by Elise Sax
“Maybe he isn’t hungry because he already ate Adam,” I whispered in Spencer’s ear. “Adam was pretty big, and he had a stomach full of food.”
“What else is in this house of horrors?” Spencer whispered back.
I climbed off Spencer’s back. “At least the office is clear, now. Let’s go check it out.”
Spencer looked like there was no way he was going to go into the office, in case the dragon returned or there was a second one hiding somewhere, but he decided to go in because he had to search for Adam remnants. I didn’t care about Adam remnants. I was looking for paper.
Boy, did I find a lot of paper. Adam was a pack rat. The walls were lined with filing cabinets, which were bursting at the seams with paper, and boxes of paper covered most of the floor. It would take days, if not weeks, to search through all of it. I didn’t care.
I started by looking through the filing cabinets, first under B for Burger and then J for Jonathan. Eureka. There were a series of notes from my father to Adam. I started reading.
“What did you find?” Spencer asked.
He took a couple of the notes and started to read, too. “My father was helping him, critiquing his work.” I read out loud. “I love your Fart Boy idea, Adam. Please don’t quit. Have faith in your abilities and your creativity. You have something special to offer the world. Your friend, Jonathan.”
Spencer put his arm around me. “So, I guess this means that he didn’t steal the idea.”
“No. I was wrong.”
“Hold on, let me record that.” He took his phone out of his blazer pocket.
“Ha. Ha. Nice try. I’m not saying it, again.”
We searched through the entire house. We found a few snakes and a spider collection. Adam was gross, but he probably wasn’t a killer.
But he was missing.
“I don’t know if I should call this in or what,” Spencer said. “My gut tells me to leave and come back in the morning. He’ll probably turn up at some point.”
“And you can look for the dragon easier in the daylight.”
Spencer ran a hand over his face. “Oh, Jesus. I forgot about the dragon. We’ll have to drag the lake for him. Block off the park. What a nightmare.”
I belched. “I’ve got terrible heartburn. Rich people’s food doesn’t agree with me. I wonder if he has a soda. That would hit the spot.”
“Fine. Let’s get you a soda, and I’ll call in about the dragon.”
We went back into the kitchen. Spencer turned his back to me, leaned against the counter, and dialed Remington’s phone. I opened the refrigerator.
“Um,” I said.
“Give me a soda, too,” Spencer said, focusing on his phone.
“Um.”
“Remington’s not answering. He’s supposed to be on call.”
“Um.”
“Maybe Margie’s up.”
“Um.”
“I can only imagine what DICK is going to say about me letting a dragon loose on the town,” Spencer complained. “Maybe it’ll eat a few DICK members and then I won’t have to worry about them. DICK members. Ha! DICK members…Get it? Margie’s not answering, either. Any kind of soda would be good, Pinky. I guess rich people’s food doesn’t agree with me, either.”
“I don’t think we want his soda,” I said. “I think we should wait and get soda at home.”
“I’ve got wicked heartburn. I don’t think Adam would be upset if I took a can of Coke.”
“I don’t think he’ll be upset, either…I mean, not anymore…but his refrigerator isn’t very hygienic.”
“Pinky, I’m a guy. You should see the fridge at the station.”
“I think this fridge is worse,” I said.
Spencer finally turned around and got an eyeful of the fridge. “Holy shit.”
“Holy shit. Yes, those are the words I was looking for. Holy shit. Holy shit!” I took a deep breath. “Holy shit! Holy shit! Holy shit!”
“He’s a big man,” Spencer said. “Amazing how he fits in there. These French door refrigerators sure are roomy.”
Adam Mancuso, successful middle grade author of The Adventures of Fart Boy, was stuffed into his refrigerator, obviously stabbed repeatedly, his blood was splattered over his food, including a six-pack of Diet Coke, which I was definitely not going to drink.
CHAPTER 11
Sometimes your match will just not be ready. Ready for a human, I mean. He may be a little backward, a little socially awkward, or he might just not have had any experience with relationships or familial love. He’s not ready. In some of these cases, your match needs a substitute, someone to shower his love on as practice for the real thing. I’m talking about a pet. A four-legged something, furry or not, that he can learn to love. Once he has experience with a pet, he can graduate to a person. Pets are really helpful to matchmakers, bubbeleh.
Lesson 139, Matchmaking advice from your
Grandma Zelda
Surprisingly, the word of a dead, stabbed man stuffed into a refrigerator didn’t cause a stir, but the word of an escaped Komodo dragon had spread like wildfire. It turned out to be the most interesting to grocery store tabloids, who drove into Cannes within an hour of the dragon’s escape to write about every aspect of the story. It didn’t take them long to find Adam’s house because Spencer’s men had surrounded it with flood lights, and it was now the brightest area of Cannes, that late at night.
I sat in the back of Remington’s car, while outside, Spencer barked orders at his men and fended off the media.
“I have no idea if a Komodo dragon can impregnate a woman. What kind of question is that?” I heard Spencer growl at reporters. “No, it’s not Alien or Predator. It’s just a reptile. No, I’m pretty sure it can’t fly. What do you mean, did it have access to automatic weapons? It’s a big, ugly lizard!”
It went on for a couple hours with no sign of the dragon. Animal control called in more animal control from San Diego, and the media stuck around, excited to prepare a slew of salacious stories about a children’s author and his possibly kinky lifestyle with dragons.
By the time that Margie drove me away to my grandmother’s house, DICK had shown up at Adam’s house, joining the media and the other looky-loos, ready to battle what they figured had to be a total lack of decency.
I slept like death, like poor Adam Mancuso stuffed into his refrigerator. I woke up in bed in the fetal position with a pillow full of drool after a disturbing dream where I was Khaleesi, and I was trying to ride a Komodo dragon, which instead of breathing fire, was trying to bite my foot off.
When I woke up, instead of Spencer in bed with me, my grandmother was sitting on the edge of the bed, watching me sleep. She was wearing her blue housecoat and plastic slip-on slippers. “Hi, Grandma,” I said, wiping my mouth.
“There’s a dragon in town.”
“I know,” I said.
“The DICK people say it’s a sign that we’re not decent, and they’re going to take it up a notch. It’s going to be hard for Meryl. Can you go to her library today and give her moral support?”
“Sure. No problem. Have you seen Spencer?”
“He didn’t come home last night. Between the bubble gum and the dragon, he has his hands full.”
I nodded. Grandma was quiet, which wasn’t a normal state for her. “Nice day,” I said.
“It’s going to be sunny and seventy-five degrees with a slight breeze. Not a lot of humidity for the dragon.”
“Do you know where it is?”
“I know love, dolly, not reptiles.” I nodded. I could feel her studying me, and I tried to think of sand, but I was too tired. “I’m going to bed today.”
I sat up. “You are? Is it your heart? Should I call the doctor?”
“It is my heart, but not like you think.”
Heartache. It was my fault. I had stirred up old wounds about loss and grief. “You know about Adam Mancuso?”
Grandma put her hand on my arm and rubbed it. “You have the Gift, do
lly. You know things that I’ll never know. I’m counting on you.”
“On me?” The idea that anyone would count on me for anything important sent waves of panic running through my body. What if I let her down? She might never recover.
“On you, bubbeleh. I have confidence in you. I trust you.” I looked in her eyes, and I knew she wasn’t lying, but there was a fifty-percent chance she was crazy. Why else would she have confidence in me? I mean, I let a dragon loose on the town. I couldn’t be trusted! “I’ll get out of bed when you find out the truth.”
I followed her to her room and tucked her into bed. I handed her the remote, and I went downstairs to make her breakfast. The doorbell rang, and I answered it. Bridget was standing on the porch, wearing a red muumuu, which along with her blue eye shadow, made her look a little like the American flag.
“This baby is never going to be born,” she said. “What’s the gestation of an elephant? I think I’m giving birth to an elephant.”
Her belly looked like she was going to give birth to an elephant, but I didn’t think she wanted to hear that. “No, you’re not going to give birth to an elephant. You’re giving birth to a sweet, baby boy. I saw the ultrasound.”
“Fake news, Gladie. Fake news. Do you have food? I’ll eat anything with hot sauce. I heard hot sauce induces labor.”
I made toasted bagels with cream cheese and raspberry jam, coffee, and sliced cantaloupe so our insides wouldn’t turn into toxic sludge. Bridget and I brought the breakfasts upstairs to keep my grandmother company while we all ate.
The TV was on to national news. “Oh my God, look,” Bridget said, pointing. “They’re talking about us!”
My grandmother turned up the sound on the television. They were showing Adam’s house, but instead of focusing on him being murdered and stuffed into his refrigerator next to leftover deli, they were all about the Komodo dragon, which had been sighted in every nook and cranny in town with hysterical calls to law enforcement breaking all records.
“This is worse than the circus tiger incident of 1972,” Grandma said.
“Look! There’s Ruth!” Bridget announced, pointing at the TV.
“If you’re not going to buy tea, you can go straight to hell,” she yelled at the press pool in town, who had stopped by Tea Time for local color. “I don’t care about dragons or gryphons or elves or leprechauns. This is a place of business, you soul-sucking vultures, cadaver-eating, gore-chasing, lowlife bottom-feeders!”
“Wow, Ruth knows a lot of adjectives,” Bridget said.
“What do you say about DICK’s assertions that you are a prime cause of the indecency sweeping through this town?” a reporter asked Ruth on television.
I couldn’t make out the answer because the station beeped through all of it. My grandmother muted the television, took a bite of her bagel, and washed it down with coffee.
“Today’s going to be stressful,” Grandma said. “I’m sorry that I can’t help, but I’ll be in bed all day.”
“I’m glad it’ll be stressful,” Bridget said, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “Stress causes labor.”
Wow, a lot of things caused labor.
“Don’t forget Meryl,” my grandmother told me. She yawned, and I took her plate and cup from her and brought it downstairs, where I cleaned up.
“What’s going on with Meryl?” Bridget asked.
“I don’t know. I just know we’re supposed to go to her library and give her moral support.”
“I can do that,” Bridget said.
The doorbell rang, and I answered it. It was Draco, and he was carrying an armful of license plates. “Hi. School’s closed on account of a runaway dragon. I thought I could get some of that work done and you could feed me.”
“What are the license plates for?”
“Phase Three in the resistance against DICK.”
“Okay.” I thought it best not to ask for details.
In the attic, I handed Draco a box of Pop-Tarts, a bag of Doritos, and a can of cream soda. I showed him where to start with his computer stuff. It was a bunch of tedious data entry. “I’ll be back in a couple hours. If you need anything, ask my grandmother in her bedroom. It might be good for you to check on her, anyway.”
Draco put his license plates down in the corner of the attic. “Sure thing,” he said.
Bridget drove us to the library in her VW Bug. “What’s going on with Zelda?” she asked. “Why is she in bed? Is she having a blind day?”
Every once in a while, my grandmother had a blind day, when her third eye couldn’t see, and she would become distraught and disoriented. On those days, she would mostly stay in bed.
“No, she’s in bed because of me.” Because I stirred up painful memories of her son’s death.
“I can’t believe that’s true, Gladie.” Bridget patted my knee. “When you moved into town, Zelda got a new lease on life. I’ve never seen her so happy.”
It never dawned on me that my presence actually did something for her. I thought the benefits to us living together were totally one-sided. I got a place to live and food in my mouth, a support system, and training for a new profession, but my grandmother only got more responsibility and stress. Could Bridget be right, and I actually brought something to the equation?
I opened my window and let the wind blow on my face. My grandmother was right about the weather. The air was clean and refreshing, and the sun was out. But the town was a mess. Television vans lined Main Street, and journalists were interviewing cardigan-wearing DICK members, who were giving them stories about how indecent we were.
As we drove by, I saw the mayor, jumping up and down behind a couple of them, shouting, “It’s not true! It’s not true! We’re small-town America! We have sixteen pie shops in town!”
“It looks like the mayor’s about to go into labor,” I told Bridget.
“I can see the vein popping out on his forehead from here. I feel bad because I should be front and center in this fight against DICK, but my sandwich board doesn’t fit me anymore, and my heart’s not in it. Do you think I’ll want to protest again, once the baby’s born?”
“I can’t imagine you going very long without protesting labor infractions or the patriarchy. You’re probably just retaining fluid, and that’s why you don’t want to protest.”
“I had to squeeze my feet into my flip-flops to get them on. If you stick me with a hat pin, I’ll leak all over. I could fill a pool.”
The library was buzzing with activity. There were several DICK people outside with their hands up in the air, shouting something and more or less blocking the entrance. Bridget parked in back, and we went inside, avoiding the DICK line.
“Fascists,” Bridget muttered. “Nazi, jack-booted, puritans. If I wasn’t bearing life, and I didn’t have hemorrhoids, I would give them a piece of my mind.”
Inside the library, Meryl was chasing after several DICK people. She was apoplectic and whispering as loudly as she could, chastising them for whatever they were doing.
“What are they doing?” I asked Bridget.
She gasped. “They’re armed with Sharpies, Gladie. Black Sharpies.”
We joined Meryl and watched as a DICK man opened a book and began to run through offending printed words with his black Sharpie. “He wrote in a library book,” I whispered to Bridget, aghast. “The library police are going to get him.” When I was six years old, Meryl had cornered me in my bedroom, demanding my overdue copy of Johnny Tremain. I shuddered to think what she would do to someone for defacing a book.
“What do you think you’re doing? Stop! Stop!” Meryl whispered to them.
It was no use. They were an army of Sharpies, and they were taking no prisoners. The gang of DICK people were Sharpieing books, left and right. “Bad words, bad thoughts, bad images,” the man said.
Meryl’s face turned red. “You can’t do that,” she whispered as loudly as she could. “Help! Police!”
“I’ll call the police,” I said.
“Nazis!” Bridget shouted at the top of her lungs. “Book burners!”
“We’re not burning books. We’re censoring them. There’s a big difference,” the man announced.
Bridget adjusted her glasses and blew out a ton of indignant air. The pre-pregnant Bridget that I had known was back. I recognized the rage of a free-speech activist when faced with a cardigan-wearing man armed with a Sharpie in a library. “To arms! To arms! Townspeople, attack! We are being overrun by fascist book burners! They may take our lives, but they’ll never take our freedom!”
With impressive speed, considering Bridget’s girth, she grabbed a hardback copy of Michener’s Hawaii and laid one on the DICK man’s head. He flew back and took down the historical fiction shelves with him.
“The Dewey Decimal system!” Meryl yelled, forgetting to whisper.
The DICK man regained his balance and raised his hand to Bridget. “Don’t you dare!” she yelled. Her voice came out in a loud bellow, like the voice of God in a movie about the Ten Commandments. “I am bearing life!”
He put his hand down. His eyes darted from right to left, perhaps flummoxed about what he should do when faced with a pissed off, very pregnant woman.
The DICK members gathered around him to support their man, but the townspeople gathered behind Bridget. “Power to the people, motherfucker!” she yelled, which drew gasps from the cardigans.
But it worked. With one imperious finger, pointed at the exit and a bark of “Get out!” in Meryl’s best librarian’s imperious tone, the DICK people left with their Sharpies.
After they were gone, Meryl slumped onto a wooden chair and laid her head on the table. I sat next to her and patted her back. The assistant librarian counted up the damage. There were twelve books that had been Sharpied. Not too bad, considering.
