The Cul-de-Sac War

by Melissa Ferguson

  The group looked at the freshly hand-mopped porch, the stack of water bottles, and the folded hand towels. Bree was ready.

  She checked her phone again: 11:48 a.m.

  They spent the next five minutes slipping on their tap shoes, warming up, and lining the porch walls with the props they’d need, mostly umbrellas and fedoras. “This is really nice,” Myra said, stretching one leg on the porch railing as if it were a ballet barre. “Built-in studio, fresh air, lots of space. Good acoustics. Man, if you’d let us, Bree, we could practice here every day.”

  “Let you!” Bree practically barked. “I’d like to force you!”

  Their expressions tempered her tone. “Because I’m committed to us getting cast in this play.”

  “Musical,” Luke corrected.

  She shook a finger at Luke. “Right. Musical.”

  “Let’s be honest,” Myra said, lifting her foot off the makeshift bar. “The chances of all five of us getting a spot are pretty much nil.” She turned to Evan, the one who, amazingly enough, was even less talented than Bree. “Have you guys made plans for if you don’t get cast?”

  “Why does everybody look at me when you ask this question?” Evan retorted.

  “All right, guys, we don’t have time for another pity party.” Birdie released her leg from a stretch that looked debilitating. “Bree, where can we play the music?”

  Bree dropped her phone on the pack of water bottles. The time now: 11:56 a.m. “My car. I’ll go turn it on.”

  Birdie put her hand on her hip, her arm slender like that of a prima ballerina. She raised a quizzical brow. “Your car?”

  “Yeah,” Bree called behind her as she stepped off the porch. “The stereo will be perfect.”

  Birdie moved to the railing. “Won’t that be too loud for the neighbors?”

  Bree waved away her question. “Stonewall Heights couldn’t be more loyal to the Barter. They’ll probably all come and watch in support. It’ll be like a free show for them.”

  Bree threw her car door open just as Russell, again, jumped out from behind the car and started barking.

  Even at this distance Bree heard the group take in a breath, several hands flying to their chests at the sight of the murder dog.

  Bree turned the key and pressed Play. Then lowered all four windows, releasing the music from its captivity.

  “Perfect,” Birdie said, giving her a thumbs-up as the group began to move into formation.

  Bree cranked up the volume to the max.

  Birdie shouted something back, but Bree could only read her lips as the music poured through the neighborhood like a flood. She jumped out of the car, walked around to the back, and popped open the trunk. There, two fat subwoofer speakers plucked straight from the 1990s took up every square inch of trunk space. The world was completely overcome with the music of “Singin’ in the Rain.” No other sound could compete. Not the birds on the electric lines overhead, who were flying away en masse. Not the chickens clucking and clamoring to get inside their henhouse. Not the enormous beast of a dog who had turned tail and run toward the backyard. She smiled at the speakers like they were her newborn twins.

  She put raging tailgate parties to shame.

  The cast had taken to shaking umbrellas at her to get her attention, but she just kept smiling blissfully.

  Why?

  Because it was 12:01 p.m.

  Perfect. Absolutely perfect.

  “Are you sure it’s not too loud?” Birdie shouted into Bree’s ears as she hopped back up on the porch and took her place in the back of the group. Bree shook her head, her slap-happy grin glued to her face.

  “Good stage smile, Bree!” Birdie yelled again into her ear with another thumbs-up. “Too big, maybe, but good to see you’ve been working on it!”

  Birdie moved to the front of the group. She raised her hands and rested them on her waist, feet in position, chin raised. Everyone else followed.

  Birdie waited four beats and gave a sharp nod.

  And as if it couldn’t get any louder, the mass tap dancing began.

  And singing.

  They were a level 8 earthquake in tap shoes.

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw Mrs. Lewis step onto her front porch in her bathrobe. She gave Bree a little wave.

  Bree waved back and kept tapping.

  Flap-flap-step-step-brush-hop-step

  Flap-shuffle-ball change-brush heel

  Flap-flap-brush-hop-step-ball change

  Bree followed along with the steps, stumbling every few beats as she strained her neck to look into Chip’s window. Every time she managed to catch a glimpse of him, she lost her place and needed at least eight beats to get back into rhythm.

  “Brush hop left,” Luke said after Bree missed her turn and they collided.

  Bree stumbled back to position.

  It didn’t matter though, because through the window, she saw what she’d been hoping to see. Her smile widened as he moved to the window. With a perplexed expression, he watched the performance.

  Their eyes locked.

  Bree saw curiosity in his gaze. Some daring. As if he wanted to say, And what are you up to now, Miss Bree Leake of 425 Stonewall Heights?

  And then, to her utter delight, she saw him reach into his pocket. Pull out, at exactly 12:03 p.m., his phone.

  And, with recognition snapping into place, stare at her.

  Chapter 12

  Chip

  Chip fumbled for the Accept button on his phone—the movement he’d been waiting to make all morning. Right now he could barely hear himself think, let alone concentrate on a potentially life-changing phone call. He was supposed to be an organized and successful businessman. But what about the insane, musical-twist-on-a-tailgate-party currently shaking down his house?

  Chip stared at the group sashaying in a circle full of jazz hands. How would he ever explain this?

  The phone rang a second time. He moved away from the raging party and toward another part of the house, dodging paint buckets and chop saws and panels of Sheetrock he had yet to install in the dining room. He stopped in the corner of the dining room, standing at the farthest square foot possible from the noise. When it rang a third time, he pressed Accept.

  And magically, as if God and His angels had thrown down the Cone of Silence over his house, the music stopped.

  “Chip McBride here,” Chip answered in his most clipped-yet-friendly, easygoing-yet-professional voice.

  An eruption of trumpets and drums and tap shoes blasted through the walls again. He slid toward the kitchen.

  “Chip, it’s Clarence Richardson. How are you?”

  “Oh, Mr. Richardson,” Chip said, scrambling to open the refrigerator. He opened it and stuck his head inside, next to a gallon of milk. “Doing well. Glad you called.”

  “Yes, well, I’m sorry to say I missed seeing your painting at the King Museum yesterday evening. I know some young artists can get bashful about an unfinished product on display, but still, I had hoped you would understand the spirit of the event.”

  “You missed my painting?” Chip replied, pushing orange juice aside to stick his head in farther. “Oh, that’s too bad. It was just beside the”—he closed his eyes for a moment, trying to remember the old building he’d been to so many times as a kid—“water fountain,” he said. “It was beside the water fountain.”

  “Beside the water fountain?”

  Chip nodded, and his head knocked against the fridge ceiling. “Just above it actually. To the left. There was a plant there though. Lots of people. Easy to miss. Anyway, what can I do for you?”

  “Well, I just looked at my schedule this week and it’s a bit dense. What do you think about—I’m sorry, what is that noise in the background? Are you . . . is that . . . music?”

  Chip jumped out of the fridge and slammed it shut. He didn’t want to move closer to the abysmal noise, but the only place he hadn’t tried hiding at this point was in one of the three bedrooms upstairs. Unfortunately, that wou
ld mean getting closer to the source of the noise before going up.

  He had no choice.

  He jogged toward the stairs, covering the phone with his hand as he did.

  “Yes,” Chip said, pulling his hand off momentarily as he took the stairs three at a time. “Let me see”—he covered the phone again—“if I can turn this down.”

  “Is that . . .” Mr. Richardson said, suspicion heavy in his voice, “‘All I Do Is Dream of You’?”

  Chip ran inside his room and shut the door. The windows vibrated with the noise.

  He snatched up his pillow and all but dove for his closet.

  Yanking the door shut, he dropped on the floor in the blackness, stuffing the pillow between the cracks. “Yes,” he said, catching the muffled but still audible chorus. “Yes, I believe it is.”

  Chip hung his head.

  There was a pause.

  “Splendid!” Mr. Richardson remarked. “I’ve been listening to that same tape all morning. You know, we’ll be doing that musical for the next lineup. Singin’ in the Rain. You’ll have to come and sing all the songs from the audience. I know I will!”

  Mr. Richardson chuckled on the other end of the line, and Chip, only too heartily, joined in.

  “Tell you what. Were you planning, by chance, to attend the finale of A Midsummer Night’s Dream Sunday afternoon?” Mr. Richardson said.

  “Was I?” Chip gave a half laugh, half cough. “Where else would one rather be this coming Sunday?”

  “Excellent. We’ll mix business and pleasure. I’ll tour you around before the show then. See you around noon?”

  There was another pause in the music outside.

  Chip stood, then cracked open the door. Slammed it shut as a new song began.

  “Perfect,” he said over the trumpets. “I’ll see you then.”

  Chip sweated through the slew of polite parting statements, then set the phone down in the darkness of the closet and exhaled. He could feel his hot face in the darkness, knew that if anyone opened the door on him in that moment they’d find a grown man sitting cross-legged on the floor, grinning like an ape who’d found his lost banana.

  Because Chip McBride had weaseled his way into a meeting with the chief administrator of Abingdon’s renovation project of the year. The very same Chip McBride who—after days of strategic internet research—knew more about domed ceilings, sweeping archways, and embossed gold wallpaper than the architects and manufacturers of old.

  He let his imagination run wild for a moment. He pictured himself in a brand-new workspace: a historically renovated office building with an original Degas painting on the wall, offering Perrier to his clients.

  Chip moved to the window and gazed down. The chorus to “Singin’ in the Rain” spilled out of the speakers. The dancers clumsily twirled a variety of umbrellas as they danced in the congested area. Floral umbrellas, tattered umbrellas, not one but two oversized umbrellas with “First Tennessee Bank” printed in gold. He smiled, seeing Bree nearly poke out the eye of another girl as she, a beat behind the others, spun in a circle.

  He watched Bree put her hand up and step back, evidently in the midst of apologizing when she glanced up and caught his eye. She paused, her umbrella drooping.

  He smiled with everything he had.

  Then, just for the fun of watching her umbrella drop completely, he waved.

  “Nice try, Bree,” he said, and even though she couldn’t hear him, he could’ve sworn from her expression she knew exactly what he’d said.

  Several hours and several dozen calls, problems sorted, estimates created, and dollars juggled later, Chip whistled to Russell as he made his way upstairs. His legs ached from the dinnertime run. His knees ached from the two hours he’d spent sanding the floor. Still, the house was slowly coming along.

  Russell pushed ahead of him through the door of his room and jumped on his bed, circling as he scratched at the sleeping bag. Chip was on the cusp of telling Russ to stop when the dog dropped with a belly-flop thud, jaw slack and panting.

  After double-checking his alarm, Chip set the phone facedown on the table, switched off the light, and lay on his bed. For one solid minute he stared up at the ceiling, replaying the scenes of the day.

  Watched the highlight reel fly by.

  Captured the key moments.

  Smiled to himself as he paused on one moment in particular.

  He switched on the light.

  Sat up. Pulled out his phone.

  One text message to her parents, and he’d secured her email.

  Now came the fun part.

  Sixty-two blissful minutes later, after signing her up for a variety of e-newsletters, he was clicking Complete on the tenth catalog subscription for a Miss Leake, 425 Stonewall Heights Drive. Within days everything from All About Mastiffs to Potato Review to (his personal favorite) Rage Be Gone! would be making its way to her door. He even started a special subscription for Evie: Beyond Off-the-Grid. With any luck, Evie would yank the AC out of their house just in time for summer.

  He scoured under his bed for his journal and a Sharpie, yanked out a piece of paper, and wrote his neighbor a message.

  Four minutes later he pushed his feet back into the sleeping bag and flicked off the light. Chip turned on his side, watching her window through his.

  He smiled to himself with one final glance at the sheet of paper he’d taped to the window.

  And fell asleep.

  Chapter 13

  Bree

  YOU’VE GOT MAIL

  It took three times reading through the glass to register the words. She rubbed her tired eyes, peered through the dawning world outside, and read again.

  At the bottom of the simple piece of scratch paper, there was a secondary note.

  She squinted, and the blurry words came into focus:

  PS: THANKS FOR THE SERENADE

  Every muscle from her pinky toe to hip flexor cried out as she tenderly made her barefoot way down the stairs and to the front door. Why was she even doing this? Surely this was a trick, some rude power flex. She should ignore that note in the window and walk right back up the stairs.

  Bree pressed her lips together. Turned the first lock. The second. The third.

  Quietly, she cracked the door open. Peered down at the fraying doormat.

  Mail? She had no nefarious packages from him. No evil surprises dropped on her doorstep.

  He was just messing with her, per usual. Maybe now his plan was to include mind games.

  But thirty minutes later, as she sat at the dining room table and opened her phone email, it clicked.

  Her eyes followed the stream of new spamming emails, nearly all starting with “Congratulations! And welcome to our . . .”

  Mail.

  Oh, she definitely had mail.

  Bree munched on her second plate of eggs and sausage as she clicked through the email catalog subscriptions with one thumb, deleting them one by one.

  Her gaze shifted, though, with the sound that was becoming so familiar down the street. She stopped. Perked her ears.

  “Evie,” Bree called over her shoulder to the kitchen, where Evie was fighting to choke down some kombucha. “The UPS guy is here!”

  She danced to the living room window and heard Evie drop her glass on the countertop. Bree opened a curtain and peeked through.

  Yes. It was definitely Gerald.

  There was an upside and a downside to the UPS man’s appearance these days. The downside was that it meant Evie had ordered something else. Again. There were only so many candle-making kits one could squeeze inside an eighteen-hundred-square-foot-house. The upside was that the interactions between him and Evie were priceless. Bree liked to think of them as a bumbling version of a Hallmark movie on her doorstep. Every single time Gerald dropped off a package, she wanted to hide behind a curtain and watch the awkward sparks fly.

  “But I haven’t ordered anything,” Evie said, rushing into the living room like there was a school fire drill, she was in
charge of it, and she had no idea where the exits were. She pushed her hair up as though by mere force she could make the high bun higher.

  But then—oh. Well, apparently with enough hair spray, she could.

  Bree raised a brow as she helped Evie untie her apron. “You haven’t ordered anything, Evie? Really?”

  “No, I’ve ordered things, but—” Evie seemed defensive. She lifted the apron off her neck and over her head. “I’m just not expecting anything to arrive today.”

  Bree took one look at her panicked roommate. She’d been watching them bumble along for months. Last week she had decided to step in. It was time to assist, to intervene in this romantic plateau.

  “What could it be then? If I didn’t order anything, and you never order anything . . . Where’s my lipstick? And my lashes?” She started patting down her face. “And the cookies! I didn’t have time to make the cookies—” Evie was clutching her chest.

  “Calm down, Evie,” Bree said, taking her by the shoulders.

  “I told him last time about the cookies. I said I’d make them—”

  “The man doesn’t need any cookies. He isn’t Santa—”

  “But—”

  The doorbell rang, loud and clear, and they both shut their mouths at once.

  Evie’s eyes roved around the room and landed on the tube of bright red lipstick sitting on the windowsill.

  The doorbell rang again.

  She took a step toward the lipstick, and Bree grabbed her by the back of the shirt and turned her around. “You look great,” she whispered. She gave her a little shove toward the knob. “Now go get ’im.”

  Evie approached the door like a sloth. To move things along, Bree gave the knob a twist and darted behind the door. She yanked it open, exposing Evie batting her lashes.

  Bree tiptoed backward toward the window and inched the curtain back to see through.

  Gerald held a five-foot-long package. “Mornin’, Evie,” he said, his voice more gravelly than usual.

  She pinked.

  “Mornin’, Gerald. That’s . . . quite a package you got there.”