Chili Con Corpses (3 page)

Gillian sighed theatrically. “Oh, James! I am
so
glad you shared that with us! I too feel bogged down in the predictable, the
routine
food that we eat now. I love my exercise walks and my closet filled with new clothes,” she indicated her kelly green shirt covered with a design of yellow and brown spirals, “but I
long
for more spice in my life! I want
exotic
. I want my tongue to be reawakened, my nose to be invigorated, my senses to be
transported
to other places!” Gillian’s armful of silver bangles clinked noisily as she gesticulated wildly during this speech. “I want to
savor
the experience of eating! My friends,” she said more quietly, her energy spent, “I spend my days with animals. I love them, don’t misread me, but I need something
more
. Like the dying autumn,” she gazed out the window and sighed, “I feel as though my days have become more and more colorless.”

At this poignant moment, the waiter appeared like a puff of silent wind and placed the bill on the corner of their table, quietly slipping away again without removing any of the dishes. He must have sensed the change in tone that had fallen upon the dinner party.

Lindy began rummaging through her purse.

“This is my treat, remember,” Lucy scolded her. “Because we’re
supposed
to be celebrating,” she added a bit ruefully.

Lindy withdrew a strip of newspaper from her bag. “We know, Lucy, and we’re so proud of you. You’re the only one who is looking forward to a major change, a new chapter in your life. The rest of us are feeling kind of like sticks in the mud.” She beamed her hundred-watt smile at the rest of her friends. “I can’t fix everything, but at least I can bring some zest back into our dinner meetings.”

“Oh, wonderful!” Gillian squealed. “How, my dear, how?”

“Once a week, on Saturday nights, we’re going to take a break from all of this dieting,” Lindy announced. “We’re going to stick to our light and healthy routines during the rest of the week, but on Saturdays, we’re bustin’ loose!” Her brown eyes twinkled with anticipation. “Pack your bags, my friends, ’cause we are about to embark on a culinary trip around the world!” Her eyes flickered over the piece of newspaper. “Well, the Spanish-speaking world, in any case, but get your aprons cleaned and gas up your cars. Next Saturday, we’re heading out on a new adventure!”

Even though he didn’t have the faintest notion what Lindy was talking about, James found himself spontaneously clapping in response. Here was the change he had been looking for. He had no idea what it was exactly, but he was ready for it. At least it would allow him to delay doing what he dreaded most: giving Lucy an ultimatum.

James opened his
eyes in the dark. He rolled over on his side and tried to read the clock, but the neon green digits blurred into the black background. As he fumbled for his glasses, a familiar throb assaulted his temples. Another headache was coming on. James peered at the clock through the water-stained lenses of his glasses. 2:14. He let his body fall flat against the bed and closed his eyes. He didn’t feel tired at all.

Sighing, James threw back the covers and slid his cold feet into a pair of ragged slippers. He then put on his robe and tiptoed out of his room and into the hall, though he could have marched through the house banging on a bongo and his father wouldn’t so much as blink in his sleep.
The old man can’t hear anything beyond the cacophony of his own snores
, James thought as he turned on the bathroom light. He helped himself to four ibuprofen liquid-gel capsules and stood in the weak light studying the box.

“Someone should just invent an ibuprofen shot,” he muttered at the rubber duck sitting on the tub ledge. “They could sell it at all the coffee bars, beer joints, pool halls, libraries.” He filled a glass from the tap and drank it down.

Back in his room he checked the clock again. 2:21. It was going to be one of those nights. James had had three of them over the past week. He woke abruptly after a few hours of sleep, restless and yet drowsy at the same time. His mind would review the day’s events, make lists of tasks that needed to be accomplished at the library, ponder over what to eat for breakfast, and fantasize about Lucy appearing at her front door wearing a filmy robe made of white silk, her mouth curved in a seductive smile as she beckoned him inside. This vision was immediately followed by a headache. Tonight, to James’s disappointment, the headache had arrived before the Lucy fantasy sequence.

By 3:35, James gave up, switched on the reading lamp clamped to his headboard, and delved into
The Alchemist
by Paulo Coelho. There was something about the simple purity of the writing that soothed James and distracted him from making scores of mental lists that he would forget by morning. Just before dawn, James fell asleep to the image of a large caravan at rest in the midst of crossing the interminable Sahara. He absorbed the sense of the vast, star-pocked sky stretching over the quiet desert. As his room seemed as cold as the desert night, James half believed he was lying down beside the shepherd boy of Coelho’s tale.

He had only been asleep for about two hours when he was awoken by the clanging of pots and pans downstairs in the kitchen. Feeling totally out of sorts, James pivoted the clock and was horrified to see that it was almost eight. He was going to be late to work if he didn’t get a move on.

“Pop!” he exclaimed as he entered the kitchen.

His father, Jackson Henry, had taken all of the frying pans, saucepans, and large pots out of the cupboard and strewn them across the floor. A carton of eggs and a jug of milk sat open on the counter while a package wrapped in white paper from Food Lion’s deli had been tossed onto the kitchen table. Puddles of milk, several broken eggs, a chunk of butter, and cheddar cheese shavings created a dairy minefield on the floor.

Their beautiful kitchen, which Jackson had completely renovated using the profits collected from the sale of his oil paintings, was in shambles. Surveying the mess, James couldn’t understand how a man with such a sour disposition could paint birds and their natural settings in such a moving and realistic manner. How could such serenity and grace spring forth from such a gruff and temperamental person?

“Where’s the goddamn
good
fryin’ pan?” Jackson demanded as he noted the presence of his only child. “How am I supposed to make breakfast with no pan? And you’re just sleepin’ away like you’re at some kind of fancy hotel with no work to go to and nothin’ to do but sit at the pool and sip fancy little drinks with fancy little umbrellas.”

Despite his fatigue, James tried not to smile. At times, his father’s childish fits could be rather amusing. “Are you hungry, Pop?”

Jackson’s furry eyebrows drew together to form a single fuzzy line. “I’ve been up for two hours workin’ in the shed.” James noticed that his father never mentioned the word “painting.” When he was locked outside in the shed, he was merely “working,” just as though he were still tying on his green apron and heading out for the family hardware store, which had been bought out by one of the mammoth home improvement chains several years ago.

“’Course I’m hungry.” Jackson sulked.

James examined the littered floor. “Let me tidy up and I’ll cook you something, but it’s got to be quick.” He eyed his father. “If you helped, I could get to the cooking part faster, you know.”

“Ha! You won’t be able to fry anything worth swallowin’ without that pan.” Jackson continued to sulk, making no move to assist in the cleanup.

The pan his father was referring to was one of the few remaining from the original set his parents had received as a wedding gift. Jackson firmly believed that all food tasted better when cooked in one of these old pans. James agreed, though he couldn’t understand why this was the case. The cooking surface of every pan looked like it had been scratched by a bear claw and the orange coating on the outside had flecked off in so many places that the pans looked like they were wrapped in tiger pelts. Still, anything precious to James’s beloved mother, who had died suddenly over a year ago from heart failure, was precious to both her husband and son.

“It’s okay, Pop. That pan’s in the dishwasher. See?” He dropped the dishwasher door and pointed at the clean dishes inside.

Jackson shook his head. “I just can’t get used to these newfangled contraptions.”

James glanced at the eggs and milk on the counter. “Would you like scrambled eggs with cheese?”

“And fried ham.” Jackson indicated the deli-wrapped package on the counter next to the eggs and settled himself at the kitchen table with the cartoon section of the newspaper.

As James began to cook the eggs, the sight of his father reading the newspaper reminded him of the advertisement Lindy had showed them last night. James had been so distracted by Lucy’s announcement that he hadn’t fully understood the gist of the ad. He finished with the eggs and divided them equally onto two plates. He then began to fry several slices of Virginia ham in the same pan.

The two men ate their breakfast in silence. Jackson read through the classifieds, occasionally snorting at what he considered absurd prices for “those little yappy dogs that can’t even fetch their own tails.” He then moved on to the
Goings-On
section while James scanned disinterestedly through the sports pages. He wanted to read the ad Lindy had clipped, but he knew better than to ask for any section of the paper until his father was finished with it.

“What are you up to today, Pop?”

“I’m gettin’ goin’ on my bathroom. Gonna rip up them old tiles and clean the gunk off the floorboards underneath. I got a pile of new tile comin’ on today’s UPS truck.”

James thought about the wallpaper in his parents’ bathroom: a silver, iridescent style fashionable in the seventies. It had always reminded James of tin foil. “Are you going to repaper it, too?”

Jackson frowned. “I’d sure like to, but I’ll likely just paint it. I can’t pick out that kind of decoratin’ stuff like your mama could.”

“I could enlist some female help,” James offered. “Lucy or Lindy.”

“Boy, I can’t keep track of all of your female friends. Which one’s your girl again?” his father asked, though he knew the answer. He then pushed back his chair, placed his dishes in the sink—still skittish of the new dishwasher—and hitched up his splattered painter’s pants. No matter what Jackson ate, he stayed thin as a plank.
I must have inherited my mother’s metabolism
, James thought and reached for the
Goings-On
section. He found the ad almost immediately.

Are You Bored By Food?

Sick of Cooking?
Join
Fix ’n Freeze
and cook 10 meals big enough for a family of 4. Our first session features exciting cuisine from Spain and Mexico. We provide the food, you provide the friends! Hurry, classes are filling up. E-mail: [email protected] to reserve your space. Classes begin Saturday, Nov. 3rd, in the former Cottage Gift Shoppe, Main Street, New Market. Grand Opening tuition: $19900.

James reread the ad several times and shook his head in confusion. “We cook ten meals in one day? No way am I doing that. I’d be exhausted!” Taking a large drink of coffee, he reorganized the paper and began to make his lunch. As he cut his turkey and mozzarella sandwich in half and packed an apple, a yogurt, and a Diet Dr. Pepper into his thermal lunch sack, he had a vision of a glass dish in the oven, stuffed with plump, oblong chicken enchiladas submerged under layers of golden, bubbling cheese.

“Shoot, I can cook all day if necessary,” he relented, eyeing his sandwich as it sat nestled in crinkled layers of plastic wrap. “I’d do just about anything if I didn’t have to see another slimy, tasteless piece of low-fat turkey breast for a few weeks.” Tossing his lunch into the Bronco, he backed rapidly out of the driveway and right into the garbage can, which was parked alongside the road.

James jumped out to discover a new dent on his beloved truck, just below the rear window. Cursing his own stupidity, he kicked the garbage can, stumping his toe so hard as he did so that he had to sit down for a few minutes until the pain passed.

When he finally reached the library, the Fitzgerald twins were waiting to be let inside.

“You should give one of us a key, Professor,” Scott suggested, running a hand through his tousled hair, which seemed to grow wilder and more unkempt each day.

“Everything okay, Professor?” Francis asked when he saw the stormy look on his boss’s face.

“Just a headache,” James grumbled as he unlocked the front door.

Francis rushed off to empty the book bin of returned books as Scott placed everyone’s lunches in the fridge.

“Hey!” Francis announced as he returned with a carton filled with books. “Look what someone left in the book bin!”

“More trash, I suppose,” Scott guessed, displaying a rare frown. “What is
wrong
with people? I already put up a sign that says,
This is NOT a trash can!
What is it going to take?”

“What is it this time?” James inquired, fully prepared to allow himself to become even more cross than before. “The remnants of another Happy Meal?”

“Nope. It’s a lottery ticket,” Francis answered, flourishing the small, colorful rectangle. “For the upcoming Cash 5 drawing.” His eyes glimmered behind his thick, old-fashioned, horn-rimmed spectacles. “I don’t gamble, but I know that if you get all five numbers right, you win a huge jackpot. A hundred thousand bucks or something.”

Scott whistled. “I would buy
such
a cool computer with that kind of dough.”

“I’d go to that astronaut camp NASA’s got,” Francis said dreamily.

“That camp’s for kids, bro,” Scott pointed out kindly.

“Hey, if twenty-five-year-olds can play high school kids on TV, then I can fake my way into Space Camp. We’re only twenty-three, after all.” He shoved his glasses farther up the bridge of his nose. “What would you do with the money, Professor?” Francis asked his boss.

James took the ticket and placed it in the cardboard box labeled
Lost But Not Yet Found
behind the circulation desk and sighed. “I’d buy a suitcase full of books and go on a trip around the world. Alone!” He saw the perplexed looks on the brothers’ faces and softened his tone. “Better write down the titles of the books that were in that bin, Francis. See who checked them out. In the highly unlikely case that ticket’s worth something, we might be able to track down the patron.”