More Than a Kiss (14 page)

Nobel SurPrize

Back
at The Original Dinerant, Jordan nibbled on a blue-corn tortilla chip.  She had
never seen anything so sensual, so intoxicating, so downright sexy as when Amy
took a huge bite of her taco.

So
far Jordan had refrained from asking anything further about that man in the
hospital cafeteria.  For one thing, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.  On the
other hand, it was going to bother her until she did.  “So what was with that
guy?” Jordan asked.  She tried to make her voice sound light and carefree,
however it came out sounding more like Alvin Chipmunk, “Somebody escaped from
the psych ward?” 

Amy
reacted like Jordan had thrown a bucket of ice on her.  “What guy?  Oh, that
guy.  He… he… he…  We went out for drinks one night.  He can’t take no for an
answer,” Amy said and shoved a blue chip in her mouth, signaling the end of the
conversation. 

Jordan
dropped the subject.  “How’s your taco?”

Amy
froze with her taco halfway to her mouth.  “Uh oh.”

Jordan
froze with her tea glass halfway to her mouth.  “Uh oh what?”

“Petronella
is in the building,” Amy whispered.  “And she’s coming this way.”

Jordan’s
first instinct was to hide.  It was too late to crawl under the table, so she
did the next best thing.  She draped her napkin over her head.

Two
seconds later, she heard an icy voice say, “Hello, Jordan.”

“Petronella,”
Jordan said back.  Sighing, she took the napkin off her head.

Petronella
looked down her nose at Amy and said, “I am sorry, but I do not know your
name.”

“We
met once,” Amy stammered.  “Here, in fact.  I mean in this restaurant.  Not at
this table.  You were leaving.  You probably don’t remember me.”

Recognition
flashed across Petronella’s face.  “Oh yes, the girl with toilet paper stuck to
her shoe.”

“Yep. 
That was me.”  Amy chuckled nervously.  “I don’t have toilet paper on my shoe
today.”

Petronella
leaned to see.  “Indeed you do not.  Good for you.”  Petronella’s skinny neck
swiveled back to Jordan.  “I saw you at my poetry reading and…”

Jordan
cut her off, “We came to see the show.  You just happened to be there.”

“Be
that as it may.  You observed what happened, am I correct?”

“Yes,
I saw,” Jordan said.  “It was quite colorful.”

Petronella
ignored the obvious pun.  “Did you see the reviews?” she inquired.

“If
you mean those little ezine-online thingies, not really,” Jordan said.

“And
the City Pages and the Arts and Entertainment section,” Petronella added.

“Yeah,
whatever,” Jordan said.

Petronella
pulled out a chair and sat.  “I need your help.”

“First,
what could you possibly want from me?” Jordan asked.  “And secondly, why should
I do anything for you?”

Petronella
ignored the questions.  Which was not unusual.  If she didn’t want to know
about something, she ignored its existence.  Just like she was ignoring Amy
right at the moment.  Petronella scooted her chair several inches closer to
Jordan.  “I need your little inventor friend… what is her name, Einstein?”

“Edison,”
Jordan corrected.

“Yes,
of course.  I need Edison to build me a machine.”

“What
kind of machine?” Jordan asked.  She wondered if it was too much to hope for
Petronella wanting a time machine to blast her back into the past.  Or the
future. Or anywhere but here.

“A
machine like the one that attacked me last night.”

Jordan
paled.  “Why?”  She squirmed in her chair.  Did Petronella know she was responsible
for the paint-spraying incident?  Was she playing some type of game, hoping to
trap Jordan into admitting her culpability?  Jordan looked to Amy for help. 
But Amy was nervously stuffing blue-corn tortilla chips in her mouth.

Petronella
continued, “I tried to find the machine after the show.  I was going to gather
up the parts and see if Einstein could put them back together.  But,
unfortunately, the terrorists made off with it before I could.”

“Terrorists?”
Amy said through a mouth full of blue goo.

“Yes,”
Petronella said.  She had the gleam of a zealot in her eyes.

“Terrorists
for what?” Jordan said.

“There
are certain people, Jordan, who wish to see me harmed.”

“Really?”
Jordan said, trying hard to appear appalled at such a thing.  “Who would want
that?”  Besides me, she added inside her own head.

“People
who dislike poetry,” Petronella said like it was obvious.  “Republican people,
no doubt.  But their little plan backfired.”

“It
did?” Amy chirped up.

Petronella
did not look at her.  “The audience loved the paint splattering.  They thought
it was part of the show.  My reviews were fantastic.  There is talk of short-listing
me for the Nobel.”

Amy
choked on a chip.  Petronella glared at her.  Amy smiled weakly and thumped
herself on the chest.  “Sorry.  Wrong pipe.”

Jordan
smirked.

“So,”
Petronella continued, “I would like your little friend to build me another
paint machine.  I will go on tour with it.  I will call it my Rainbow Tour.”

“What
a fantastic idea!” Jordan said.  The thought of Petronella being on tour and
out of her life was too good to be true.  Wait, Jordan thought, what if it
really is too good to be true? “For realsies?” she asked.

“Yes,”
Petronella said.  “For realsies.”

“When
would you be leaving on this tour?”

“As
soon as I get the paint machine.”

“I’ll
call Einstein, I mean, Edison, today.”

Petronella
smiled and stood. “Contact me after you have talked to her.  You know my
number.”

Jordan
and Amy watched Petronella as she left.  No sooner had the door closed behind
her than Edison entered through the back door.  She saw Jordan and hurried over
to the table.  Skipping hellos entirely, Edison panted, “Was she here?”

“Petronella?”
Jordan asked.

Edison
nodded, trying to catch her breath.  “Who else?  I’ve been following her, but I
lost her about a mile back.  I invented a motorized bicycle, you know, for the
lazy cyclist so they wouldn’t have to pedal up hills, but I think I ran out of
gas.  Do you know how heavy one of those bikes are when you have to pedal?” 
She wheezed a couple of times and sucked in a giant lungful of oxygen before
continuing, “I lost her, but figured she was headed here.”

“You
just missed her,” Jordan said.

“Motorized
bicycles have already been invented,” Amy said.

Edison
sat in Petronella’s vacant chair.  “They have?  Are you sure?”

“Yeah,
pretty sure,” Amy said.

Edison
looked downcast.  “Damn.  All the good inventions are already taken.”

Jordan
leaned across the table until her nose was six inches from Edison’s nose. 
“Guess what?  Petronella wants you to invent a paint car just like the one that
sprayed her.”

Edison
looked confused.  “I invented the one that
did
spray her.”

“She
doesn’t know that,” Jordan said.  “She wants to take it on tour.  Build another
one and Petronella will be out of my hair forever.  Can you do it?”

“Of
course,” Edison said.

“If
you build it, she will go,” Amy said.

Congress of Cow

Amy
walked into the house and was immediately engulfed by the aroma of curry
emanating from the kitchen.  She followed her nose to the source, expecting to
find Isabel.  Instead, she found Jeremy stirring something in a saucepan and
reading a book - both very unnatural things for him.

“You’re
cooking?” Amy said.

“Actually,
I’m only babysitting.  I have strict orders to not stop stirring.”

Amy
peered into the pot and saw something green and lumpy.  She was no expert, but
she knew enough to know that wasn’t a good sign.  “What is that?”

“It’s
Saag Paneer.  Or will be when it’s done,” Jeremy said, not looking up from the
book he was holding.  He cocked his head and then turned the book upside down
and squinted his eyes.

“It’s
what?” Amy said, taking the wooden spoon from him and giving the goop a good
poke.  It had the consistency of something found in a touch pool at the
aquarium.  She felt the urge to do it again, the way kids like to poke dead
things with a stick.

“Saag
Paneer is Indian for green slime.  It’s essentially cooked spinach with this
Indian cheese stuff.  The sauce is supposed to be thinner than this but he ran
out of coconut milk.  He went out to get it.  He’s making you dinner.”

“He? 
He who?” Amy asked with a note of panic.

“Chad
he, that’s who.  You know a man’s in love when he starts cooking dinner.”

“What!” 
Amy said, dropping the spoon and splattering green stuff everywhere.

“Seriously,
the dude’s got it bad for you.  He was like so down about what happened at
lunch that he took an express cooking class this afternoon to woo you back. 
The only class they had available was Indian cooking.  Hence, the green slime.”

“That’s
just great.  I thought I could spend an evening alone with you and Isabel.  I
had something important to tell you both and…” her voice trailed off when she
realized Jeremy was more interested in his book than in what she was saying. 
“What’re you reading?”

“
The
Kama Sutra
.  Talk about a real eye-opener.”

Amy
looked over his shoulder at the drawing he had been studying.  “That’s not even
humanly possible.”

“Apparently,
it is.  Those bodies are drawn to scale.  I think you just have to be really
limber.”

“Why
do you even have this?” Amy made some deductions and she hoped she was wrong
about all of them.

“It’s
not mine.  It’s Chad’s.  He bought it with the cookbook.  He’s boning up on
some new positions to try out on you.”  He laughed.  “Boning up.  Get it?”

“Not
funny.  This is wrong on so many levels I don’t know where to start,” Amy said.

“No,
I think the dude is right on target.  His plan is to feed you and then fuck you
like…” he shows her a picture in the book, “a congress of cow.”

“That
is so not going to happen.”

“You
prefer him to fuck you like a panda?”

“Jeremy,
there is going to be no fucking – panda, cow or any other animal.”

“He’s
going to be totally bummed out.  What’re you going to tell him?”

“Good
question.”  She could call Jordan and have her call back with some fake emergency. 
Amy bit her lip.  In theory that was a good plan but maybe the wrong person. 
Jordan was already skittish about Chad.  Amy didn’t want to make it any
weirder.  She thought some more.  Her mother!  She’d be perfect.  Who can deny
the call of a sick mother?  And it would have the added benefit of not looking
like she was rebuffing him because the rebuff strategy was backfiring.  It was
making Chad more ardent than ever.

“Do
you think that Chad thinks I’m trying to play ‘hard to get’ and that’s why he’s
trying so hard to get me?”

Jeremy
stared back at her.  “Could you put that in like man-speak?”

Men
and women were not of the same species despite the claims of science, Amy had
concluded.  She tried again.  “That’s what you told me once.  That he thinks I’m
playing hard to get.”

“Yes,
and he likes it.”

“So
if I acted like I wanted him then would he go away?”

“No,
he’d totally marry you.”

“And
then cheat on you the day after,” Isabel said, entering the kitchen.  She was
carrying a bag of groceries with celery sticking out of the top and something
moving in the bottom.

“What’s
in the bag?” Amy asked.

“A
live lobster which I really need to get into some water,” Isabel said, setting
the bag down on the counter.  She peered into the pot on the stove.  She took the
wooden spoon from Jeremy and poked the green, lumpy stuff.  “What is this?”

“Saag
Paneer,” Jeremy said.

“It
needs more coconut milk.”

“Chad
went to get it,” Jeremy said.

Isabel
ran water into the sink.  She carefully extracted the lobster from the sack and
dumped it into the water.

“What
are you making for dinner?” Amy asked.  “Lobster bisque?”  Amy didn’t know what
lobster bisque was exactly, but it had to better than Chad’s Pig Veneer or
whatever it was Jeremy was stirring.

“No,
the lobster is for the lobster race that’s being held at the Extreme Cook Off
downtown in the Convention Center,” Isabel said.

“Lobster
race?” Amy asked.  She did a
double take when
she saw Jeremy was now studying a diagram on cunnilingus.  She made a mental
note of the page number.

“The
placement of your lobster in the race determines your place in the cook off. 
Obviously being in the top ten is best.  Judges’ palates get jaded and gastric
problems start occurring so you want to get in early.”  She gestured at the
lobster in the sink, saying, “I thought this guy looked pretty fast and he was hot-to-go
getting out of the tank.  Look at him trying to get out of the sink now.”  She
grabbed a spatula and parried it at the lobster, like an errant knight
defending a damsel.  The lobster evaded Isabel’s thrust, reached out with one
deadly claw and snapped the spatula in half.

“Wowzer,”
Isabel said, surveying the decapitated spatula.

“Wowzer
is right,” Amy said.  “Remind me not to get on his bad side.” 

Isabel
threw the spatula in the trash.  “I guess that’s why they’re usually sold with rubber-bands
around their claws.”

“So,
after the race, are you going to eat him?” Amy asked.  Jeremy was totally
engrossed in the book and not stirring.  She poked him with her elbow.  “Keep
stirring.”

“Depends
on if he wins or loses the race,” Isabel said, looking down on him.  “His
performance will affect my life.  If he places high I should reward him with
life, don’t you think?”

“You
could take him to the beach and free him,” Amy said.

The
front door slammed, announcing the arrival of Chad with the coconut milk. Amy
panicked.  He was the last person she wanted to see.  She was about to sneak
out the door when Chad appeared, blocking her only exit.  “Hello, my little
love button.”

Amy
gritted her teeth and looked at Isabel, sending her telepathic messages. 
Isabel caught on and came to her rescue by saying, “You better get that coconut
milk in the Saag Paneer because it has the consistency of wallpaper glue.”

Chad
quickly began tearing the top of the container.  “How much do you think?”

Isabel
shrugged.  “Don’t know.  Never made the stuff.  I have a spastic colon.”

Chad
noticed Jeremy reading and snatched the book away from him.  “No one was
supposed to see that, you idiot.”

“Hey,
I needed entertainment.  Stirring is boring.”

Chad
poured in a tiny bit of the coconut milk.  Jeremy had to use both hands to stir
the thick gunk.  “Keep stirring,” Chad ordered. 

Isabel
grabbed the carton of coconut milk out of Chad’s hands, saying, “Let me help. 
You men are useless.”  She poured a little at a time into the pot while Jeremy
continued stirring.

Chad
leaned up against the counter next to the sink, affecting a pose that Amy
supposed was calculated to look like a male model.  He tossed Amy his famous
wink.  She didn’t bother to catch it.

Chad
changed poses, leaning on one arm, crossing his feet and pooching out his
bottom lip.  Amy supposed it was his sultry look.

“Where
are your pink shoes?” Amy asked.

Chad’s
smile disappeared.  “They were stolen. I couldn’t believe it.  Who would steal
pink size 12 men’s shoes?”

“A
clown?” Isabel said.

Amy
snickered.

Chad
ignored the insult.  “Do you know how hard it is to find a shoe like that?” he
said, petulantly.  “And now I’ve got to do it again.  But you should see all
the adorable kid Converse shoes.  You know for when we’ve got little ones,”
Chad said, raising his eyebrows up and down like Groucho Marx.

Amy
might have decked him if what happened next hadn’t happened.

Chad’s
face turned red and he screamed.  He plucked his hand up off the counter by the
sink.  The lobster was dangling from his finger!  The lobster had a death grip
on his forefinger with one of its enormous claws.  Chad jumped up and down,
spun in a circle and then banged the lobster on the edge of the counter.  The
lobster sailed across the room, splashing into the pot of Saag Paneer.

Jeremy
yelped and jumped back.

Isabel
screamed, “Save him!”

Amy
said, “I’ll save him!”  She rushed to Chad who was now spurting a stream of
blood from his hand.

Isabel
shook her head.  “Not him!  Save the lobster!”  Isabel pushed Jeremy back and
whacked the back of the pot.  It turned over, emptying out the green lumpy
stuff and one seriously dizzy lobster onto the floor.  The lobster scurried
away.

Jeremy
put his hands over his ears, screaming, “Will somebody please turn off the
alarm?”

“That’s
not an alarm.  It’s Chad screaming,” Amy shouted.  “The lobster bit off his
finger!”

That
seemed to be news to Chad.  He looked down at his hand and, for the first time,
saw that he was missing his index finger.  He stopped screaming.  His eyes
rolled back into his head, his knees buckled and he crumpled to the floor.

“What
kind of doctor faints?” Isabel said.

“One
that just lost his finger,” Amy said.

“He’s
bleeding an awful lot,” Isabel said.  This observation kicked Amy into gear. 
She grabbed a dishtowel and kitchen shears.  She cut the towel into strips. 
“Snap, snap, you two,” Amy said, gesturing to the floor, “find the finger.  The
lobster probably dropped it into that green goo.”  She tied the strips to
Chad’s hand, fashioning a tourniquet.

Jeremy
and Isabel knelt on the floor, searching the globs of Saag Paneer with their
bare hands.  They looked like two kids making mud pies
.  Green
mud
pies. 

“How
do we know which lump is it?” Isabel asked.

“Just
find a lump that looks like a finger,” Amy said. 

“They
all look like decapitated fingers,” Jeremy said.

Amy
said, “Get them all, we’ll sort it out later.”

“I
found it!” Isabel yelled triumphantly.  She held the finger up for everyone to
see.

Jeremy
gently pinched the dismembered digit between his thumb and forefinger and
dunked it in the sink of water, to rinse it off.  “Isabel, get a baggie. Fill
it with ice.”

Isabel
leaped up and got a baggie and ice.  Jeremy dropped the finger inside.  Isabel
put her hands on her hips and looked at the kitchen floor.  “Gross.  It looks
like Linda Blair was here.”

Satisfied
that the tourniquet was working, Amy turned her attention to waking Chad up. 
She slapped him across the face.  He didn’t move.  She slapped him again,
harder.

Chad’s
eyelids fluttered.  He opened his eyes and smiled at Amy.  “I knew it.  I knew
you cared.”

She
gave him one more slap just because she could.