by Elise Sax
“What was it? What made the whap noise?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t know. So, I ran out of the kitchen and spied on Fanta and her husband again. That’s when I saw it.”
“What?” I asked.
Matilda pointed at my binoculars and urged me to look through them at Fanta’s apartment. “It looks the same,” I said.
“No, it doesn’t. Don’t you see the difference?”
“No. There’s their living room and kitchen. It’s exactly the same as it was before.”
“Look again. Look at the bedroom,” Matilda urged.
“I can’t see the bedroom. The shades are down in the bedroom.”
Matilda touched my back. “Exactly. The shades are down.”
“The shades are down,” I repeated in a whisper. “The shades…”
“Are down. Yes. For the first time since I moved here, their bedroom shades are down. It happened after the whap.”
I studied the bedroom shades through the binoculars. “It happened after the whap?”
“Listen, Gladie,” Matilda said. “You’re going to think that I’m crazy, but I think that man killed Fanta. I think she’s lying dead in their bedroom.”
“The whap was a murder?”
I had a lot of experience with murder, but I had never heard one before. I usually came around after the murder already happened.
“I’m ninety-percent sure the whap was a murder,” Matilda said. “Actually, I’m a hundred percent sure that Fanta has been snuffed out by her brutish husband. She’s in there, dead, dead, dead.”
I sat down and took a deep breath. This was so typical. I was getting married in four days, and now a woman was murdered. “And we have to get justice for her, I’m assuming?” I asked Matilda.
“Well, yes. Don’t you think so? I mean, she was killed. We have to bring her killer to justice.”
I sighed. “Yeah. Yeah. Justice. I guess we have to. You got any cookies? I like a nice chocolate chip cookie before I get justice.”
“I have Nutter Butters. Would that work?”
“I like milk with Nutter Butters. Do you have milk?”
“I have lowfat. Is that okay?”
“I guess so.”
I ate ten Nutter Butters and two glasses of milk. After, I still wasn’t ready to help poor dead Fanta, but Matilda was raring to go. As I was eating, she gathered a bunch of rope, a crowbar, and a roll of duct tape.
“Do we need anything else?” she asked.
“It depends. What’re we doing?”
“We have to break into their apartment while Chris is out. Then, we find Fanta’s body, take pictures for proof, and go to the cops.”
“Okay. I’m still a little fuzzy about the duct tape, but let’s do it. Let’s find justice for Fanta.”
Matilda gathered her supplies together in a Trader Joe’s reusable shopping bag, and we walked to her front door. Right before she put her hand on the doorknob, Matilda stopped and turned toward me.
“I’ve never felt so full of life,” she said. “Is that horrible? A woman is dead, and I’m giddy with excitement. That’s probably bad karma, right?”
Matilda and I had been separated at birth. I had gotten giddy in the face of a poor unfortunate’s murder at least nine times in the past year. I had a whole lot of bad karma that I had to work against or I would wind up a cockroach in my next life. But as much as I tried to push down the giddiness and just feel a swell of empathy and horror, the sleuthing bug had bitten me big time, and I couldn’t wait to discover poor Fanta and get her husband on death row.
“It’s bad karma,” I agreed. “You shouldn’t be excited about a murder. That’s low, Matilda. Real low.”
“You’re right. I don’t know why I feel this way. There’s something about discovering something horrible that nobody else knows that gets my heart pumping. Think about it, Gladie. If I hadn’t been watching, no one would have ever discovered that Fanta was murdered.”
“That’s true.”
“I’m like a murder genius. I, alone, know that Fanta’s husband killed her. I feel like I have purpose, that I’m special. I’m the Albert Einstein of death. I’m the Stephen Hawking of murder.”
“You’re special,” I told her. “And not just because you figured out about Fanta. That was genius.”
“Poor Fanta,” she said and turned the door knob.
As she opened it, we gasped in surprise. Fanta was there on the other side of the door, about to knock. It turned out that Fanta wasn’t poor. She wasn’t even dead. She was at Matilda’s door, dressed in khakis and a blue button-down shirt.
“Did I catch you going out?” she asked. “Do you have an egg? I’m making brownies.”
Matilda gurgled, and she had stopped blinking. She was like a robot that had wound down. I elbowed her to restart her. “I wasn’t going out, Fanta,” she said, finally. “I was just saying goodbye to Gladie.”
Fanta smiled at me. “Oh, good. I’m dying for brownies.”
She walked past me toward the kitchen. I shrugged at Matilda, and she shrugged back at me. I had never seen anyone so disappointed to see that someone was alive before.
“Matilda, you left the oven on again,” Fanta called from the kitchen.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered to Matilda.
“It’s okay. Rockwell comes home tomorrow. He always makes me feel better. But we don’t need to tell him about this, right?”
“Right,” I said and left.
I felt no guilt about eating half of a package of Nutter Butters because I had sweated away at least five pounds in Matilda’s apartment. I was grateful for my car’s air conditioning, but I was even more grateful that I had a bathtub at home, because I was planning on filling it with cold water and soaking in it for an hour.
What a day. I had become a godmother and the town’s porn star all at the same time. That had to be some kind of record. Despite the heat, I craved a latte. Church coffee wasn’t cutting it. I parked down the block from Tea Time because the parking spaces in front were full. It didn’t take me long to figure out why. Muffy & Dicks had opened and was doing bang-up business.
Meanwhile, across the street, the dictator of Fussia was pacing back and forth, as if he was preparing for an attack.
“Look at that maniac,” the mayor told me, coming out of Tea Time. “Tourism is down four percent. Did you know that?”
“It is?”
“Four percent, and it’s his fault. Nobody wants to eat pie and buy antiques in a town where there’s a maniac dictator. I’m the mayor! We’re not supposed to have dictators. Nobody would let Mussolini move in, so why are we letting that nutcase in?”
I didn’t know what to say. The maniac dictator was pressing charges against me for stealing his donkey. “You’re sure he’s a maniac?”
“He’s setting up his own post office, Gladie. He’s going to offer discount stamps. The maniac is going to put our post office out of business. Benjamin Franklin started the postal service. One of our founding fathers! Now he thinks he can do a better job? Better than Benjamin Franklin? That’s treason! He should be shot. We need to put him up against a wall and shoot his treasonous self.”
I hadn’t used a stamp in five years, so I wasn’t very worried about his post office. “Did he say anything about his donkey?”
The mayor adjusted his tie. “I have to remain neutral, Gladie. It wouldn’t be good for me to interfere in an ongoing criminal investigation.”
“Criminal?” I gulped.
“I’m not talking to her about her criminal behavior!” the mayor announced loudly. He looked across the street at the dictator and then hightailed it to his Cadillac.
The Tea Time door opened, again, and Ruth’s two sisters walked out. “Look, Naomi, it’s Zelda’s granddaughter. How’s it going, Gladie?”
“Just fine.” It was the first time I had seen them at Ruth’s tea shop. Normally, they stayed busy in their house and neighborhood. They were ninety-three years old, but they were as active as Ruth. N
aomi was dressed in a Jackie Kennedy lookalike pink suit, and Sarah was wearing her usual overalls and frilly shirt.
“We’re helping out with tomorrow’s wedding. Ruth’s about to blow. She doesn’t believe in barbecues,” Sarah explained.
“She won’t let us help, so we were just giving her moral support,” Naomi explained.
“She didn’t want that, either,” Sarah said. “She told us to go to hell.”
“No, she didn’t, Sarah. She told us to go fuck ourselves,” Naomi said.
“Oh, yes. That’s right. Fuck ourselves. I must have had a little senior moment. Are you going over to Muffy & Dicks, Gladie? Going to get your vagina modernized?”
“I like her vagina, Sarah,” Naomi said, coming to the defense of my private parts. “It’s lovely, dear. I especially liked your picture with your tush sticking out. That was nice of you to send it to us. Don’t let peer pressure change your vagina.”
“It’s 2018, Naomi. It’s time to modernize and keep up with the times,” Sarah insisted. “We don’t have hair down there, and neither should she.”
“Don’t let her bully you, Gladie. Our hair stopped growing down there twenty years ago.”
“The thing is…” I started and then clamped my mouth closed. I didn’t want to have to defend my personal grooming habits. The truth was that waxing hurt, and Spencer didn’t mind that I looked like a real woman. At least I didn’t think he did. But maybe Ruth’s sisters and Bird were right. I was going to get married in four days, and I needed a little spit and polish. And maybe some waxing.
I said goodbye to Ruth’s sisters and walked into Tea Time. The tea shop was packed to the rafters. Pushing my way to the bar, I tried to get Ruth’s attention, but she was distracted, brewing pots of tea as fast as she could.
“Ruth, latte,” I called.
“Don’t you see that I’m busy with every meat-eating, waxed person in Cannes?” she sneered.
I looked around. She was right. The shop was filled with the spin off from Muffy & Dicks, the organic beauty products, waxing, butcher shop. Men and women with little to no body hair, all carrying butcher packages had filled Tea Time. Suddenly, I craved a steak.
“Sorry,” I said.
Ruth whipped around and studied me. “What did you say?”
“Sorry.”
“Sorry?”
“Sorry.”
“You never say sorry,” Ruth noted. “You give as good as you get. What’s the matter, girl? You having second thoughts about the cop, or is it the fact that the whole town has seen your puff that’s got you cowering in a corner?”
“Ruth, don’t say puff.”
“Hey, I’m not the one who sent nudie pictures to hell and gone. When Stieglitz wanted to take nude photos of me, I told him to shove off. Then, he took them of Georgia O’Keeffe and she got rich. So, maybe I’m the dumb one and you and Georgia are the smart ones.”
I leaned forward. “Ruth, I didn’t mean to send those photos to the town.”
“So what happened? Was it the Russians? Was it the maniac across the street? The Fussians? Did they hack your phone?”
I wanted to say yes so bad.
“It was dark. The buttons were small.”
“I never push those damned buttons,” Ruth told me. “Those small buttons can kiss my ass. Fine. I’ll get you a latte.’
I sat down at one of the few empty tables and got halfway through my latte when Ruth sat next to me, bringing a pot of tea and plate of scones with her. The shop had died down by then, with most of the customers rushing home to put their meat in the refrigerator.
“Did you know that men get their scrotums waxed?” Ruth asked. “Their actual testicles. I can’t imagine the staggering level of stupidity it takes to get your balls waxed. That’s the Dicks in Muffy & Dicks. Did you know that? I’ve been learning all kinds of new things today. Stuff that I never wanted to learn, Gladie.”
I was relieved that we had gotten off my genitalia, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to talk about my neighbors’ balls.
“Are you ready for Julie’s wedding?” I asked, changing the subject.
“Barbecue. Blech. I’m going to be manning the grill right there at the lake.”
“I love barbecue.”
“I wanted to do an English tea, but no. Pork ribs instead of clotted cream.”
My mouth watered, and I grabbed one of Ruth’s scones. Pork ribs sounded delicious. I hadn’t eaten much at the christening, and Nutter Butters weren’t filling. I decided to surprise Spencer and Grandma by bringing home ribs for dinner.
The door opened, and Spencer walked in. He marched up to our table. “Good. You’re here,” he said. “We’re running late. We gotta go.”
“Where?”
“The marriage counselor. Don’t you remember that my mother made an appointment for us?”
I put my hand out to Ruth. “Help,” I mouthed.
CHAPTER 9
Faces, bubbeleh. Love is about faces. Private faces and public faces. What a person is at the PTA meeting is nothing like he is when he’s watching the football game at home in his undershorts. It’s up to us to figure out all of the faces. One fakakta punim that’s private when it should be public can throw a wrench into our works.
Lesson 127, Matchmaking advice from your
Grandma Zelda
Spencer knew.
I didn’t have to complain. He just knew.
“It’s just an hour, and then my mother will be off our backs,” he told me as he drove us to the marriage counselor’s office, which turned out to be near Matilda’s apartment building. “We’ll just shine her on. I’ll give her the big spiel about us being in love. It won’t hurt a bit. We’ll get out of there with a glowing report on our future happiness. My mother will be happy. You’ll be happy.”
“Let’s get ribs on the way home,” I said. “We’re eating barbecue at Fred’s wedding tomorrow, but I could go for some tonight, too.”
“I’m proud of you for focusing on pork instead of the marriage counselor, Pinky. I know you’re upset about the counselor. And you know, my mother.”
“I’m okay. Weddings are stressful. The bridezilla thing is a reality for a reason.” But I had done nothing for my wedding. My grandmother and her posse had made all of the arrangements. Besides going to my bachelorette party and going to Bird’s salon on Saturday, all I had to do was show up to my wedding.
“It’s almost over. Sunday we’re married, and we can move into our house and live happily ever after with our double-sized refrigerator and Jacuzzi tub.”
In other words, I had four days to grow up. It was time. Most people grew up when they turned eighteen. I was way behind in the growing up department.
Spencer put his hand on my knee. “And you know we can’t have barbecue tonight. My mom’s vegetarian, and we have to get on her good side.”
“Your mom’s coming over for dinner?”
“Yeah. I guess I forgot to tell you. My folks are coming over. Zelda is ordering vegetarian.”
“Did you explain to my grandmother what vegetarian is? She might think it means extra ketchup on her hamburger.”
“I mentioned beans and salad.”
Blech. “Sounds good. Did you explain to your mother about the pictures?”
His fingers danced up my thigh. “I never said thank you for the pictures. I’m a lucky man, Pinky. Not a lot of guys get pics like that from a woman.”
Actually, every guy in Cannes had gotten pics like that from a woman, but I decided not to remind Spencer of that.
“I was trying to inject some romance into our relationship,” I explained.
Spencer put his hand back on the steering wheel and grew quiet. We rode the rest of the way in silence, which led me to believe that maybe we really did need to see a marriage counselor before we took our vows.
Spencer had not let go of my hand since the moment we walked into Dr. Tiffany’s Love Happiness Factory. Her office was housed in an old H&R Block in a strip mall. I lo
oked around for her diploma, but all I saw were signs on the walls with affirmations written on them in pastel-colored cursive handwriting.
“Beauty begins the moment you decide to be yourself,” read one of them. “Complainers are doomed to live longer,” read another one.
“This doesn’t look so bad,” I told Spencer while we were sitting in the waiting room, but he didn’t respond. It dawned on me that he liked this counseling idea less than I did. Spencer was an alpha male who was used to giving orders. I didn’t get the impression that he was in a hurry to spend an hour in Dr. Tiffany’s Love Happiness Factory and have Dr. Tiffany tell him what to do in his marriage.
A side door opened, and a cloud of lavender and bergamot wafted out, followed by a woman, who I assumed was Dr. Tiffany. She was wearing a tailored, red suit. She was about my age, and she was very attractive.
“Spencer and Gladys?” she asked with a smile. She waved us into her office, and we walked in as if we were on our way to our execution.
“I’ve never done this before,” I said, taking a seat on a sofa. Spencer sat next to me, still holding tight to my hand.
“That’s good,” Dr. Tiffany said. “You haven’t been polluted by bad advice and diagnoses. Here at Dr. Tiffany’s Love Happiness Factory, we do things differently. We do things the right way. What we do works. We don’t talk.”
“You don’t talk?” Spencer asked with more than a tinge of hope in his voice.
“This is 2018, Spencer. We’ve moved beyond talking. Talking is the old way. We’re the new way. The better way. The only way.”
Danger, Will Robinson. Be afraid. Be very afraid. My interior warning lights turned on and were blinking like they were on speed.
“That sounds great,” Spencer said, relieved. Fool. He didn’t know that we had walked into a trap. A new way only way meant bad news for us. But Spencer didn’t have warning lights. That might have been why he was going to marry me. Poor Spencer.
“After speaking to your mother and seeing you together, I can say with utter certainty that your marriage is doomed to fail,” Dr. Tiffany said, matter-of-factly.
Spencer dropped my hand. “Excuse me?” he asked.
