by Rice, Debby
“No, honey, she’s just sleepy and wants to be left alone. Now go to bed. If you’re not back in your room in 60 seconds, I’m calling Zoya.”
“Open the door so I can see Sugar!” Lucille was kicking the door. “Why won’t you let me in?”
“Lucille, I said go to bed!” Charmaine yelled over the din.
“I have a gun.”
I remembered the pistol Larry kept at the bottom of his underwear drawer. How many times did I tell him to get rid of that thing?
“What did she say?” Larry was on his feet, and for a minute I thought he was going to throw the door open and let Lucille catch his full frontal.
“Lucille, please repeat what you just said very slowly. I want to be sure I understood,” said Larry.
“I have a gun. Open the door and let me see Sugar.”
“Okay, Lucille, calm down. Sugar’s fine. Just give me a minute.” Larry grabbed his silk boxers from the floor, pulled them on and very slowly opened the door a tiny crack. His shoulders, which had been hunched up, to the ceiling, relaxed into their usual slouch. He let out a deep breath and opened the door wider. Charmaine released both me and the bedspread, which she had been clutching to her chest like it was made of Kevlar. There stood Lucille with her thumb and index finger pointed at Larry. She was smiling, but it was the obsequious expression of an underling giving the boss really bad news.
I was so happy to see Lucille that I couldn’t stop yapping and chasing my tail, a compulsive reaction to excitement.
Larry’s face was tight with anger. His arm twitched. He took a step closer to Lucille, but then stopped and folded his arms across his chest. He was gripping himself so hard that his knuckles were white. “Lucille, I can’t believe you did that. Are you crazy? Pull another stunt like that and you’ll be heading for an institution, not a foster family. Get it together. Veronica would be furious. Is threatening people something a future Olympic gymnast does?”
“I’m sorry, Larry. Really, I didn’t mean it. I just wanted to see Sugar. Please believe me, I didn’t mean to hurt anyone. I only said that because you wouldn’t open the door. “Oh, Sugar, look at you. You have a new outfit. You look so pretty.” She scooped me up. Being the agent of such happiness is a superpower. It is one small advantage dogs have over humans. What other species can induce ecstasy without trying? Humans dress us in ridiculous outfits. They make us beg, shake and roll over and tease us with table scraps. We are surrogate friends, lovers, brothers, sisters, moms and dads—sometimes all at the same time. The compensation is unconditional love. We can demolish a couch or bark incessantly, and we are still adored. There is nothing intellectual in this bond. It is all heart. As Cherry, the only pain I felt was my own. As Lucille’s pet, I was a tuning fork. Her heart was a constant vibration in my chest.
Zoya came shuffling down the hall, hand shading her eyes as if to dim the glare of Larry and Charmaine’s half-naked bodies. Her room was at the other end of the condo, by the kitchen. But the commotion was loud enough to waken her. She was wearing a quilted bathrobe several sizes too big and pink slippers in the shape of bunny heads. Their ears were tipped in gray from dragging on the floor—hand-me-downs, perhaps from another dead client. Her braid swished sloppily in time with the dangling rodent appendages. Zoya’s wardrobe must have been secretly sapping her vitality. Everything she put on her back was the shadow of someone else. I wondered what she would choose for herself and imagined her fashion aesthetic teetering precariously between sister-wife and glitter tramp.
“Bozhe moi, Lucille. What you doing in Mr. Larry and Miss Charmaine’s bedroom? Put Sugar down and come with me. You got big day tomorrow. Mrs. Fletcher coming at 9:00 a.m. She taking us to the Kingdom Hall to meet some prospects.”
“What’s a prospect?”
“A new mama and papa for you, milashka. She think maybe she got some people who want to adopt—make you their little girl for always.”
“I’m not going. My mama won’t like it. She told me I can’t go with Mrs. Fletcher. I need to follow my career path.” Lucille’s eyes narrowed, and even her braids seem to stiffen with resolve.
For an instant, Larry, Charmaine and Zoya were all on exactly the same page, wondering if Lucille’s problems were far greater than they imagined.
I, on the other hand, was elated. This was the proof that Don Paco was not leading me on a wild ghost chase. Veronica was here. Lucille was communicating with her, and we were one tiny step closer to salvation.
“Lucille, don’t be saying crazy stuff to Zoya. She’s trying to help you. Now get to bed.” Larry was staring at her like she had Ebola.
Charmaine looked down at her cleavage, then snatched me out of Lucille’s arms. She did this as if hoping Lucille wouldn’t notice, but she was clumsy and lost her grip. I fell on the floor between the two of them. Thanks to Larry’s penchant for carpeting with the toe appeal of a suburban lawn I bounced, instead of shattering.
“Look what you’ve done!” Lucille screamed. “You don’t care about Sugar at all. You just want her to be your purse buddy.”
Larry grabbed Lucille’s shoulder and turned her around. “You better get to bed right now.” Whatever modicum of patience he had been exhibiting was exhausted.
Zoya took Lucille’s hand and pulled her down the long hall to her bedroom.
As I watched their retreat, I realized that Lucille had not been hallucinating. For walking next to her was the shadow of the only woman I knew who looked like Venus on steroids. I was too surprised to even consider whether I could communicate with Veronica. She appeared to be wearing the clothes she died in. Her leather cat suit fell around her muscular curves in shreds and tatters. A wedge of inky hair swished across her butt as she strode after Lucille and Zoya. She looked over her shoulder at me, smiled sweetly and flipped a backhanded bird at Larry and Charmaine.
Chapter 10
“When the physical organism breaks up, the soul survives. It then takes on another body.”
Paul Gauguin
Were Lucille and I saved or damned? The results of an astral collaboration between Veronica and Don Paco seemed unpredictable, to say the least. Given the volatility of those spectral personalities, Satan might be a more desirable ally.
I didn’t know what had occurred during Lucille’s trip to the Kingdom Hall to meet the “prospects.” I had not seen her for several days. Although Larry was anxious to have her gone, the condo was very big. She was more like a mosquito bite on his ankle than a pimple on his nose, only remarkable when it itched.
So Christmas was a reprieve for Lucille, as I was certain that any handover would take place after the festivities. Charmaine and I, as her best purse buddy, were busy planning Larry’s party. She was applying the same compulsive diligence to researching Christmas as she did to discovering the idiosyncrasies of the mini Chi. Coming from a religious Jewish family, she had lots of ground to cover. Happily, she was more focused on the pagan aspects like recipes for wassail, mistletoe configurations and various other schemes for decking the halls than she was on Jesus and the manger. Most interesting of all, we had hooked up with an old acquaintance. The high priest of white was Chicago’s hottest planner of green parties. Yes, Cristoff, Trudy Dichter’s rep to the distressed, bereaved and seekers of lost souls, was now the “go-to” for a politically correct Yule. Not that Larry and Charmaine gave a shit about the environment. But green was the new black and Cristoff, via his connections with wealthy ghost grovelers, had slithered and shimmied his way up the social ladder.
He had entranced Charmaine with his wispy New Age confidence. She was convinced that he could transform a steamy stew of gambling, drugs and sex into a high-end holiday soiree that would exceed Larry’s expectations and, quite possibly, even his supersized budget.
The three of us were huddled in the solarium. Charmaine and Cristoff had their heads together at the round teak table that was the room’s centerpiece. This hulking piece of furniture, sourced by Charmaine’s favorite decorator, looked li
ke it belonged in an outpost of a colonial empire. In keeping with the Raj décor, I was lying in Charmaine’s lap on a paisley silk tuffet. The pillow’s long gold tassels spilled down the sides of her boots, giving her the look of a drum majorette. She was pouring tea into transparent porcelain cups. The pot was wrapped in chunky floral-print bunting to keep it warm and tied with a green satin bow. Afternoon tea was one of Charmaine’s new vomit-inducing affectations. It was the result of her slavish desire to ape the imagined lifestyle of former A-list clients at Barney’s.
The air was warm and slightly humid. Orchids in a bouquet of gaudy island colors dangled from assorted trellises and pots—fragile plants that had no business existing inches away from freezing temperatures and would definitely perish without their weekly grooming by Personal Paradise Exotic Plant Rental. The view from this high-rise jungle was a winter wonderland. Sprays of snow swirled romantically in the twilight. Forty floors below, a wicked blizzard had turned Lake Shore Drive into a parking lot and sent the legions of homeless corner-sitters off to warming centers. The wind raised humpback swells on the lake and sunk below-zero chops into the city’s hapless pedestrians. Angry motorists shouted at their windshields and gave each other the finger. But at this advantaged elevation, the world was all silence and sparkle. A commuter’s nightmare read as a delightfully tangled skein of holiday lights.
Cristoff had lost the séance headgear and sported a jaunty white mink beret (more appropriate than the turban to his role as party guru) and enormous furry white après-ski boots. The boots, which made his feet look like a Wookiee’s, were miraculously spotless, as though he had astrally projected himself over the grime-encrusted snow and slush. This was not a comfortable outfit for the tropical environment, and tiny beads of sweat were forming on his upper lip.
“Charmaine, sweetheart, I’ve prepared an agenda for our meeting today. Oh, I didn’t notice the dog. It’s sooooooo tiiiiiiiny. You know, I’m slightly allergic.”
Delicate sniffles punctuated this revelation, and he buried his nose in a white silk handkerchief the size of a napkin.
“I feel like I’ve seen that dog before,” he said, cocking his head to get a better view of me.
I looked up sweetly, trying to match his doe-eyed gaze.
“She’s a mini Chi. They are a very rare breed—almost impossible to get. Her name’s Sugar.”
“Sugar—I think one of Trudy’s clients had a little dog named Sugar. It made a terrible scene at a reading. Peed all over the white carpet. There was a disgusting yellow puddle and the entire room had to be reblessed and carpeted.”
“Well, it can’t be this Sugar,” said Charmaine emphatically. “This Sugar never has accidents, and if she did they would be just like her—very, very tiny. She’s a highly trained animal. You can see how many lovely things we have here, and Sugar never, ever damages anything. She’s so dainty. I can let her walk all over the entire top of this table, and she will not break one single thing.”
Charmaine set me on top of the table. The teacups winked, begging to be smashed. But I stood still. My status as best purse buddy was too important to risk.
“See how good she is?” said Charmaine, tapping an acrylic fingernail on the table next to me.
I was Charmaine’s alter ego. My pee was her pee, and her cheeks had turned pink with emotion. Cristoff looked both shocked and a little frightened by this unexpected outburst.
“Oh, don’t worry, honey, I’m sure this Sugar is a perfect little lady,” he said in the ghost-whisperer tone he uses with Don Paco. “Now, we have lots of ground to cover today and not much time. Let’s talk first about party themes. You definitely need a theme. Less is always more. I’m very fond of one-word impact statements. They are so chic. Let’s consider a few ideas.” He paused, stood up, took a chest-expanding breath and lifted both arms over his head in a yoga stretch. Then he swan-dived forward until his palms swept the floor, rose and stood on his tiptoes. The mink beret fell off, exposing oily Pirates of the Caribbean dreads.
“Ah, that’s better. I need to get my Chi flowing to be really creative. You might consider taking one of my rebalancing sessions before the party. It really illuminates the complexion. All right,” he squeezed his eyes shut and pursed his lips, “SNO-OW! SPAR-KLE! FES-TAL!” Each word, including “snow,” was enunciated in two syllables. “I really like Festal. It sounds holiday with a medieval twist.”
“Well, snow would be very appropriate. I’m sure there will be lots of it,” said Charmaine slyly. “But can’t we have a few more words?”
“Oh, we don’t want to clutter up our thoughts with words. Snow it is. Imagine snow—sparkly, sprinkly, Tinkerbelle snow—let that image guide you in all the other decisions. But if you really want more words, we could use Snow as the design theme and Festal to style the mood. Yes, I think that’s perfect. It covers all the bases. Let’s close our eyes for a second and focus.”
Charmaine, dying to please, shut her eyes and squinched her face in concentration. She wanted to be sure to give this task appropriate effort, so the two of them sat this way for a long time.
“All right,” said Cristoff, “next on the list, decorations—candles. Hundreds and hundreds of candles. Candles really scream Christmas. But of course they must be soy candles, because wax candles are very destructive to free radicals in the environment. So I’ve brought some samples.” He unzipped a white leather backpack. “We’ve got vanilla fudge, arctic snow, cloud cover, starched shirt, virgin blanket, whipped cream, milk bath, sea foam and polar bear. You tell me which you like best.”
“Gee, they’re all white. Is there any difference between them? Are they scented?”
“Actually, there are subtle shifts in the color palette, and when you put masses of them together, each color looks completely distinct. Scent is definitely a no-no, unless it’s with organic, essential oils, which we could do. But that might be overkill. I’m thinking massive caldrons of potpourri made entirely from local prairie plants. It has a wonderful grassy Midwest sort of smell.”
“Grassy doesn’t sound very Christmas, and cauldrons, that seems kind of Halloween.”
“Oh, absolutely not. These are Christmas Cauldrons. Kind of like those Salvation Army thingies. Only they’ll be silver, of course. And the grass scent reflects Bethlehem and Baby Jesus in a manger—not that any of that would be our focus. Now, an all-white buffet with splashes of silver and red is truly fabulous.”
“I’m not sure that would work,” said Charmaine.
I could tell this topic was making her nervous, because she started munching on her very expensive manicure.
“Larry’s favorite food is steak, and he really wants to serve filet. He’s connected in the restaurant business and can get them wholesale, you know.”
There was a long pause.
“Well, what about this?” said Cristoff. Coquilles St. Jacque, Tofulets with white mushroom caps and chardonnay sauce, white asparagus with beurre blanc, endive and apple salad—there’s that splash of red—with macadamia nuts and for dessert. Now this is really special, an all white Bûche de Noël. Remember, think FESTAL/SNOW.”
“Why can’t filets be the splashes of red?”
“Filet is brown, and we don’t want brown anywhere. Brown clogs the chi. There’s a reason brown rhymes with down. It will drag your party down, down, down. Besides, I thought you wanted an Eco Christmas. That is my specialty. Really, Charmaine, I can’t be involved with meat.”
“You said it would be green, not vegetarian.”
“Well, I thought that was understood,” he sniffed.
“You know, Cristoff, I think I need to stop for today. Before we go any further, I need to talk with Larry about the menu. Why don’t you email me the rest of the ideas you wanted to discuss.”
Charmaine’s eyes had glazed over, and her blush had rubbed off. She looked exhausted. I had a moment of sympathy for her predicament. Larry and Cristoff were two demanding masters, and the consequences of disappointing either were
wearing her out.
Chapter 11
“He saw all these forms and faces in a thousand relationships… become newly born. Each one was mortal, a passionate, painful example of all that is transitory. Yet none of them died, they only changed, were always reborn, continually had a new face: only time stood between one face and another.”
Hermann Hesse
Evil keeps a low profile. The stink-breathed monster disguises itself in bunny slippers and a “Jehovah Saves” T-shirt. While Larry and Charmaine did not have Lucille’s best interests at heart, they were not attempting to profit from her misery. But Zoya was busy selling her little charge to the highest bidder. Although smoking, alcohol and drugs were on Zoya’s new list of soul-damning activities (like Oprah’s diets, I was making bets with myself on how long these privations could be sustained), child- brokering did not seem not to impede a joyous afterlife. Zoya’s ethical disconnect may have resulted from growing up in a country where everything has a price and anything, from passports to plutonium to children, can be bought or sold.
I witnessed this scummy negotiation on the way to my fitting. Yes, Charmaine had ordered me a custom-designed creation from Chi Couture for the Christmas party. It was a riff on the outfit she would be wearing, adapted for four legs and a tail. I was packed in a nylon carrying case; it was hard to see through the plastic window. Zoya was huffing and puffing and banging the case around as if I weighed 30 pounds instead of 30 ounces. This was her way to express outrage at a list of indignities: One, she hates dogs. Two, she despises me because Charmaine makes her treat me like another human mistress. Three, she does not like to be sent on errands, preferring to circulate around the condo from TV to TV, absorbed in compulsive cleaning. Four, when she chose Chicago, she thought it would be warmer than St. Petersburg, and now the temperature was below zero. Fortunately, Charmaine had wrapped me in a cashmere blanket, so Zoya’s passive-aggressive kickboxes didn’t make much difference.
