Lizz Lund - Mina Kitchen 01 - Kitchen Addiction! (11 page)

“Oh,
they’ll all be gone by the morning.” Aunt Muriel thwacked once or twice too. 
“Our boy certainly likes his pepperoni,” she said.

Vinnie
‘sat pretty’ for her while she rewarded him with another piece of pepperoni,
and then she went upstairs to bed. Vinnie trotted along after her.  I hoped she
wasn’t sleeping with any more pepperoni in my pockets.

I
turned out the lights.  The sound of crickets chirping filled the living
room.   I lay down on the sofa, wondering how I would ever get used to sleeping
with crickets.  Then I heard Vinnie tossing his bowl of Kitty Cookies on the
kitchen floor.  I swore quietly and stumbled into the kitchen, determined to
give him what for.

That
was when I met Blossom the Possum.  All twenty-seven pounds of her. 

“Nice
possum… nice possum… wanna go back outside to your nicem possum place-um?”
I sang hopefully, opening the back door to let her out.   Which only succeeded
in letting in more insect life.

Blossom
looked up at me, and continued to munch on Vinnie’s Kitty Cookies with fierce
looking, jagged jaws.  Eech.  Then she washed her face, burped, and waddled
out.  I closed the door after her just as a big fat fly landed on the counter. 
I thwacked him.  I knew it’d make my karma suck, but I’d had enough of the Peaceable Kingdom for one night
.

CHAPTER 4

(Monday)

I
hate Mondays.

I
woke up to gnawing sounds.  Which was weird. What could Vinnie be crunching?
Carefully peeling back my eyelids, I saw bright sunlight streaming into the
living room.  Which was also weird.  The sun doesn’t shine on the living room
side of the house until almost noon.  Then I watched as a small terrier chewed
my rocking chair.  I shoved him away and staggered into the kitchen.  It was
10:45 a.m.  It was Monday.  I was supposed to have been at EEJIT a long, long
time ago.

“Shit!
Shit! Shit!” I cried, running up the stairs and headlong into Auntie brushing
her teeth in the bathroom.  “Why didn’t you wake me up!?” I yelled.

She
spat into the sink. “Your manager, Howard Blech, was notified by the police of
your being robbed yesterday,” she said.  She rinsed and systematically spat
again.  “I contacted him personally this morning to let him know you have a
doctor’s appointment at 11:30.   If you feel well, and if the doctor says you
are fit, I will drive you into work.”

Oh. 
Well.  That explained everything.  My life was now under maternal law.  I
leaned against the wall and rubbed my head.  It felt sore but also like the
swelling had shrunk.  “Hey, I think the swelling’s gone down!” I yelled
happily.

“Ummm…
I think you should keep this appointment, Mina. After all, you also need your
foot examined.” She winced at me and walked away.

I
looked in the mirror.  Yup, the swelling was down – no more pregnant forehead.
In its place was a large, dark purple circle that was ringed in red and green
like a bull’s-eye.  I gazed down at my stubbed toe, the cut on my foot and the
spot where Auntie’s stilletoed heel pierced me.  Each was a wonderful shade of
eggplant, delicately trimmed in pink.

Aunt
Muriel and I turned as we heard gnawing sounds from downstairs.  I figured it
was the terrier eating my furniture again.  “Whose dog?” I asked.

“Do
you have a dog?” she asked, pulling a plastic grocery store bag over her head
in preparation for getting dressed.

“You
know I don’t have a dog.  I’ve got Vinnie,” I said. “By the way, where is
Vinnie?” I asked nervously.  Aunt Muriel pointed her grocery bag encased head
toward the bed.  Vinnie lay sleeping on his side mumbling, with one paw
covering his snout and the other clutching a half gnawed piece of pepperoni. 
“Oh good grief,” I said.  No wonder he hadn’t encountered Fido in the living
room.  He had a pepperoni hangover.

I
patted his belly and a lethal ‘poof’ pooted out his south end – the silent but
deadly kind.  Aunt Muriel still had her head in the bag.  “You might want to
stay in there,” I warned, holding my nose.  She nodded, and I headed back
downstairs to settle the score with somebody else’s dog.

I
got Fido away from more rocker gnawing by bribing him with Apple At’ems
cereal.  He took the bait and trotted happily behind me into the kitchen.  
There I made a pot of coffee and heard the front door open.  It was Vito.

“Hey,
Toots, how’s your head?” Vito smiled as he ambled toward the kitchen, carrying
a white paper bag.  “I got yous and Muriel some jelly donuts.  I figured yous
could use them…” He trailed off as I faced him, giving him full frontal
forehead.  He stared disbelievingly at my bruise and gulped.  “Boy, that was
some whack, huh?”

I
shrugged, took the bag from him and set some plates and coffee mugs on the
counter.  We helped ourselves, and chewed quietly.

Vito
looked down and finally registered the furniture crunching Terrier.  This was
because the dog was sitting pretty for Vito’s jelly donut.  “When’d you get
him?” Vito asked.

“I
have no idea.”

“Gee,
I always wanted a dog,” Vito said wistfully.  “Hey, if he doesn’t belong to
anyone, can I keep him?”

“Better
check around first, Vito, just in case.”

“You’re
right.  Jeez, ya never know what walks through an unlocked door,” Vito said.

I
looked meaningfully at him.  “Yep, one never knows,” I agreed.

“By
the way, Mina, if yous thinks you’re going into work today, could you take this
for me?” Vito asked, holding up his perpetual gym bag of dry cleaning.

I
sighed. “Sure.”

Aunt
Muriel came down and shushed me upstairs to get ready to have my head
examined.  I got dressed, Vinnie still lay sprawled out on my bed, snoozing and
pooting in bachelor bliss.  I fed Marie, went back downstairs and left Kitty
Cookies in Vinnie’s bowl.

“Where’s
Vito? And the dog?” I asked.

“Vito
took him for a walk to find his owner,” Aunt Muriel replied.  “Come along,
Mina,” she called after me.  I trotted obediently behind.

We
got to the doctors’ and I signed in.  Before long, a nurse called out, “Mina
Kitchen?”

“That’s
me,” I said.

She
backed away.  “Uh, just step over here so we can, uh, weigh you…” she
trailed, keeping a good distance away from me.  I sighed.  Why is it when you
feel like crap you have to get weighed?  What good is that?  You’re there
because you feel bad, right?  So you have to feel guilty, too?  I accepted her
unacceptable weight reading and went inside an examination room where I perched
on a bench and waited.

A
few thousand years later, a guy I’d never seen before popped his head into the
room.  “Good afternoon, I am Dr. Singh,” he sang.

“What
happened to Dr. Dahler?  Or Dr. Senz?” I asked.

“They
are out of town at a very impressive conference, for which they will gain
invaluable knowledge about the cosmetic medicines,” he beamed.  “I am their
replacement for today’s patients,” he finished.  Great.  Leave it to me to get
a temp.  “So, what is the condition of which you would like to complain?” I
looked at him questioningly.  He’d got to be kidding.  Where should I start? 
And how much time did he have?  “Do you have a physical malady for which you
wish to be cured?”

Oh. 
That stuff.  “I suppose,” I began, and explained about the konk on my noggin
and mutilated foot.

“Oh,
this is very, very bad,” Dr. Singh said, shaking his head.  “It is terrible to
live with such pain.  But it is this which will gain us the moral strength.” He
smiled at me.  Oh good grief.  I got a doctor of philosophy.  “Here, please to
let me examine your head,” he continued, and invaded my personal space by
stepping in-between my thighs.  After that he proceeded to peer so closely into
my eyes with his scope thingy that I felt his eyelashes flicker against my
cheek.  Oh well.  At least he hadn’t eaten pepperoni.

He
stepped back and picked up my foot.  I yelped politely at him.  He looked at me
and shook his head, tsking.  He let my foot down and started to write in my
file.  Then he wrote something on a prescription pad.  “Firstly, let me say
this to you: you are very much in very much pain,” he said.  “Your foot has the
contusion and has been lacerated with a wound, and also appears a bit pierced. 
And your head has suffered quite a blow by a round, heavy object.”  How
observant of him.  “I see from your file that you have not had a tet-a-nish
shot in your recent personal history with this practice, yes?”

I
gulped.  “No…”

“Good!”
And he beamed at me far too brightly.  “Then we will have a registered nurse
administer a tet-a-nish shot! As for your head, though, I am afraid there is
not much we can do for it.”

“That’s
pretty much the family consensus,” I quipped.  Dr. Singh stared back at me
blankly.  Clearly he thought more damage had been done than he’d assessed.  He
shook his head and ripped a sheet off his prescription pad.

“This
is a small but helpful prescription for your pain,” he said, handing the paper
to me.  I reached for it, and he withdrew it.  “It is not to take during
working or driving or eating or sleeping hours,” he admonished.

“Oh,
okay,” I said.  Must be just for playtime, then.

“And
please to read all of the instructions accompanying this medicine, which will
come forthrightly from your neighborhood pharmacist,” he finished.  He pressed
a button on the wall and left the room.  I shrugged and waited around for my
tet-a-nish shot.

A
short, round, snarling bleached blonde nurse shuffled into the room.  I
cringed.  She opened my file.  “Well, what do we have here?” she drawled at it.
Obviously my input wasn’t necessary. “Oh, you’re the tetanus shot.  Well!” She
smiled at me.  I cringed some more.  “We’ll just fix you up right here!” she
said, and pulled a large syringe from her pocket.  She wiped my arm with an
alcohol swab and uncapped the syringe.  This revealed something that looked
like a large knitting needle with a propeller on the end.  I winced.  “Oh, this
won’t hurt a bit!” she jibbed, then jabbed my arm.  “Now, this might feel hot
later on.  And it might cause a bump.  And a little bruising.  And you might
have a headache.  And some nausea.  But nothing to be worried about,” she
concluded and handed me the charge sheet to take up front.  I wondered why I
needed the tet-a-nish shot, since I already had bumps, bruises, nausea and a
headache?  I sighed and wandered up front to ransom myself from the doctor’s.

Ninety-five
dollars later – inclusive of my discounted co-pay – we were back inside
Auntie’s Lexus and headed for the drug store, and then back to my place for
Vito’s forgotten laundry bag.  I was going to have to start writing things
down.  I blackmailed Auntie into chauffeuring all this.  If she didn’t, I told
her I’d bring Vito back to St. Bart’s.  She agreed.  We got my prescriptions
filled, picked up Vito’s laundry bag, and finally she dropped me off at the Chestnut Street entrance to EEJIT.  That was where I met all the other occupants of the
Armstrong building milling and seething on the sidewalk. Of course Lee spotted
me first.

“Nice
of you to join us today, Mina,” she sneered.  “Too bad about your head.  Guess
it made some dent in your memory, huh?” she smirked.

Bauser
came over and stepped between us.  “I think Howard’s looking for you, Lee,” he
said.

Her
cheeks flushed red. “Really? Where?”

“Oh,
I think over by the courtyard entrance,” he said, and pointed.  Lee swaggered
away from us, then broke into a full jelly roll cantor as she wobbled around
the corner.  My head throbbed.

“Why’s
Howard looking for her?” I asked, afraid to find out I was being replaced as we
spoke.

“He’s
not.  I fibbed,” Bauser said.

“Really!
Good for you, Bauser!” I congratulated.  Even though he was from Lancaster, I figured he had to be capable of the occasional white lie.  After all, his dad
was from Hoboken.

“You
alright, Mina?” He looked at me warily.

“Yeah,
I just look kinda bad right now.”  I explained about my weekend.

“Jeez,
you’d have been better off staying here,” he said.  We looked at each other and
winced.  Clearly things were not exactly as they ought to be for my social
life.

Bauser
went on to fill me in about the power shortage and the aftermath.  “Well, the
thing is, I dealt with the power.  No parts to replace, no shortages, no
nothing.  So I just hung around until the power came back on. About seven
o’clock,” he said.

“Okay,”
I said.

“Not
exactly.”

“Huh?”

“The
fire started in our server room – seventh floor.”

“What
fire? I thought this was a drill?”

“No
such luck,” he responded.

He
led me around to the corner opposite our building.  From this angle, I could
see the billows of smoke hurdling up into space from EEJIT’s seventh floor
offices.  Oddly enough, it made me feel a little happier.  I smiled contentedly
and looked at Bauser. He looked puzzled. “All I can get from the firemen is
that it’s contained to the server room.”

Crap. 
How-weird would have a field day pinning this on Bauser.  And me.  Especially
since I wasn’t with Bauser in the server room yesterday.  My happy feelings
went up in smoke.

“Don’t
worry,” Bauser said.  “I could do with a break.  Collect some unemployment;
have an extended vacation…” His eyes glazed over at the thought of endless
nights on the Internet with endless mornings of sports shows.

I
shook him.  “Bauser, get real!  If Howard pins this on you, it’s not like
getting laid off!  It would be fired for cause!”  I hissed.  Bauser’s glaze
continued in its reverie.  “You won’t be able to collect unemployment!” I said.

That
made him snap out of it.  “Oh crap,” he said quietly.

Just
then we saw several fire marshal types gather groups of employees from various
companies and shuffle them over to the courtyard.  Bauser shrugged.  “Now or
never,” he said, and I nodded.

We
plodded our way back across the street, and gathered with the masses.  I saw
How-weird grouped with Lee and – yikes – also Myron Stumpf.  And worse yet,
what appeared to be a client.  I hung my head.