by Maddy Hunter
“I’m not sure where she kept it when she was traveling.”
“Let’s pray it wasn’t in her handbag because if it was, it may be lost to her family forever.” I softened my voice as I delivered the bad news. “The police informed Etienne that her bag and all its contents were destroyed in the bomb blast.”
“Really? I’m very sorry to hear that.” But the sudden lilt in her voice seemed to belie the sentiment. “Very sorry indeed.”
ten
“Do you recall seeing a journal when we packed Astrid’s belongings?”
We’d gotten stuck in traffic on the way back to Munich, so by the time we reached our hotel, we were staring at a scant half hour to freshen up and dress for our big night at Oktoberfest. While we were still on the bus, the mayor’s office had phoned Wally with the unexpected news that all four Iowa oompah bands would have time slots in the Hippodrom beer tent this evening. And since the Hippodrom hosted the unofficial red carpet for celebrity guests, the group shouldn’t be surprised if their appearance spurred something of a media circus.
The bus had gone wild when Wally made the announcement. Not only would the event be a dream come true for the musicians, but the whole group would be recognized for their humanitarian efforts after the explosion, which was a tribute to what kind of people they really were beneath all their contrarian banter. “This will be your time in the spotlight,” Wally told everyone. “You’ll be among the glitterati this evening, so dress the part. Remember, your photos might be splashed across newspapers all through Europe.”
That we had so little time to plan our ensembles for such an important night was discouraging, but my afterburners were on overdrive as I raced between the closet and the bathroom, dithering over shoe and makeup options.
“There was no journal in her room,” Etienne replied as he slipped into his sports jacket. “Why are you asking?”
“Because Hetty Munk told me that Astrid wrote in a journal every day of her life. So if she brought her journal with her, where is it?” I presented my back to him for assistance with my zipper.
“Could it have been in her handbag with Otis’s elusive book of poetry?” He fastened the hook and eye at the top of my little black dress and planted a kiss at the nape of my neck.
“And that’s something else that’s weird.” I dashed into the bathroom. “Hetty implied that Astrid was almost pathologically neat, so why did Otis tell us that tidiness wasn’t one of her virtues?”
Knock. Knock. Knock.
“Perhaps because of the condition of her bedroom?” he suggested on his way to answer the door.
“Can I speak to Emily real quick?” Nana’s voice. Anxiety-ridden. Breathy.
“She’s in the bathroom creating magic with her lipstick wand. Feel free to poke your head in, Marion. The door’s open.”
She skidded into the bathroom like a surfer riding a wave, her sneakers squeaking on the tiled floor. “Has Bernice been ’round to pick up Tilly’s miracle cream yet?”
“Not yet. Why?”
She held out a small plastic travel jar. “You reckon I could borrow a glop before she takes off with it? I usually don’t pay your mother no mind, dear, but I took a long look in the mirror when we got back, and she’s right. I been in denial. I got so many wrinkles, I could audition to be one a them California raisins what we seen on TV ads years ago. So I need help, and fast. I figure if I use Tilly’s cream before we hit the festival grounds, maybe it’ll do for my face what it done for yours. By the time we walk down the red carpet, them media folks could be takin’ pictures of a whole new me.”
“I hope not. I’m pretty fond of the old you.”
From the outer room, Etienne reminded us, “Ten minutes ’til showtime, ladies.”
BAM. BAM. BAM.
“Hurry up.” Nana slapped her jar down next to the sink. “That’s probably her now.”
“Bernice,” Etienne announced as he answered the door. “How can I help you?”
“I’m here for my miracle cream. Where’s Emily?”
I whipped the lid off Tilly’s jar, dug in with my forefinger, and slopped several ounces into Nana’s container. “Remember, apply lightly,” I whispered as I watched her cap the jar and stuff it inside the pocket of her Minnesota Vikings wind jacket. I gave her a conspiratorial wink and nudged her out the door.
“Where’s my cream?” demanded Bernice, eyeing Nana with suspicion.
“Got it right here,” I said, popping back into the bathroom and returning with Tilly’s jar. I handed it over.
“So tell me, Marion,” Bernice asked as she unscrewed the lid, “what pressing reason brings you to Emily’s room minutes before we’re supposed to leave?”
“I’m kin,” said Nana. “Kin don’t need to make up no reason to visit.”
Bernice lifted the jar to her nose to sniff the contents. “It better all be here or—hey, how come this stuff doesn’t stink? Anything that works usually smells like pigeon poop, but this smells pretty good. So how thick do I need to pile it on?”
“Lightly,” said Nana in a helpful tone, stiffening up like an old washboard when she realized she’d said something.
Bernice slatted her eyes. “How do you know that?”
I felt a moment’s panic before inspiration struck. “Nana’s only repeating what she heard Tilly tell me last night.”
“Sure, sure,” sniped Bernice. She drilled Nana with an accusing look. “You took some of my cream, didn’t you?”
“She most certainly did not,” I defended. Nana didn’t take anything; I gave it to her. There was a huge difference. “So, ladies, I don’t want to be rude, but you’d better scoot back to your rooms so you can change your clothes before we head out.” I herded them toward the door.
“I already changed,” said Nana, her windsuit swishing as she walked. “You think I need to kick it up a notch? I s’pose I could wear my World’s Best Gramma sweatshirt, but I didn’t want no one accusin’ me of puttin’ on airs ’cuz of the glitter on the letterin’. It’s pretty dazzlin’.”
“It doesn’t matter what you wear,” Bernice declared, reaching the door a step ahead of Nana. “I’m wearing sequins tonight, so all eyes will be on Bernice Zwerg, former magazine model, making her much-anticipated comeback. Trust me, Marion, if we appear on the red carpet together, you could be buck naked and no one would notice.”
“Takes too long to get naked. These new bloomers what I’m wearin’s got so much spandex in ’em, they’d be rollin’ up the carpet before I’d have time to get ’em off.”
When Etienne and I reached the lobby ten minutes later, the place was in an uproar. Laughter. Backslapping. Excited whispers. Either the musicians were suffering performance jitters or the whole tour group was giddy at the prospect of spending an entire evening getting hammered on dark beer. “What’s up?” I asked George, who was standing beside a potted plant with a goofy smile on his face.
“Dick just struck it rich.”
“Which Dick?”
“Stolee. Now everyone wants in on the action.”
“Omigod.” I grabbed Etienne’s forearm. “Zola predicted a windfall in Dick’s future just a few hours ago.”
George nodded. “Five hundred big ones from some kind of gambling thing.”
“Dollars?” asked Etienne.
“Euros. That’s even more than dollars, depending on the conversion rate. Lookit ’im.” He bobbed his head toward where Dick was holding court with Zola, surrounded by a throng of well-wishers. “Folks are saying that redhead can really predict the future.”
“For what it’s worth,” I said somewhat reluctantly, “she’s been right more than she’s been wrong.”
“She’s been practicing on other folks?”
I nodded. “She told Dick Teig he was shallow.”
“Dang,” George reflected. “She’s good.”
Nods. Shrugs. Murmurs of assent.
“Everyone’s already guaranteed extra cash in their future once you stop smoking,” Stretch called out.
Maisie grinned. “Okay. Maybe she can tell me if my latest push is going to succeed. What do you say, Zola? Are you up for it?”
Zola fluffed her hair and smiled, appearing deliriously happy to be appreciated. “I’m game if the rest of you are.”
“All right, then,” said Maisie. “We’ll meet back here after our gig is over. And let’s all be good sports. Let’s have a hundred percent participation.”
“Is she calling for a vote?” asked Osmond.
I spied Wendell loitering by the elevator, arms folded tightly across his chest, jaw locked, looking as if he were sucking on the world’s sourest lemon.
Uh-oh. I was getting a bad feeling about this.
Wally made his presence known by thrusting his umbrella into the air. “It’s about a ten-minute walk to the Oktoberfest grounds and it’ll be crowded on the sidewalks, so watch where you’re going and stick together. I’ll also warn you to mind your handbags and wallets because this kind of a crowd means open season for pickpockets. If you should get separated from the group, when you reach the fairgrounds, aim for the tent with the red and gold Ringling Brothers–style façade. It only seats forty-two hundred people, so it’s one of the smaller venues. Do all the musicians have their instruments?”
“you bet,” they shouted, as if responding to a football cheer. “Let’s go, then,” said Wally, charging forward with his umbrella held high.
“We can’t go yet.” Osmond threw a desperate look at the mass of humanity parading for the exit. “We haven’t voted.”
“I bet she pulled one of those unanimous consent deals,” said Alice Tjarks as she looped her arm through his and marched him toward the door. “I think we voted. We just didn’t realize it.”
Walking through the gates of the beerfest grounds, beneath the Willkommen Zum Oktoberfest sign, I felt the kind of adrenaline rush a kid feels at the prospect of spending the day riding the Scrambler and Caterpillar while pigging out on candy apples and cotton candy.
Oktoberfest in Munich wasn’t just a beer-drinking event. It was the Iowa State Fair on steroids…minus the six-hundred-pound cow sculpted from pure dairy butter.
The midway opened up before us in an exuberant chaos of fright-filled screams and flashing lights. Giant swings umbrellaed outward from a column that seemed to reach the stratosphere. A quintuple-looping rollercoaster tore shrieks from the throats of people who enjoyed their beer with a g-force chaser. Something called the Toboggan sluiced fairgoers down a mammoth wooden slide like logs down a flume. A ferris wheel that vied for height with London’s Millennium Wheel rose high above the midway. Bumper cars. Carousels. A haunted house. Pony rides. Gravity-defying rides with catchy names like Topspin and Free Fall. A towering contraption that looked like a handheld blender with a propeller stuck on the end that turned people upside down, inside out, and end over end while swooping a hundred feet off the ground. If this ride had been available in medieval times, it would have been labeled a torture device—and the price of admission would have been free rather than a whopping four euros.
The press of revelers was claustrophobic as we muscled our way through the crowd. We passed arcades where patrons could hammer nails, shoot rifles, or launch darts to win a purple elephant or helium balloon. We passed concessions selling the best of wurst: bratwurst, blutwurst, bockwurst, knackwurst, and weisswurst, served on sticks or in buns, with or without sauerkraut. We smelled the heavy scent of cooking oil as vendors deep-fried such culinary delights as cheese curds, corndogs, cabbage rolls, mushrooms, onion rings, pickles, funnel cakes, and Oreo cookies. They were probably still trying to perfect the process for candy apples and Peeps.
As we approached the area of beer tents, I realized my perception of the word tent had been completely out of whack because these structures were the size of airplane hangars, with solid sides and decorative exteriors. The Hippodrom’s façade was a wild splash of red that was gilded with curlicues and swirls reminiscent of a circus parade wagon. On the rooftop above the front entrance, a trio of carousel horses reared their wooden hooves as they stared down at those of us waiting in line to pass through the security check. But they didn’t stare at us for long because Wally spoke to an official at the door who escorted us directly to a reserved seating area, bypassing the long queue, bag checks, No Smoking signs, and the much-touted red carpet. I’d probably get an earful from Bernice about the omission, but the noise level inside the tent was so high, I suspected I might not be able to hear a word she said.
Yes!
Music blared from the speakers perched on the raised bandstand in front of us, filling the tent with a foot-stomping, knee-slapping polka that prompted a spontaneous sing-along. Voices rose to the rafters in a roar of drunken abandon. Dancing broke out in the aisles. Patrons hopped onto benches, heads bobbing, arms flopping, elbows flying, in a synchronized performance of what was either a Jane Fonda aerobic workout or the German version of the Chicken Dance. Swaying. Chanting. Clapping. The six-person brass band onstage played louder and louder, faster and faster. Beer flew. Froth spattered. The floor shook with an intensity that might have registered a magnitude 4 on the Richter scale. “Zicke, zacke, zicke, zacke, oi, oi, oi,” they hollered in unison. “zicke, zacke, zicke, zacke, oi, oi, oi. prost!” The atmosphere was so festive, I felt like a member of the Wisconsin student body again, watching “Jump Around” being performed by every fan in the football stadium.
We occupied three tables in a section of prime real estate that was cordoned off by wooden partitions and located directly beneath the bandstand. The tables-for-ten were narrower than a diving board, but since the Hippodrom was known for hosting a more gentile crowd, our impossibly narrow tables sported a touch of elegance that was missing from all the other beer tents: plastic tablecloths.
We were shoehorned together five on a bench, with no space left for arm movements that might include eating or drinking, so I now understood the other reason why so many people were standing in the aisles and on top of their benches: the illusion of breathing space.
I sat at the first table with all the ladies, Etienne sat at table two with the Guten Tags and the guys, and Wally sat at table three with the rest of the musicians and Zola, although he couldn’t really sit because there was no room left on the benches so he kind of floated between all three. When the polka ended, the sounds of pandemonium still rumbled through the tent, but at least I could hear myself think a little better.
“Why are we at the circus?” Mom shouted into my ear as she eyed the green, gold, and red streamers that ribboned the ceiling.
“Forget that!” yelled Bernice from the opposite side of the table. “Why do we have our butts parked here when we should be posing on the red—”
The band struck up another tune, drowning her out completely. I poked a finger at my ear, shook my head, and flashed one of those “I can’t hear a word you’re saying” looks. She made a megaphone of her hands and continued yelling, but I really couldn’t hear a thing, so I had no choice but to offer her a sympathetic smile and a shrug. It was freaking awesome.
A troop of official-looking men in white shirts and red vests entered the partitioned area, and after speaking to Wally, they collected all the instrument cases that were scattered on the floor and carried them to what looked like a holding area near the bandstand. Next to arrive were barmaids in official costume, flaunting smiles, cleavage, and comically oversized beer mugs brimming with ale that w
as dark as axle grease. They slammed a mug down in front of each of us.
“What am I s’posed to do with this?” Nana shouted into my other ear.
“Drink it,” I shouted back at her.
She made a face as she sniffed the contents. “This one’s spoiled. It smells like dirt.”
“Probably from the kind of yeast they use in the brewing process.”
She drew her brows together in a frown as she pondered the liter mug. “Would you flag down one of them waitresses when she heads back our way? If I gotta drink this thing, it’s gonna need cherries.”
When the music ended again, a man in lederhosen and a feathered hat took up a center stage position on the bandstand and commandeered a microphone. I might have been able to understand him if he’d been speaking English, but his announcement was in German so I didn’t have a clue. Except I did hear him utter the word “Iowa,” after which he swept his hand in a grand gesture to indicate our tables in the reserved section.
I was suddenly forced to squint as the spotlight caught us in its glare.
The tent erupted with thunderous applause, followed by whistles, hoots, and table-pounding. The area around our partition filled with Germans clamoring to photograph us. They even directed the poses they wanted us to strike: standing, sitting, smiling, waving. Wally took pictures. Etienne took pictures. Dad fired up his camcorder and filmed the Germans shooting pictures of us with their camera phones. Bernice managed to end up front and center for nearly every shot, showing off her sequined jacket. She especially liked close-ups and delivered a wide spectrum of emotions ranging from pouty to surprised, like a Gloria Swanson wannabe stepping onto the set of Sunset Boulevard.
I had to admit she looked sensational. The silver sequins softened the bulge of her dowager’s hump. Whatever product she’d used on her hair made it appear less like a wire whisk. And her nicotine- and smoke-damaged complexion was suddenly glowing with health and vitality. Was that even possible with a single application of Tilly’s cream?
I peeked at Nana, whose face was still cross-hatched with fine wrinkles that were offset by liver spots and senile plaque.