’s President Carter for your information, Gladie. You ignorant non-reader!” Ruth was at the back door, kicking it.
“Ruth is on the pre-prep patrol?” I asked my grandmother.
“In her way.”
I opened the door. Ruth was carrying four to-go cups. “You didn’t show up at Tea Time,” she complained. “I thought you would want your latte. What’s with you, girl?”
She looked honestly hurt that I hadn’t visited her the morning of my wedding. “I’m sorry, Ruth. So much going on.”
Ruth sputtered and coughed. “Too much going on to get the best latte in town?” She put the to-go cups down on the table. “It’s not my normal latte. I couldn’t do that withou
t power, but it’s better than anything Zelda can make.”
“That’s true,” Grandma said, spreading cream cheese on her bagel.
Ruth sat down. “So, you didn’t want old Ruth to be part of your wedding, is that it? I guess I’m not hipster enough for you.” She shot a look at Bridget, who was wearing a conservative blue dress and her hoot-owl glasses.
“I’m not a hipster, Ruth,” Bridget told her.
“Young people. Hunh,” Ruth said.
She was upset. Hurt. I had hurt her feelings. I took a sip of the latte. “Delicious, Ruth. Even without electricity, you make the best coffee in town.”
Ruth smoothed her shirt and adjusted her seat. “I could have told you that. To think you were going to get married without your coffee.”
“I had a lapse in judgment. My doctor says I need more magnesium. It might be that.”
“It’s no wonder with the way you eat,” Ruth sneered, more or less appeased by my excuse.
After breakfast, Bird showed up with her team, right on time. I didn’t know who had organized my wedding, but it was being pulled off with military precision.
They set up in the kitchen, where they had given my grandmother her weekly beauty treatments for years when she was a shut-in. Bird dropped a box full of tools that looked like Medieval torture devices onto the table.
“No electricity,” she said. “I had to drive to the Beauty Museum in San Bernardino and borrow hundred-year-old beauty implements. Zelda, I need to use the oven. I have to heat these cast iron tongs.”
“Uh,” I said.
“That damned dictator,” Ruth complained.
I flinched. “What about him?” I asked, crossing my fingers that I wasn’t in trouble, again.
“He sabotaged our electrical system. That’s why we don’t have power,” Ruth said.
“Do you know that for sure?” Bridget asked.
Ruth squinted at her and frowned. “I may not be a hipster, but I do know a thing or two about the happenings in this town.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Bird said, pulling the tongs out of the oven with oven mitts. “I heard he’s a lunatic from Lake Havasu. He won a hundred thousand dollars with a scratch off, and he went downhill from there.”