Crazy for You (5 page)

“My car,” yelled a man, tearing out of the house. That was the signal for the other partygoers to burst out of the house, everyone frantic to move their cars off the fiery curb before their paint blistered or their gas tanks exploded.

Labeck and I ran out along with everyone else, but we were jostled apart by the milling party guests. The cold night air smacked me like a fist. Where was
my
car? My head spun. I vaguely recalled parking in Rhonda’s driveway. Or had I? Jogging around the side of the house, I saw to my relief that Pig was there, right behind Rhonda’s car. She couldn’t park it in her garage because it was so crammed with junk the door wouldn’t go down all the way.

Out of the corner of my eye I caught a movement. Something was scuttling along in the shadows of the garage. I moved closer, wanting a better look, following cautiously as the thing—a person, I saw now—lurched Quasimodo-style toward the back of the garage, then stepped into the glow of the spotlight above Rhonda’s rear porch. It was a guy in a parka and stocking cap, carrying a heavy container in one hand. I watched as he wrenched the top off the container and splashed something liquid across the wooden porch steps.

A chemical odor drifted in my direction. It took me a second to realize that it was charcoal lighter fluid.

“Hey!” I yelled.

Startled, the man looked up. Except that it wasn’t a man. It was a woman with short curly hair and eyeglasses that glinted in the light from the porch lamp. “K-keep away from me,” she warned, suddenly swinging the can and splattering lighter fluid all over my pants. Fumbling in her pocket, she snatched out a matchbook. “Scream for h-help and I’ll light you up like a torch!”

This failed to terrify me. I could smell the liquor fumes on her breath two yards away. This lady was too blitzed to light a birthday candle.

“Did you set those bags on fire?” I asked.

She giggled. “Guess I spoiled Rhonda’s party, huh? For my encore, I’m g-going to burn down her stinkin’ house. Maybe I’ll burn
her
up, too!”

Fumbling open the matchbook, the woman struck a match and threw it at the drenched step, but the wind blew it out.

“Shit!”

She tried again, but the second match went out, too.

“Shit!”

She looked at me. “You got a lighter?”

“Nope, sorry.”

“Come on. Help me light this friggin’ thing. We’re all in this together, sisters in the struggle, y’know? Us against Rhonda. She’d steal your hubs, too. You married?”

“I was. He’s dead.”

“Lucky you.” She lit another match. It went out. I saw my chance and snatched the matchbook out of her hand. She had lighter fluid all over her sleeves—if she
did
manage to spark a match, her arms were going to be charbroiled.

“Give ’em back.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Aww, goddammit all to hell!” She burst into tears. “I’m such a loser I can’t even burn down a lousy house!”

She weaved away into the dark just as the first fire engine pulled up.

Chapter Six

Never ask for a severance package when the package that might be severed is your head.

—Maguire’s Maxims

It was one of those Monday mornings when your possessions gang up to drive you insane. Your desperately needed underwear comes out damp from a dryer you swore you’d turned on; your cereal box explodes cornflakes all over the floor; your mascara clumps; your earrings fall in the toilet.

I couldn’t find my coat, my lovely, toasty-warm, genuine US Navy pea coat. I turned my apartment upside down searching for it, and was about to accuse Muffin of eating it when I suddenly remembered—amid the general craziness Saturday night, I’d left the coat at Rhonda’s.

I threw on a hooded sweatshirt far too flimsy for the twenty-degree temperature outside, and draped a muffler over it. Even after a double loop around the neck, the muffler still dragged on the floor. It was a Mom Muffler, the kind your mom knits for you in the shade of pink you liked back in third grade, the kind of muffler she starts but then she can’t stop because otherwise the extra yarn will go to waste, the kind of muffler you feel obligated to wear even though it clashes with all your clothes and you feel like you’re being strangled by a polyester python.

I fed and walked Muffin, dropped him off at doggie day care, then hiked the four blocks to where I’d parked my car the night before. The gods of bad luck weren’t finished messing with me yet, I discovered; Pig had a big, fat parking ticket on its windshield. I’d parked on the wrong side of the street. You’re supposed to park on the even-numbered side on even days and the odd side on odd days, a system that combines the worst of roulette, Monopoly, and a Chinese fire drill. You snooze, you lose: that’s the motto of the city’s parking department, who were now dunning me for eighty bucks.

I stuffed the ticket in Pig’s glove compartment and puttered off to do my mystery-shopping.
My first call of the day was to a fast food joint on the far west side named Zippeeburger, which touted itself as the home of “Zesty, zippin’ quik food.”

The motto turned out to be more PR than reality. Zippeeburger was not zesty
or
zippy. My Egg McZippin was flabby and lukewarm, my breakfast fries were soggy, and while I was sitting in a booth deconstructing the sandwich, an employee began swabbing the floor around my feet with a wet mop. Nothing like the smell of disinfectant to put an edge on your appetite.

There were other red flags: gooey stuff sliming from the soft serve machine; a cotton glove used as a spill-blotter on the coffeemaker’s hot plate; a clothespin replacing a spigot cap on the pop machine; paper cups rolling around the floor in the food-prep area. I gave the place mostly ones on the CRS five-point scale, although I was tempted to use the Mr. Yuck emoticon.

I finished writing up my review, sent it in, and drove on to my next destination, Boppers, a shop geared toward teens and twenties in a mega mall on Milwaukee’s south side. The first thing a mystery shopper looks for when she walks into a place is how quickly a store associate greets a customer. Although I was the only customer in the shop, the two teenage girls chatting at the register treated me as though I were a nuisance sent to ruin their day—not invisible, but there in the same way as, say, a carton dropped off by the UPS guy. Finally, after thirteen minutes had elapsed—I timed it—an impossibly skinny sixteen-year-old slouched over to me.

“Help you?” she mumbled, gazing down at the message on her cellphone.

I held up a pair of jeans and recited the CRS script. “I wondered if you had these in a size ten.”

She looked at me as though I’d asked if they sold crack out of the back room. “Sorry,” she said, her tone clearly indicating she was not sorry, “but we only go up to size
eight
. You could try Penney’s. My grandma buys a lot of her stuff there.”

Amazing. In one sentence, she’d made me feel not just obese, but old. You couldn’t teach this stuff in school.

After Boppers, I mystery shopped a hardware store, a hair salon, and an exotic pet emporium, whose salesperson tried to interest me in buying a Javanese spitting lizard. Since I already worked in an environment where being spat at was a daily possibility, I
said no thanks to the lizard. Just before heading back to the office, I checked the CRS website. Our site has the down and dirty on restaurants, plumbers, electricians, dentists, doctors, and nearly any product or service available in the Milwaukee metropolitan area. Based on evaluations by CRS’s mystery shoppers, businesses are awarded ratings on a five-point scale. None of this information is free, naturally; customers have to shell out for a yearly subscription. The Zippeeburger review was up. I scanned it eagerly.

Service: 5/5

Food: 5/5

Ambience: 5/5

Fives? You have got to be kidding! Fives!

Yes, there they were—every single category boasted a four or five. The review at the end was as generic as an off-brand paper plate. Not a single word was my own. Maybe someone had accidentally transposed the information from a different review, I reasoned, forcing myself to remain calm. Probably it was just an honest mistake.

My email chimed. Rhonda. I opened it and discovered a short, all-caps message. All caps are the cyber equivalent of yelling.
SEE ME ASAP
, the message read.

I didn’t like the sound of this.

When I got back to the office that afternoon, I went immediately to Rhonda’s office. Rhonda was rocking the Navaho nation today, wearing a top woven with geometric designs, a suede skirt with hem fringe hovering around her crotch, and turquoise, turquoise everywhere—necklaces, rings, even turquoise-studded high-heeled boots. A manila folder sat out on her desk. Reading upside down, I saw my own name on the folder. Another ominous sign.

Rhonda got up and came around from her desk, eyeing me coldly. “Close the door.”

Conversations beginning with that phrase are never happy ones.

Rhonda pulled a page out of her printer. Holding it with the tips of her fingers as though it were a dead cockroach, she thrust it at me. It was my review of Zippeeburger.

“Do you feel that this is acceptable work, Maguire?”

They must teach this technique in boss’s school. Get you on the defensive right off the bat so you start stuttering out excuses, then wait for you to admit that you’re a
pathetic excuse for a human being who ought to be paying for the privilege of serving the company. “Did you even visit this place?” Rhonda asked.

“Of course I visited it. You read my notes, didn’t you? The place is a dumpster. Who changed my review?”

“I did. The Zippeeburger chain happens to be an important client. Apparently, you had a lapse in judgment when you evaluated the place.”

“A lapse in
judgment
?” I’d been nervous when I walked into Rhonda’s office, but now I was getting steamed. Time to smack the ball right back into her court. “I’m getting the impression,” I said, trying to hang on to my temper, “that businesses can buy their way into higher ratings.”

Rumors to that effect had been floating around the office ever since I’d started working for CRS, but I’d put it down to gossip. Now I wasn’t so certain. “You didn’t by any chance contact the restaurant owner and offer to change the review, did you?”

Rhonda’s eyes flashed fire. “No one has ever questioned my website’s integrity.”

Which wasn’t exactly a denial, just a weaselly politician-type evasion.

“Because if you’re taking kickbacks, word is going to get around.”

“Oh, that’s rich, that’s really rich.” Rhonda’s mouth set in a hard line. “You’re an ex-convict! You worked the system and walked free! And you have the gall to stand there and accuse
me
of unethical behavior?”

That was the moment I knew I was about to burn my bridges. “How does it work, Rhonda? Do you shake down the businesses you feature? Is there a set amount for a three-star rating, a four—”

“I don’t have to put up with this crap,” she barked. “Consider yourself terminated, as of this minute. Turn in your company property, clean out your cubicle, get off the premises!”

“You’re canning me?” My head was whirling, my heart was hammering, things were happening way too fast. But I couldn’t let her get away with this without zinging her back. “Okay, fine. I just hope that when you’re arrested for soliciting bribes, I get to see you do the perp walk!”

“Get out!”

I didn’t move. “I want my paycheck. You owe me six weeks’ salary.”

Rhonda tapped her long, polished fingernails on my folder. “Your contract clearly states that failure to satisfactorily complete your assignments will result in a loss of all financial remuneration.”

“So you’re a thief, in addition to being a cheat.”

She squared her jaw. “I’m calling security.”

“Go ahead. But we haven’t talked about my severance package yet.”

Of course this was complete nonsense; it was just fun yanking Rhonda’s chain. But I hadn’t picked up on the flushed face and glittering eyes; hadn’t realized how much of the street animal lurked beneath Rhonda’s sleek façade.

“
Here’s
your severance package!” She slapped me across the face, putting a lot of shoulder into it.

I reacted without thinking, the old prison reflexes still there, sweeping out a foot and kicking her legs out from under her. Women who go around slapping people shouldn’t wear spike heels. Rhonda tottered backward, wildly clutching at her chair for support, but it spun out of her grip and she landed on her back, legs sprawling.

We stared at each other, both of us breathing hard. I kept my fists clamped tightly against my sides because I was one second away from jumping on Rhonda and punching her perfectly sculpted nose into her sinus cavity.

Rhonda hauled herself to her feet. She limped to her desk, pressed a button, spoke into an intercom. “Mitch? Come into my office. I need you to escort someone off the premises.”

The left side of my face throbbed where Rhonda’s oversized rings had gouged my skin, but I would rather have had my nostril hairs yanked out with a roto-rooter than show that it hurt. The more I thought about it, the more this whole incident seemed contrived, simply an excuse to fire me. Rhonda wanted me out for reasons of her own, I thought—reasons that had more to do with Ben Labeck than with my shortcomings as a mystery shopper. She’d come on strong to Labeck at her party Saturday night, probably envisioning him as the latest addition to her stud stable. Had she found out that Ben and I had been a couple—was she worried that I’d get in her way?

Mitch Gilbert, head of the CRS security division, appeared in the doorway.

“Remove this person from the premises,” Rhonda ordered. “Watch her to make
sure she doesn’t take company property with her. And since she has a criminal record, maybe you ought to do a body cavity search, too.”

Chapter Seven

The best cure for depression is hanging around with someone more depressed than yourself.