by Nina Post
“It’s the bats that do what?”
“Spread something like Marburg.”
He noticed the start of dark circles under her eyes. “Are you having trouble sleeping again?”
“Trouble getting to sleep,” she said. “Working on a project.”
He didn’t bother asking about it, because she never said a word about any of her projects. All he and Willa could do were occasional safety checks and the strict stipulation of no radioactive materials, and no reasons for the CDC or any other federal or private agency to raid their house. And enforce a bedtime, but he and Willa usually got to bed so early that Taffy probably just waited until they were asleep to work some more.
“At your age, you ought to get nine or ten hours,” he said.
This statement garnered a distracted “I know,” the tone of which said, ‘Maybe, but that’s never going to happen.’
“I don’t want you to fall asleep in school. Try to wind down from your work earlier.”
“Sure. I’ll try.”
Taffy seemed unparentable. Eric worried about her constantly – what was she working on? Was it safe? Should he and Willa demand to be more involved? She resisted all of this. Not only was Taffy the least sentimental person he had ever known, she was the most independent. Sure, they provided for her, but more like they were the host family for a scientist whose top-secret research they were supporting.
Taffy paused by the gumball machine in front of the store. “Why don’t we just get a delivery?”
“Because I’m selfish and want to go to the store with you,” Eric said. Going to the market with Taffy was not for the undiscriminating or weak-stomached. But he knew what she was like in the store.
Five minutes into their shopping, a woman with a toddler bumped into Taffy with her cart and didn’t apologize. Eric knew the woman would have hell to pay later. When they saw the woman in the deli section, Taffy smiled and stood beside her like she was admiring the chicken. Taffy peered into the case.
“Retail-sliced deli meats have the third-highest combination of disease-causing micro-organisms, so if your family starts exhibiting symptoms like high fever, severe headache, neck stiffness and nausea, even weeks from now, it’ll be your fault.”
The woman sputtered and was about to say something to Eric about bringing up his daughter or forgetting to instill manners in her or punishing her for being so impudent. But he just left the aisle with Taffy.
“Nice job,” he said, being sincere. “But try to resist your completely understandable urge to rub their stupid behavior in their faces.”
Taffy shrugged. “She was the one with no manners, and she’s older than you. She’s had all that time to work on being a nice person, but I guess having a baby means she doesn’t have to be.”
They swung by the refrigerated shelves. The warehouse door swung open and one of the employees held it open as he yelled to someone in back.
“Hey, there’s not enough sweat in dairy. Modify the temp!”
Taffy rolled her eyes and looked at the yogurt selection. She picked up the same brand that Eric had been eating lately, Quantal Organic, and took a closer look at the lid.
“Dad.”
He was always psyched to hear her call him Dad. It didn’t happen often.
“Look at this Amass-and-Win prize.” She looked up at him, eyes wide. “Winning this contest would be amazing. Do you know what it could mean?”
Eric hadn’t paid much attention to the lid, or noticed the prize.
“I could do field study anywhere I wanted,” she said. “Not that anyone could ever really win one of these things. But wow.” She turned the lid one way, then upside down. “What are these symbols? They’re not Egyptian or anything else I recognize. How are you supposed to Amass-and-Win if you don’t know what the letters are? How are they allowed to do that?” She put the yogurt back. “Figures.”
They selected a cake, which Taffy didn’t really care about but Willa did, and checked out with their snacks and birthday candles and favors. Eric’s subconscious plucked at his brain, but he didn’t even know what he was trying to think of.
Eric brought Taffy and the birthday haul back to the house, with Rex following, and dumped everything off in the kitchen.
“What’s this thing?” Willa asked, pushing the plastic bag down around the base of the cake container.
“The cake,” Eric said.
Rex leaned in. Eric turned his head and gave him a look that said, ‘Really? You’re here now?’
“Did Taffy see this?” Willa gripped the counter edge, narrowed her eyes and put her tongue over the edge of her teeth – a dangerous look.
“We picked it out together.” Eric chewed on his bottom lip. “Why, is it wrong?”
Willa pulled up the bag around the cake container. “She must not have been paying attention. You’ll have to take it back and get something else.”
“What’s wrong with it?” Eric took the snacks out of the other bags.
“She’s turning twelve,” Willa said. “I want something a little more … sophisticated. It has a unicorn on it. She doesn’t like unicorns, or horses, for that matter.”
“Everyone loves unicorns,” Rex said. He tried to remove the top of the container and Eric slapped his arm away, then covered it by tapping the top of the plastic container for rhetorical effect.
“She’s twelve,” Eric said. “It’s not like ponies are automatically replaced with high-end espresso makers. Also, Taffy doesn’t even care what’s on the cake, as long as it’s not a barber, a squirrel, or a princess. Heaven forbid all three.”
Willa was silent.
“But maybe I can find a new cake with something from the Pleistocene era, or the Pilosa order,” Eric said.
“What’s that, a Robert Ludlum book?”
“The musk ox, the saber-toothed cat, even pandas, I think. Or sloths, anteaters.” Eric shrugged, hoping his suggestion would work and smooth this over. “
Willa closed her eyes and held up her hand. “I’m sure you’ll have no trouble finding a birthday cake with a giant ground sloth frosted on the top. Good luck with that. Just get something else, please. And with chocolate filling this time.” She left the kitchen with a towering stack of paper plates, napkins, and plastic utensils.
“Mm, she’s a firecracker.” Rex tilted to the side to watch her leave.
Eric glared at Rex then looked for Taffy. She was talking in an excited, gesturing stream to Eric’s old acquaintance Dan, the microbiologist. Eric’s mood started rolling down a cliff, then exploded in a fiery conflagration when his friend Mark Bollworm came in with a huge wrapped present. He swooped in with one deft move, set down the gift, and hugged Willa, lifting her several feet off the floor. She emitted a brief, high-pitched, un-Willa-like shriek. Mark gently set her down, then gave Eric a shoulder hug-slap. “Willa,” Mark said. “You look stunning, as always.”
Eric glanced over while he assembled a tray of snacks. What the hell was happening?
“You are not going to believe this story, Willa.”
Stop using her name, Eric wanted to yell. Mark went on to tell a story about how he stood up to the firm’s biggest client the previous day – a story that made Mark look like the most self-assured person in the world, unwavering in his belief in himself.
Eric grabbed his keys. No one noticed him leave. He took the Princess.
He needed the extra protection.
Eric perused the cakes at Quantity Market. He hated all of them and deemed every single one offensively unacceptable. Instead of leaving in a micro-rage over the failure of the store’s bakery to please him, Eric went over to the dairy aisle, took out a Quantal Organic Yogurt with the Amass-and-Win contest and tossed it from hand to hand like a ball. He put it back. He grabbed a plain chocolate cake and fidgeted in the checkout line behind one person.
After a minute, he abandoned his place in line and returned to the dairy aisle. He considered the display of Quantal Organic Yogurt, then shook his he
ad at himself. Disgusted at his indecisiveness, he went back to the checkout line and bought the cake, then, back in the Princess, he secured the cake with a blanket on the passenger-side floor.
Eric drove back to the house that he couldn’t live in anymore so he could drop off the cake. He intended to leave again right away. His phone made a ding, but he waited to check it until he could pull over. He slowed on the two-lane road then guided the Princess into the pipe organ store lot.
The text was from his friend Mark Bollworm. I want to make a fresh start, and disassociate myself from certain relationships. Unfortunately, this includes you. Thus, I hereby terminate our friendship, effective immediately. Do not attempt to contact me, as this decision is final.
Eric was stunned, then enraged, then dismayed, then enraged again. His insides clutched like a seizing bus transmission. He picked up the cake and threw it out the window onto the pipe organs sign, where it oozed over the lettering. Eric thought it looked like a horse had projectile-shat. The owner came running out, leading with his fist, so Eric put the Princess in gear and pulled out to the street. The proprietor threw a clump of cake onto the back of the bus.
Shaking with adrenaline and anger, Eric drove until he reached what was possibly the worst place in Jamesville to buy a replacement cake: Holt’s Tanning, Tools & Pastry Shop. A bell rang as he opened the door. The center of the store was devoted to low shelves of tools, the right side to tanning, and the left, enclosed, to clear-front cabinets with pastries, bars, and cookies. The store was empty, with no other customers.
“Got a special this week,” a woman said in the tool section. “Buy a Dremel tool or one tanning session, get a free Linzer Torte.”
At Eric’s expression, which he assumed conveyed suspicion, she lazily arched a brow. “I’m Holt.” She headed over to the pastry cabinet, secured her thick dark hair in a barrette, and put her hands on the counter.
“I need a birthday cake,” Eric said.
Holt pushed up her wire-rimmed glasses. “We’re pretty much out of cakes.”
Eric bent over, hands clasped behind his back, and stared at the pastries like they were fish in an aquarium. “If you had been friends with someone for more than ten years, and they started to hit on your wife, and then ended your friendship, what would you do?”
Holt smiled, and it had the effect of light reflecting off a knife blade.
“I’d get tan and buy lots of tools.” She winked. “And maybe a cake. We offer free cake decoration with the purchase of a miniature screwdriver set.”
Eric paced down the length of the store, came back, then crossed his arms. “I covered for him at work when he didn’t get something done, which was all the time. I doubt he did a single thing by himself as a paralegal.”
“Who is the cake for?” Holt held a pen over a tablet.
“Then,” Eric pointed with one arm, “when I came back, he was in law school, and did I refuse to talk to him, even though he was lazy and entitled? No. In fact,” Eric paced to an end-cap then back to the counter, “I helped him study for the Bar. He wouldn’t have passed otherwise.” He paused. “Oh, the cake. Right. It’s for my twelve-year-old daughter.”
Holt started to say something but Eric slapped the cabinet and leaned in. “I lent him money, which I earned as a dishwasher. A dishwasher! He probably took that money and stuffed it down a woman’s thong.”
Holt made a note. “Maybe a unicorn?”
“No unicorns,” Eric said. “Did he pay me back? I’ll tell you how he paid me back. By severing our friendship out of the blue. By putting the moves on my wife.” He put his arms on the counter and spoke in a conspiratorial tone. “Can you do a saber-toothed cat with the head of an old-timey barber in its jaws?”
Holt didn’t skip a beat. “I did four years at RISD, so, yes, I can absolutely do a saber-toothed cat with the head of an old-timey barber in its jaws.”
This brought Eric out of his pacing. “What are you doing here, decorating cakes and selling tools?”
“My parents need me.” She gave him a level stare.
“So you’re not Holt.”
“No, I’m Holt. But so is my mother. She ran this shop until I took over. When do you need your cake?” She poised her pen.
“Today. Right now.”
“Then I can’t do a saber-toothed cat, let alone one with the head of an old-timey barber in its jaws.”
Eric was silent.
She held up a finger, then took a cake out of the fridge behind her. “I can give you this one.” She placed it on the cabinet.
“How much?”
Willa planted one arm on her hip and placed a hand on top of the new cake container. “Have you been inhaling Freon?”
“It’s the only cake I could get. It’s not like we’re in the city.”
She pushed the cake closer to Eric. “Did you look at this in the store? What is this supposed to be, a bug?”
“It’s a termite. It was reserved for a pest control company.”
“It says, Frank, You Baller!” Willa fell silent. Her expression said, ‘QED. What could you possibly have to say now?’
Eric swallowed. “Frank could be the termite that wouldn’t die or the guy who went after a legendary termite.” After a moment, he added, “They didn’t even have any undecorated ones. This was literally the –”
She put up a hand to stop him.
Eric thought it was a good time to leave.
Chapter Five
Nathan Watling walked into his boss’s office, holding a label maker in one hand and rubbing his face with another. DZ’s attention was riveted to his half-circle of flat-panel screens. “DZ, you need to stop buying stuff,” Nathan said. “If you’re feeling anxious, why don’t you go for a run instead?”
Nathan went around the desk to look at the screens: two twenty-inchers on top and three smaller ones in a row on the desk surface. “You don’t need a …” He peered closer and read off the bottom right screen, “Fifty thousand dollar pressure chamber. You’re not a professional athlete.”
DZ ignored him and checked on his active auction bids and orders in progress on various shopping sites.
“Are you listening to me?” Nathan wondered if he should start looking for something else, a new job, maybe in a completely different industry. Maybe in a different city. He should move, just rent his house or sell it if he could, and move to a different region altogether. Something radically different. The southwest? No, scorpions. Maybe a city in a different country. Barcelona?
DZ whirled around in his appallingly expensive office chair and sprang out of it. He caught up to Nathan and paced around him in close circles like a panther. “We should go party tonight, get you out of the office. How about,” he looked up to the ceiling and chewed his lip, as though trying to solve a mathematical proof, but instead coming up with, “The Yeti Cooch?”
Nathan physically recoiled.
“The Stamen Club.”
“Ew, no.”
“The Boob Window.”
“No!”
“La Pétasse.”
“What?”
“Wait!” DZ jabbed a finger toward Nathan. “I’ve got the perfect one: The Swedish Surf Camp Lounge. Just opened. And guess what: I can get us in.”
Nathan sat down with his label-maker and typed in some text with his thumbs. It calmed him, the process of the typing plus the low whirring noise and the little white label the maker chugged out: Did not claim for income tax purposes; Took standard deduction instead. “No, a thousand times no. And you have a videoconference with the enchanters in four minutes.”
DZ perched on his desk then punched Nathan in the arm. “C’mon. You need to meet a woman. What’s your type? Let’s look for the opposite of whatever that is. A chippie, as my mother would say.”
A ding from his desk spurred DZ into running back to check whatever auction had alerted him.
“I got the milkshake machine!” DZ pumped a fist in the air. “And did I tell you that I found a seahor
se breeding facility in Hawaii? That aquarium’s really gonna work this time.” DZ race-walked out of his office, zipped over to the kitchen, then pressed the button for coffee on a gigantic machine that sounded like a particle accelerator. Nathan called it Robbie, after the robot in Forbidden Planet.
“I’m going to start the video chat,” Nathan said, heading back to his employer’s desk.
“Do we have to use those idiots again?” DZ asked, sipping a coffee drink.
“They’re your team,” Nathan pointed out, walking away. “But since you insist on using them, the paucity of enchanters requires that we do have to work with those idiots again, yes.”
Nathan addressed the four enchanters and overheard DZ making reservations for the circus in the phone booth around the corner from the office. He put the phone on mute but still covered the handset with his palm. “DZ, hang up the phone and get over here!”
Maybe he could move, Nathan thought, meet someone nice. A teacher? He could buy another house, maybe have a kid. There was no way he would even be willing to consider raising children while working with DZ; he would want to drive off a cliff. But if he moved …
“Okay, okay.” DZ told the person on the other line that he’d have to call back unless she could give him an order confirmation. He held up a finger to Nathan as he jotted down a number. Finally DZ hung up the phone, which was in a replica of a red London phone booth. He stood behind the desk and clicked on the chat window.
“This is DZ. I hope you’re having a great morning. Wait, is it morning where you are, or some kind of eternal night?” He laughed like he found that hilarious, then got serious. “Our client, Quantal Foods, wants to increase sales on Quantal Organic Yogurt, a new, as-yet-unknown brand. Your job as enchanters is to imbue the spirits in the yogurt.”
Nathan rolled his eyes and opened a spreadsheet on his laptop, which he had moved to a chair on the other side of the desk.
“The spirit stays dormant in the lid,” DZ said, and leaned against the window seat, arms crossed. “The commerce spirit will go into the customer when he consumes the product and make the customer insatiably desire the product. Repeat that back to me so I know you understand.”
