Cassie broke into a full sweat.
No. No! Are you kidding me? What are you saying?
“I…l–love…new beginnings,” she said. “Midnight at the new year al–always promises something new and…um…fresh. Do you know what I mean?”
Richard narrowed his eyes and nodded.
“Y–you’re covered in glitter,” she told him on a rolling, nervous laugh.
The glitter she’d sprayed on her hair and skin was smeared down one side of Richard’s face. He lifted his hands, and they were shimmering, too.
“Nice,” he chuckled. “It must be my sparkling personality.”
“Too bad I don’t have a pool. We could both jump in and wash it off.”
“And clog up the filter,” he pointed out. “There’s always the canal.”
“You first,” she teased.
“I think I’ll go home and have a shower instead.”
Two little words, and they cut like a sharp knife.
Go home.
“Do you have to?” His astonished expression told her that she needed to expound. “I mean, are you hungry? Because I am.”
“I’m beginning to think you’re always hungry,” he said with a grin.
“I wish so much that I could deny that.”
“I really should be going,” he told her. “Besides, I can’t eat this late and keep my girlish figure.”
Cassie giggled at that. “I wouldn’t want to tempt you out of your golfing weight.”
She walked him inside and then stood by the front door feeling awkward. Fortunately Richard broke the silence.
“Aside from the whole gang mentality there at the end,” he said seriously, “I had a really good time tonight. Thanks for being my date.”
“Thanks for putting up with all the glitter.”
“It was nothing.”
“Tell me that in the spring when you’re still vacuuming it out of your car,” she remarked.
“Hey, yours is a rental,” he remembered. “I should have let you drive.”
“I guess you’re playing golf tomorrow?” she asked.
“No plans. What about you?”
“No, I’m not golfing either.”
Richard laughed right out loud at that.
“Unless it’s miniature,” she continued. “There’s nothing like the feeling when that ball goes straight into the clown’s mouth.”
“I’m not so much into the whole miniature thing. But if you’d be interested in going to the driving range instead, I could pick you up around noon.”
“Really? Me and a golf club. I didn’t peg you for being quite that courageous.”
“Not so courageous,” he replied, “as just…fast.”
“If you’re serious—”
“I’m serious.”
“—then I think it might be fun.”
“Lunch first?” he asked.
“I’ll make something here and we can head out afterward?”
“Don’t go to much trouble. Just a light soufflé would be fine. Some truffles. Maybe something flaming for dessert.”
“Golf clubs and a flaming dessert. You’re not brave; you’re stupid.”
One chuckle popped out of Richard, and he put his hand on the back of Cassie’s head and drew her toward him. He planted a lingering kiss on her forehead and then immediately blew through puckered lips as he brushed the glitter off them.
“My sparkling personality,” she quipped. “It’s everywhere.”
“See you tomorrow,” he said, still making raspberries and dusting off his mouth as he headed out the door toward his car.
Cassie stood under the hot shower for ten minutes, rinsing off the glitter and washing it out of her hair. Then, with her locks still dripping wet, she ran a warm bath in the garden tub, grabbed an apple from the crisper, dimmed the lights over the tub, and climbed in to soak for a while. While Cassie munched on her Gala apple, Sophie stretched and yawned before curling into a large strawberry blond ball of fur on the bathroom rug.
It was nearly 2 a.m. by the time she dried her hair and pulled on her favorite pajamas: pale pink boxers and a T-shirt with dancing ducks across the front.
Not exactly the jammies of a fifty-something, she thought, but no one has to know.
Her feet had no sooner left the floor than Cassie’s cell phone began to ring. She’d left it out in the dining room, but no one called her at two in the morning without a pretty good reason, so she took off at a full run down the hall. She stubbed her toe on the table leg and was groaning as she flipped up the phone and hobbled toward the light switch.
“Ow—hello?”
“Cassie?”
“Millicent?”
“Hunny bunny, I have a…situation.” Her words were clipped, and she didn’t sound like herself. “Would you mind coming over right away?”
“Are you all right?”
“Please just come over right away. Oh, and come around to the back door.”
“Um, okay. I’ll be right over.”
“Hurry, please?”
“Will do.”
“And don’t come to the front. Come to the back?”
“I’m on my way.”
Cassie tucked her cell phone into the pocket of her boxer pajamas, stepped into the rubber flip-flops by the sofa, and yanked open the door.
“Sophie, stay,” she said when the dog bolted toward her. “I’ll be right back.”
She closed the gap between her house and Millicent’s and then started up the front walk. Suddenly remembering Millicent’s instructions, she cut across the grass and went around to the back of the house. The yard was dark and her feet were drenched, but she made it to the back door and pulled it open.
“Millicent?” She saw the woman standing in the middle of the L-shaped living and dining area, her back to Cassie and still clutching the telephone. The woman was completely stark naked.
“Oh my gosh! Millicent?”
“Don’t come any further,” Millicent warned her. “Stay right where you are!”
Cassie covered her eyes on instinct and exclaimed, “What are you doing?”
“Don’t panic, okay?”
“Why would I panic?” Cassie asked her, an octave higher in pitch than normal.
“There’s something over by the front door.” Millicent was slow and deliberate in the delivery of the statement.
“What? What is it?” Cassie’s heart was pounding so hard that she could barely hear Millicent above the thump of her pulse resounding in her ears.
“I’ll tell you, but not until you promise not to react.”
“Is it human? Can you just tell me that?”
The muscles in Millicent’s back tensed. Her arms outstretched from her sides, she flexed her fists as she replied. “No.”
“Is it a bug?”
“Hunny, it’s not a bug. But every time I move a muscle, it rears up. So I need you to very slowly and carefully open that door behind me, to your left, and get out one of the big towels. If we throw a towel over it, I’ll have time to run out the back door with you.”
“Okay, Millicent. But will you please tell me what it is?” she asked as she tiptoed toward the linen closet and cringed as she eased open the door.
“It’s a very…big…snake,” Millicent answered—and Cassie could almost hear the screech across the record of the moment.
“What is it about Florida and reptiles?” she said loudly, with feeling, as she squinted at the dark side of the house to try to see the thing.
“Please. Don’t. Shout.” Millicent’s voice trembled.
“Okay, okay. I’m sorry,” she said in a hushed voice. “Here I come, towel in hand.”
“Um, hunny? Could you grab a second one for me? I don’t want to run out of the house without a stitch.”
“Oh. Right.” Cassie took a second one from the shelf and crept back toward Millicent.
“Now, very carefully, hand me one of the towels. And then unfold the other one and hold it open.”
“Why?”
There went her panicking heartbeat again. “Because if you’re thinking I’m going to catch it or something, Millicent—”
“The open one is for me to run into before I leave this house.”
Cassie considered it for a moment and then got the visual. “Makes sense.”
“Slowly, hunny bunny.”
“Where is it?”
“About five feet in front of me.”
“What’s it doing?” she asked, craning her neck to peek past Millicent.
“It’s considering where to strike before it eats me alive. Give me the towel, please?”
Millicent’s hands reached backward toward Cassie, and she placed one of the towels into the hand nearest her.
“I don’t think this will be big enough.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s really big, Cassie. Maybe get a blanket instead?”
“Millicent, maybe you should just back out of there without trying to cover it up. Just take a few steps backward.”
“I can’t. Every time I’ve moved for the last hour, it has come closer to me.”
“You’ve been standing there naked and facing off with a snake for an hour?”
“Hunny, could we maybe have this discussion a little later?”
“Sorry.”
The moment Cassie made a move toward the linen closet and yanked out a blanket, Millicent let out a blood-curdling scream and ran into her so hard that the two of them flew backward into the wall. Millicent, still screaming, thudded past her and then grabbed Cassie by the arm and yanked.
“Oh, my Lord, help us!” the woman screamed. Cassie looked down to see a fat black snake with yellow stripes at least six feet long now less than two feet away from her.
She and Millicent screeched all the way down the hall and into the bathroom where Millicent slammed shut the door and continued to shriek.
“That is the biggest snake I’ve ever seen, in person or not!” Cassie cried. She stepped over the side of the bathtub and stood there pitching from one foot to the other, clutching the towel and the blanket as if her very life depended on them. “Seriously, I don’t think I ever even knew there was such a thing as a snake that big. How did it get into your house?”
“I wish I knew,” Millicent said, panting.
“Oh,” Cassie breathed, “here.” And she handed Millicent the towel, which the woman wrapped around herself.
“Thank you.”
“Now what are we going to do?” Cassie asked.
Millicent turned toward her, her face pinched like a dried prune, and she held up the telephone that she was still clutching. “But who do I call?” she asked.
“I’m thinking 911 would be appropriate.”
Chapter Seventeen
20 ACROSS: Displays originality and wit
Cassie was stretched out in the dry bathtub with her feet propped on the faucet and her arm draped over the side, looking very much like she was trying out the sled for a downhill luge race in the Winter Olympics. Across from her, Millicent had lowered the toilet seat and was perched on the edge of it, wrapped in two large towels.
“What’s taking them so long?” she grumbled.
Cassie shrugged. “I dunno.”
“Did Richard say he was coming over?”
“Yes, but I told him to stay outside until the fire department arrived so he doesn’t get eaten.”
“That thing sure did look big enough to have any one of us for a midnight snack,” Millicent remarked.
“At least he’s too fat to get through the opening under the door.”
Millicent’s eyes darted to the doorjamb, and she lifted her feet to their tiptoes.
“It’s okay,” Cassie reassured her, rubbing her knee. “I told you, he’s way too big to get through.”
The woman sighed and reluctantly relaxed her feet and planted them on the floor again.
“Cassie?”
Cassie bolted upright and scowled at Millicent. “Richard? Don’t come in! Wait for the men with axes.”
A rumble of activity on the other side of the door told her that the cavalry had arrived. A sudden turn of the doorknob jolted Millicent, and she screamed as she pulled the top towel in closer around her.
“Don’t open the door!” Cassie cried.
“Why not? You can follow me right out the back door now,” Richard said through a minuscule opening.
“The thing is, Richard…Millicent is sort of…naked.”
Total silence. And then came the snickers of several men, including Richard.
“Maybe instead of laughing, you people could get her a robe!”
“She’s right,” Richard told them. Then he called to Cassie, “I’ll go and get it.”
“It’s hanging on the back of the bedroom door,” Millicent sang as she looked at the ceiling. “Down the hall, first door on the right.”
Cassie opened her cell phone and checked the time: 4:11 a.m.
“It’s after four,” she told Millicent.
The door eased open, and Millicent hopped to her feet and shielded herself behind it, her back to Cassie. As the robe entered, Cassie shielded her eyes and told Millicent, “Put that on, will you?”
“Happy to,” the woman snapped.
Just as Cassie pushed herself to her feet, a ruckus from the other side of the door caused Millicent to slam the door and catapult over the side of the tub, standing inside it right beside Cassie.
“Whoa!” one of the men yelled. “That thing is huge!”
“I told you!” Cassie shrieked, and Millicent yanked the shower curtain shut in front of them.
“What in the—!” someone shouted.
“What is it?” someone else asked, and then a chorus of men suddenly roared in unison.
“What? What? What happened?” Cassie cried.
Thumps and bumps and shouts and groans from the other side of the bathroom door drew Cassie and Millicent together in a desperate embrace. When there was finally silence for a few seconds, the women looked at one another in sheer terror. Fear stuck in Cassie’s throat like a large cotton hook.
“Uh, Richard?” she managed in a shaky rasp. “Are you out there?”
No one answered.
Cassie felt the dread swirling around them in a torrent like dirt on the floor of a drafty old warehouse. clutching Millicent, she cleared her throat.
“H–hello?”
Nothing.
“Sweet Jesus, protect them,” Millicent prayed.
“Sweet Jesus, protect us, too!” Cassie added.
Footsteps…the turn of the doorknob…
As the bathroom door flew open, Cassie and Millicent shrieked.
“It’s me!” Richard exclaimed, but when he yanked open the shower curtain, they screamed again. “Calm down, it’s me.”
Both women threw themselves into his arms.
“Thank God you’re all right!” Cassie cried.
“Did they find it?” Millicent asked concurrently. “Is it gone?”
“It’s gone,” he told them, and he took Millicent’s hand and helped her over the edge of the tub. “You can go on out. It’s gone.”
“What was it?” Cassie asked him when he offered his hand to her, but Richard paused to look her over.
“Nice outfit,” he remarked. She tugged at the boxers and T-shirt to make sure it was all in place. “It was a Florida king snake.”
“Are you kidding me?” she said as she stepped over the tub and followed him out of the bathroom. “What’s that?”
“It was a King,” one of the firemen stated. “You could tell by the yellow crossbands.”
“Ewwww.” Cassie cringed. “Why did he come inside the house? Why would he do that?”
“Happens more than you’d think. They’re most active at night, and the weather has still been warm, so—”
“Where is it now?” Millicent asked him.
“Animal Control just arrived. They’re loading it into their truck.”
“Cody!” One of the other fi
remen entered at just that moment and declared, “Man, the thing is five feet eleven inches!”
“Ohhh.” Cassie cringed again and turned away. “And I thought those little anole lizards were disgusting, running amuck wherever they please the way they do!”
“Probably lives out in the canal,” the fireman told them. “I’m surprised a gator didn’t get it.”
“What? There are alligators in the canal?” Cassie shouted.
“Nice,” Richard said to Cody with a smack to his arm. “Thanks for that.”
“How on earth did it get into my house?” Millicent exclaimed.
“I’d advise you to get a pest control inspector out here as soon as you can,” Cody, the twenty-something fireman in the tight gray T-shirt, advised her. “They’ll be able to answer that question for you.”
“Meanwhile, you’ll stay at my house,” Cassie added. “Go pack a few things.”
Millicent gave a ferocious nod and scurried toward the bedroom.
“Alligators, lizards, snakes,” Cassie muttered. Richard moved to touch her arm and she jumped a foot out of his grasp.
“Sorry,” he said and grinned.
“I hate Florida.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I do. I always have.”
“No, you haven’t.”
“Richard, I think I would know if—”
Millicent appeared, wearing a cotton housedress and clutching a bulging overnight bag. Putting one arm around her shoulder and the other around Cassie, Richard began walking them toward the back door.
“You don’t like the wildlife,” he told Cassie, “but you don’t hate Florida.”
“Well, I think it’s icky anyway,” she said as they headed outside. “The humidity in the summer and bugs the size of Volkswagens…It’s just not natural.”
“It’s very natural,” he replied in a soothing voice. “It’s just not what you’re used to.”
“I don’t think I want to get used to it.”
“Me neither,” Millicent chimed in.
“Okay, well, we’ll get you both across the street and settled,” he comforted them as they rounded the house and headed down the driveway. “The only scary creature over there is Sophie.”
Cassie giggled, and then so did Millicent.
Richard had a very calming influence, Cassie realized. And she took a moment to shoot a prayer upward to thank God for it.
Love Finds You in Holiday, Florida Page 19