Impulsive (36 page)

He laughed heartily. "You make me sound like a big, horny St.
Bernard!"

They had a terrible practice, followed a few hours later by a superb
game. It was just one of those crazy games where everything they did went
right, and everything the opposition tried went wrong. For a new team to beat
the Dolphins was practically unthinkable, but they came away with a 42-39
victory, nonetheless. Then, like the good sports they were, the Dolphins turned
around and invited the Knights to a Halloween costume party they were having
that evening.

"They probably want to spike our punch, then tar and feather
us," Jess joked as they headed toward the visitors' locker room.

"I noticed they waited to invite us until it was too late for
any of us to rent or buy a decent costume," Ty pointed out with some
irony. "All the stores are closed."

"No problem," Jess told him. "If you want to go,
we'll think of something."

Ty shrugged. "I wouldn't mind putting in an appearance, at
least. We wouldn't have to stay long, but it's nice to get together with other
players from other teams now and then and catch up on some of the NFL
scuttlebutt."

"That's okay by me." She checked her watch. "You're
right. Even Kmart is locked up by now." She thought a moment. "If you
can find a twenty-four-hour grocery, we can purchase a few things there and
make do."

"What sort of things?"

"Makeup, tape, glue, whatever. I'll know when I see it, I
guess. Oh, and don't turn your uniform in. Bring it with you."

To say Jess was resourceful was an understatement, Ty soon
discovered as he pushed their cart down the grocery aisles. "Aluminum
foil? What's that for?"

"For you."

"Pardon?"

"You'll see. Now hush. I'm trying to concentrate, so I don't
miss anything we need." She tossed a roll of colored cellophane wrap into
the cart and hurried on.

In the automotive section, limited as it was, she found a large
metal funnel. Into the cart it went, along with some speckling putty and a
small squirt-type oil can. When Ty, trying to be helpful, reached for a quart
of motor oil, she smacked his hand. "Don't need that."

"You sure? I'm just guessing here, but don't you have ideas
of presenting one of us as an auto mechanic?"

She laughed and shook her head. "Too mundane, James. You've
got to be more imaginative than that."

In the stationery aisle, she selected tape, a bottle of glue, a pack
of paper clips, and a pouch of colored markers. In the adjacent, if scanty, art
section, she rummaged around until she found a single jar of gold sprinkles
hidden at the back of the lower shelf and heaved a sigh of relief. "Whew!
For a minute there, I thought I'd have to resort to moth crystals, or those
thing-a-ma-gigs you hang in the toilet bowl."

"Say what?"

"Never mind." She waved him off and charged onward, a woman
on a mission. Locating the guaranteed-to-break-in-five-seconds toy area, she
chose a bag of fake coins, a bottle of blowing bubbles and a plastic pinwheel
on a stick.

"Lawrence Welk, perhaps?" Ty hazarded, eyeing the
bubbles.

"Get real," she scoffed. "Okay, where are the
cleaning supplies? I need a new head for a dust mop, a really shaggy one."

"You need a new head, regardless," he muttered, trailing
along behind her.

Among what was left of the Halloween novelties, she found three
sets of ghoul's teeth. "Ho, ho! Perfect!" With a wicked chuckle, she
popped them atop her growing mound of supplies. Next, she tackled the cosmetic
rack with a vengeance.

When they left the store thirty-five dollars lighter, and toting a
bulging bag of assorted "goodies," Ty was still in the dark as to
what was cooking in that screwy brain of hers—and, cute but obstinate cuss that
she was, Jess wasn't about to tell him until they reached the privacy of the
mansion. And with good reason. He'd likely have caused a six-car collision if
she'd confessed while he was driving.

"I'm going as
what?"
he bellowed in disbelief.

"The Tin Man," she repeated sheepishly, waving the
aluminum foil box at him. "You know, from the
Wizard of Oz.
You
have seen it, I hope."

"Only about a dozen times." He gestured toward the mop
head. "Tell me that's not part of my costume. As I recall, the Tin Man
didn't have bushy hair."

"No, that's for me," she told him calmly, sounding much
like a teacher speaking to a slow student. "This is yours."

He nodded as she produced the funnel. "It figures," he
groused. "So, what are you dressing as? Dorothy? Toto? The witch?"

"Nope. I'm going as the Rotten Tooth Fairy."

He shook his head, sure his ears were playing tricks on him.
"The Tooth Fairy?"

"No, the
Rotten
Tooth Fairy," she stressed.
"There's a difference, you know."

"Actually, I didn't," he admitted in bafflement.
"However, I'm sure you'll enlighten me."

"I'm the fairy that collects all the kids' rotten teeth. The
ones not worth as much, because they're decayed."

Ty sighed, and pinched the bridge of his nose, where a headache
was threatening. "Right. Why didn't I know that?"

"Beats me. Now, we'd better hurry, or we'll never be ready in
time." She hurried out of the room, headed for the patio. "Come on.
You can help me collect some ashes from the barbecue grill. If there aren't
any, I suppose we'll have to burn some paper in it, or something."

He chased after her. "What for? What do we need ashes
for?"

"To make the speckling gray. It's part of your costume."

"What part?" he demanded, not sure he wanted to know.

"Your makeup. For your face."

He groaned. "I didn't want to hear that."

"Then why did you ask?"

An hour and a half later, they were ready to leave the house, and
Ty was praying they wouldn't have an accident and end up in the hospital—or
worse yet, get mugged. Being robbed would be bad enough, but in this getup he'd
be thoroughly humiliated.

"Tin Man, my blooming ass!" he grumbled. "I look
more like that character on 'Captain Kangaroo.' What was his name? Tom
something."

"That was before my time, I'm afraid," Jess commented
blithely, making him feel ever so much more—decrepit.

"Maybe we should just skip this party," he suggested
belatedly, catching a last glimpse of himself in the hall mirror. He was
wearing his football shoes, minus the cleats, along with his gray uniform
pants, socks, knee and elbow pads. From the waist down, he looked pretty
normal. It was the upper half that gave him pause.

After some squabbling, Jess had finally agreed to let him wear a
T-shirt, over which she'd wound several layers of tin foil—completely covering
his chest and his arms with it. She'd left his elbows bare of the stuff,
covered only by his elbow pads, so he could at least bend those without
crinkling like a cheap TV dinner. Then, she'd plastered his neck, face, and
even his hair with gray putty, covered his hands with silver eye shadow,
painted two huge circles on his cheeks with bright red lipstick, and pinned the
funnel to the top of his head.

"Hey! After all the effort I put into this, we're going to
this party," she told him, not about to let him weasel out of it at this
late date.

"I look ridiculous!"

"And I don't?" she replied, drawing his attention to her
own costume.

Until now, Ty's mental image of a tooth fairy had been of some
beautiful winged creature. Nix that idea. Before him stood the most atrocious
example he could ever have imagined. After donning her caftan, inside out, Jess
had fashioned cellophane wings with the aid of several coat hangers. This, by
itself, wouldn't have been too horrible. But then, she'd gone off the deep end
by adding the mop head as a wig, creating "warts" made of putty,
which she'd tinted dark brown, and applying her makeup in the most hideous
manner. Her eyebrows now resembled two squiggly caterpillars over a double arch
of neon green eye shadow. Huge purple "bags" beneath her eyes gave
the illusion that she hadn't slept in three months. Her lipstick looked as if
it had been applied by a preschooler just learning to fingerpaint, and she'd
blackened one of her top front teeth.

"You are, indeed, a fright," Ty agreed. "Enough to
give any poor kid nightmares for the rest of his life, especially if he found
the likes of you hovering over his pillow. He'd probably wet the bed into
puberty after an experience like that."

"Yeah, but I'll bet he'd lay off the candy and start brushing
regularly," she predicted with a "toothy" cackle. "He
wouldn't want me collecting any more of these, would he?" She patted the
Zip-Lock baggie hanging from her cellophane belt. It was filled with ghoul's
teeth. Another bag contained the play coins, and a third held gold sparkles,
aka "fairy dust." She was carrying her bubbles, as well as the
pinwheel, her makeshift wand.

"No offense, sweetheart, but you're a real hag this
evening."

"You're kind of a rust bucket yourself, fella," she
retorted sassily. "Don't forget your oil can. We wouldn't want your old
joints to freeze up."

"Lord, I've never seen anyone with such a low tolerance for
alcohol," Ty commented with a rueful shake of his head. "You're
sloshed."

"I know," Jess agreed, blinking as the white lines on
the highway made her even more dizzy, "and I only had a couple of
drinks."

"Well, it's a good thing we didn't stay any longer. I was
planning on another marathon love session, but it looks as if I'll have to
sober you up first—and wash this gunk off both of us. Somehow I can't visualize
the Tin Man making love to the Rotten Tooth Fairy."

"I'm... I'm starting to feel awfully odd," Jess said,
her voice quivering.

"Do you have to throw up? Do you want me to pull the car
over?"

"No. Just get us home. Maybe if I lie down, everything will
stop spinning."

"We'll be there soon," he promised. In an effort to
divert her attention from feeling ill, he began talking about the party.
"It was a pretty nice turnout, don't you think? And some of those
costumes! Once I got a gander at a few of them, I didn't look half bad. Neither
did you, but I thought that crack Bambi made about you actually being a fairy
was out of line. Not out of character for her, but definitely in bad taste. So
was her outfit, come to think of it, though I have to give her some credit for
ingenuity."

Bambi had pinned palm fronds to her thong/bikini underwear and
gone as Eve. She had even carried an apple, and dared to offer Ty a bite of it.
He'd declined as politely as possible, but she was still ticked off, though not
nearly as mad as when she learned that Ty and Jess were now engaged.

Jess hadn't spoken at all in the past few minutes. He glanced over
at her, to find her holding her arms out and staring at them in fascination.
"You still with me, babe?"

"This is amazing!" she enthused in a dreamy tone.
"I can actually see the blood flowing through my veins. It's kind of
bubbly, like Christmas lights, and the colors are really neat! But I wish my
heart would stop making those funny little bumps. It feels really weird."

Her off-the-wall comments stunned him into silence. Then it dawned
on him. She was hallucinating! With mounting horror, he concluded that she was
likely having heart palpitations as well.

"Oh, holy shit!" he cursed. He stepped on the
accelerator, careening across three lanes of traffic to take the next ramp off
the freeway. "Which way? Which way?" he muttered to himself, trying
to remember which exit along their route was the one for the hospital. They had
passed it a couple of times before, on their way to and from the house, but it
took him a second to recall exactly where it was. "Not this one. Two
up," he decided, hoping that he was correct.

He pulled back onto the highway, horn blaring as they sped along
in the right-most emergency lane.

"Oooh!" Jess clamped her hands over her ears. "Stop
the noise! My ears! My eyes! The blood's pounding so hard in them."

He didn't doubt it; but he couldn't take the time to soothe her,
and he had to warn other drivers to stay out of the way. He saw the sign for
the hospital and took the exit on two wheels. By this time, Jess was mumbling
incoherently. A chill chased up Ty's spine when he realized she was holding a
conversation with her dead father.

"Hang in there, Jess. We're almost there."

He screeched to a stop in front of the emergency entrance and had
her out of the car before anyone could come to their aid. Rushing into the
hospital with Jess, now unconscious, in his arms, he yelled, "We need help
here! Now!"