Good Chemistry (3 page)

Chapter 3

After a long, tiring day, Bernie was finally on her way home. She began to hurry because in about fifteen minutes, the sun would be low enough to blind her completely.

Although she was quiet by nature, Bernie hadn’t said two words to Andrew since lunch. Things were becoming unsettled at work, that was true, but things between her and Andrew were fine. Until today, his fixation on Heidi was merely an annoying distraction. It made for a boring lunch since she’d had every item on the menu fifty times. But that was the worst of it.

Bernie saw the way Heidi looked at Andrew. She knew she had no cause for concern. But this new ‘love potion’ changed everything. Bernie pulled her tiny blue Honda Civic up in front of their cute seashell bungalow of a house. Judy’s sexy jacked-up black truck with the knobby tires was already in the driveway.
Thank goodness.

The house they shared was a little two-bedroom. Most of the walls were progressively warmer shades of pink. The previous tenant never could get the color temperature right. With the plastic flamingoes in the front yard to complete the picture, it was a typical Florida house. If it were anywhere else, people would have stopped and stared.

“Hey, Judy, I’m home.” Bernie tossed her purse on the kitchen table and got a 7-Up out of the fridge.

“Hey, girl, don’t get comfortable. We’ve got work to do.” Judy Marx, Bernie’s roommate, couldn’t have been more unlike Bernie if she put her mind to it. She was on the border of loud, yet she was fun and gregarious. Short and stocky with wavy blonde hair that couldn’t decide if it wanted to be curly or straight. It suited Judy to a tee.

Bernie never knew what cockamamie scheme or hobby Judy was going to take up next. Tango lessons, Vegan diets, Haitian voodoo, it didn’t matter, if it caught Judy’s fancy, she’d try it.

“What work? I’m pooped.”

Judy emerged from her bedroom in an old pair of Levi’s with shredded cuffs and a Frankie Goes to Hollywood T-shirt. “Have a look. They’re back.” Judy pointed out the window to the backyard that terminated into one of the many canals that crisscrossed the city.

“Not again.”

“Afraid so.”

They looked out the back door at the pair of alligators, one was seven foot long, and the other was nine-foot. “Damn it. All right.” Bernie pouted as she went and threw on an old pair of jeans and a pair of rubber boots. A plain white cotton T-shirt was the only top she was willing to sacrifice for this job.

“Here.” Judy handed her a catchpole and a roll of black electrical tape. She had a pole and roll of tape for herself. “Come on, we have to move them before she gets a chance to build a nest.” The two marched out the back door determined to reclaim their territory.

“How was work?” Judy asked perfunctorily, as she pounced on the back of the male gator.

“Honestly. This may have been the worst day of my life.” Bernie began as she poked and stabbed at the female gator to keep her from attacking Judy. It snapped viciously and clamped its teeth momentarily on the tip of the catchpole.

“What on earth happened?” Judy panted and huffed as she wound the tape around the gator’s mouth four times. She taped its legs up behind its back. “Did your grant extension get denied?”

“No, it’s way worse than that.” Bernie waited for Judy to hurl herself onto the furious female gator’s back.

Together, they pinned her down and started winding tape around her mouth and legs as Bernie began to explain. “Andrew has made a breakthrough.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?” Judy asked, as they heaved the female gator up into the bed of her pickup on the count of three. They went back and grabbed the other one.

“No, no, it’s not a breakthrough on his schizophrenia research. Apparently, he’s been working at home on some sort of side project. He says he’s invented some sort of elixir that will cause the person of your choice to fall madly in love with you and stay that way for life.” Bernie knew better than to go into the science. Judy had majored in physical education with a barely respectable C+ average.

“Seriously! Does it work?” Judy asked, seeming to already like the idea. The two piled into the cab after securing the gators and began the drive out to the Everglades.

“When have you ever known Andrew to not be serious?”

Bernie had a good point. Andrew was kind-hearted but the concept of humor was outside his narrow bandwidth. “But isn’t that a good thing? I mean if it works you two could become rich.”

“That’s the problem. If it works, there won’t be any
‘you two.’
He’s concocted this whole thing in order to win over the bartender, Heidi.”

“Of course. Hey, that reminds me, do you want to have steak for dinner?”

“Ha-ha-ha! Very funny! After two years of steak at Alexander’s for lunch, I may never eat steak again. Judy, I’m serious. I may be about to lose my job and my man as well.”

“But, Bernie, he’s not
your
man. He’s your friend. It sounds to me like it’s time for you to tell him how you really feel.” Judy turned off the last paved road onto a hard dirt track that skirted the edge of the glades for a few miles.

“I know. I’ve tried a zillion times. I just can’t.”

“Well then, you’re going to lose him. Hey, wait a second. Why don’t you just use the elixir on him?”

“No way! I want our love to be real. Not just some chemical reaction in his brain.”

Judy pulled the truck off the road and into a clearing along the edge of the murky green water. She parked; they jumped out, and grabbed the first gator by both sets of legs. “Well, maybe you should take what you can get?” Judy dog piled the beast while Bernie carefully cut away the tape.

On three, they both jumped clear. The gator whipped around, snapping his displeasure before backing into the slimy water and vanishing.

“I don’t know. It just seems wrong to me. That’s not even the worst part. He wants to use
me
as a guinea pig to test his miraculous love potion before he uses it on Heidi.” Bernie panted for air as she collapsed onto the back of the female gator.

“But that doesn’t make any sense. If he uses it on you, you’ll fall madly in love with him, which also doesn’t make any sense, because you are already madly in love with him. What? Does he want both you and Heidi?” Judy popped the tape around the female’s mouth. The gator thrashed at just the worst moment. “Oh crap!” Judy shouted, as she tumbled sideways. It wasn’t the gator that made her scream. It dashed off into the hidden murk the instant Judy was off her back. Judy had landed about four feet from a fat water moccasin. “Hey, toss me the machete, will you?”

Bernie was already digging around for it behind the seat before Judy asked. She slowly passed it over to Judy just as the snake’s irritation had it up and bobbing its head, ready to strike.

“No, Andrew has an antidote. He said I could fall in love with him and then go back to feeling nothing special for him the way I do right now.”

“Did you slap him?” Judy asked, as she smoothly arced the blade through the thick moist air.

“No. It wouldn’t do any good.” Bernie picked up the snake’s head between grudging fingers and hurled it out into the water with an ‘icky’ expression on her face.

“So what did you tell him?” Judy, after draining the blood out of it, coiled up the headless water moccasin and stuffed it in her snake bag.

“I said I’d give him an answer tomorrow. I wanted to talk to you first.” They climbed back in the truck and headed home. “So what should I do?” Bernie’s sad green eyes grew wide and questioning as she held the snake bag in her lap.

“Oh my God! It’s perfect! Tell him that you’ll do it but you need a day before the test to clear out your system or something. I don’t know, just find an excuse to put it off for a day. Then switch the elixir with water and bring the real elixir home with you.”

“Why in the world would I want to do that?”

“Don’t you see? This could solve everybody’s problem. You pretend the elixir is working. You have the chance to show Andrew how you really feel. Then pretend it wears off, forcing him to go back to the drawing board. By the time he’s had a few doses of seduction Bernie-style he’ll forget all about Heidi.”

Bernie frowned. “I can’t do that. He’ll either want to go on forever, until the formula works, or until I have to tell him it was all a hoax. Either way, I lose him.”

Judy pulled back in the driveway and they went inside to the kitchen.

“But wait. That was only half my plan. Bring the elixir home and you can test it out on me.” Judy stretched the moccasin out on the counter and began to gut it. She peeled off the skin so she could tan it for a belt.

“Don’t you see? It’s perfect. Andrew still gets his elixir so you two can be rich, you get to keep Andrew, and I get to keep whatever I catch.” Bernie started chopping the snake meat with a cleaver then dumped the chunks into a stew pot.

“Well I suppose it could work. But what if there are side effects? He’s only tested it on mice so far.” Bernie dumped a box of Zatarain's Gumbo mix in with the snake chunks and started to measure and pour six cups of water.

“Well you said there’s an antidote, right?” Judy got out a hammer and some small nails. They went out to the back porch. Bernie held the one-inch by six-inch board steady as Judy carefully stretched the skin and tacked it down every few inches.

“I don’t know. When he tests me, I’ll have to pretend that it works. I’ll have to seduce him. I can’t do it.”

“Well, it’s that or lose him to Heidi.” Judy drove home the last nail. She rubbed salt all over the skin, working it in little circles.

“I know you’re right. But what about you? There really could be side effects. How can I tell Andrew about them without giving up the whole game?”

“We’ll just have to do his research for him. And any side effects we encounter, you’ll just have to find a way to imitate in the fake tests.” Judy winked knowingly, as she held open the screen door for Bernie as they went back inside.

“I suppose it could work. But, Judy, why on earth would you want to do this?”

“Are you kidding me? You even have to ask. Look at my track record: an ex-con, a dwarf, and a hemophiliac who nearly died in a freak Frisbee accident.”

“Yeah, I guess I see your point. You could use the help as much as I can.”

“So, are we going to do this thing?”

“All right, but we’ll have to do all of our research here at the house.” Bernie began surveying the room. “I have three wireless cameras that we can hide in here. We can conduct the experiments in the living room and I can monitor the whole thing on the computer from my bedroom.”

Judy went into the kitchen to stir the gumbo and grab a bottle of beer from the fridge. “Hey, you want a beer?” Judy hollered.

Bernie was busy foraging around the top shelf of her closet. “Yeah, that sounds good,” she replied.

Bernie returned to the kitchen carrying a small, black-plastic carrying case. Judy popped the top on a beer and handed it to her friend.

Bernie opened the case and got out the three miniature cameras. “Now let’s see, we probably want a view of the couch from three different angles.” Bernie got a kitchen chair and installed the first camera in the fluffy bird’s nest on the perch of her cuckoo clock.

“You know Bernie, the more I think about it the more I realize just how huge this could really be.”

“And how’s that?” Bernie asked, over her shoulder as she fiddled with the fiber optic lens until she was sure it couldn’t be seen.

“Think about it for a minute. I mean, if you had a man completely under your spell it would make life a heck of a lot easier.”

Bernie moved the chair while she listened. She unscrewed the cover to the air-conditioning vent and situated the second camera. Bernie checked the angle to make sure it was catching a full view of the couch.

“You wouldn’t have to shave your legs if you didn’t want to. Hell, for that matter, not even your armpits. You could eat as much chocolate and ice cream as you wanted.”

Bernie climbed down and perched on the edge of the couch peering up at all angles, making sure the camera was invisible, lest the unsuspecting test subject figured out what they were up to.

“Go ahead, I’m still listening,” Bernie said as she stared at the third wall. It was blank. She needed something to disguise the camera so she could hang it from the wall.

“Don’t you see? This could be limitless. We could send men to the store for tampons. We could get them to cancel ESPN. Hell, we could get full control of the remote. My God! It just occurred to me; if we could keep this elixir out of the hands of men, we could rule this planet.”

Bernie pulled the candleholder off the wall in the bathroom and sized it up on the living room wall. “Yeah, but keeping it out of the hands of men would be nearly impossible.” Bernie plopped down on the couch and sipped her beer. She began carving out the inside of the candle to make room for the camera.

“Yeah, you’re right. And you know what the first thing they would do is? Convince us that it tastes like chocolate.”

Bernie spewed a mouthful of beer on the coffee table. “
Judy
!”

“Am I lying?” Judy grinned.

Bernie turned three shades of red as her cheeks flushed with embarrassment. “Yeah, I suppose you’re right. I mean, at the very least they would have us believing that we’re always in the mood.” She clicked the remote to activate the three hidden cameras. The tiny, flashing-red light was invisible on all three.

“Wow. You should work for the CIA.” Judy turned off the heat on the gumbo and got two bowls out of the cupboard.

“Hey, come and check this out before we eat.” Bernie called from her bedroom.

Judy popped in and sat on the corner of the bed while Bernie typed away furiously at the keyboard for a few minutes.

“
Viola
!” she announced, as three separate boxes appeared on her computer screen. Each contained a different view angle of the couch.

“Wow, you’ll be able to see the whole thing.” Judy giggled and nudged Bernie’s shoulder.