In the Unlikely Event... (30 page)

“I don’t know,” Bud responded. “What are you doing?”

“Looking under the car.”

“So am I. What are we looking for?”

“That’s for me to know and you to find out,” he said.

“This is not the school playground,” Gitana yelled. “What are we being charged with?”

“You’re going to get charged with…” he appeared to be thinking.

“Being rude,” Donna suggested. “I mean you haven’t arrested her so it can’t be resisting arrest.”

“And there is the change of life thing,” Bud added.

“The change thing. What exactly is that?” he inquired.

Bud supplied the info. “It’s when a woman stops having her period…”

He put up his hand. “Stop right there.”

“And her ovaries stop producing as much estrogen,” Bud continued undaunted.

“Hot flashes ensue and then it is advisable to start some sort of hormone therapy in order to correct that and help with the erratic mood swings, some of which you may have noticed.” She pointed at Gitana.

“Cease and desist or you will all being going downtown—I mean it.”

“But I really feel that natural hormone therapy using—” Gitana clamped her hand over Donna’s mouth.

“Yes, sir. Now what do you need us to do?” Gitana said, coming back to her senses.

“Open the trunk. Your car fits the description called in by the border patrol—we are looking for illegal aliens. Now, I need your vehicle keys.” He held out his enormous hairy-knuckled hand.

Donna shook her head.

“Give him the keys. We don’t have illegal aliens in the trunk,” Gitana said.

Bud was standing close to the police officer capturing everything on tape. He looked down at her. “Is that a camera?” he asked.

“Yes, sir. I am making a documentary,” Bud replied.

“You’re filming me?”

“If it’s all right with you. If I use this footage, I would send you a release form.”

He smoothed back his hair and pulled up his pants again. “I don’t see a problem with it. Now, open the trunk.”

“I can’t. I won’t!” Donna said, getting angry.

“It’s just as I suspected,” he said, playing to the camera. He moved toward the trunk. He turned to Bud, “Are you getting this?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Open the trunk, or I will be forced to blow the lock.”

“No! It’s my trunk and what is in my trunk stays in my trunk.”

The standoff began. Bud panned from one stern, resolute face to another.

“Donna, for fuck’s sake open the trunk,” Gitana said.

“Not in front of the child,” the officer said.

“You weren’t concerned with her before when she was frying on top of the car,” Gitana said curtly.

“I didn’t know she was a filmmaker then,” he replied. “Now, open the trunk, or I will be forced to compromise the lock.” He pulled out his revolver to illustrate the point.

“What if there are people in the trunk? You’ll kill someone,” Gitana said.

“Are there?” he said.

“No. But if there were,” Gitana said. She glanced over at Donna. “There aren’t, are there?”

Donna eyed the gun. She must have realized the gravity of the situation because without another word she handed the keys over.

The police officer eyed her warily and went to the trunk. “I’m coming in. Put your hands where I can see them,” he said to the trunk.

Donna covered her face with her hands.

Gitana and Bud stared at her. “Do you know what’s in the trunk?” Gitana asked.

“No, but it must be something bad or Donna wouldn’t be freaking like this,” Bud replied.

“It’s bad,” Donna said through splayed fingers.

“What is it?” Gitana said, alarmed.

“You’ll see.”

“Ma’am, can you explain this?” His face was beet red.

Donna walked over, her head bowed. Gitana and Bud followed her and they all peered in the trunk. It looked like a mobile sex toy shop. There were boxes of dildos in every conceivable color of the rainbow according to the cover photos on the top of each box. There were black leather harnesses and boxes of lubricant in a variety of flavors along with vibrators, butt plugs and clitoral-stimulating devices that resembled a human forefinger.

“Donna?” Gitana said.

“It’s for a demonstration class at the Institute,” Donna blurted.

“Are those rubber penises?” the police officer asked, his face getting redder.

“They are commonly referred to as dildos, and they have a long history dating back to Roman times,” Bud said.

They all stared at her.

“It’s all on Wikipedia,” Bud explained.

“Do you have a license for these?” he asked, picking up a box and staring at the photo on the top of the box. He opened it slowly and peered inside. He shut the lid quickly. “What on earth is that thing?”

“It’s a Muffin Mucker,” Donna said, seeming to regain some of her confidence.

Bud reached up to the camera and hit the zoom feature. Gitana saw Bud do it and put her hand over the lens. “That’s censorship,” Bud said. It wouldn’t matter. The Panasonic digital camera was filming away from the back of the car through the crack between the trunk and the rear of the car. It added an interesting perspective.

“No, it’s parental control.” She took the box from the now shell-shocked police officer. “It appears to vibrate as well, you know…” she glanced down at Bud, who now had the camera off her head and was cleaning the smudged lens. “And it has this added attachment for…”

The police officer held up his hand. “That’s enough.”

“What does she need a license for? It’s not like she’s going to drive a penis,” Bud said.

“A business license to sell those…things,” he sputtered, pointing at the trunk with distaste.

“But I’m not selling them. They’re for a class on ‘Sex Toys for the Novice.’ Believe it or not there are a lot of women out there who know nothing about sexual aids,” Donna said, her composure now intact. “I have the invoice that proves I purchased them at full price, and I am not selling them. I am simply delivering them to the Institute. I am the CFO, which more or less makes me a purchasing agent of sorts, especially for purchases of this sort.”

He held up his hand again. “That is enough, more than enough information.” He shut the trunk and handed over Donna’s license and registration. “You may go.”

“Thank you, Officer,” Donna said pleasantly as if he’d only given her directions to a museum or tourist attraction.

Once in the car, Donna said, “Well, that didn’t go as badly as I thought.”

Bud had edited out the part where Donna had banged her head on the steering wheel and swore them all to silence. She had restarted the video after everyone had calmed down a bit, but that was a director’s prerogative.

Gitana leaned back on the headrest and said, “Great mother of God, that had to be the most embarrassing moment of my entire life.”

“I think you handled it pretty well. I mean you did explain the Muffin Mucker rather succinctly,” Donna said. She started the car. She glanced in the rearview mirror and put on her turn indicator.

“You’re a very good driver,” Bud said. She patted Gitana’s shoulder. “Those things are just a natural part of people’s sexual lives.”

“How do you know about people’s sexual lives?” Gitana said, turning around to look at her daughter. “Oh, never mind. I keep forgetting you know everything.”

“Except what a penis looks like in 3-D.”

“Well, you got an eyeful of facsimiles today,” Gitana said.

“Yup.”

“See this whole thing was rather educational, after all,” Donna said, setting the cruise control for sixty-five. Then she changed her mind. “I think I’ll set it for seventy-two.”

“I was going to suggest that,” Bud said.

Bud did a “That’s all folks” imitation using a dildo instead of a carrot and the screen ran the credits.

Bud turned to smile at Chase.

The angry lesbians were laughing so hard the auditorium echoed with it. Donna, sitting in the screening room, had her face in her hands. “It was awful, so awful.”

“I thought it was hilarious,” Isabel said, rubbing Donna’s back.

Chase sat with her mouth open. “No one ever mentioned any of this to me. In fact, it’s news to me.”

Addison appeared to be musing. “It was definitely enlightening. That Muffin Mucker could put a dent in teen pregnancy.”

“You are sworn to silence on this,” Chase said. “Your mom might not be too mad, but Stella would hang me upside down by my toes and make me eat oatmeal.”

“Oatmeal?” Addison said.

“Ever tried to eat something that thick and viscous while hanging upside down?” Chase said.

“Uh, no,” Addison said.

“I’ve seen it done and stuff comes out your nose. Regatta Vasquez ate an oatmeal cookie while hanging from the monkey bars, and it wasn’t pretty,” Chase said.

They all stared at her. “What?” Chase said.

“Let’s go see what’s happening in the war zone, shall we?” Donna said.

When they got to the stage, Dr. Robicheck and Lacey were speaking to some women who were smiling. Lacey gave them a thumbs-up motion. Chase took this to be a good sign. She lost Bud and Addison in the crowd of admirers. She watched as Bud’s head of curls moved along with people. She tried to be okay with this—Addison was with her. It wasn’t like someone would abduct her…

Chase suddenly imagined a group of paramilitary lesbians taking hold of Bud and holding her for ransom so they could gain control of the Institute. She took a few deep breaths and tried to feel normal, which, as usual, didn’t work. She never had mastered normal. Instead, she contemplated getting a GPS bracelet for Bud so she could be located anywhere. Oh, God, now she was really getting off track.

Lacey and Donna broke her train of paranoid thoughts. “We’ve got them to agree to meet with Dr. Robicheck in the library right now. Donna and I are going with,” Lacey said, beaming with enthusiasm.

Chase touched Donna’s arm before she followed Lacey. “How long do you think the effects of laughter last?”

Donna shrugged. “Not long enough.”

“Chase, don’t you think you might be overextending yourself?” Gitana asked, looking around the writing studio.

“What do you mean?” Chase turned off the microphone but continued wrapping the refrigerator in floral pattern silver on white—standard issue wedding paper. Mrs. Meadowbrook-Parks had given her scads of wrapping paper remnants so she could practice her wrapping skills for the upcoming competition.

“Well, for starters you no longer have time to type your book; you dictate because you’re busy wrapping every conceivable thing in your office.”

Chase looked around. She
had
wrapped everything in her office. The couch had been the most difficult or was it the office chair, and the lamp hadn’t been a piece of cake by any means. She was thankful her muses weren’t there to reprimand her for thinking in clichés. She studied Gitana. Was it possible to wrap a person?

Gitana must have realized what she was doing. “Don’t even think about it and that includes the dogs.”

Chase sighed. Her mind began to churn as it contemplated first the tail, keeping it a separate piece would be best…

Gitana interrupted. “I think you need to give this a break. How is your book coming?”

“Pretty good. Wrapping seems to soothe my mind and gives my hands something to do and this new voice-activated program works great once you teach it to understand you. That’s the hardest part.”

“Teach it? Doesn’t it just record what you say?”

“Well, in theory,” Chase said, as she taped down the final seam on the fridge and then stuck an enormous silver bow on the freezer door. “Until it gets used to your voice, you have to teach it things. Like when you say ‘I can’t find it’ and it thinks you said, ‘It’s my hind end.’ Stuff like that.”