“Have you always been a gift wrapper?”
“No, I started much smaller and worked my way into this. I volunteered at the hospital because if I got fired for incompetence I thought it would be less traumatic if I wasn’t a paid employee. If I messed up as a Pink Lady they’d just ask me not to come back—a little pat-pat on the arm and a ‘Maybe this isn’t for you, dear.’”
Chase nodded. Wow, just like her.
“I got through that and then started part-time at the library and that went well, but it didn’t pay much and my girls were going to college. I wanted to contribute financially to show them I was a viable member of the family, and my library job wasn’t much of a challenge, so I got into the gift-wrapping business because there’s no getting around a badly wrapped package. Your work is right out there for everyone to see.”
“What you’re saying is that I am going to have to do it in front of people.”
Mrs. Meadowbrook-Parks smiled. “Is it going to matter? They’re going to see your work and like it or complain about it right there.” She did take her hand off the wheel for a moment and patted Chase’s hand. “But you’re going to do fine and you have to remember most people can’t wrap well so you are one up on them.”
“Okay.” Chase took a couple deep breaths and told herself she could do it. She had to. She didn’t want Bud to grow up and be embarrassed that she had a coward for a parent.
When they arrived, the household was in an uproar. It was a serious clusterfuck, Chase thought. The lawn and tents were a soaking mess and the ruined presents sat up on the cement veranda that overlooked the lawn. The house was amazing in its Eastern two-story Georgian style. It made Chase think of Isabel Dalhousie and her Edinburgh environs in Alexander McCall Smith novels. The house was definitely at odds with its environs in the Southwest desert. She half-expected a Scot to come out of the French doors and say, “Good God, man, what a right bonny mess we have here.”
Instead, a diminutive Hispanic woman came out, flapping her hands, followed by the bride, eyes swollen from crying. “Can you fix this? Please, Mary mother of God, please say you can fix this,” the mother of the bride said.
Chase assumed it was the mother because the bride looked like a younger, thinner version of her. Mrs. Meadowbrook-Parks studied the pile of soggy wrapping-papered boxes. She looked a little dubious. She didn’t say anything and the bride teared up.
“Of course, we can,” Chase said, acting more out of compassion than confidence.
Mrs. Meadowbrook-Parks took up the call to action. “Yes, we can. Now you two carry on and let us get to work. You, young lady, need to put some cucumber slices on those eyes to get the red puffiness down.”
The bride nodded.
“Thank you, thank you,” the mother of the bride said, taking both their hands before ushering her daughter away.
“Poor thing,” Chase said, after the woman left. At least she’d never put her mother through a wedding. Then she thought if the gardener at Stella’s house had sprinkled the wedding presents, Stella would have had him beheaded on the spot. It would be best if she keep her mother away from weddings or gardeners.
“All right then, let’s get started,” Mrs. Meadowbrook-Parks said.
“What’s the plan?” Chase said, suddenly overwhelmed by the task ahead. It was easy enough to placate the bride and mother with kind words, but now she was going to have to back it up with action.
Mrs. Meadowbrook-Parks took the initiative and said, “Remove and restore. You get the supplies from the van, and I will get on with the removal part.”
Chase scurried back and forth, feeling less overwhelmed with every trip. Far from being fired, she was proving to be useful. Well, there you have it, Chase thought. The Universe had come around and instead of her being terrified, she’d taken on the fear proactively, and here she was being a valued employee and not fretting about her performance. This was better than getting fired. She set the last box down and wiped her forehead on her sleeve.
The bride bustled outside, carrying two bottles of water. She looked pleadingly at Chase.
“Thank you,” Chase said, and then she did another uncharacteristic thing—she patted the woman’s shoulder. “It will be all right, and your eyes already look better.”
The bride smiled. “I hope this isn’t a sign,” she said, looking tentative.
“A sign?” Chase said, puzzled, and then it hit her. “Oh, no. The only sign here is that you might need to get a smarter gardener.”
“Enrique is not the sharpest tool in the shed,” she said.
They both laughed.
“There we have it,” Mrs. Meadowbrook-Parks said.
“You better go inside. We don’t want you seeing all the presents before the wedding,” Chase said.
“I suppose you’re right.” She looked at Chase and crossed herself.
Chase studied the mess of soggy cardboard. “How much is ruined?”
“Not as much as would be expected. Now, I want you to remove the wet cardboard and rebox the item. I’ll start wrapping.”
“We’ll do it like an assembly line,” Chase said brightly. She was catching on.
“Precisely.”
They set to work. Chase helped Mrs. Meadowbrook-Parks set up a long wrapping table and then she began removal, reboxing and redistribution. When she’d caught up with Mrs. Meadowbrook-Parks, Chase began wrapping. Chase sized up each box, cut the perfect amount of paper and with dazzling speed wrapped it. It was like her mind was a computerized measuring and matching machine. Her hands flew. She discovered method.
“I didn’t realize that if you position the box this way—up on its side—you can eliminate a step. Like the Chinese-method-of-folding-the-T-shirt thing,” Chase said.
Mrs. Meadowbrook-Parks looked at Chase, astonished. “I can’t believe I never thought of that. Why don’t I just hand you the stuff and you wrap? You’re even quicker than I am.”
She covertly timed Chase as she wrapped a blender.
“Will you do the bow thing? I haven’t got that part down yet,” Chase said, not looking up from her next assignment—a soup tureen.
For the next two hours, she wrapped steadily and was so focused she didn’t notice the time. She was reaching for yet another box when Mrs. Meadowbrook-Parks stopped her.
“Chase, we’re done, honey.”
“We are?” Chase looked around to see Mrs. Meadowbrook-Parks and the bride and her mother staring at her with admiration. The bride and her mother sandwiched Chase in a hug.
“You’re amazing!” the bride said, and she kissed Chase’s cheek.
Mrs. Meadowbrook-Parks rubbed her hands in delight. “You are a genius, and I have big plans for you.”
Chase hoped they weren’t too big. She knew two things for certain—she loved gift wrapping and getting fired no longer interested her.
Mrs. Meadowbrook-Parks discussed her plans for Chase’s future as Chase eyed the barbeque grill. “Your talents are wasted as a front-line worker. I am promoting you to our tech-demonstrator.”
The barbeque grill had a bow slapped on it. Chase said, “What about that?”
Mrs. Meadowbrook-Parks looked at her dubiously.
“I can at least try,” Chase said.
“All right. Far be it from me to stand in the way of someone’s dharma.” She winked.
Chase studied the barbeque and figured out the geometrical planes, got cardboard tubes and broke down smaller boxes until she had made a larger structure into which they wheeled the barbeque. It was actually easier than it looked. She felt like one of the architectural students Frank Lloyd Wright had put at Taliesen, the desert outside of Phoenix, and bade to make a structure where they would live while they attended school. The only difference was she’d put a barbeque in hers.
The bride and her mother applaudedly madly when Chase was finished.
“You’ll demonstrate your methods of creation and then you’ll go to the Gift-Wrapping Competition held in December,” Mrs. M
eadowbrook-Parks said, continuing her litany on Chase’s future.
Chase interrupted, “Like you wrap in front of an audience?”
“Yes, the judges watch while you are given an item that is difficult to wrap. They keep making the objects more and more difficult until they are down to the last two contestants and then the wrapping magnum opus is brought out and whoever wraps it best wins.”
“And you think I can do that?”
“I know you can.”
Chase took a deep breath and thought about it. Wasn’t this her fear thing again? Instead of getting fired she was promoted and pressed into competition. This was much bigger. This was about conquering her performance anxiety. This was a better fear to overcome. “Well, I can try.”
“You’ll do better than try. You’ll win.”
Chase gulped.
When she got home, Gitana was putting away groceries. “How’d it go?”
Chase shrugged. She was still processing what had happened to her—how she had found her dharma. “I don’t know.”
“What does that mean?” Gitana said. “Did you get fired? Are you all right with it?”
Bud smirked. Chase bit her lip.
“What’s wrong?” Gitana said.
“She didn’t get fired,” Bud said. “She got promoted, and she’s in training for the Gift-Wrapping Olympics.”
“What?” Gitana said. She was still putting groceries away. Chase tried to figure out what she was up to. The house was stocked with food. She had gone shopping two days earlier.
“It’s this big competition for gift wrappers,” Bud said.
Chase would have kept this low profile, but Mrs. Meadowbrook-Parks had called while she and Bud were driving home after school. The Mini Cooper was equipped with a synced-in phone line. Chase didn’t like to drive and talk on the phone even in a hands-free environment, but they’d been stuck in a traffic jam and it was her boss. Bud had heard the conversation about the “Olympics” and Chase had been forced to tell Bud the rest of the story.
“But I thought your goal was to get fired, not promoted,” Gitana said. She dug her phone out of her pocket and fiddled with the buttons.
“Enough of the ‘F’ word. I have new goals now,” Chase said.
Gitana put the ice cream in the freezer. Oh, Chase thought. She got dessert. That couldn’t be dangerous—ice cream in a bowl certainly wasn’t a fire extinguisher moment and the ribs had turned out fine the other night.
“So if you no longer have the fear of getting fired, do you have a new fear to take its place?” Gitana said. She went into the dining room and pulled a chair over to the china cabinet. She reached in and retrieved the Joy of Cooking book from the top shelf, where Chase had hidden it behind a full set of Stella’s cast-off special-occasion china dinner setting for twelve. She had to move several stacks of plates and a gravy boat to reach it.
No matter where Chase put the book, Gitana found it. She couldn’t for the life of her figure that out. It was like she had a GPS thingy attached to it or had gotten it micro-chipped. Chase was hoping that by hiding the dangerous book Gitana’s interest in cooking would shift toward simple fare so they wouldn’t keep having these cooking disasters. They never discussed the book. Chase hid it. Gitana found it.
“Performance anxiety,” Chase said, as she poured the iced tea for them and got Bud a grape juice box. She’d used the pretense of getting drinks so she could glance over Gitana’s shoulder at the book—she was thumbing through the dessert section.
Bud got out the fire extinguisher. “Is this one full?”
“Yes, I got a new one after the last ‘episode,’” Chase said.
Gitana rolled her eyes. “I’ve got this one under control. No worries, it doesn’t involve flame.”
“I bought two fire extinguishers just in case,” Chase said, opening the cupboard under the sink to check as if to make sure a fire extinguisher thief hadn’t entered the house and made away with the goods.
“Oh, good,” Bud said.
“I’m not going to light the place on fire, for goodness sakes. This is only a dessert. We’re having Schwan’s Alfredo and Broccoli.”
“Okay, well, that’s safe,” Chase said.
Bud nodded but eyed the cookbook.
“I still don’t understand your interest in cooking,” Chase said, cutting up a lemon for their iced teas as a pretense for checking out the place Gitana had marked with a yellow Post-it. It was Baked Alaska. What the fuck was that?
“I think it has to do with middle age,” Gitana said.
Bud looked at Chase for elucidation, which wasn’t forthcoming. Chase shrugged. Despite being middle-aged, she had no idea what any of it meant. She seemed the same as she always was…well, except for this new Fearless Chase thing. Maybe that was what Gitana meant.
“Fossilization,” Gitana said.
Bud nodded in what Chase construed as a sage-like manner. She was lost. “I don’t get it.”
Bud explained. “She’s concerned that not learning new things in middle age could result in the fossilization of her mind so she wants to keep challenging herself. The proverbial ‘use it or lose it’ thing.”
“Exactly.” Gitana went back to studying her book.
Chase found this disconcerting. Whatever she was planning to make wasn’t an easy concoction, obviously, Chase thought as Gitana furrowed her brow and traced her forefinger along the text.
“Okay,” Chase said, wondering if the fire extinguisher should be handy.
“Tell me about this promotion-competition thing,” Gitana said.
“I shouldn’t have wrapped that fully assembled barbeque. That was definitely a tactical error.”
“You wrapped a barbeque,” Gitana said, acting truly impressed.
“I just constructed an oversized box and wheeled the thing in.”
“But how did you do that without having seams on the box?” Bud said.
“What do you mean?” Gitana asked, flipping to the next page of the cookbook.
Holy shit, Chase thought, this dessert is a two-pager.
Bud noticed it too and grimaced. “In order to construct a box of those dimensions, she would have needed to break down and flatten out ready-made boxes and even if she did a really good tape job there would be seams that the wrapping paper would accentuate.”
Gitana appeared to consider this.
Chase sipped her iced tea and leaned toward the Joy of Cooking nonchalantly. Gitana put her hand over the page. “It’s a surprise.”
“You know how I feel about surprises,” Chase said, trying to read between Gitana’s fingers.
“You’ll like this one.”
Chase had a bad feeling.
“So how’d you do it?” Bud said.
“I took the cardboard tubes from the wrapping paper and made the armature, and then I took brown paper and secured it to the tubing and then wrapped that.”
“You made a four-sided sail,” Bud said, clearly impressed.
Gitana took her hand off the page and stared at Chase. “That is pretty cool. How’d you think of that?”
“I don’t know. I just look at things and then it comes to me and I wrap it. Mrs. Meadowbrook-Parks says I’m a natural.”
“Boy, don’t ever use a ‘Mrs. Meadowbrook-Parks’ name in one of your books. It’d be hell to type out all the time,” Bud said.
“No kidding,” Chase replied. She tapped her fingers on the counter and then glanced at the cookbook and then Gitana.
Bud seemed to sense they needed to get out of the kitchen so they could regroup. “Maybe we should leave the chef alone while she works on her creation, and we can check out gift-wrapping sites to get pointers. What if you had to wrap a pony inside an Eiffel Tower or the Statue of Liberty?”
Chase blanched and “what if” thoughts ran through her head.
“Although that is highly improbable,” Bud said, leading her from the room. They went upstairs to Bud’s room where they immediately Googled Baked Alaska.
>
“I don’t think she can really mess this one up,” Bud said.
“You’re right. No fire is involved. The meringue thing looks a little tricky,” Chase said. “She did make really good rib…I mean, rigatoni the other night.” Sweet Jesus, that was a quick save.
“I really don’t understand why she wants to cook when she almost got us swallowed up by a blob not two weeks ago,” Bud said. “I mean, cut your losses.”
“It’s kind of like Gloria’s line dancing.”
“Do you smell smoke?” Bud said.
“I think someone is having a fire—like in-their-fireplace kind of fire,” Chase said. She got up to look out the window. Their neighbor’s house up the road had a plume of smoke coming out of the chimney stack. Bud came up beside her. “See,” Chase said, pointing to the house. “It’s not us. She can’t light ice cream on fire.”
Bud opened the window and leaned forward, pressing the screen out slightly. “There’s smoke coming out of our kitchen window as well.”
“What?” Chase leaned out too pressing harder against the screen.
“Stop, you’ll bend it. We know something is on fire because any second now…”
The smoke detector went off. The dogs, who were outside, howled and barked.
“All hell is going to break loose,” Bud finished. She grabbed her Contour HD 1080P camera helmet off her bureau and strapped it on as they made their way downstairs.
“Is your camera going to be ever-present?” Chase asked.
“Yes.”
“I thought so.”
“You have to admit,” Bud said, tightening down the chinstrap, “this is not a moment to miss.”
Chase sighed. “I suppose not. I’ll get the fire extinguisher,” Chase said. “You are to ascertain and assault.”
Bud nodded. “Whatever happened, it’s going to be sticky.” She turned the camera on.
“Sticky?”
“Ice cream.”
When they got to the kitchen, Gitana was swatting at the howling smoke detector with a broom. The oven door was open and an oozing mess seeped across the floor. “It’s ruined,” she yelled.
In the Unlikely Event... Page 16
