Red Tape (5 page)

I imagined that would have been nice. It would probably be smart for me to take baby steps with someone new instead of jumping right in to a relationship. I wasn’t crazy about the idea of dating someone from work. Everyone would have talked about us. I would have been embarrassed. Well, not as embarrassed as I was earlier with my leaky ladies, I supposed.

I was becoming very torn about Officer Williams. I wasn’t sure I’d have anything to talk to him about. While I did like the idea of getting out for an evening with a hunk of a guy, I think I liked the fantasy that I had drawn up in my head more than the reality of actually going on a real date. I doubted he’d ask me anyway, which was good. It meant that I wouldn’t have to make any decisions about him.

“I wouldn’t have anything to wear,” I told her.

“I’ll take you out shopping. I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you could use a makeover. Plus, I feel bad about the little problem you had with your ta-tas. You deserve something nice.”

“Fine. I’ll ask my parents to watch the baby on Saturday. I realize I’m a mess.”

“You are a mess, but I’ll fix that.”

* * *

Saturday couldn’t have come quickly enough for me. I dropped the baby off in the morning and headed over to Bonnie’s Taj Mahal beachfront home. Her house was pale pink this week.

“Did you change the siding since I was here last? I thought your house was yellow. I almost drove right past it.”

“I got sick of yellow. My husband hates the pink, but it reminds me of Bermuda’s pink sand.”

It must be nice to switch your house color on a whim. My house was dark green with burgundy trim. It had been that way forever. I wasn’t sure if that was Uncle Lou’s choice or if Uncle Lou bought it that way. I certainly didn’t have the funds to paint my siding whenever I felt the urge.

I slid into the cushy charcoal leather seats in Bonnie’s shiny new black Mercedes. She revved the engine, then pulled out of her three-car garage, making a right onto Ocean Avenue. She made a left onto First Street and headed toward the causeway.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“I thought I’d take a ride out to Jackson to the outlets since there are a lot of stores there.”

“Jackson? We should try that Bratz Restaurant for lunch.”

Bonnie was game to try a new place to eat. She merged onto Route 195 and headed west toward Jackson. Within thirty minutes, we were pulling into the outlets. She then dragged me from store to store for hours.

I had to say, Bonnie was a fantastic personal shopper. I should have brought her shopping with me all the time. She had an eye for what would look good on a person’s body. She picked out the perfect pair of jeans to fit my shape. I had sticker shock at first. I usually spend around twenty dollars on a pair of jeans. These were eighty-five dollars. I also got a cute peach halter top to match the jeans on a clearance rack for only five bucks.

Bonnie wouldn’t let me leave without the perfect little black dress, a more casual sundress, and accessories that could be mixed and matched with what I bought. She said I needed to be prepared for any type of date I went on. Jeans for a sporting event, something fancy for dinner and dancing, and something for a picnic or casual affair. Not that I expected to have a date anytime soon, but at least I had some clothes that fit me that I could wear anywhere, not only on a date. When I couldn’t possibly stand another minute because my feet hurt so badly, she agreed to take a break for lunch. We hopped back in the Benz and she sped off to Bratz at around one o’clock.

Bratz was located on County Route 526. A large parking area was placed in front of the restaurant. The façade was red brick with large windows. Their sign was a deep red color. Inside was modern-rustic. The walls were painted copper and had barnyard-looking wood trim. Strangely, it didn’t have a country feel to it. There was a large bar area toward the back, which had at least twelve specialty beers on tap and over thirty varieties of bottled German beers.

The hostess escorted us to a booth not too far from the bar area. There was still a decent lunch crowd inside. I looked over the menu.

“Can I get you something to drink?” the waitress said with a large smile. She was dressed like a traditional German beer maiden straight out of Oktoberfest. Bonnie chose one of the bottled German beers. I noticed that they had Woodchuck Hard Cider, so I selected that since I’m not a big beer lover. “I’ll give you a few minutes to look over the menu while I get your drinks.”

“This is a really cute place,” Bonnie said.

“I have a confession to make,” I told her. “Tex and his wife were trying to play matchmaker with me and the owner of this place.”

“Really? What does he look like?”

“I don’t know; I didn’t ask. I said I wasn’t interested.”

“Well, it looks like he does a good business.”

The waitress arrived to deliver our drinks and take our order. The menu was very unique. There were twenty-seven types of bratwurst to choose from in two categories: traditional brats and exotic brats. The exotic list included ostrich and pistachio, smocked kangaroo, and smoked alligator. I opted for the chicken, apple, and cinnamon brats. Bonnie chose something more to her caliber of taste buds—the sweet duck and fig with a touch of brandy bratwurst.

“What’s the difference between smocked and smoked?” I asked Bonnie.

“Smock generally means to decorate.”

“So, decorated kangaroo?”

“I think I’ll pass on that.”

“Me too.”

“I have a question for you,” Bonnie said to the waitress. “Is the owner here? I’d like to meet him and tell him what a wonderful restaurant this is.”

I opened my eyes wide and kicked Bonnie under the table.

“What?! Don’t you want to see what he looks like?” she asked.

The waitress responded, “Oh, I’m sorry, he doesn’t work weekends. He’ll be back on Monday.” And she strolled off to the kitchen to place our orders.

Truthfully, I was curious to see what he looked like, but I didn’t want him to know who I was, so I wouldn’t have been so blunt as to ask for him personally at our table. I felt a twang of disappointment that I couldn’t check him out after all. I was clearly wrong about a restaurant owner having to work all weekend.

We finished our delicious meals and headed back to the island. It was nice to have a day out with a friend. I enjoyed myself. It was a much-needed tension reliever.

Chapter 6

It was Thursday night and I was inside the courtroom, setting up for the council meeting. My heart skipped a beat when I saw him. Officer Williams was scheduled to work the metal detector. He waved to me from the back of the room.

“What are you doing here tonight? Where is the guard?” I asked.

“Vacation,” he responded.

His blue eyes were dreamy, but I had to snap out of it. It was seven fifteen and the mayor had arrived along with several council members. I was relieved when I switched on the recorder at seven thirty and there was no sign of Mr. Triggers. The mayor called the meeting to order and I did the roll call. The Pledge of Allegiance followed, then the approval of minutes. Still no Triggers in sight. When it was time for public comment, the regulars lined up at the microphone.

First, there was Rose Sciaratta. Rose was in her seventies and as thin as a strand of spaghetti. Her hair was bleached blonde and done up high in a bouffant. Her voice was gruff, probably because she had smoked two packs of cigarettes every day for almost her whole life. She strutted to the podium with her long, slender, wrinkled, fingers holding an opera length cigarette holder.

Mayor O’Donnell spoke up. “Rose, you know you aren’t supposed to be smoking in here.”

“I swear, doll, I put it out on my way in,” Rose said. It was hard to tell if the stench of smoke was emanating from a lit cigarette or Rose’s clothing.

Mayor O’Donnell asked her to state her name and address for the record. Rose complained about her landlord. “My slumlord is at it again! The heat is broken in the apartment and he won’t do a darn thing about it.”

“Rose, it’s summertime. Maybe the heat is shut off this time of year and not broken,” Mayor O’Donnell informed her.

“No, it’s broken! I’m telling you, it’s broken!”

“We’ll send our inspectors out to take a look tomorrow.”

This was pretty much the same thing Rose did at every council meeting—complain about her apartment and her landlord.

Next up was Giuseppe Fruscione, another senior citizen, who complained about the noisy renters next to him. He was an army vet from WWII and had lived in Sunshine his whole life. He was in great shape for being ninety-two years old and he was still very sharp and witty. He always dressed to impress in his suits and bowties. He walked up to the microphone with his cane.

“I need you to do something. These college kids are up all night; they play loud music. They smoke and throw their cigarette butts all over my yard. There are beer bottles all over the place. This is my home and at my age, I deserve some peace and quiet. Isn’t there anything you can do?”

The mayor looked toward Officer Williams, who was standing in the back of the room. “Officer Williams, would you please speak to Mr. Fruscione about his noise complaint after the meeting and see if someone is available to do a drive-by tonight?”

“Absolutely, Mayor,” Williams responded.

I began to imagine him driving by my house in that sexy uniform, but my fantasy was interrupted by the beeping of the metal detector. I glanced up to see that it was my not-so-favorite resident, Mr. Triggers, walking in before Giuseppe finished his speech. I’m sure I frowned, although I tried to hide it by burying my head in my computer, typing away. He immediately got in line for public comment.
What
a jerk,
I thought. He made me go through all that hassle over those boxes, then never bothered coming back to the office to look through them.

Mitchell Looney was the next speaker. He was our resident “pothole police” and he told his tales of where potholes were appearing in our roads. He was probably in his forties and looked like he stepped out of a time machine from nineteen seventy with his long, brown, hippie-like hair. He was the guy who made beer in his bathtub and stayed glued to the TV, watching
Ancient Aliens
all day long.

“Um, yeah, I was walking in front of the ice cream shop on the corner of Thirteenth Street and I noticed a pothole there. Someone could blow out a tire. Would you mind having someone go out there and take a look at it?”

“Sure thing, Mitch. We will send public works out to take care of that,” the mayor replied.

Mr. Triggers stood up to the microphone next. Once again, he preached about the dunes. The mayor interrupted him. “Mr. Triggers, we have already told you we cannot help you with the dunes.”

Mr. Triggers turned red. “You are a stupid louse and all this red tape is bull. You are such a moron to think you can’t do anything. It would only take fifteen cents per resident to bring over a few loads of sand to put at the end of my street. So here is your fifteen cents, you cheap bitch!” He reached in his pocket and threw fifteen pennies at the mayor.

Mayor O’Donnell started banging the gavel wildly. She was furious. “Officer! Officer!” she screamed, calling for Williams. “Remove Mr. Triggers, I want him arrested!”

What happened next was somewhat of a tornado. I guessed Williams called for backup and when Mr. Triggers would not leave peacefully, he and another officer tackled him to the ground. Mr. Triggers was kicking and shouting. “I want my dunes, I want my dunes!” Chairs went flying, papers were scattered throughout the room, and audience members scrambled out of the way. I ducked behind the dais—I didn’t want to get hit in the eye with any stray pennies or police bullets, for that matter.

The mayor adjourned the meeting and I was left to clean up the mess.
Tomorrow’s another day,
I thought and I went to my car to drive home. On my way there, I chuckled at the recollection of what happened. It wasn’t funny at the time, but it sure seemed funny after the fact.

The next day, I decided to drop off Mandy a few minutes early so that I could stop at Take Ten, the only coffee shop in Sunshine. I love their sugar-free, fat-free chai latte. For some reason, it always made me feel calm and peaceful.

When I arrived at work, I went straight over to the courtroom to clean up the mess. A few minutes into repositioning the toppled chairs, Triggers appeared at the clerk’s office window. Bonnie came to get me.

“Mr. Triggers is at the window and he’s asking for you,” she said.

The tranquil effects of my chai suddenly wore off. I cringed.
Wasn’t he in jail?
I thought for sure he was arrested last night after they took him out in handcuffs. I knew he was going to take up a good amount of my time, so I told her to tell him that I was in a meeting and that he was welcome to look through the boxes. Bonnie came back a few minutes later. “He doesn’t want to look through the boxes; he wants to see you personally,” she said.

“Tell him I’m not available at the moment and ask him if he’d like to make an appointment,” I said.

I finished cleaning up the room and putting the chairs back in order. Thirty minutes later, I headed back to my desk. To my dismay, Triggers was right there at the counter waiting for me.
This is someone who doesn’t have a life,
I thought. He was dressed head to toe in banana yellow, including his socks and the bandana he had wrapped around his forehead. Bonnie could not say his clothes were mismatched that day. The song “Mellow Yellow” started playing in my head. The yellow part was right, but the mellow part didn’t quite fit Mr. Triggers.

“How may I help you?” I asked him.

First, Triggers told me he didn’t have time to look through the boxes and that he would be back on another day to look through them. The thought of my having to deal with him coming back on another day made me ill. I was also annoyed that I also had to continue to deal with the boxes all over the place.

Then, Triggers handed me a list of documents that he wanted copies of, such as flood hazard maps and house elevation standards. Bonnie and I took out the materials and provided the copies he wanted. Then, he handed me a request for sand dune management plans. I copied those for him. Then, he handed me another request for various purchase orders. When I returned with the purchase orders, I had to inform him that one year was destroyed in accordance with State laws. This bit of news did not sit well with Triggers. I showed him the permission slips I had obtained regarding the destruction of the documents. After scowling at me, he started with a barrage of questioning.

“Who made the decision to destroy the purchase orders? Was it your finance division or that stupid mayor herself? Why would you destroy them? I don’t understand why you would destroy them. They take up so little space. There is no reason for you to destroy such small documents. This is a perfect example of government red tape. Preventing the public from finding out what is really going on around here.”

He rattled off the questions so fast that I didn’t have time to answer them. Clearly, he did not want to hear any explanation. It wasn’t our policy to keep records past their retention periods; it had nothing to do with preventing the public from obtaining information. To him, it might seem like a small file folder containing only the purchase orders he requested. To me, it was one folder, then another folder, then another, which amounted to twenty boxes per year that had to be stored somewhere. Plus, when you actually counted up all the purchase orders from all the departments of the town, there were hundreds of them yearly; not quite the small amount that Mr. Triggers thought. Since there was no storage here in our small municipal complex, the town had to pay for storage. It wasn’t financially wise to keep dozens and dozens of extra boxes around when we typically didn’t have requests for older records like this.

“I know you are either hiding something or you’re an idiot!” Triggers shouted at me.

“Mr. Triggers, I can assure you that I am not hiding anything. I am only doing my job.”

I didn’t address the idiot comment. I felt it wasn’t worth it. He was possibly the most annoying person I had ever encountered in my life. I used to think Mitchell Looney with his pothole complaints at every council meeting was the most annoying person I knew. Triggers changed all that. I had a theory—Mr. Triggers was put on this Earth in order to make Mitchell Looney seem normal. Normal people would fill out one form, listing all the documents they wanted, then leave it with me so that I could compile everything. Normal people didn’t hand me one list, then a second, then a third, fourth, or fifth. Normal people didn’t demand that I wait on them for hours at a time. Normal people understood the meaning of the word
no
. Triggers was anything but normal.

After an hour and a half of berating me, he finally left. I could feel the tension releasing from my shoulders the second he walked out. I hadn’t noticed that Tex had come in through the back of the office while Triggers was here.

“Having trouble?” he asked.

“What do you think?” I asked, sarcastically.

“Aw, but I thought for sure he brought the sunshine to Sunshine today with that outfit.”

“Yeah, the outfit was a little bright, but his personality…not so much,” Bonnie said.

“Seriously, wasn’t he arrested last night? Why was he here?” I asked.

“He was arrested,” Tex said.

“Then why isn’t he in jail?”

“He was released on his own recognizance.”

Bonnie chimed in, “What was he arrested for? Assault with deadly loose change?”

“Disorderly conduct,” Tex said.

“Well, what if he comes in here throwing things around, like his big rock?” I asked. “What if he hits one of us? Would that be assault? Would that keep him in jail longer?”

Tex shook his head at me and said condescendingly, “Next time he comes in here, pick up the phone and dial 9-1-1 if you feel threatened at all. We are right across the parking lot.”

“That doesn’t make us feel any better,” I said, annoyed.

“And I checked out the rock thing. It was one of those plastic fake rocks to hide a key in.”

“Oh. Then why did he bring it in here?”

“How the hell should I know?”

I hustled back to work. I was behind in my meeting follow up since Triggers took up all my time. After an hour went by, I was so engrossed in paperwork, I didn’t notice it at first. But then I heard it….
drip, drip, drip
.

What the F?
I thought.
Oh well, I’m too busy to deal with whatever that is. Back to advertising ordinances.

Drip, drip, drip.

I called out, “Bonnie, is that getting louder or is that my imagination?”

Drip, drip, drip, drip, drip.

Bonnie said, “Yeah, where is that coming from?”

I stepped outside my office into the space where Bonnie sat and looked around. It took me a few minutes, but there it was—the ceiling was leaking.

“Where is the water coming from? It didn’t rain. Do you think the air conditioning is broken?”

Bonnie looked at me blankly and shrugged.

I bent over to get a garbage can to collect the dripping water and I heard a loud crack. I gasped. Gallons of water burst through the ceiling tiles and landed on my head and back with a huge splash. I was soaked.

Bonnie burst out in laughter. She was laughing so hard that tears were streaming down her face. I just stood there in the huge puddle with my eyes wide, mouth opened, and hair plastered to my head. I was dripping from everywhere.