by Gina LaManna
Meg re-read the list once more, lapsing into silence. When her eyes reached the bottom of the page, she guffawed. “Sleep naked. Good one, good one.” Wiping her eyes, she continued to chortle, mumbling random words to herself. “Sleep naked, I like it.”
I took the notebook back, reading over the words written in my mom’s handwriting once again. Back in the day, she’d never opened up this side of herself – the goofy, innocent side. Now in retrospect, many of her bucket list items were quite ironic for a woman who’d made her living dancing in sparkly bikinis on stage. Sleep naked? Not a far stretch. Kiss a boy? Well, there were plenty of men at her bar, but maybe not the “nice” kind she was looking to date. Start up a conversation with a stranger? I suppose dancing didn’t require much talking, but she dealt with her fair share of customers.
“This list is so sweet,” I said. “Can you imagine my mom at sixteen?”
Meg snorted. “She was a sheltered sixteen-year-old if the worst thing she could think to do was sleep naked and skip a day of school.”
“Carlos and Nora were her parents. I imagine she didn’t get away with much.”
Lapsing into silence, I considered the notebook. The meaning behind it. My mother must have written this back when she lived at the estate. Once she discovered she was pregnant with me, our best guess was that she’d run away from home to protect my father, although we’d never truly have the complete story. She’d passed away just over three years ago now, but the story was coming together piece by piece, and one of those pieces was my father.
“I just had a good idea.” Meg puffed out her chest and looked proud. “You know what you have to do?”
“Do I want to know?”
“You’ve got to complete these for her.”
“Maybe she already did complete the list.” Reading through numbers one through ten, I bit my lip in thought. “I imagine she probably got through most of them.”
“Why not, Lace? It’ll be fun! I’ll do it with you. I bet even Anthony would help with some of them, since you can’t kiss me in the rain. I mean you could, but I don’t think that would count. You could also go on a date with me, but I don’t count as nice.”
“Yeah, or a boy,” I pointed out. “So that wouldn’t work.”
“See? Me and Anthony will be your partners. Has he seen this list?”
I nodded.
Meg clapped her hands in approval. “Great. Where is he now? Let’s ask him.”
Glancing up at the clock, I stood up. “Later. We’ve got to get going. Do you want to walk up to the estate with me?”
“Do hippopotamuses smile?”
“Um…I don’t know.”
“Don’t you listen to Christmas music?”
I hesitated. “So…you want to come with me?”
“Do hippopotamuses smile?”
“Um, yes?”
“Duh.” Holding the list out, Meg made a sweeping, Vanna White gesture. “Here, take a picture of this with your phone so you don’t forget anything. Capisci?”
I raised an eyebrow. “Since when do you speak Italian?”
“I’m practically one of the family now.” Meg blinked. “Clay basically declared his love for me.”
“But you haven’t gone on a real date yet.”
“We’re taking things slow,” Meg said. “I thought you’d understand that, Miss Undies-in-the-purse.”
I stood up. “Speaking of, let’s stop by my apartment after Carlos’s chat. It’s laundry time.”
CHAPTER 5
“Ladies.” Harold swung the door open. “How are we on this fine February morning?”
“Frozen to the bone and in desperate need of coffee,” Meg said. “You know where they keep the marshmallows, Harold? My buns are freezing. They’re actually frosted over.”
The butler blinked once. He’d been imported straight from England before I was born. Despite all his years on the job, and all the things he’d seen from Carlos, Meg still managed to stump him speechless. Meg and her frosty buns.
“Hi, Harold.” Kissing him on the cheek, I glanced around the entrance. “Are Carlos and Nora around? What’s Carlos’s mood like?”
Harold bit his lip. “Nora’s in a baking sort of mood, unfortunately for my palate, and Carlos has been quiet this morning.”
“I’m not sure which is more scary,” I said, wincing at the news. “They’re in the kitchen?”
Harold began to nod, but halfway through his head bob, a tornado of a man whipped out the front door, nearly knocking the butler on his rear end. Meg’s reflexes were faster than mine, and she caught Harold before he could collapse.
“I never thought I’d say this,” Harold said, blinking in surprise. “But thank you for catching me.”
“No problem.” Meg gave his butt a little pat. “My pleasure, ol’ buddy. So, you and Lizabeth got any plans for Valentine’s Day?”
I didn’t stick around to hear the answer. I jogged out the front door and called after the tornado who’d knocked down Harold. The tornado had a name, and we called him Nicky. At the moment, Nicky was disappearing down the driveway. “Hey, where are you going?”
He turned and gave me a blank stare, blanker than usual, and kept walking.
“Nicky!” I started jogging down the front steps. “What’s going on? Why’d you run over the doorman?”
“Lacey, let him go. Carlos is waiting for you,” Harold cautioned. “Plenty of people have run me over. I really don’t mind.”
I slowed my jog, then turned around and rested a hand on my hip. I definitely didn’t stop jogging because I had a side-ache. “Harold, people shouldn’t be running you over.”
“It’s really quite amazing how people use the front door to express their emotions.” Harold nodded wisely. “They storm through it, they slam it, they hang on the knob, they come in and out ten times, they sneak through…really, you can tell a lot about a person the way they leave the front door.”
“That’s surprisingly perceptive. I wasn’t expecting life lessons this morning.”
“Harold, do this.” Meg clenched her fist, then held it straight out in front of her.
“What am I doing?” Harold’s eyebrows twitched closer together.
“Just do it.” Meg bounced her arm up and down once. “Close your fist then hold your arm straight out. Stiff, like a dead guy.”
Harold’s face paled, but he stuck his arm straight out like a lever, his fist closed.
“Good. Now, pretend you’re holding a microphone.” Meg opened her fist just enough so that a microphone could slip between her fingers.
“I don’t want to hold a microphone.”
“Pretend you’re holding a mic.”
“I don’t want a mic!”
“It’s invisible!” Meg looked exasperated. “Just do it, Harold.”
“I don’t understand.”
“That doesn’t matter.” Meg patted his shoulder. “Now open up those fingers, and pretend you’re holding a microphone.”
Maybe Meg’s grip was too tight on his shoulders. Maybe Harold was still thinking about the “dead guy” comment from before. Maybe Harold just wanted to get rid of Meg. Whatever he was thinking, he loosened his fist enough so that an invisible microphone might be able to slide into his grasp.
“Good. Now don’t put your fist this way, put it this way.” Meg rotated Harold’s fist. “You want the microphone horizontal.”
“But that’s not how you hold a microphone.” Harold’s expression looked pained. “You’re doing it all wrong.”
“No, I’m teaching you something cool, Harold. I’m teaching you how to be cool. Now hold your dang microphone sideways.”
Harold twisted his hand sideways so he looked like a stiff Frankenstein trying to give me knuckles. I cautiously raised my own hand and gave him a little fist bump followed by some spirit fingers.
“What are you doing?” Now Harold shifted his alarmed gaze to me.
“She’s doing an exploding fist-bump,” Meg said crossl
y. “Which is not what we’re teaching him, Lacey. Leave the bumping for later.”
“What sort of bumping is Lacey doing later?” Anthony appeared suddenly from behind. If Meg or Harold had seen him coming, they hadn’t warned me.
“Now’s not the time for jokes, Anthony.” Meg put both her hands on her hips. “I’m teaching Harold how to drop the mic. All the kids are doing it these days.”
“What’s a drop of the mic?” Harold raised his eyebrows. “Why wouldn’t I hold onto the microphone?”
Meg threw her hands up in the air. “Anthony, why did you have to interrupt?”
“I’m just coming to work.” Giving me a sideways stare, Anthony’s eyes danced in amusement. “But I’ll be back later, by the looks of things.”
“Wait, and watch,” Meg instructed.
To my surprise, Anthony didn’t make his normal move to slide past Meg and into the house. He crossed his arms across his very nice, very distracting chest, and…
“Lacey, pay attention to me, not Anthony’s body.” Clearing her throat, Meg startled me from my daydream. I gave a sheepish grin at Anthony, whose mouth twitched upwards, and then I directed my gaze towards Meg’s tutorial.
“Dropping the mic is the new way of saying ‘You got served’.” Meg grinned. “Capisci?”
“What are you serving?” Harold asked.
“Tea and crunk-ettes.” Meg rolled her eyes.
“Crumpets.”
Meg shook her head. “No, Harold. ‘You got served’ means you’ve been burned, or…Lacey, help me out.”
“That’s about it,” I said.
“So if I burn you with one of my witty comments, I drop the mic after.” Harold blinked. “Okay.”
“You can’t burn me,” Meg said. “But that’s the general idea of it.”
“How do I drop an invisible microphone?” Harold looked at his hand, his fist still clenched in front of his body.
“Like this.” Meg then gathered all of her confidence in the form of a big breath, puffing her chest out again, and walked right up to Anthony. “Yo, Anthony. Lacey said she wanted to hang out with me on Valentine’s Day instead of you.”
“I didn’t say that—” I interrupted.
“Boom!” Meg called. She opened her fist, gave a little shimmy-shake with her shoulders, and raised her hands before disappearing through the front door.
“Did she just drop the microphone on me?” Anthony asked.
“Looks like it.” I shrugged.
“I don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day,” Anthony said. “So you can hang out with her if you want.”
I bit my lip. “Oh. Okay.”
“Boom!” Harold shouted. He opened his fist, and then stepped backwards. “Did I do it right?”
“Harold, Harold, Harold.” Meg reappeared in the hallway, clasping the butler on the shoulder. “We have work to do, young grasshopper. Keep practicing.”
“Carlos is going to be angry at you for keeping him waiting.” Harold turned to Meg, stuck his fist out, and then opened it. “Boom, just dropped the mic again.”
“Harold, you can’t just go willy-nilly dropping the microphone, or it doesn’t work. It’s like the boy who cried wolf.”
“And on that note, gang, it’s time for Meg and me to get going,” I said, pointing inside and hooking my arm through Meg’s. Together we started down the hallway. “Did Clay say anything about celebrating this weekend yet?”
“I always celebrate the weekend.” Meg gave me a funny look. “Sometimes I lump Wednesday, Thursday, and Monday into the weekend to join Friday, Saturday and Sunday. So really, Tuesdays are the tricky ones.”
“I celebrate Tuesdays.”
“Good on you.”
“But what about Valentine’s? You can’t call me last minute to come fix your hair. I need some advance warning.”
“Oh, I decided that we’re gonna celebrate. I’m sick of waiting for him to ask, so I’m gonna take the initiative.” Giving a fist pump, Meg turned towards me. “I’m gonna shoot Clay.”
“Excuse me?”
“Like Cupid.” As we crossed the Great Hall, Meg grinned. Filled with statues, stained-glass windows, and regal carpeting, this room wouldn’t be out of place in the Vatican. “I’m gonna shoot him with a little bow and arrow.”
“You know that’s just a story, right? People don’t actually go shooting each other. It’s symbolism.”
“Then I am symbolically gonna put an arrow in Clay’s shoulder.”
“You worry me.” Resting a hand on her shoulder, I looked into her eyes. “Don’t hurt him, okay?”
“Girl, relax. Clay and I have an understanding. We don’t talk about stuff like ‘dating.’ It’s so arbitrary.”
“What do you talk about?” We marched down the Hallway of Infamy towards the heavy, mahogany kitchen door, the way lined with framed mug shots, parking violations, and my spelling bee certificate from eighth grade. First place? You know it.
“Well, after that weird confession on Christmas Eve, not a whole lot changed.” Looking down at the floor, Meg dragged one of her toes against the shiny wood. “After that, we just kind of kept hanging out as usual.”
I raised an eyebrow. “What does that mean?”
“It means I stop by your place and annoy Clay until he kicks me out.”
“Have you kissed?”
“Not really.”
“Have you tried to ask him out?”
“Who do you think I am, Mary fudgin’ Poppins?”
To say Meg had an odd relationship with love would be accurate. In fact, I might call her a “love skeptic,” though she had a good reason for it. Having watched her mom’s revolving bedroom door as a child, I imagined it’d done a number on her ability to believe in fairy tales; in finding one man who’d actually treat her nicely. Someone who actually cared for the person she was inside.
“Have you ever had a guy stay the whole night?” I snuck in one last question as I rested my hand on the swinging door at the end of the hallway.
“Specify what you mean by night.”
“I mean, you went out to dinner with a guy before ten p.m. on Day Number One. And then the clock hit midnight. And then you went out to breakfast or had coffee on Day Number Two. A sleepover.”
“Now you’re talking that Mary Poppins shit again.”
“No, Meg, I’m talking about a normal relationship.”
Meg tapped her lip with her pointer finger. “Nope! Haven’t had one of those, either.”
“Well, how about—”
“No time.” Meg stuck out a clenched fist, opened it a tiny bit, and then let go of an imaginary microphone. “Boom. This conversation is over.”
CHAPTER 6
“So.” Ever the conversationalist, my grandfather sat across the table from Meg and me, his hands steepled in front of his face.
Meg shifted in her seat, craning her neck around. “Is Nora here? Just wondering what you guys had for breakfast.”
I elbowed her, while keeping my eyes fixated on Carlos. My grandfather, head of the Italian mob, St. Paul branch, squinted at me. Over the last few years, he’d mastered the fine art of ignoring Meg.
Even as he sized us up, Carlos’s face took on a strange expression. As always, his salt and peppered hair was combed to perfection, except for one, single strand that clung to his forehead. This set off alarm bells all by its lonesome; he never had a hair out of place. Intimidation was Carlos’s favorite game to play, despite his short stature and skinny legs, and it was rumored he could make guests flinch with the blink of his eye. That’s before he brought out the big guns. Literally. From the basement. I’m pretty sure it was stocked full of very, very big guns. And not just Anthony’s arms.
“You wanted to see us?” Glancing over my shoulder, I noted Nora’s absence. Another alarm, this one even louder. Nora never missed the chance to be part of the gossip. Plus, she could smell a hungry stomach two miles away, and Meg’s insides were growling. Something was definitely up at Casa Luzzi.
“No, I wanted to see you.” Carlos cleared his throat, glancing pointedly at Meg. “You. Singular. Not The Two Musketeers.”
“We’re a team,” I said.
“A team that’s starving.” Meg looked around. “Seriously, do you have a donut? Or a bagel? I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’d even settle for a plain ol’, healthy bagel right about now.”
“I’ll buy you lunch after,” I whispered. “Keep your shorts on.”
“Lacey, I can’t wait that long,” she whispered back. “I’d even take a wheat bagel right now. Does that tell you how desperate I am?”
Carlos stood up, took two short steps over to the counter, and pulled a baguette as long as my leg, but three times skinnier, from behind a canister of flour. He held it under Meg’s nose like a threat, his eyebrows pulled into dangerous knots.
“Carlos, what are you doing with that?” I rested a hand on the baguette, which he was holding like one of those fencing sword-thingamabobs. “Put down the baguette.”
Carlos ignored me. He and Meg were in the middle of a stare-off, neither of them paying attention to my peacekeeping attempts. Carlos’s eyes narrowed. Meg huffed. Carlos grunted. Meg squeaked noxious fumes. Carlos dropped the baguette.
“I knew I could win in a staring contest,” Meg said, happily removing the twist-tie from the end of the loaf. “I practice in the mirror all the time. I win, like, 100% of the time against myself.”
“Yes, but you also lose.” I tapped my knuckles against the table. “And you sort of cheated. You made Carlos’s eyes tear up.”
“That’s strategy, baby. Now, go on and discuss your business.” Meg ripped off a hunk of bread and leaned back, a pleased look on her face.
I brushed crumbs from the picnic table in front of me – the large, sturdy table that’d been imported from Italy years back – that now served as the central gathering place for family and food. Sometimes it was my favorite place in the whole estate, just not right at the moment. Carlos’s “death stare” had a way of ruining even the most powerful appetites.
“Here.” Carlos reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper that’d been crumpled into a ball. He slid it across the table, his eyes flicking up at the last second, watching my face for a reaction.
