Best Staged Plans Page 19

  “He could get hit by a car tomorrow. Or you could.”

  “Thanks. So I called Greg and Luke and Shannon and left messages saying how much I loved them.”

  “That’s so cute. It’s like a Disney movie. What did they say when they called back? Or is it too gaggable?”

  I pulled my pillow out again and gave it another punch. “That’s the strange thing. They didn’t call back.”

  “None of them?”

  “Nope.”

  Denise hugged her pillow tighter. “How long ago did you call?”

  “I don’t know. Seven or eight hours.”

  “Ha. That’s really funny.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “Maybe you’ve been such a bitch they’re blocking your calls.”

  “Takes one to know one,” I said.

  “Wow, I haven’t thought of that expression since high school. Remember: I’m rubber, you’re glue, everything bounces off me and sticks to you?”

  “Before I left, I told Greg not to call me until the house was ready to sell.”

  “So, big deal. He knows how you get.”

  “But what if something really did happen to him, and that’s the last thing he remembers me saying before he dies?”

  “Then he won’t feel so bad about being dead.”

  “No wonder you’re single. Who could live with you?”

  Denise held her middle finger over the light.

  “A one-eared rabbit?”

  “Bingo.” Denise sighed. “You know, if this were a movie, this would be the scene where we smoked a joint.”

  “Yeah, what’s up with that anyway? I mean, they do it in every Boomer movie.”

  Denise held my mood ring under the light. “Look, the thought of good drugs makes me nostalgic.”

  “It makes us all nostalgic. It’s the last time we can remember having any fun.”

  “Speak for yourself.”

  I gave my pathetic pillow another punch. “And then we’d have a pillow fight.”

  “No, first we’d eat everything in sight, and then we’d have a pillow fight.”

  “The munchies,” I said. “I mean, how cool were the munchies.” The pillow was still flat as a pancake, but I tucked it back behind my head anyway. “Drugs were different back then. It was a freer, gentler time.”

  “Oh, please,” Denise said. “We were young and stupid.”

  “I read in an article that a significant number of Boomers said they’d start smoking pot again in their retirement, as long as they were in a safe place.”

  “Ha,” Denise said. “You mean like a padded room?”

  “Maybe that’s why they put the master bedrooms on the first floor in those fifty-five-plus places,” I said. “So you can get high and not break a hip falling down the stairs.”

  “The visiting nurse could come around and take your car keys.”

  “And stock your refrigerator.”

  “Mystic Mints,” Denise said. “Remember those? I ate a whole box once.”

  “Frozen Snickers bars,” I said. “And Twizzlers.”

  “Together? That’s disgusting.”

  “No, first the Snickers. And then the Twizzlers. If you peeled them into strands, they tasted better. Like licorice hair.”

  “Ooh, that’s heavy.”

  “Thank you. I’m really profound when I’m remembering being high.”

  “There’s a whole cottage industry here,” Denise said. “We could make a fortune. Hash brownies laced with Geritol . . .”

  “Organic salad greens with walnuts, gorgonzola, and sprouted marijuana seeds.”

  “We could chew on our hemp hospital gowns between drug deals. And get walkers with beeping lights so we don’t accidentally run over anyone else in the nursing home when we’re stoned.”

  “We’ll make a fortune,” I said. “We’ll be in Paris in no time.”

  “But first we have to shoot Josh,” Denise said. “It’s the only way.”

  CHAPTER 35

  CHANCE PROMISED to take us paintball shopping, since he needed some new fishing lures anyway. I didn’t quite get the connection between the two, but I figured I’d have plenty of time to figure it out. If you ever decide to remove a Juliet balcony from your daughter’s living room, be prepared for a long day.

  Chance’s friends started rolling in before our second cup of coffee.

  Denise pushed aside the bamboo blinds in the guest room. “You know, somehow I’m feeling less depressed already.”

  I finished tying my sneakers. “Don’t even think about it. Shannon will kill us both if you hit on one of Chance’s friends.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m all look but no touch. Hey, what are they doing out there?”

  I joined Denise at the window. Three SUVs were parked in a circle in the driveway with their backs facing and the rear doors open. Chance’s friends were sitting on their vehicles and drinking coffee from take-out cups.

  “It’s called tailgating,” I said. “It’s huge in the South. Football games, rock concerts, any time a zebra gets loose on the highway.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind. Come on, I need some more caffeine.”

  I poured another cup of coffee, topped it with a spoonful of Truwhip, then opened a cabinet and started piling things on the kitchen counter.

  “What are you doing?” Denise asked.

  “Obviously,” I said, “I’m assembling a coffee cake. I’m mixing instant maple and brown sugar oatmeal with walnuts and a tiny bit of butter, and then I’m going to sprinkle it over the top of this cinnamon thingy I bought at Trader Joe’s and heat it till it’s warm.”

  “It looks more like recycling than assembling to me.”

  “So, don’t eat it.”

  It doesn’t matter if you call it assembling, recycling, faux cooking, or cheating. I mean, potato, pohtahto, tomato, tomahto. But if you start a work session by serving hot fake-baked anything to men who are giving up a significant part of their weekend to help you with a project, you’ll get on their good sides.

  I cut whatever it was into squares and placed them on one of the Danish modern serving trays I’d mailed to Shannon.

  “I’ll do the honors,” Denise said. She flipped the apron over her head.

  I grabbed a handful of paper napkins and followed her out to the driveway.

  “Mmm-mmm,” Chance’s friends said when they tried it.

  “See,” I said to Denise.

  Every team needs a leader, and since it was Chance’s house, I knew I had to give him the opportunity to assume the role.

  Five minutes later, they were all still sitting around on their tailgates, drinking coffee.

  “Looks like it’s going to be a hot one,” Billy, or maybe it was Hunter, said.

  “Why, thank you,” Denise said. She gave the ruffled hem of her apron a little shake.

  “Time’s up,” I said. “Here’s the plan. First we move out all the furniture, then we set up the scaffolding Chance borrowed. You remembered it, right?”

  Chance jumped off the tailgate of his pollen-coated BMW SUV. “Yes’m, I did, but I’m thinking we might could use two stepladders and just lay a big old board across them.”

  I shivered. “Every time I kill one of Shannon’s husbands, she makes me find her a new one.”

  Chance’s friends got a good laugh out of that one, and one of them even volunteered to be Shannon’s next husband. But safety is key in any do-it-yourself project. You need to get a plan. You have to measure twice, or even three times, so you only have to cut once and so no one gets cut. And if you’ve taken the time to borrow some scaffolding from a painter friend, do me a favor and use it.

  In no time, we had the living room cleared out and the furniture piled up in the other rooms. We covered the floor with drop cloths.

  We all stood in the living room and looked up at the little balcony.

  “Anybody want to do one last Juliet balcony soliloquy?” Denise said.

  “Chance?” on
e of the guys suggested.

  “Pass,” Chance said.

  “Come on,” Denise said. She gave him a shove.

  “Chance, Chance, Chance,” his friends chanted.

  Chance clomped up the stairs. The little wooden balcony shutters opened.

  “Oh, Romeo, Romeo,” Hunter, or maybe it was Billy, yelled. “Wherefore art thou Romeo?”

  My tall, handsome son-in-law peered out over the living room, one hand held above his eyes like a visor.

  “But soft,” he said. “What light through yonder window breaks?”

  Denise sighed. “Southern accents just slay me.”

  I elbowed her.

  Chance switched hands and peered in the other direction. “It is the East, and Juliet is the sun.”

  He switched hands again. A sputtering noise came out of his mouth, like the sound of an old coffee percolator. He made a wavelike motion with one arm and then the other. “Yo, get up off your butt, start the day, make some hay, fair sun, and kill that envious moon.”

  Before Southern Shakespeare rap could take over the world, Chance’s friends started peppering him with pillows from the sofa. He caught one and hurled it back, then closed the shutters and clomped back down the stairs.

  “Moving right along,” I said once he’d reentered the living room and finished bowing. “The balcony has to be screwed into the studs. So we just saw off the metal as close as we can, get rid of the balcony, figure out how to get the screws out, and take it from there.”

  “Piece of cake,” Denise said.

  Two hours and several saws later, Chance and one of his friends lowered the balcony down to the rest of us with a rope.

  “Nice yard art,” one of Chance’s friends said.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “Let’s bring it right out to the garage.”

  The Swiss chalet–like shutters on either side of the balcony opening had to go, so we took those down next and brought them out to the garage, too. Eventually we got all the metal screws unscrewed, both the big ones that had been holding the balcony and the smaller ones from the shutters.

  “Okay,” I said. “Now we close this sucker in.”

  Filling in a big hole with drywall is a bitch. It just is. First you have to cut a new section of drywall. Then you have to figure out how to make a support to screw it into. We finally managed to frame out some pieces of wood and get them to fit just right, without anyone falling out the hole in the second bedroom wall and ending up on the floor of the living room below.

  If you don’t want the drywall seams to show, you’ve got to match factory edge to factory edge and cut edge to cut edge. Then you screw them into place, apply drywall tape, and follow with mud. You sand and repeat as necessary until the wall is perfect.

  We finished the bedroom side first, then went downstairs and climbed up on the scaffolding. Since only two of us could fit, somewhere along the line, Denise and Chance’s friends disappeared. Loud music blasted out, and some really bad singing followed.

  “Is that ‘Good Vibrations’?” I said. “A barely recognizable karaoke version of ‘Good Vibrations’?”

  I kept one hand on the wall for stability. I wasn’t a big fan of heights.

  Chance stopped sanding. “Sounds about right. That’s not karaoke, though. Shannon bought me Rock Band 3 for my birthday. You should see the guitar that came with it.”

  “Now that’s a good wife.” I took half a step back to assess our progress. “She is going to be crazy happy when she sees this.”

  Chance’s face lit up. “I sure do hope so, mo’am. She’s not always so easy to please.”

  “She gets that from her father’s side of the family. Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it. Come on, let’s give this some time to dry, then we can prime and paint.”

  Chance and I got in on the next round of Rock Band. My guitar playing wasn’t much better than my voice, but I kicked butt when it came to choreographing the backup singers.

  “Come on, follow me,” I said as “Get Up, Stand Up” blared from the speaker and Denise butchered the guitar chords. “Your hands are going like this, and it’s just step-touch forward and step-touch back.”

  Eventually Chance made a pizza run, and everybody else headed outside to do some more tailgating.

  I tiptoed into the guest room and closed the door. I found my cell and checked for messages. Not a one.

  I took the pillow off Denise’s bed and tucked both pillows between my head and my headboard. I called Greg.

  It went right to voice mail.

  “I can’t believe you haven’t called me back,” I said. Then I hung up.

  THE GUYS ALL JUMPED into Chance’s SUV, and Denise and I followed them to a store by the side of the highway. A huge yellow sign with a big-mouthed fish on it proclaimed BASS PRO SHOPS in red letters. I’d always thought that fishing was the most boring thing in the entire world, but it turned out there was something even worse: shopping for fishing stuff.

  Chance and his friends cruised the aisles as if they were strolling through heaven. Chance held up a buggy-looking hairy thing that must have been a fishing lure. “Sweet,” he said. “Listen to this: ‘Drives bass wild with high-action round rubber legs, unique body styles, pulsating hand-tied hackles, and water-piercing colors.’ ”

  “Hey,” Denise said. “Enough with the fishing porn. Remember? You guys were going to help us go paintball shopping?”

  Nobody even looked up.

  I grabbed Denise by the arm.

  We found the paintball section. Denise put on a big black Darth Vader–esque helmet with an attached visor and padded mouthpiece. She handed an identical one to me.

  I slid it down over my reading glasses. “ ‘If your mask fogs up,’ ” I read out loud, “ ‘call yourself out, and ask for a referee to escort you to the deadbox.’ ”

  “Who knew paintball would be so complicated?” Denise said.

  “Well, I definitely think we want the pink paintballs,” I said.

  “I agree,” Denise said. “The green ones aren’t nearly as eye-catching.”

  I flipped to the next page of the instructions. “OMG. It says we need barrel condoms to protect against unintentional firing.”

  Denise put two in our shopping cart. “Of course we do. Accidental discharge is nothing to sneeze at. There are enough little paintballs running around unsupervised without us adding to the epidemic.”

  “ ‘Do not overshoot people,’ ” I read. “ ‘Overshooting occurs when you shoot someone more times than is technically necessary.’ ”

  “Duh,” Denise said.

  I picked up a rifle. “I don’t know,” I said. “I thought they were going to be cuter than this.”

  I put the rifle down again. My readers were fogging up, so I handed the instructions to Denise.

  “ ‘Before shooting,’ ” she read, “ ‘have your tank inspected. The valve of a CO2 tank holds up to forty-five hundred pounds per square inch of pressure. If you accidentally unscrew it, it will become a dangerous rocket that might become airborne and kill people. This is serious and has resulted in the deaths of several unfortunate players and the occasional innocent bystander.’ ”

  “Okay, that’s it.” I started taking the stuff out of our cart.

  “Bummer,” Denise said. “It was such a good fantasy. It got me through some really rough stuff over the years.”

  I shook my head. “They sure know how to take the fun out of violence.”

  We pushed our cart to the next aisle.

  “Nerf guns are cute,” Denise said. She unhooked one that looked just like a sniper rifle, except that it was bright yellow and purple.

  “We wouldn’t even have to go into the hotel,” I said. “We could just set up on a rooftop across the street.”

  Denise hooked it back on the display. “We have to be careful. I think this one might violate the Geneva Convention.”

  I grabbed a Super Soaker off the shelf. “Luke used to have one just like this. Actually, he prob
ably still does.”

  Denise picked up a hot pink plastic gun. “Aww,” Denise said. “A bubble gun.”

  “That’ll get their attention,” I said.

  She put the bubble gun back and picked up three plastic jars of bubbles.

  “Is that it?” the woman at the register asked.

  Denise handed her a credit card. “What else could we possibly need?”

  CHAPTER 36

  WE WERE SITTING in the hotel parking lot, and Denise was blowing bubbles out the passenger window. She’d been doing this nonstop since we’d left Bass Pro Shops, leaving a trail of bubbles in our wake as we drove across Atlanta. My only hope was that she’d run out of bubbles before she started hyperventilating.

  I turned the key in the ignition and lowered the window on my side.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  There was just enough light to see her shrug. “I should have bought that bubble gun. It had a nice heft to it.”

  She put her bubbles in the cup holder and opened the car door.

  About a million stars lit up a sky that was the color of my mood ring on a bad day. I kept time with Denise as she walked a lap around the parking lot in sandals designed for neither speed nor distance.

  She stopped at the Dumpsters. “This is where she was sleeping?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  I bent down and slid out a corner of Naomi’s cardboard mattress.

  “I kind of want to know what it feels like,” Denise said. “I mean, can you imagine being out here all by yourself? And trying to sleep?”

  Out on the street a horn beeped, cutting into the dull crunch of traffic.

  I unfolded one flap of the cardboard.

  Denise took a step back. “Careful. These sandals were really expensive.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “God, I am so going to rot in hell for that.”

  “Okay,” I said, “send Naomi a pair of the same sandals. And say three Hail Marys.”

  “Done.”

  I slid the cardboard back. We walked through the alleyway and out to the street.

  “So,” I said, “what’s the plan? Once we have a plan, you’ll feel so much better.”