Grendel's Guide to Love and War

by A. E. Kaplan

  I opened the refrigerator and grabbed the milk. I figured I was going to need my own Ovaltine for this.

  Zipora had not dealt well with postwar Dad. Her coping skill of choice was avoidance, and once she left for college, she made a point of not coming home unless she had to, though I was never sure how much of that was because she couldn’t deal with Dad and how much was that she couldn’t deal with Dad criticizing her life choices. Which, admittedly, were frequently pretty rotten.

  Then I heard a car door slam outside, and I remembered some of Zip’s other bad choices.

  “So are Minnie and Allison having family over or something?” she asked. “There’s a crap-ton of cars out there.”

  The crap-ton of cars probably belonged to the people who were too drunk or too passed out to drive home. There were lines of them up and down the street every night these days. I set down my milk. “Ah. No. Minnie and Allison moved to Florida. Ellen Rothgar’s living next door now. Or, actually, she isn’t.”

  “Oh. So, like, what were her kids’ names? They’re there with the dad?”

  “Rex and Willow. And no, she’s getting divorced.”

  “So the kids are there by themselves?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Oh, come on, idiot. What does that even mean?”

  I winced. “Um. So do you remember Wolf Gates?”

  She stared at me blank-faced before lowering her forehead to the kitchen counter. “Oh, sweet baby mongoose in the morning.”

  “Yeah. It gets worse.”

  “Can we shorthand this, please? You’re pulling this Band-Aid off a millimeter at a time.”

  I took a breath. “Okay. Um. Rex and Wolf are throwing these epically loud parties every night until like three in the morning and Dad kind of went all catatonic and engineered this trip to Florida so I’ve been trying to shut things down over there but it isn’t working and now I’m kind of on the losing side of a prank war.”

  “Oh, Jesus Christ on a pogo stick. Anything else?”

  “I think Wolf may still, sort of, have a thing. About you. Or something.”

  “Wait—you talked to Wolf about me?”

  “He just said something.” I felt like my Ovaltine might make a reappearance. “It’s not worth repeating.”

  “Wonderful. My life is on a permanent upward trajectory.” She put her glass in the sink. “What are all these dead ants doing here?”

  “Not a conversation for four a.m.”

  “Right. What is? I’m going to bed.”

  “Okay.”

  “Do not wake me up in the morning.”

  “I won’t.”

  She kicked off her shoes and started down the hall, spinning for dramatic effect in the doorway, because that’s what Zip does. “And, Tom, we are totally ending those parties.”

  Her face changed into something dark, and she gave me a feral smile.

  “I’ve seen enough of Wolf Gates for this lifetime. He’s going to be very, very sorry he showed his face here.”

  I nodded and toasted her with my Ovaltine.

  My car still stank like wet dog when we drove into Chambliss the next day to have lunch with Ed.

  Ed commuted the half hour to Chambliss twice a week to wait tables at the Fifty States Doll Café, where his patronage consisted of eight-year-old girls, their mothers, and their very expensive collectible dolls. This was not the only job Ed had held in the years I’d known him; he’d worked, at one point, rolling barrels around for a local winery, until they decided they no longer wanted to employ minors, and for a while behind the counter at an ice cream shop. But Fifty States was his special prize, because it funded his overpriced-wine expenses and his projected vintner-school costs. He was good-looking enough to flirt with the moms and just charming enough to talk to the girls about their dolls without seeming like a child molester.

  I sat in the back room next to Zip while she paged through a copy of Malina Saves Alaska! and Ed unrolled mountains of pink streamers for a party later that afternoon. In my pocket, my phone started to buzz. It was Mrs. DeLuca again. I made a mental note to call her when I got home.

  Zip flipped the book over, dropping her voice as she read the back cover. “ ‘When Malina’s village is destroyed by an oil spill, everyone loses hope. It’s up to Malina to save her family and her town’ ”—she broke character and laughed—“ ‘but will her bake sale really be enough?’ ” She glanced over to Ed. “Somehow I don’t think the bake sale will really be enough, no.”

  Ed smirked and shook his head while I picked up DeeDee Saves Oklahoma! “ ‘DeeDee’s family has lost everything in the Dust Bowl. DeeDee is her family’s only hope, but will she really be able to save the farm with’ ”—I coughed—“ ‘her bake sale?’ ” I threw the book on the table. “I’m sensing a theme here.”

  “There’s some variety,” Ed protested. “Maria from New Mexico sells tamales.”

  “So you’ve read all these books?” Zip asked, fingering the pages of Alice’s Alabama Adventure.

  “Dude,” he said. “It’s part of the job.”

  I looked out into the restaurant at the other servers. “So you’re saying they’ve all read all the books?”

  He pointed at a middle-aged woman in the regulation fuchsia apron. “Not her. She refuses to read the ones for the discontinued dolls.”

  “Discontinued…Wait. Why should she read them?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Because sometimes kids come in with the old dolls, and if I can rattle off three pieces of trivia, I get a forty percent tip.”

  “Ah,” I said. “Right.” And this was why Ed loved the Fifty States Doll Café. He was a legend here: between the flirting, the charming, and his knowledge of the lives of ten-year-old girls in nineteenth-century New Orleans (who save everyone by selling beignets), Ed frequently came home with twenties falling out of his pockets.

  “It’s like a strip club,” he’d once explained. “Except I don’t have to take my clothes off.”

  And, well, it was kind of true. The moms were paying a premium to have someone smart and nice to look at who would be solicitous of their kids. And they were happy to slip twenties into the string of his apron for it.

  “Are you guys going to eat or hang out back here?”

  Zip gave one of her patented half smiles. “I forgot my doll.”

  Ed leaned in close, giving her his 40-percent-tip smile, and pressed a doll with curly black hair into Zip’s arms. “You can borrow mine.”

  Zip flounced into her seat like Scarlett O’Hara, talking to her doll in an accent that was supposed to be either English or Southern but which failed rather spectacularly at both. She glanced down at her menu. “Wait. They serve alcohol here? Can I get a gin fizz?”

  “No, Tallulah,” I said, then to Ed, “We’ll have the afternoon tea service.”

  “Oh, how droll,” Zip drawled.

  I rolled my eyes. “You’re loving every minute of this.”

  “Shh,” she said. “You’re being a very bad daddy.” She adjusted the hair of her doll, newly christened Flotilda from Florida, who sat primly in a doll-sized booster seat clipped to the side of the table. Ed came by with a multilevel platter of cookies and finger sandwiches and presented Flotilda with a doll-sized teacup. And silverware.

  “You know she can’t actually open her mouth, right?” I muttered to Ed, leaning sideways as he arranged Flotilda’s napkin on her lap.

  “Shut it. The moms are watching.”

  I glanced around and sat up straight. “Right.”

  He presented us with a box of tea bags. “Why are you here, exactly?”

  “Zip wanted to come.”

  Ed winked at Zip. “Is that so?”

  I grimaced, trying to remember if it was like this the last time Ed and Zip were in a room together, but that had been six months ago, which accounted for about two inches and twenty pounds of Ed.

  It was altogether shudderworthy.

  Zip perused the box and pulled out a bag
of Orange Zinger between her fingers. “Well,” she said, “it’s simply been ages since I had a decent finger sandwich, dahling.”

  Ed snapped the box shut and went back toward the kitchen. I turned to Zip. “What are you doing?” I demanded.

  She dunked her tea bag into her cup of steaming water. “Making my tea,” she said. She pointed at my cup. “You should do yours, too, while the water’s still hot.”

  “With Ed. What are you doing with Ed? You know he’s seventeen, right?”

  “Ick,” she said. “I am not doing anything that would make that piece of information relevant.”

  “Are you sure?”

  She fished her tea bag out of the mug and took a sip. “Profoundly.”

  “But you’re flirting. Why are you flirting?”

  She blew a stream of air across her tea to cool it. “It has been a very long time since I had the opportunity to exchange glances with anyone as nice as Ed. Or as hot. Because, damn, that boy can work an apron.”

  I struggled not to spit tea onto the table. “Why do you tell me these things? Jeez.”

  “You asked.”

  “I…Whatever. Look, just, don’t exchange anything other than glances, please.” Then I realized what that sentence actually meant and gagged.

  “Does it bother you?” she asked.

  “Of course it bothers me! You’re way old.”

  “I’m twenty-two.”

  “That’s way old! And also illegal. And also, it’s just…gross. Please, Zip.”

  “Exchanging glances,” she said. “We covered this.”

  I shoved an entire heart-shaped cucumber sandwich into my mouth. “Fine. Let’s talk about something else. When are you getting a job?”

  She nibbled a tiny quiche. “Hush. Let’s talk about Wolf Gates.”

  I gave her a brief history of my attempts to thwart Rex and Wolf.

  “Wouldn’t it have made more sense to cut his power before you hacked the speakers?”

  I took my bag of Earl Grey out of my cup and added some sugar. “Yes, in fact, it would have.”

  “ ’Cause then he might not have known it was you. The thing with the speakers was just you wanting to have bragging rights to some huge prank.”

  I said nothing.

  “I’m just saying, you’ve kind of bungled this.”

  “I’m aware of that, Zipora.”

  “And now anything you do is going to be instantly traceable back to you.”

  “Do you have a point?”

  “Just that you’re always accusing me of being overly dramatic, but you’re just as bad. And I’ve never come close to getting shot because of it.” She inclined her head toward the doll, who was staring glass-eyed at her untouched tea service. “Hush, Flotilda. My brother’s not either a moron.” She glanced up at me. “Flotilda thinks you’re a moron.”

  Ed, who was rushing by the table with a plate of cupcakes, leaned in toward Zip. “Ess-lay of the oron-may, please.”

  “Sorry,” she said, picking up her tea with her pinkie sticking out. “I am a lady again.”

  “So does Flotilda have any idea how to fix this?” I asked once Ed had delivered his cupcakes to a quartet of little girls in frilly dresses, who clapped as he served them. Honestly, I could see the appeal of the job. It’s a similarity I’ve noticed between little kids and old people—they’re both always so surprised when anyone actually treats them like humans.

  Zip leaned her head toward the doll again. “What’s that? Flotilda says Wolf Gates thinks very highly of his own intelligence and very little of everyone else’s.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning he can dish it out, but he can’t take it. And people like that need to be knocked down a peg. Or four.” She bypassed the rest of the sandwiches and went straight for a tiny chocolate tart on the top tier of the tray, which she prodded with her spoon before digging in. “This isn’t bad,” she said around a mouthful of chocolate.

  I grabbed the other tart, which was about three bites’ worth of dessert. I ate half, and it tasted sort of brown rather than like actual chocolate.

  “It’s not as good as Dad’s,” I said.

  “Don’t go there, Tom.”

  This pretty much summed up how things worked in my family. I preferred talk to action. My sister preferred action to thinking. And my father preferred to admire some far-off spot on the horizon that no one else could see.

  Zip was unlikely to talk about the Dad situation. But that didn’t mean she wouldn’t help. Though, to be frank, I wasn’t entirely sure if the person she was helping was Dad. It was hard to tell with my sister.

  I scowled at the last bit of my tart before eating it. Really, the crust was all wrong. Too cardboardy. Dad would have said it was overworked, or something. “Fine,” I said. “So what do you actually want to do? About Wolf?”

  “Flotilda has to think about it, but she’s eating now and wants you to shut up.”

  I shrugged and reached for a purple-iced sugar cookie. Ed tossed the check on the corner of the table as he walked by.

  “Hello?” I said. “Rushing?”

  “I have a party in here in twenty. I need the table back.”

  Zip and I both stared at the check without picking it up. She cleared her throat and pushed her chair back from the table an inch, saying, “You do remember the part about me being broke, right?”

  “You neglected to mention that.”

  “I thought it was implicit. Seeing as the job market has not exactly been kind to me.”

  “Right,” I said. “So I’m buying you lunch.”

  “It would seem.”

  “Anything else I’m paying for?”

  “If you give me a twenty now, I won’t have to ask you to buy me my lady products later.”

  I threw my wallet at her, which she caught neatly. “God, Zipora. Why do you have to— You know what? Never mind. Just take whatever you want.”

  She pulled several bills out and tucked them into her pocket before she tossed my wallet back.

  “So what now?” I asked.

  “Now,” she said, “we pay a visit to Wolf Gates.”

  Zip and I decided to hang around Chambliss until Ed was done with his shift, and by the time we got back, it was six o’clock. We pulled up in front of my house, and I looked over at Zip before she got out.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  She shrugged. “I have to give the boy a chance before I slay him. It wouldn’t be sporting otherwise.”

  “So you’re really going to talk to him?”

  “I am.”

  “Am I coming with you?”

  She thought about that for a minute. “Actually, I think you are. Thank you.”

  “Sure.”

  “And maybe Ed, too.”

  “Um, are you sure about this? If you feel like you need double backup, maybe we should just skip it.”

  “Thomas, I can handle this. Just hang out in the background. That’s all.”

  “Okay.”

  We grabbed Ed, who had come in his own car, and made for the Rothgars’ backyard, where Wolf was crouched over the speakers. He looked up as we came through the side gate, and stood up slowly, wiping imaginary dirt onto his pants.

  “Well, well,” he said, eyeing Zip. “You heard I was here and couldn’t stay away, Zipora?”

  She stopped on the other side of the table. Ed and I held back and tried not to look like idiots while we stared at the grass.

  “No, Wolf. I didn’t know you were here until a few hours ago.”

  He smirked. “Of course you didn’t.”

  She made a face and took a step closer to him, one hand balled into a fist at her hip. In that pose, she looked like our mother. Without the eyeliner and the funky hair, they might have been sisters. I wondered if Zip saw it when she looked in the mirror. I wondered if maybe that was what all the eyeliner was for.

  “Look, Wolf,” she said. “It’s about these outdoor speakers and these big parties—”<
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  “Your baby brother needs you to be his mommy?”

  Zip and I both flinched. “Listen, you bastard—” I said, but Zip waved me off. She laid a hand on Wolf’s arm, and for a split second I could see that there was something between them, something I really didn’t want to know about. He looked down at her hand and back at her face. It was almost tender, that look. Affectionate. But then it morphed into something ugly.

  “Wolf,” she said. There was a rigidness to her posture that told me two things: she truly, deeply hated Wolf Gates, and she’d waited a very long time to do something about it. “Come on. You know my dad’s in the army, and he’s…he can’t handle all this.”

  “Last time I checked, we had a volunteer army, Zipora.”

  “Come on. Don’t do this.”

  “Do what? Look, he got paid to be in the army. That was his job. Am I supposed to give him a cookie for doing his job?”

  “You’re supposed to act like a human being!”

  He laughed. “How am I not acting like a human being? What am I doing, Zipora? Throwing some parties? Look, your dad can take his taxpayer-sponsored VA benefits and get himself some nice, tasty therapy.”

  “He moved to this neighborhood because it was quiet! This is like—like a sanctuary for the old and the broken. And you’re shitting all over that! And for what, so you can party with a bunch of high school kids? That’s just weird, Wolf.”

  He pulled his arm back. “My aunt asked me to come down here and keep an eye on things,” he said. “I’m doing her a favor.”

  Zip cocked her head to one side. “Is she unbalanced?”

  “Hey, this isn’t what I had in mind for this summer, either. But I’m going to make the best of it. If you want, we could do that together.”

  She sputtered, “Are you kidding me?”

  “What? It’s not like we can’t have fun, Zip. We always did.”

  She sucked in a breath. “I’m not doing this with you. I just want you to stop.”

  He looked around at the speakers and the Christmas lights he’d strung off the back deck and the keg full of cheap beer and shrugged. “The parties stay, darling. I suggest you go buy some earplugs and get used to it. Or come on over and drown the noise out with me.”