Casserole Diplomacy and Other Stories

by Various

  He should have stayed in Wisconsin. It was five cross-town blocks to where he’d parked his car—five Manhattan cross-town blocks, the better part of a mile—in the rain, sleet, snow and the pounding heat of high August.

  An exquisite pain took that moment to drive a rusty cavalry sabre into the pit of his stomach. That second martini at Lloyd’s Bar. Or was it the third? He’d have to cut back. Jim gagged at the curb. He bent over with his head between his knees and vomited in cascading waves. He felt immediately better but his eyes were now blinded by tears. He felt for the curbing with his heel, but it wasn’t there; he tripped and stumbled. In a yellow arc, a medallioned taxi swerved past in a tight uptown turn, its driver leaning on the horn and screaming curses in a foreign language.

  Yeah—from here on out, one drink then home. He should have stayed on the farm in Wisconsin.

  Sally Schofield was a pretty blond woman who still looked good in a flowered spring frock. The luxury of bare arms, not a wattle or a saddle bag on her, thought Hillary. Sturdy legs—well-shaped, tanned, shaved and moisturized.

  “You shave your legs.” It was a statement.

  Sally looked surprised and re-crossed her legs, a defensive posture. “You’ll have to forgive me if I’m a little antsy. I don’t do interviews well. That’s what this is, isn’t it? An interview, the ice-breaker, the Welcome Wagon?” This was all so very TV-Land—The Andy Griffith Show, Leave it to Beaver, just like on cable.

  “Of course, you are in denial.”

  “What?”

  Hillary hummed a slight tune as she dithered with the daisy-painted saucers, sugar bowl and creamer that formed the cordon sanitaire between them. She reordered a stack of paper napkins. “We try to keep all this entre nous, strictly between us girls. Lycanthropism has enjoyed a, an, uh . . . unfavourable public image. Too much goddamned TV. That is why newcomers get the tour and the lecture. You know the drill: peasant cunning on the rampage, ozone filled air from Tesla coils and Van de Graaff generators. Great lolloping hordes of shopkeepers and railway clerks come panting up rocky switchbacks to Doctor Frankenstein’s castle with their pine pitch torches—burn and destroy, kill, ravage, extirpate, their answer to the outré—quivering with dread at anything outside their daily grind.”

  Five blocks.

  The walk should have helped with the spare tire hung carelessly at his midriff, but the day’s end martinis Jim Schofield allowed himself at Lloyd’s negated all the walk’s good work. The homicidal taxi had by now disappeared into the traffic at 42nd Street, its horn a descending Doppler ringing between the walls of buildings. He shuddered as he crossed an empty 39th Street against the light. Behind him the light turned to WALK and the smell of freshly savaged flesh, steaming and bloody, filled his nostrils. A red haze splattered across the insides of his eyes.

  Cow slaughtering. Eight-year-old Jim Schofield rolled on the blood-wet ground with the yard dog: any other day a Wisconsin farm boy playing with Ol’ Shep. At one particularly tempting chunk of offal, the yard dog snapped at him. Jim bit the dog’s ear off. Jim spat—dog blood was different, somehow forbidden. He stood to throw up, then scrambled into an empty silo with his trophy as the yard dog whimpered under the swaying corpse of Barbie AB619.

  His aunt Irene had stood, sauced-eyed, in shock. “Jim . . . no.” Deep in the hollow, ringing silo they pulled him clawing and howling off the cow’s entrails. After that Jim was watched. The family did not speak of the business of the cow killing ever again.

  From an alley stuffed with trash, one of the city’s derelicts beckoned to him. This was one of those alleyways of permanent twilight prowled by drunks, junkies, building supers and the homeless. The man was curled up on a ventilation grate, knees under his chin. He looked pretty well beat-up, but then they all did.

  Home, he had to get home.

  Jim turned to go. Another moan, weaker, brought him back. The guy was hurt, maybe by those gangs of wilding teenagers he had heard about. He had to help. He steeled himself to the likelihood of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation as he crouched over the man.

  The man was having trouble breathing. Jim tore at the man’s clothing, exposing his chest. The man’s throat was russet-ripe, a sun-swollen fruit full to bursting. As the taut skin popped, hot blood burst into Jim’s mouth and dribbled past his lips to cover his face. Where it clotted and dried.

  “Penises,” said Hillary Braunstein. “Seal penis bones. David, my first husband, cut and polished them for amulets. In Alaska. The sexually challenged wear them: Sid wears one. He rode away on his motorcycle to homestead in Alaska—David, that is. He left me for subsistence farming and penis polishing. That was 1988. He said he was going for cigarettes.”

  “Oh,” Sally’s cookie hovered, unmoving. Sally was silent. The ball was still in Hillary’s court.

  “How did you two decide on Sur la Mer?” Hillary asked.

  “Oh, I thought you knew. It was your husband, after all.” Sally entered her comfort zone; the cookie was eaten. “Jim met Sid at one of those boys’ sports nights they have after work. It was in a bar . . . In the city? Sid didn’t tell you? After that it was every month like clockwork for about a year. All Jim could talk about was moving out here.”

  “Ah . . . yes.”

  Sid Braunstein aimed his remote at a wide screen plasma TV. “You into baseball? I’m a Red Sox nut. Had to sign up for satellite service to get the games.”

  The two husbands sat out on the deck in white painted wicker chairs with cushions whose bright oversized daisies echoed the motifs of Hillary’s kitchen. Sid Braunstein was a jovial, hairy man with a tightly packed body, a college jock who hadn’t let himself go in middle age. His paunch looked solid enough to have genuine muscle behind it. Sid worked out. Jim surreptitiously touched the bulge at his own midsection. Sid noticed.

  “Don’t let it get you down. Free weights.”

  “Huh?”

  “Free weights. I have a mini gym in the garage. And the girls watch our diets. This . . .” Sid held the bowl of clam dip aloft like a druid holding a chalice high to catch the first rays of a dawning solstice, “. . . is a plenary indulgence. In durance vile here must I wake and weep and all my frowsy couch in sorrow steep—Robert Burns. It’s about getting banished to the outer darkness, as it were . . . while the girls chat up the neighbourhood amenities.”

  “Yeah, Burns.” Jim had read Robert Burns in high school.

  “Mmmm . . . don’t know how she does it, Hillary,” said Sid Braunstein. “Armed with but a simple blender and a whack of cream cheese, spices and clams, she can create ambrosia. Help yourself to another beer. We’re not shy here.”

  “Uh, yeah . . .” Jim scoured his memory for Red Sox statistics.

  “Jim met your Sid in Manhattan,” said Sally Schofield.

  “A sports bar. Lloyd’s on Madison Avenue,” said Hillary. “Sid’s baseball hangout. I know. He was on his way to the train and caught your Jim in an alleyway off 39th Street making a shambles of a homeless man. It was too late for the derelict, but Sid got your husband sedated and back to the clinic.” The older woman crossed and then uncrossed her legs. The legs were marvellously long, tanned and slender. “Your Jim wouldn’t remember. None of them do; that’s why the wives have to be in charge.”

  Limousine legs thought Sally. And doesn’t she love to show them off. She blushed at getting caught staring at her hostess’ marvellous legs.

  Too young, too pretty, thought Hillary. And dumb as a post. Let’s toss her a bone. “David did come back, eventually, but by then it was too late.” Hillary waited while Sally reflected on this last tidbit.

  “Oh . . .” A neat change of subject. But she was the one who brought it up, the missing first husband, thought Sally.

  “I know this because he sent a postcard once. One postcard: ‘Dogs run free, why not we?’”

  “There are huge national parks in Alaska,” said Sally.

  Maybe not so dumb. “He was tired of feeling confined? He needed room to roam. All this was
before Sur la Mer, of course. The mere suggestion of a gated community would have driven him right up the wall.”

  She’s doing the legs thing again, thought Sally. She couldn’t pull her eyes away fast enough.

  Gotcha, thought Hillary.

  “There is a forgetfulness—a mild amnesia, you might call it. The lacunae are sometimes . . . ahh, embarrassing. Like this?” Sid pulled what might have been a medallion from inside his aloha shirt. A polished disc reflected opalescent gemstone hues. It was fastened around his neck by a leather thong.

  “Hmm . . . nice? What is a lacunae?”

  “Sort of like an alcoholic blackout. Not the blackout itself, but the hole where your missing time went. A lacuna, singular—Latin, first declension, assigned gender feminine—appropriate as the girls cover up for us.”

  Sid held the dangle in front of Jim’s nose. He gave it a gentle tap so it swung like a pendulum. He’s trying to hypnotize me, thought Jim.

  “From the penis bone of a seal.” Sid dropped the amulet back inside his shirt. “David, Hillary’s first husband, made it in Alaska. David made a run for it, but he came back. Before he left, he bit me. But, like I said, he came back. Overland. He must have followed the railroad tracks. There were news reports. His trail pointed right here. Anyone with the brains God gave a tree could have figured things out.” Sid upended his can of beer and reached for a replacement. “Thank God for narrow-minded chauvinism. Nobody would have believed it even if they had caught on. Which they didn’t. Derek Lowe and Pedro Martinez. The Sox have a decent bullpen at last.”

  “David left on a motorcycle; we don’t allow motorcycles here in Sur la Mer. One of the rules. Here, have another.” Hillary pushed the platter of cookies across the centre line back to Sally’s side. “We went the Lysistrata route—Aristophanes? Withholding sex, that got their attention. First we tried threats and confrontations about those things they will keep on dragging home to bury in the yard—the boys can’t recall anything of their midnight rambles or so they say. Dear, please don’t let your mouth hang open like that.”

  “But . . . Jim?”

  The woman is a born ingénue, thought Hillary. “And the answer was right there all the time. We simply had to get some protection.”

  Sally thought of condoms and Allstate, the good hands people. “You already have the gates. What’s left, guard dogs and sentries?”

  “From the government. Our husbands were threatened, therefore Section 4—CFR 17.11 could be brought into play.”

  “Seventeen-eleven. That’s not the convenience store . . .”

  “No, that’s the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The Endangered Species Act of 1973.”

  “Oh. Yes . . .?”

  “We are an aging population here in Sur la Mer. You have children,” said Hillary. It was a statement, not a question.

  “Yes.”

  “In the play, Lysistrata—and it’s a comedy—the women go on a sex strike. They got fed up with their husbands always charging off to war. We supplement the husbands’ treatments with herbs.”

  “Isn’t that dangerous?” Sally had seen a TV report on the perils of self-diagnosis. “There was that diet drug—ephedrine . . .?”

  There was a squeak from the legs of a high-backed colonial reproduction chair as Hillary stood and collected the cookies and the cups. “For thirty years the doctors slapped hormone treatments to women and called it ‘enhancement.’ We pointed this out—their maleness would be ‘enhanced.’ It’s only fair,” said Hillary Braunstein. “And we got the cancer and the strokes. I figure if a woman loves her husband . . .” She absently dumped the plate of cookies into the garbage disposal. “We don’t compost,” she offered by way of an explanation. “Makes the ground too easy to dig in. I have an herb garden.”

  Hillary walked out of the room. They would view the garden.

  “Yes, I’d love to,” said Sally.

  “Here, help yourself . . .” Sid Braunstein passed the bowl of clam dip. “Ambrosial. The girls, God bless ’em,” said Sid. “They have the top hand and they appreciate that. We acquiesce. Since the Lysistrata thing.”

  “Lysistrata,” said Jim Schofield.

  “Lysistrata. Don’t ask; Hillary will tell Sally and Sally will tell you—that’s how it works. Durance vile on the patio. Heh heh. Beer and chips beats bread and water.

  “Lysistrata. Isn’t that a play by Aristo . . .”

  “Yep. The girls needed a rest. And the hormone treatments did it. No more unchaperoned midnight impromptus; we all get hairy and horny at the same time. Impotence puts a strain on the best of marriages.” Sid gave Jim a nudge with his elbow. “Come home with a wet willie and the girls like to know where it’s been . . . Heh heh.”

  At the back door, Hillary slipped into a pair of garden clogs. “Since you are the new girl, you get to patrol the wire. Fence maintenance. It’s only three nights a month and not too demanding. Here’s a set of rubber wellies. I think they’ll fit you, Sally. They were David’s; he had small feet.”

  “How did you meet your second husband?”

  “We even had a skateboard park built. For the kids?” Hillary had changed the subject. Again. “Turns out we can’t have kids. None of us. Something about the treatments. Oh, you mean Sid. Well, David and I were living in Jersey at the time; Sid was a veterinarian with a midtown clinic. On Madison Avenue. All very upscale and glitzy. The doctors couldn’t find anything wrong with David. One of them made a chance remark . . .”

  “Is this what all the secrecy is about?”

  “My, Sally, but you are fast on your feet. Excellent. See, David was a werewolf. We have made some, ahh, understandably tentative feelers to the government as to endangered species status for the husbands. But so far . . .”

  “Then Sid is . . . ?”

  “And so is Jim. And that is why you and I are here today going on a tour of my dumb, totally useless herb garden while our husbands swill beer and natter man-talk on the deck. Ow!” A blue spark arced from a wire fence to Hillary Braunstein’s finger. “It’s only 24 volts but it packs a wallop if you forget your rubber wellies.”

  “You have an electrified fence?” Sally was aghast.

  “The picket wire. That’s what we call it from the days when Marshall Dillon gave the trail bosses till sundown to get their unruly cowhands out of Dodge. We do the same, only in reverse. The husbands tend to roam.”

  “Dodge?”

  “Ah, the generational difference. Gunsmoke—an old TV show. Marshall Dillon strung barbed wire around the perimeter of the town. To keep the cows off the streets?” Hillary held a finger poised near the wire. It was strung tight between self-anchoring metal posts and twisted onto yellow plastic insulators. “It shouldn’t be much longer and we can turn the damned thing off.”

  “Was. You said David was. And Jim . . .”

  “No, dear, there’s no cure; don’t get your hopes up. Sid put him down. An overdose of morphine, quite painless. David couldn’t change back, but David was a rare case. Sid and I had discovered feelings for one another. And David bit him before running away to Alaska, so Sid was a goner. Even with belladonna poultices.”

  “Hence the herb garden?”

  “Sharp girl. Even with his medical knowledge, Sid was caught short. Belladonna is a specific for werewolf bite. Lacking belladonna, Sid improvised with the available members of the family. Deadly Nightshade: potatoes and tomatoes. French fries and ketchup. We were the talk of the Madison Avenue Burger King that night.”

  “So just how did you come to Sur la Mer?” asked Jim Schofield.

  “Well, as it happens, I’m a veterinarian and Hillary came to see me about David. See, he’d killed the newspaper delivery boy.”

  Jim froze on the edge of his chair. The blue corn taco chip in his hand dripped clam and sour cream dip onto his slacks.

  “Strike a nerve, did I? Hey . . . get a handle on that. Ruin your crease.” Sid pulled a paper serviette from a stack folded into a decorative wire holder, “Any tr
ouble back in Manhattan? Beyond chasing cars and peeing on policemen’s legs?”

  As Sid leaned to wipe the fallen splotch of dip from Jim’s pants he spoke urgently as if they might be overheard. “You know the kind—folks usually end up here on the run from some mess they have to get away from. Not the full of the moon, that’s all bullshit. Hundreds of thousands of years ago, the moon was closer, much closer to the Earth. And the months were shorter. There is a hormonal rhythm. Antibodies in the blood release a timed catalyst that triggers a hormonal shift. Really fast and nasty. But you would know all about that. That derelict I caught you with in the alley? There, that should do it.” Sid wadded up the napkin and dropped it on the floor. He leaned back and fondled his remote. “Once a month the girls fire up the electric fence and lock the gates.”

  A weak arc of crackling blue curved from the fence wire to Hillary’s outstretched finger. “It all depends on where you stand.” She played the spark like a yo-yo, pulling her finger in and out. “There’s a formula—inductive capacitance, something like that. See, no shock.”

  “You like touching the fence, don’t you?” said Sally. The electric blue followed Hillary’s finger but never seemed to make contact.

  “Like I said, I just moved a little. It’s all in where you put your feet. And the rubber wellies too. Give it a try.”

  “No thanks.”

  “Whatever. Being a soccer mom . . . I almost envy you, Sally—the ballet lessons, soccer practice, fencing, Boy Scouts. When the men developed their—ahh, problem—and we applied hormone treatments, they became sterile and lost all interest in sex, and I mean totally. No more Mom’s Taxi; our kids aged and went off to school. You will have the only children in Sur la Mer. Of course if you get caught outside the wire after curfew, you’ll have to fend for yourself. But it’s only two days every month. And they’re horny as hell.” Hillary smiled a wide, suggestive smile.