In the Unlikely Event... (36 page)

She got the ten points. She was the winner! Mrs. Meadowbrook-Parks picked her up and swung her around. The auditorium exploded with applause, and Chase saw the sardonic grin on her mother’s face, like Stella knew all along that Chase would win. She’d done the standing ovation thing as a consolation prize for Kim Lee.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the Golden Gift-Wrapping Award goes to Chase Banter,” Mrs. Valponne said. She indicated that Chase should come forward. Poirot handed her the gold box and shook her hand.

“You’re very talented, Ms. Banter, and I commend you,” Poirot said.

“Thank you. This means a lot to me,” Chase said, and she meant it.

She and Winnie and Mrs. Meadowbrook-Parks were surrounded by her family. Bud jumped up and down and squealed. “You did it! You did it!”

Chase laughed. She would give Bud a good ribbing over this jump-squeal moment. It was so not her. Of course, Bud’s design prep had been instrumental. Maybe she wouldn’t tease her about behaving like an overexcited six-year-old.

“Well done, now we can have the party,” Stella said, dialing her cell phone.

“What party?” Chase said. She’d been adamant about having only a few people know about her wrapping gig. She wanted to get over her performance anxiety in a private way, which was, of course, antithetical to her cause, but Dr. Robicheck had told her that psychological incrementalism was a better method than plate tectonics when it came to modifying behavior.

“Your victory party,” Stella said.

“I made tamales and Frito pie,” Jacinda said.

“Everyone is waiting at Stella’s house, and you’re invited too, Mrs. Meadowbrook-Parks,” Bud said, handing her the MapQuest directions that she had fished from her backpack.

“Wait just a minute, you all planned a victory party?” Chase said.

Gitana avoided her gaze.

“What if I hadn’t won?” Chase said.

“Then we would have a celebration party for giving it your all and overcoming your fear. It’s a win-win,” Bud said. She hugged Chase’s thigh. “But I am glad you won. It’s so much more fun. We invited everyone. Donna and Isabel are at the house setting it all up with banners and balloons and a big cake.”

“I’m glad I won, or it would have been a big to-do for a not winning,” Chase said.

“Exactly,” Bud said, stroking the gold trophy, which was shaped like a wrapped box. She would add it to her wall of Chase’s accomplishments.

“Are you going to put it next to my Golden Vulva plaque and the Labia Majora statue for my book award?” Chase said.

“You know me so well it’s scary,” Bud said. “But I thought I’d put it between them so it appears that the gold-plated gift box is a metaphor for unwrapping one’s true self—free of fear.”

“What does that have to do with plaques that have vaginal parts on them?” Chase asked.

“A better question would be why do you have awards with that on them? I want to put the gold box there to distract the viewer,” Bud replied.

“I know, right. This trophy makes sense at least,” Chase said, looking down at it and feeling truly proud.

“Now, let’s go party,” Bud said.

“Where the hell have you two been?” Chase said. She was in the writing studio dusting her trophies.

Divine Vulva and Commercial Endeavor were holding hands and bumping each other’s hips. “You tell her,” Divine Vulva said.

“No, you do it,” Commercial Endeavor said.

“Really?” Divine Vulva said.

“Will someone just fucking tell me?” Chase said, shaking her feather duster at them.

Divine Vulva pointed a finger at Chase. “You have a filthy potty mouth.” She looked at Commercial Endeavor. “I hadn’t noticed her dirty mouth before. Has she always been like that?”

Commercial Endeavor nodded and shot Chase an apologetic look.

“You should fucking talk,” Chase said, pointing at Divine Vulva.

“Tsk, tsk,” Divine Vulva clucked, putting her hand on her hip and waggling a finger in a gesture of shame-on-you.

“Tell me where you’ve been. The suspense is killing me,” Chase said sarcastically.

“Well, since you put it that way, all right. We went to Buffalo,” Divine Vulva said.

“Buffalo? As in New York? Why?”

Divine Vulva stuck out her left hand and smiled coyly. Chase scrutinized her hand. “What’s wrong with it? It looks fine to me.”

“We got married, you stupid fuck,” Divine Vulva said.

“Vulva!” Commercial Endeavor said.

“Oh, sorry, honey.” Divine Vulva gave her a penitent look.

“Why Buffalo?” Chase said.

“New York State now recognizes gay marriage. We wanted to partake in the newness of ceremony,” Commercial Endeavor said.

“Did you have her sign a prenup?” Chase asked Commercial Endeavor.

“What?” Divine Vulva said.

“She makes a lot more money than you do,” Chase said.

“I realize that,” Commercial Endeavor said.

“Our union is one of the soul, not of the God Mammon,” Divine Vulva said.

“Don’t get a joint checking account,” Chase said. “But congratulations and I desperately hope this works out because it’s a little late in the game for me to be finding new muses.”

Divine Vulva and Commercial Endeavor both winced.

Chase was secretly ecstatic they were back, but she didn’t want them to know that.

“Now, I hope you’re both well-rested because I’d like to get back to work, and we’ve got a deadline. So let’s chop-chop.” It was a good thing the gift-wrapping gig had come along or Chase would’ve been a basket case worrying about them and how their absence would affect her writing career.

The three of them got back to work. Chase was deep in concentration, thinking about Act Three of her mystery novel. Her publisher, Eliza P. Newman, divided books into three acts—the first act was “climb the tree,” Act Two was “shake the tree,” and Act Three was “getting out of the tree.” Commercial Endeavor was going over the plot outline. It was Divine Vulva’s job to come up with the last of the red herrings. Her brow was furrowed with the effort, and she was scribbling on a yellow legal pad. It wasn’t easy to get Divine Vulva to work, but when she worked she
worked
.

Chase saw movement out of the corner of her eye and looked up to see Lacey standing with her forehead pressed against the glass pane of the door. And if this wasn’t disconcerting enough, she used her head to knock. Chase leapt up and unlocked the door before Lacey gave herself a concussion or shattered the glass.

“What’s wrong?” Chase asked. Lacey trudged past her and dove onto the couch face-first, bursting into tears. Evidently something was really wrong. “Did someone die? Is Jasmine all right? She didn’t break up with you?”

That question sent Lacey howling. “No, thank the Goddess, but I need her so much and she’s gone,” she blubbered, snuffling and rubbing her eyes.

“She’s on a book tour, and you insisted she go, and she is under contract to do so,” Chase pointed out.

The wailing continued. “Shit,” Chase said. She rummaged around for a box of tissues in the bathroom. She found an unopened box under the vanity.

She handed the box to Lacey. She sat up, took a tissue and blew her nose. “Fank you,” she said with a stuffed nose.

“Do you want me to call Dr. Robicheck?”

This started a fresh torrent of tears.

“Or not.”

“No, she did her best. It can’t be fixed. They can’t behave or bond. It’s hopeless.”

“Who are ‘they’?” Chase asked.

“The fucking lesbians, that’s who. Chase, it was a mass exodus and all over a seminar in comedy. I thought it would help. Bud’s film and Dr. Robicheck’s session worked wonders for a while, and then I don’t know what happened. We all seemed fine, I thought. I had Chino and Dixon check things out and the thermometer seemed to read high.”

“Thermometer?”

“We call it the Cultural Thermometer—it’s the way I measure how the general population is feeling about the way things are being run at the Institute. You should check it out some time. It’s a marvel of charting—takes up one whole panel in the boardroom.”

“How come I haven’t seen it?”

“It’s a secret.” She dabbed at her eyes and brushed her hair back from her face.

“You know your clandestine world is gonna bite you in the ass one of these days,” Chase said. She heard Divine Vulva sigh heavily. Ah, life was back to normal—her muse was disgusted with her banal use of language.

“Do you think I should fire Dixon and Chino?” Lacey asked, shredding the snot-filled Kleenex.

Chase put the wastebasket beside her. She didn’t want any biohazard material on her floor. She thought about the question. She didn’t like Lacey’s henchmen, but they did what they were told. “They’re not my favorites, but you are the one in charge. Maybe they’d behave better if you didn’t instruct them to behave in a totalitarian way.”

Lacey considered this. “I suppose some of their actions
are
my fault.”

Chase pulled out her desk calendar and made a notation.

“What are you doing?”

“Marking this day on my Calendar of Unlikely Events.”

“What’s so special about today—other than my nervous breakdown?”

“You admitted to being wrong. That doesn’t happen a lot. In fact, I don’t think it’s ever happened.”

“Am I really that bad?” She finished shredding the Kleenex and set the waste basket aside.

“Uh, let me think about that—yes.”

“Smart ass. Come sit next to me. I need some moral support.”

Chase obliged. “Do you want to talk about what induced the exodus or do you want to hear the plan Bud came up with for the new Institute?”

“I don’t think even Bud could save the Institute. No one, it appears, wants to be saved,” Lacey said.

“Tell me what happened,” Chase said. The sun hit the gold box trophy through the windowpane. Chase gazed at it. Damn, that was a good moment. She still felt the glow of success.

Divine Vulva poked Chase in the ribs and whispered, “Do try and pay attention. This is a pivotal moment in lesbian history and it might prove instructive.”

“Because?” Chase inquired, eyebrows raised.

“It’s a failed lesbian experiment,” Divine Vulva said.

“And we need those…because?”

“It shows our fallibility as a people.”

“And that’s good…because?”

“It means we are stretching our boundaries and growing.”

“And we got a really good library out of the deal,” Commercial Endeavor piped in.

“Chase, are you paying attention?” Lacey said, getting up and pacing. “I mean, if I am going display my failure as a leader and a person, I would really appreciate your full attention.” She glared.

“All right. Tell away,” Chase said, fixing a look of concentration on her face.

“Well, it started as a comedy seminar. I hired this local lesbian comedian. She does club gigs, and I’d heard good things about her. So I figured all the laughing had helped before and that keeping the momentum going would help, and it was all going so well until the joke.”

“What was wrong with the joke?”

“It was off-color.” Lacey sat back down and pulled out a Kleenex in anticipation of a crying jag.

“It was about black, Hispanic, Asian or Native American people?”

“No, not that kind of color. It was a nether regions joke.” Lacey sighed and put her head in her hands.

“You mean a vaginal joke? What the fuck is that?”

“Just listen. Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden…”

“A vaginally religious joke?” Chase said.

Lacey rolled her eyes and continued, “And Eve decided to take a bath, so she went to the river and was washing her hoo-hoo…”

“Hoo-hoo? You call it a hoo-hoo? Come on, you can say vagina.”