Ten minutes later, I was playing a video of a Golden Retriever puppy pouncing on a Great Dane on repeat, my breathing had slowed considerably, and I was seriously considering going to live on a farm in the middle of nowhere with nothing but a large pile of dogs as company. And then my phone vibrated.
slight problem, the text from Toby read. can’t seem to find ferdinand anywhere
Great. Yet another problem for me to ultimately fail at fixing!
oh no! I texted back. did you check under all the seats?
yeah, i dont know what to do…penny, its like he just vanished or something
Obviously that was a ridiculous statement, ferrets don’t just…
Another text came in from Toby.
heres the thing: the car door was open for awhile when you got out, and i never saw him jump out or anything, and then he was just gone so im pretty sure he was in…
My bag, I realized, my heart sinking. No wonder it had been so heavy on my way here. Why hadn’t I noticed? And hadn’t something been brushing against my ankles earlier?
Shit.
Ferdinand the ferret was loose at the International Tooth Event of the year.
Chapter Sixteen
Things Never Go Right
I sprang up from underneath the table, promptly hitting my head on the edge of it and nearly knocking the entire cheese platter to the ground. I managed to catch the platter just in time, and while I was fixing it back up, pretending that I had just happened to walk up here a moment ago, I felt a warm breath on my neck. I whipped around.
Dr. Booper was standing there, much too close for comfort. I wondered when he had gotten there and desperately hoped he hadn’t borne witness to my cheese-dive.
“Come to join the party?” he said kindly.
“Sorry I was late,” I said, attempting a subtle stroll away from the table to avoid incrimination. But something was holding me in place. What was that?
Dr. Booper smiled at me understandingly. “I’m just glad you’re here, Penny. You know we wouldn’t be here without you. Your hard work and efforts have really paid off. Thank you for all you’ve done for us.”
“Mmm,” I said, tugging hard at the bottom of my dress, which seemed to be stuck on something under the table.
“Actually,” Dr. Booper continued, “I have a surprise for you. I think you’re really going to like it.” He was smiling a little too hard, and for the first time it occurred to me that maybe he wasn’t always quite as nice as he let on.
And then, there was a flash of grey on top of the table behind him. Ferdinand!
“Oh!” I said, in what was definitely the most disingenuous voice I had ever spoken in. “That’s great!” Yanking the bottom of my dress until I heard a riiiiip, I shuffled away from Dr. Booper, who was eyeing me quizzically. Some things, I decided, are better left unsaid.
“Ferdinand,” I hissed, when I was sure I was out of earshot of Dr. Booper. “Where the hell are you?”
In response, he poked his head out from a giant floral centerpiece in the middle of the silent auction table.
“Stupid overgrown rat,” I said, but then felt bad that I had called him a rat, even if he hadn’t heard me. “We need to get you home, mister.” Hoping that nobody was watching me, I dove for the damn ferret, but he was way faster than me in my heels (which I was quickly realizing were a size too big). I lay sprawled across the auction table, empty-handed, with only a tipped-over vase of centerpiece flowers to show for it.
How was this happening to me right now? Ever since the day Sven didn’t propose to me, things had had a funny way of collapsing the moment I got involved in them.
I couldn’t do this alone. And I knew exactly who to ask for help.
From across the room, I spotted her elegant updo. “Cyril!” I called, stumbling over to her.
She looked stunning. Now that I had gotten used to the idea of her in an actual dress, I was realizing that the one I had loaned her fit her perfectly. It hugged her curves in all the right places, and honestly looked about ten times better on her than it had ever looked on me.
Cyril took a long time to recognize me, and I was sure it was the ridiculous dress I was wearing, which was now not only stained from the several gallons of sweat I had leaked out, but ripped nearly all the way up my thigh from where it had caught under the table.
But then, Cyril’s face brightened and she leaned into me. “I didn’t want to wear my glasses,” she confided. “So I’m pretty blind tonight.” Ah. So that was why she looked so different.
Okay, so maybe she wouldn’t be the most useful at helping me find a loose ferret.
“Who’s watching Dayton?” I asked her, and she smiled.
“His dad.” Oh. Right. He would…have a dad. That made sense. I just never thought of Cyril as being the type of person who would ever have…like, you know. Done that. With someone. “Oh, and I’d like you to meet Lester…my boyfriend.”
Wait. Hold up. Cyril had a boyfriend? But she was so…you know. “Hi, Lester,” I said. He was about Sven’s height, with handlebar mustache and giant bushy eyebrows to match. If he had been bald, he would have been a dead-ringer for the Monopoly guy.
“Hi…Penny, right? Cyril’s told me all about you. It’s so nice to finally meet you,” he said warmly, pulling me into a giant hug. Cyril had…told him all about me? But we were barely friends! Why would she have talked about me to him?
Maybe we were barely friends, but it seemed that Cyril thought a lot more of me than I had of her.
Part of me wanted to be grossed out by Lester and his touchy-feely-ness with a stranger. But a much bigger part of me liked it. So what if it wasn’t necessarily the way people are supposed to greet you? So what if he smelled a little bit like wet dog? I had never seen Cyril look so happy. Maybe the things I thought were important in a boyfriend weren’t really as important as I thought.
“Yeah, it’s Penny. It’s so nice to meet you, Lester! Cyril has been a great friend to me over the years.” Well, it was true, wasn’t it? Who always warned me when Mrs. Lavishim, a middle-aged hypochondriac, was coming in, complaining that she most definitely needed at least eight root canals when she definitely did not? Who always took the blame for me when Dr. Booper asked who had left the lights on overnight, even though I was obviously the last one there?
Cyril and I had been friends for years, and I just hadn’t realized it.
“Weird question,” said Lester. “Has anyone else noticed that there seem to be little bite marks on the cheeses?”
Shit.
“Do you think there are mice here?” Cyril asked, eyes darting between me and Lester.
“Probably,” said a voice behind me, and I spun around to see Bernard, arms crossed over his chest, grinning from ear to ear. What a little shit.
“I mean, have you seen this place? It’s obviously a front for something. There’s no other reason for it have this much marble.” It did have a lot of marble. Although I wasn’t sure why that was suspicious. “And if it’s a front for something, the drug house—or whatever it is—definitely has mice. Or rats. Or possums.”
I nodded my head seriously. “Definitely mice,” I said, but inside I was freaking out. Those teeth marks were a little too big for a mouse and just the right size for a ferret…
Cyril looked concerned. “I don’t want rabies,” she explained, making very pointed eye contact with an unfazed Lester. “My dad’s dog died of rabies when he was a kid. Hydrophobia, they called it back then. My dad had to shoot it in the backyard.”
“Um,” said Bernard, “are you sure he wasn’t just recounting the plot of Old Yeller?”
Cyril narrowed her eyebrows at him but didn’t respond, which I took as an admission of her mistake.
Bernard seemed unperturbed. “Well, the good news is that none of you will ever have to worry about diseases ever again! I’ve just signed on with this lovely little startup that administers vaccines for everything from rabies to the flu! All you have to do is pay a month
ly forty dollar fee, and your shots will be delivered right to your doorstep!”
“A subscription service. For…vaccines.”
“That’s right! And the best part is, you don’t even need a prescription or a doctor! We take care of everything for you. Granted, we are still trying to find a doctor to hire to agree to sign off on all these vaccines…but still!”
“So, there are no doctors to give you the medicine. Isn’t that…illegal?”
Bernard shrugged. “We like to think of it as a slight bending of the rules. We are GOING to have a doctor, we just have yet to find one. It’s only temporary, so it doesn’t count.”
I laughed. “I mean, it doesn’t sound like it’ll be that useful, honestly…” Bernard, Cyril, and Lester all stared at me. “I mean, it’s just that I’ve already had all my vaccines…do you know of anyone who hasn’t?”
Shaking his head, Bernard walked away, and I immediately felt terrible for shooting down his dreams. “Someone had to tell him!” I said defensively, before Cyril or Lester could say anything.
But I knew Bernard wouldn’t be upset for more than three minutes. His entrepreneurial spirit always inspired him to get back up after he’d fallen, even though he’d fallen more times than a newborn, three-legged deer.
The first time I had failed—the only time I had failed—it had broken me.
And I realized—I was taunting Bernard not because I disliked him, and not even because I really thought his business ideas were that stupid; it was because I was jealous of him. Me, the successful woman with the (mostly) perfect life, jealous of him, a kid who didn’t know when he needed a haircut and was always coming up with new and terrible business ideas?
But at least he was having ideas.
Perhaps it wouldn’t kill me to be more supportive of my friends. Especially when they were doing things I knew I could never do, not in two billion years and if the planet was taken over by creatures that looked like E.T. and if we had eaten all the avocados. Nope. Still couldn’t think of a new business idea.
Just as it was occurring to me to apologize, the lights began dimming and people were finding their seats at their tables. Naturally, I had been so distracted walking in the door that I hadn’t even realized that there were seating cards, and now had precisely no idea where I was supposed to go. Panicking, I started twirling around in circles, hoping that someone would be kind enough to wave me over or something, but everyone was enthralled in their own conversations.
Okay, okay, Penny. Don’t panic. This isn’t that big of a deal. Think this through.
But of course, I would be seated with Sven! So…where was he?
He was a pretty tall guy, and I usually didn’t have trouble picking him out of a room. But for some reason, I couldn’t see him anywhere. I found the group of guys he had been schmoozing with, but he was nowhere to be seen. Maybe he was in the bathroom?
Most everyone was sitting down by this point, and I didn’t want to be the only one left standing—that was not the kind of attention I needed at the moment. So I shuffled over to the bathrooms and poked my head into the men’s room.
“Hello?” I whispered, and there was no answer, so I slipped all the way in. Maybe he hadn’t heard me or something. It was a big, fancy bathroom, just as nice as the women’s; the only difference was that the chaise lounges were a horrible mustard color rather than covered in a flowery fabric.
“Sven? Are you in here?” In my oversized heels, I clip-clopped all the way to the end of the stalls. Nothing. Maybe he wasn’t here after all.
But then, where was he?
Maybe he had already grabbed his seat before everyone started sitting down, and I hadn’t seen his tall head over everyone for that reason. Yeah, that could be it. Okay.
I went back over to the door and cracked it open just a bit, and pressed my eye up to it so I could see out but nobody could see in. I didn’t have the best view to scout out the room, but it would have to do. The table closest to me had no empty seats, all of them occupied by very symmetrical-looking strangers. No Sven. The table to the left definitely had no empty seats, nor did the one next to that. I squinted harder.
In the dimmed lights, I could make out some familiar outlines at the furthest table from where I stood…someone was gesturing emphatically. Was that Bernard? And the back of that stunning woman…that must have been Cyril. I recognized the V-shaped back of my dress. She was sandwiched between two men—one who I presumed was Lester, and the other who was—yes! Sven! There was an empty seat to his left, which must have been for me, and to his right was a…beautiful woman that I didn’t recognize. With whom he was engaged in very intense conversation.
She had flawless ebony skin, and her hair was somehow shiny and curly all at the same time, something I had never been able to achieve with any styling tools. Her waist was approximately half the size of mine, and I could see Sven’s eyes being drawn to the space between her breasts in her blindingly white, low-cut dress. What a surprise.
Maybe I wouldn’t go out there at all. That would show him. He would start wondering where I was, and nobody would ever think to look for me in here, and they would send out a whole search party for me, and after I decided I had punished him enough I would eventually show up on his doorstep and he would never stray from me again. Not that he had actually strayed, as far as I knew. He was just looking. But still.
But I did. I was the one who had strayed.
Either way, it was much more likely that he would become totally entranced with this girl, completely forget that I was the reason he was even here in the first place, and fall desperately in love with her, all in the span of tonight.
I couldn’t let that happen. Nope, nope, nope. Not on my watch.
Eye still in the crack of the door, I took a deep breath for courage, and was about to storm out when suddenly the door swung open and slammed into my forehead with a loud thud.
Pain sliced through my head.
Falling backwards, time slowed down. Aaaaand, this is how I die. Strange memories flashed slowly before my eyes.
I was remembering…being born? Well, at least I saw a dark tunnel and light opening up at the end of it. Maybe this was just me dying. But then there were more…
When I was six years old and I dropped my popsicle in the mud and cried about it for three hours. And the first time I shaved my legs at thirteen. Packing the car for college. And that awful, awful, night of my graduation…
NO! I screamed, jolting myself out of whatever-the-fuck that was. Reality hit me with its cold, unfeeling florescent light from above. With a start, I realized that I was sitting on my ass on the tile floor, dress hiked up to my hips, one of my heels cracked off.
And standing in front of me was Toby, who looked like he had just seen a ghost. Or more like, he was a ghost, his face was so white.
“Oh my god. Oh my god. Fuck. I’m so sorry, shit, Penny. Fucking hell, are you okay?”
Despite the very loud ringing in my ears, I actually felt…weirdly fine. I tried to tell him this, but the words weren’t coming out in English.
“Oh, shit, you’re bleeding…”
He limped over to the sink, discovered that this place was super fancy and only had hand dryers, grabbed a roll of toilet paper from a stall, and proceeded in sticking the entire thing under the automatic faucet until it was sufficiently drenched.
His hand shaking, he ripped off a sticky glob and held it up to my hairline.
As soon as it touched my skin, I flinched. It felt like I had something bulging out of me, and when I put my hand up to take the toilet paper from him, I found that I had a huge egg already forming on my forehead. Beautiful, I thought to myself, and then started giggling madly.
“Um, Penny, are you sure you’re…?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I said, grateful that my tongue was back to forming words again.
He smiled. “This…is the men’s room.”
“That is correct.”
He didn’t ask me to clarify. �
��I didn’t see you out there, and I just needed to come in and…”
I squeezed my eyes shut, suddenly confused. Why was Toby here? I must’ve hit my head harder than I thought…
“Are you here to try to find your ferret?” I asked him, pulling the toilet paper away for the first time and gaping at the amount of blood on it. “Because you’re probably not blending in so well.” After all, he was wearing the same falling-apart sneakers, ripped-up sweatpants, and ratty tee as earlier, some of it still wet from the snow.
“You should talk,” he said indicating the bloody lump on my forehead. We made serious eye contact for just a moment, and then burst out laughing.
“Yep, I’m a mess,” I said, showing him the rip up the side of my dress. For a moment, I was pretty sure his eyes were lingering on my leg instead of the fabric. “But what are we going to do?” I asked. “The ceremony started already. We can’t just go hunting for a loose ferret in the middle of the auditorium…can we?”
“I don’t know,” Toby said mysteriously, a huge smile breaking across his adorable face. “Can we?”
One at a time, we snuck out of the men’s room and made our way over to the appetizer tables, pretending we just needed a quick snack or drink from the bar. We both looked like complete messes—him limping on his wrapped ankle, me with my bleeding head and bare feet, having taken off my broken heel. Toby would appear completely out of place if anyone looked closely, but there was no help for it.
Into a napkin, I shoveled handfuls of cheddar cheese and crackers, and one-handedly began crushing them on the table to make little crumbs. God, I hoped nobody was looking, because there was really no explanation that I could come up with that was less insane-sounding than “Oh, we are creating an elaborate trap for an escaped ferret!”
Catching each other’s eyes from across the room, Toby and I sprinkled our goodies in a sort of maze formation. With Ferdinand’s nose and great love for food, we’d find him. With a lot of luck, nobody would notice what was happening. I wasn’t super counting on that last bit.
Impractically Perfect: A Romantic Comedy Page 16
