“Not very well—that’s why she’s taking lessons. She wants to learn the Electric Slide really bad. I hope it’s all right. Gloria has a good driving record,” Bud said.
Chase folded the paper bag over, making it lay flat against the ribs, hoping this would make for a less noticible item to shove into the fridge.
“I’m sure she does,” Chase said, keeping her back to Bud while she inched to the fridge.
“So, it’s all right? I told her I’d call if it wasn’t.”
“No, it’s fine,” Chase said, her head in the fridge stashing the ribs behind condiments.
“Really?”
“I agreed to the sleepover, didn’t I?”
“Well, yes,” Bud said.
This sleepover had been a big step for Chase, who had difficulty letting Bud stay with her grandmothers, let alone school chums. The new “Fearless Chase,” as she had taken to calling herself, had given her ready approval. “I think that’s a great idea. Sleepovers are part of a child’s ritualistic rite of passage into independence—gaining the ability to sleep elsewhere will make you a better traveler.”
Bud had shrugged and handed Chase a manila file folder full of research about the necessity of children attending sleep-overs.
Chase quickly perused it. “I absolutely concur. I will let you make the arrangements, and I promise not to inquire about the number of smoke detectors in the house.”
“We’ve already attended to that. Collins knew there would be a concern, so we checked them all and replaced the batteries just to be sure.”
“Ah, good. I knew I could trust you.”
Gitana had come over and felt Chase’s forehead. “She doesn’t have a fever.”
It had been settled and now the time had come, Chase thought, as headlights pulled up in the drive.
“There she is,” Bud said, picking up her duffel bag.
“Well, you better get going,” Chase said, putting her hands in her pockets.
“Yeah, I better.” They stared at each other. It was like some awkward movie scene.
Gloria saved them by knocking on the sunroom door. The dogs went wild, barking and licking Gloria’s hand as Chase let her in. Bud quickly hugged Chase’s thigh.
Gitana came downstairs. “All right, I expect you to be on your best behavior.” She waggled her finger.
Bud rolled her eyes. “I have a finely tuned moral compass.”
“Have fun,” Chase said. She had a lump in her throat and willed herself not to cry. If sleepovers did this, what was the leaving-Bud-at-the-college-dorm scene going to look like?
Gitana hugged Bud and ruffled her curls.
“Line dancing, huh?” Chase said as a diversionary tactic.
Gloria stuck her thumbs in her belt loops. “I’ve admitted to myself that I am a slow learner, but like the tortoise I shall get there.”
When they’d gone, Chase said, “I almost got us busted. I didn’t know you bought ribs too.”
“I couldn’t help myself.” She studied Chase. “Are you all right with letting her go?”
“Kind of,” Chase admitted. “I know it’s part of growing up.”
Gitana held her. “I’m proud of you.”
“Really?”
“Really. Now let’s get this party started.”
“I’ll be right back,” Chase said, darting upstairs.
Chase changed the sheets, got the patchouli candles out and tucked Phyllis Dildo under the pillow. The Fearless Chase was also amorous, she’d decided. If she was going to re-create herself, she might as well incorporate the carnal.
Gitana had begun preparations. She put a Memphis-style rub on the ribs. She looked over at Chase. “When did you start painting your fingernails?”
“Lacey had a manicurist come in and I was accosted, but then I attended Lacey’s L.I.P. seminar and rearranged my thinking on the subject.”
“What is L.I.P.?”
“It stands for Lover’s Instrument of Pleasure. I’ll try and nutshell it for you. Hands are the equivalent of a male sex organ. They are sources of pleasure to our lovers. They stroke, tease, delight and bring…” She glanced over at Gitana, who was gaping at her. “What’s wrong?”
“You never talk about stuff like this, much less attend a seminar.”
Chase shrugged. She almost had this gesture down. She wasn’t quite as good at it as Bud, but the shrug was more attainable than the eyebrow-raising thing. “It’s the new me. Shall I wash the potatoes and wrap them in tinfoil?”
She was embarrassed, but she didn’t want to show it because this was the person who let her only child risk her life at a sleep-over, who had a dildo hidden beneath her pillow, got a job she had no talent for and had taken up a dangerous sport. She couldn’t let sex talk embarrass her. It wouldn’t be right. She was fearless.
“Okay, but this hand business…” Gitana put more rub on the ribs after studying the photo in Martha Stewart’s Living magazine. Apparently, hers didn’t look like the photo. Chase had hidden the Joy of Cooking book after the fish debacle and then again after the blob debacle. Gitana had obviously not located it yet.
“Don’t worry. I’m not going to start wearing tighty-whities and thinking I have a penis, if that’s what you’re concerned about.” Her mind flashed to Phyllis. She worried this hand-as-penis thing might spoil the sexual escapade she had planned for later.
“Do you have anything in mind for after dinner?” Gitana said.
“You’ll just have to wait and see,” Chase said. She picked up the tray of ribs before they became more Memphis rub than rib.
Gitana looked uncertain. “I suppose they’re ready.”
“I’ll get them on the grill.”
“With the steaks,” Gitana said, pulling them out of the fridge.
“You wrapped them in bacon?”
“Just like in the picture,” Gitana said, pointing to the photo in the magazine.
“We do have a problem,” Chase said.
They stood outside under the crisp October sky with the stars as brilliant points of lights and inhaled deeply. “I love that smell,” Chase said.
Gitana wrapped her arms around Chase and nuzzled her neck. “After dinner, I’m going to take you upstairs and eat you like a cheeseburger.”
“We’ve got meat on the mind.”
“And I’m feeling carnal,” Gitana said, and she actually growled.
The dinner was fabulous. “I think,” Chase said, as she finished eating, “that your barbequing skills have definitely improved.”
Gitana smiled. “You’re the one that taught me that if you set your mind to something it can be achieved eventually.”
“We’ll see. I’m not convinced about Gloria’s line dancing.”
Gitana giggled as she collected the plates. “What’s next on your agenda for this evening?” she asked over her shoulder.
Chase faked a yawn and stood up and stretched. “Oh, I don’t know. I think I’ll just go to bed.”
“Me too,” Gitana said, taking off her clothes in the middle of the kitchen.
“Oh my,” Chase said, moving toward her.
“Race you,” Gitana said.
They were both naked by the time they got to the bedroom. Laughing, they sprawled on the bed.
“What do we have here?” Gitana said, looking around the room and, like an airport drug-sniffing canine locating the drugs, she reached under the pillow where Chase had stashed Phyllis. “And right here,” she said, running Phyllis up between Chase’s now naked thighs.
“How’d you know she’d be there?” Chase said, feeling her face growing warm as Gitana rubbed Phyllis between Chase’s legs.
“Because I went looking for her while you were outside, and when I couldn’t find her I started looking around. Under the pillow is pretty obvious and accessible.” She kissed Chase deeply.
“So you had the same idea?” Chase inquired.
“I did,” Gitana said, kissing Chase’s ear.
“I think Lacey shoul
d have an ‘Ear as Second Clit’ seminar,” Chase said, opening her legs wider so Gitana could slip inside.
“Oh, God,” Chase said, as Gitana pushed Phyllis inside her. “Why did it take us so long to discover this?”
“We’re shy.”
“And we’re not shy now?” Chase said, rocking her pelvis against Gitana and pulling her ass to her in what she thought of as the “come grasp.”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” Gitana said, climbing on top of Chase and pushing harder. She gently bit Chase’s nipple and then caressed her breast. “Tell me when you come.”
Chase felt it start in the middle of her back and then course downward until her hoo-hoo felt like it had been Tasered on a low-voltage setting, and she said, “I’m coming. I’m going to come so hard.”
“Wow,” Gitana said, leaning up and looking at Chase. “I never thought I’d get you to do sex talk.”
Chase took several deep breaths and then touched Gitana’s hand. “She needs to come out slowly and right now before I have a heart attack.”
Gitana did as instructed.
Later as they lay in each other’s arms, Gitana said, “You know that hand thing isn’t far off. Maybe I’ll take the seminar next time it comes around.”
“It was very informative,” Chase said, running her hand down Gitana’s stomach.
“Hmm… Maybe we should practice some more.”
“We could.”
Chapter Thirteen—Wrapping Alaska
The following week, with the full intent of getting fired, Chase started her gift-wrapping job. Mrs. Pauline Meadowbrook-Parks was her supervisor. Her name sent Chase into thoughts of parks and grassy meadows and Jane Austen and her novel Mansfield Park. This off-task tangent compromised Chase’s attention to detail during the gift-wrapping demonstration. According to Mrs. Meadowbrook-Parks, gift wrapping was an art form and a calling. Mrs. Meadowbrook-Parks was a maternal-looking woman in her fifties with steel-gray hair and washed-out blue eyes. She made Chase think of a character in Mother Goose—the kindly grandmother who might live in a shoe or exhibit a talent for baked goods, which in fact she was, having five grandchildren and being the primary gift wrapper in the family.
“Someone has to do it what with all the baby showers, birthdays and holidays. It’s a necessity that at least one family member has the skill,” she told Chase.
Chase had gone off on another tangent of Mother Goose tales. She preferred Wind in the Willows, she decided, to the bizarre Grimm Brothers. Chase figured being fired by a kindly grandmother wouldn’t be traumatic but would serve her goal. She gave it one day, two days tops, and Mrs. Meadowbrook-Parks would put her plump arm around Chase’s shoulders and say, “Honey, don’t feel bad. We can’t all be gift wrappers.”
Mrs. Meadowbrook-Parks’s voice broke into Chase’s daydream. “It’s all about geometry. An isosceles triangle here, a ninety-degree angle there and everything done up tight and straight.” She demonstrated by wrapping a blender in white and silver paper covered with wedding bells. “Okay, now I want you to try.”
She pushed an electric wok over to Chase. The wok made Chase think of origami, and she mimicked Mrs. Meadowbrook-Parks’s movements and the box came out looking decent. This was not her intention. Mrs. Meadowbrook-Parks studied the box. Chase waited. Certainly, having so little experience wrapping, combined with not being interested, should make one a poor gift wrapper. Unfortunately, it didn’t.
“This is quite good. Now, we stick a bow on it and some ribbon and voila we have a finished product,” Mrs. Meadowbrook-Parks said, nodding her approval.
Okay, Chase thought, there was more to it than geometry, but this part looked fun. “So we can use all this stuff to spruce up the packages?”
“Oh, yes. This is the artistic part of the process, and frankly, my dear, this is where a gift wrapper is born not made. Either you have it or you don’t.” Mrs. Meadowbrook-Parks waggled a finger.
Well, there you have it, Chase decided. She could make good lines, but the decoration would bring her down.
Mrs. Meadowbrook-Parks’s cell phone rang with the tune “Here Comes the Bride.” She glanced down at the screen. “Oh, my, I wonder who this could be? You’ll have to excuse me a moment.”
Chase sat listening to a series of “Oh my, I see, oh my, yes, this is dreadful, oh, my, I see, and well yes, and several of courses.”
Mrs. Meadowbrook-Parks agreed to something and then clicked off. She let out a heavy sigh. Then she spotted Chase as if she’d forgotten about her. Chase felt like Max, the dog, when the Grinch looked at him and the eureka lightened his face.
“Of course,” she said.
“What?” Chase said with apprehension.
“We are going on assignment,” Mrs. Meadowbrook-Parks said. She opened her desk drawer and threw a set of keys at Chase. Luckily, Chase had good reflexes from her years of juggling her mother’s Fabergé eggs. She’d done this to piss her mother off when they were arguing—it didn’t. Stella was very good at appearing nonplussed that her precious eggs were being tossed about by an amateur juggler. Chase caught the keys.
“Assignment?”
“Yes, now go get the van in the back parking lot. You can’t miss it. It’s pink with a white bow painted on the side. I’ll get the supplies together and meet you on the back dock. We can do this. With your skills and my organizational abilities there is no disaster we cannot overcome.”
Chase had no idea what they were doing or what they could or couldn’t do, but this talk of disaster relief gave her heart palpitations. She went for the van but stopped and turned. “Am I going to be able to do this thing we are doing?”
“Yes. You may be a novice right now, but by this afternoon, you will be expert.”
“Where are we going?”
“Rio Rancho.”
“And our assignment?” Chase couldn’t believe she said “our.” An hour and a half in the workforce and she’d become part of the proletariat.
“To save a wedding.”
Chase went for the van and then helped Mrs. Meadowbrook-Parks load packing supplies and gift-wrapping paraphernalia, lots of it. There was every conceivable size of box, tube, padding, rolls of wrapping paper, strange cutting implements, ribbons, markers, glue and plastic caddies full of God-knows-what. Chase was petrified.
“What happened? Did the wedding planner forget to have the presents wrapped?” Chase asked as she buckled up. She hoped Mrs. Meadowbrook-Parks was a good driver. Driving with strangers made Chase nervous.
“They were wrapped and everything was ready and then the gardener turned the sprinklers on. He didn’t know the presents had been set up on a table on the lawn. All the wrapping paper is ruined and a lot of the boxes will have to be replaced.”
“Wow, this is big,” Chase said, watching as Mrs. Meadowbrook-Parks merged onto the freeway from Carlyle using her signal and checking her mirrors. Chase glanced at the control panel to insure the passenger airbag was turned on.
“It is big. I know this is a huge step for one so young to the calling, but I have the utmost faith in you,” Mrs. Meadowbrook-Parks said, trying to reassure her.
Chase felt like Luke becoming a Jedi. She was going into battle. She checked the tool belt Mrs. Meadowbrook-Parks had given her. It looked like it had everything she needed. The soggy boxes would be ousted and the new regime installed. She felt confident until one her many fears popped up, like a mole in the Whack-A-Mole game. Performance anxiety kept poking its little head out of its hole, but before she could hit it with the balloon hammer the head disappeared. “Will people be watching us?”
Mrs. Meadowbrook-Parks didn’t take her eyes off the road, which pleased Chase—it was a true sign of a professional driver. “Why?”
“Well, it just kind of, like, makes me, like, nervous and it could, like, affect my performance.” She sounded like a Valley girl—like, like, like.
“I see.”
She was going to get fired. Part of her felt good because she was ac
hieving her goal. But the other part wanted to help. She liked Mrs. Meadowbrook-Parks, and she wanted to help save the wedding. The good Samaritan part of her nature clawed its way out of dross and declared her worthy. “I could try to overcome it.”
Mrs. Meadowbrook-Parks put her indicator on and merged onto I-25 heading toward Rio Rancho. “I want to tell you a story.” There was a pause.
“Okay,” Chase said, uncertain about the nature of the pause. Pauses made Chase nervous because she had enough time to conjure up a hundred bad stories about to be revealed. A pause was like an abyss and the next sentence was the push.
“You see, I was once very neurotic, incapable of making the tiniest, most mundane choices,” Mrs. Meadowbrook-Parks continued.
Chase sat, mouth agape, but quickly recovered herself. “Really?” She thought Mrs. Meadowbrook-Parks was one of the elite people who knew what they were doing and why. There weren’t many people in that club and here she was confessing to being neurotic. If the Universe was a stage it had put Chase in the right place at the right time with the right person.
“Yes, and I overcame my burgeoning fears by approaching them head-on. It’s the only way.”
“What happened to make you change?” Chase hoped it wasn’t something like her husband dropped dead in the kitchen, or he cheated on her and left. It seemed husbands played integral parts when it came to these life changes.
“My family.”
Oh, here it comes with the husband, Chase thought. “Was it your husband?”
Mrs. Meadowbrook-Parks chuckled. “Henry? Oh no, he’s one of those men that loves unconditionally. That’s not to say he isn’t glad that I can lead a fuller life, but it wasn’t him that changed me. It was my teenage daughters. I overheard them talking one day after school about what a coward I was and how they both were afraid it might be genetic and they’d end up just like me, nervous, scared and unable to experience new things.”
“Genetic?” Chase was confused. Could being afraid of experiencing new things be genetic?
“Oh, you know how kids learn that stuff about genes and gene therapy and how all human behavior is linked to your genes. Personally, I think a lot of it is just hogwaddle. But there you have it. I overheard them and I vowed to change. I got a job and every time I was scared about something, I made myself do it.”
In the Unlikely Event... Page 15