Losing Penny

by Kristy Tate

  Penny sat back in her chair while Rose’s friends wowed appreciatively at the growing pile of presents. Why did engaged couples get to register for gifts? Why didn’t friends and family shower gifts on the perpetually single? Wouldn’t that make more sense? Penny hated feeling envious and wished the mounds of wrapping paper and ribbons would swallow her whole. But since that wasn’t going to happen, she swallowed a forkful of blue cheese then nearly gagged as the bitter ooze clumped in the back of her throat. She chased it down with a slug of lemon ice water.

  “Are you finished, Miss?” the waiter asked, motioning to Penny’s plate.

  Penny looked at her salad. When it had arrived it had been bigger than her head. Since then she’d eaten the oranges off the top, pushed the cheese and bacon to the side, picked at the almonds, and crunched on a few torn spinach leafs. “Yes, thanks,” she said, wishing she could banish blue cheese to hell.

  “Would you like a box?”

  What good is a day old salad? Produce is like heaven’s manna: It has a defined expiration date.

  “No thank you,” Penny answered, her stomach twisting as the blender changed hands from one admirer to the next. Char had bought the red one, but the one sitting in Penny’s closet was black. Rose might prefer the red blender, but Penny knew Richard would rather have black. Pushing away from the table, Penny hurried to the restaurant’s restroom, but a hand on her arm stopped her.

  “Hi Penny,” Allen said. He eased a finger around the collar of his chef coat and sweat dotted his forehead. “Is everything okay?”

  She opened her mouth to tell him about the blender disaster, but then closed it and forced a smile. She realized Allen was asking about the food. They had gone to cooking school together, and after graduation Allen’s dad, a master chef for the Ritz Carlton, had hired them both. It had been sweet of Allen to offer to host Rose’s bridal shower at the Ritz.

  “Everything is perfect,” she told him, running her hand down his arm and squeezing his hand.

  Relief washed over his expression and he held on to her with his clammy palm. “I wanted it to be nice for you,” he said, “and for Rose, of course.”

  “It is more than nice,” Penny assured him.

  “I noticed you hardly ate anything…so I wondered if you didn’t like the salad choice. The shrimp is excellent. I had guessed you would have chosen the shrimp.”

  Laughter from the bridal shower guests drowned his words. Penny gave him an apologetic smile, motioned her head toward the restroom, and excused herself. Allen looked sad as she pushed through the swinging door, but she forgot about him as she punched in Aunt Mae’s new cell number. When Mae didn’t pick up, Penny typed out a text: Disaster.

  Chapter 8

  A night without moon and stars or a day with dead sun. The storm pitched the ship up and down valleys of the cascading tide. Closing his eyes against the perpetual dark, Hans envisioned the green hills of the Norse, the stretch of the interior plains. He longed for sleep, but the rocking ship could not lull him.

  From Hans and the Sunstone

  Drake looked at the unknown number. Disaster. Char gave Rose the blender. You were right—we should give them a more personal gift.

  Curious, Drake let the guy behind him place his order at the bar. For the first time that night, a smile tugged at Drake’s lips.

  Personal…like intimate? He texted back.

  Do you think it’s too late for the quilt idea? Came the reply.

  Drake looked across the room at Melinda. Her dress matched the color of the Rhododendrons, but it clashed with her hair. Redheads shouldn’t wear pink.

  Personal—a nose hair trimmer is personal, he responded.

  He laughed when the unknown caller sent back a question mark.

  How about a coupon for a Brazilian body wax? He typed next.

  Several minutes went by and Drake found himself smiling at the bartender while he waited for his drink and the response to his text. His phone buzzed.

  Do you have time to make the quilt? It really was a lovely idea. I’m sorry I didn’t think so when you suggested it, but it just seemed like it would be more from you than from me.

  Drake set down his drink at the closest table so he could text. I have time.

  Wonderful, came the response. How about if I purchase all the materials and come by tomorrow and help you piece it?

  Perfect, Drake typed. Let’s make a cat quilt.

  The response was almost immediate. Cat quilt?

  You know, fabric with pictures of cats. Maybe even a few squares of faux fur.

  His phone went still, silent, and dark. Drake laid it on the table, keeping his eye on it while he sipped his drink.

  Richard doesn’t like cats.

  But this isn’t just about Richard.

  I’m pretty sure Rose isn’t into cats either.

  Drake sat down at the table, took a long drink and typed. Really? I always buy them kitty things when I travel and I gave them matching Hello Kitty T-shirts for Christmas.

  Silence. And then, I was with you at Christmas. You gave them tickets to the ballet.

  Ah, well. The gig was up. Drake drained his drink, pushed away from the table, and wondered how soon he could go home.

  Chapter 9

  You should always have a healthy kitchen free of temptations. If you happen to be in close quarters with someone who insists on stashing trash, give them their own cupboard or drawer in the fridge. Always use a cuss word when referring to this cupboard or refrigerator drawer. I generally don’t advocate cussing, but in this instance it’s highly recommended. If swearing isn’t your style, you might consider the terms “poopy pantry” or “caca cupboard.”

  From Losing Penny and Pounds

  Penny returned on shaking legs to her seat at the table. She folded her hands and set them in her lap to keep them still then focused her attention on Rose.

  Her future sister-in-law looked so happy with her flushed cheeks, glittering eyes, and bright smile. Before his engagement, Penny took every little problem and hiccough in her life to Richard and he would solve it. Not only was he her big brother, but he was also the smartest person she knew. But there were, of course, some problems she just couldn’t share with Richard, and this was one of them. Not that he couldn’t figure out a solution, but because she didn’t want him to worry about anything or anyone but Rose and the fast-approaching wedding.

  And she knew he would over react.

  Kayla caught Penny’s eye, and the laughter in Kayla’s expression died. Leaning over, she put her hand on Penny’s arm and whispered, “Are you okay?”

  Penny nodded.

  Kayla pinned her with a stare and said, “Liar.”

  Penny tried to smile and shrugged.

  “Was it the Lurk?” Kayla whispered.

  Penny nodded.

  “Oh my gosh!” Kayla sat up straight.

  Penny shushed her.

  “He’s here?”

  Penny shook her head and motioned for Kayla to get close enough to whisper in her ear. “I just had a weird text conversation.” She thought for a second and then reconsidered. “But you know, it can’t be him.” The more she thought about it, the more she knew she had to be wrong. After all, she sent the first text. It must have been a random wrong number. She lifted her finger at Kayla, telling her to wait and to hold on to her panic. “Maybe I dialed wrong. I thought I was texting my aunt, but it was clearly someone else,” Penny said.

  “Your aunt texts?” Kayla asked. “She doesn’t have Internet or cable TV, but she texts?”

  Penny laughed and relaxed her shoulders. After a few deep breaths, the tension in her spine melted a fraction. A wrong number. Not the Lurk.

  Kayla sent Rose a quick look. “Are you going to tell Richard?”

  “The police said the less people who know the better.” Penny shook her head. “Besides, you know how Richard is. He’d cancel their honeymoon, or make me go with them.”

  “Your plan is almost as crazy.”

/>   Penny wrapped her arms around Kayla and held her close. “It’s going to be great!”

  “There are so many people who would love to have you stay.”

  Penny interrupted her. “And I’d be putting them all in danger. No, the beach house is a good plan.”

  “Is it isolated? Somehow I imagine it in the wilds of Washington, far from civilization.”

  “It’s outside a tiny town. They have electricity, running water and everything.”

  “Everything?” Kayla raised her eyebrows.

  “Maybe not everything, but everything I need, and more importantly, the one thing I don’t need.”

  “You really think that the Lurk is going to buy that you’re traveling the world?”

  “I’m hoping that the Lurk and everyone I know, except you, Phoebe, and Aunt Mae, will think I’m traveling the world.”

  The women around the table burst into whistles and laughter as Rose lifted a negligee from a tiny pink gift bag that looked like a collection of feathers. Penny wondered how much weight she would have to lose to look good in feathers.

  “I still don’t get it.” Kayla frowned at her dessert. “Why not just go with Phoebe? Why go to the edge of nowhere and create an elaborate charade?”

  Penny bit into her salad to stall. She knew exactly why she didn’t want to travel. Her weight loss and exercise routines were too new and too fragile to subject to months of sleeping in weird places, dealing with different time zones, eating foreign things, and not having time to work out. But Penny knew if she told Kayla her reasons, Kayla would lecture her. Penny smiled and said, “I love the beach house. It’s the perfect place to write the cookbook. Besides, with Phoebe’s photos and the magic of online media, all of my followers, including the Lurk, will think I’m abroad.”

  Chapter 10

  Hans woke to find himself tied to a bed. “I am Hans the Mighty!” he roared. “Am I a thrall to be captured in your snare? No. I rule with blood and terror. The people of the villages lining the great eastern coast shake in fear at the sight of my mighty sails.”

  A soft voice answered, “Perhaps before your bloody reign begins, you would like your garments.”

  From Hans and the Sunstone

  Drake followed Melinda into the beach house, suitcases in his hands and duffle bags beneath his arms. He stopped in the doorway. He liked the weathered wood floors and the large picture windows overlooking the Sound. He saw himself relaxing on the white denim, slip-covered sofa and chairs, and in the big rocking chair next to the stone fireplace. Drake sucked in his breath when he noticed a large oil painting of seascape dominating one wall.

  Melinda saw him staring at the painting. “An original Charlotte Rhyme.”

  “I knew her,” he said, turning away to look out at the clouds gathering over the Sound.

  “Supposedly she was completely insane,” Melinda said, coming to stand behind him. Despite the heavy clouds and mean wind, Melinda wore cutoff jeans and a tight T-shirt. Whatever message she was trying to send, Drake wasn’t interested in reading it.

  “She didn’t like me,” Drake said, his throat tight.

  “Well, then that settles it. She must have been crazy.” When Melinda took a suitcase from Drake’s hand, her fingers brushed his, and a small trill of warning tingled up his arm. “Do you want these in the bedroom?”

  Drake tried to swallow. “Is there just one?”

  “No, there are two upstairs and one down, although the one downstairs is more of an enclosed porch with a twin-sized bed.”

  Drake thought of following Melinda’s tight shorts up the stairs to the bedrooms and said, “I’ll stay down here.”

  “Really?”

  He didn’t know he was moving into Charlotte Rhyme territory when he’d agreed to stay at the beach house. There were so many beach communities along the Sound that he hadn’t thought the beach house would be all the way in Rose Arbor. Of course, he’d heard that Blair had gone to the Caribbean with Rawlings, so it wasn’t as if he would run into her. But he’d already sublet his apartment, so there was no going back. At least until the end of August. He reminded himself of the money. Not normally driven by finances, Drake acknowledged that without Blair cooking his food and editing his work, his expenses had risen dramatically. Plus he needed a new transmission, or a new car, since the transmission wasn’t the only thing that was fifteen years old beneath the hood.

  Melinda leaned against the doorjamb to the back porch and folded her arms across her chest, making her breasts squish together.

  It was going to be a very long summer.

  ***

  His first night at the beach house and he couldn’t sleep. The lights from the Marx home twinkled at him through the branches of the pines and alders. Melinda said she didn’t live there, but her car had been parked in the drive ever since his arrival. He had lied to her to get her to leave. He said he was tired, but now he couldn’t sleep. He was afraid to turn on the lights, afraid that she’d mistake his light for an invitation. Lying down on the sofa, he tried not to look at Charlotte’s painting. He closed his eyes, and his mind wandered back to his last conversation with Blair.

  “It’s an incredible story,” she had said, handing him a notebook. “I tried to write it down as best as I could, because I knew you would love it.”

  “Vikings and magic manuscripts?” He didn’t think his pain could grow—he thought that she’d hurt him as badly as she could—but what she said next cut deep.

  “You know you’re brilliant, but your problem is your stories lack plot. There’s no spine.”

  No spine. He’d stopped listening after that. He had walked away, completely unaware that he still held the notebook. He thought about burning it, the same way that Blair had burned his collection of poetry, but later, when the hurt had subsided, he opened the notebook.

  Blair had typed out the story. He was glad he didn’t have to read her handwriting. That would hurt.

  He tried sleeping in every bedroom in the beach house, but it wasn’t any use. The bed in the blue room had a nasty squeak, the walls of the red room looked too much like blood, and the wind whistling through the windows of the downstairs porch sounded like moaning.

  He thought about going home. Maybe he could just sneak in and sleep on the couch. Sure, he’d rented it out to his cousin for the summer, but Justin was a good guy, he probably wouldn’t mind if Drake crashed on the sofa. But Drake knew his problem wasn’t with a squeaky bed, or blood red walls, or whistling windows.

  It was the Vikings and the lost manuscript.

  Drake picked up a novel, Moby Dick, and flipped it open. “Whenever it is a damp drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses…” Aarhg. He needed something…happy. His gaze went to his stack of books. Tess of the d’Urbervilles. Bleak House. Les Misérables. Dante’s Inferno. Heart of Darkness. Not. One. Uplifting. Thing. He just wanted to be entertained. Was that so much to ask? He returned to Melville.

  Drake knew by morning he would be sluggish and stupid from lack of sleep, and he was supposed to go golfing with Don Marx at seven. He’d probably fall asleep in the cart as they drove over the fairways, his head nodding and bouncing like a grounded ball.

  Maybe it would rain. It generally did. A good gully washer would keep Don Marx and his irons and putters inside. Although a long chat with Don would certainly put Drake to sleep. Maybe he should listen to the tapes of Don he’d been recording to help him nod off. That would be torture. More torturous than even Melville. Drake went to stand by the window, searching for clouds. A smiley moon and thousands of stars twinkled at him.

  He wondered if there had been stars when the Vikings first landed on Britain’s soil. There must have stars guiding them. They must have known something about navigation or else they’d have been lost in the North Sea. Sinking back onto the sofa, he tried to empty his mind. A blank canvas. An empty sheet of crisp, white paper waiting for prose, waiting for words…waiting for Vikings.
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  Chapter 11

  Find a friend, preferably one with fur and four legs. Dogs make the best running partners. They’re not picky about the weather or the time of day. They never offer or encourage excuses. And if you’re not ready to go when they are, they carry around your sneakers to remind you that they need a run…even when you don’t think that you do.

  From Losing Penny and Pounds

  When Penny met Shep face-to-face, she knew she couldn’t live with him. Yes, he was as big and as ugly as his picture had promised—maybe that was the problem. She had studied up on German Shepherds, and she had read most of the sales pitch coming from the shelter’s director.

  “German Shepherds are the world’s leading police, guard, and military dog,” a woman with the name Nelly stenciled on her shirt said. “Approachable, direct, fearless, energetic, and fun-loving.” Nelly opened the door to Shep’s kennel.

  Shep curled his lip and the fur on the back of his neck rose making Penny think of two things: Cujo the killer dog, and an article she had read online about the warning signs of German Shepherd behavioral problems. Penny didn’t remember the warning signs, but she did know that she absolutely didn’t want to hire a pet psychiatrist. She had more than enough crazy in her life; she didn’t need to invite doggy-psycho to her party.

  “He’s not for me,” Penny said, backing away from Shep’s hostile glare.

  “Are you sure?” Nelly asked, closing and locking the door. “He really is a sweetie.”