Lizz Lund - Mina Kitchen 01 - Kitchen Addiction! (36 page)

I
nodded, but wondered when Ethel’s hormonal thermostat thingy would stop acting
whacky.

Vinnie
settled down in front of the TV Yule log.  Jim settled alongside him.  Everyone
else settled sleepily and stared blankly at the screen.  Julie Andrews began to
sing ‘My Favorite Things’. Why is that considered a Christmas song?  I’ve
always wondered about that.

After
Ike began to snore, I poked them all awake, hoping that visions of leaving
would dance through their heads.   As my slumberous herd yawned and stretched,
the doorbell rang.  I grimaced and opened the door bravely, fearing another
visitor.  A woman clad in party wear greeted me.  “It’s alright! They’re not
dead!”

Ordinarily
I would have figured this was just another visit from an enthusiastic Jehovah’s
Witness.  For some reason, Jehovah’s Witnesses visit my neighborhood a lot. 
However, this evening-wear version was a new breed.  She was clad in a hot-pink
silk jacket and electric green slacks. Her eyes were smeared with lots of lime green
eye shadow that matched the streaks in her hair.  She also sported an
air-brushed beach-scene manicure, and wore about as much gold jewelry as a
small third world nation.

Vito
lumbered up behind me, yawning and stretching.  “Hi ya, Miriam,” he said sleepily.

Miriam. 
Oh.  Yeah. Right. Miriam.  Didn’t recognize her with the green streaks.  Last
time I saw her, they were fushcia.  Then again, that was last Christmas.

Miriam’s
my neighbor on the other side of Vito.  Miriam Gladstein, the Happy Widow. 
That’s how she introduced herself to me when I first moved in, while I was
holding the bottom half of a mahogany dresser:  “Miriam Gladstein – the Happy
Widow!  Pleasure to meet you, I’m sure.  My husband died eight years ago.  He
was a cheap S.O.B..  Never let me have a nickel.  After I scraped together
enough cash to get the carpet washed, that’s when I found $50,000 under it!  No
wonder it was hard to vacuum. The kid cleaning the carpet found it!  Lucky for
me that kid was real honest.  So I tipped him a hundred bucks! Altogether we
found $358,625 stashed across the house! The ceiling, the box spring, behind
the medicine cabinet, the garage – you name it.  Saul would have bust a gut to
know I’d found that money, or tipped anyone a hundred dollars!  Ha!  I sold
that old dump, moved here, and got an African Grey, a parakeet and two
Conjures.  Did I mention I love birds?  He never let me have none of them.  I
found a special vet for mine, too – it costs lots.  Ha!”  In the time it took
for Miriam to introduce herself to me, I had lugged the dresser all the way
upstairs, placed it, and packed it full of clothes.

“Oh,
Vito, I was hoping you were here!”  Miriam cried.

I
looked at Vito.  He rolled his eyes.  “Well, you know, I do live next door, ha
ha,” he said.

“Of
course, of course, ha ha!” Miriam agreed.  “I saw Muriel’s car here, and
figured she’d want to know the news, seeing as Henry goes to St. Bart’s and
all.”  She looked around.  “I hope I’m not interrupting a party or anything,”
Miriam said in a hopeful voice that told me she hoped exactly the opposite,
clearly glad she was all decked out with some place to go.

“Sorry,
no, not at all; please come in,” I said.

“Actually,
Mu’s got some news tonight,” Vito grinned.

“Really?”
Miriam asked hungrily. She was unable to resist the lure of neighborhood
gossip.

“Yeah,
Muriel’s gonna be a great-aunt!”

Miriam
pursed her lips and stared at me.

“No!
No! It’s not me! I’m not pregnant!” I yelped quickly, holding my hands out in
front of me.

“I
am,” Ethel called out from the living room.

“My
sister Ethel; my brother-in-law Ike,” I introduced quickly.  “And Ma,” I added.

“Louise,”
Ma clarified.

Miriam
nodded and walked around the room, pumping hands.  “Miriam Gladstein, the Happy
Widow…” she began.  I went back into the kitchen to refresh my drink, and
whip up a batch O’Brioche.  After all, I knew I had the time.

I
came back into the conversation a lot more buttery but no less informed.  “So,
Ethel, you are the one who is expecting?” Miriam asked.

“Yup,”
Ike beamed back for both of them.

“Mazel
tov!” Miriam said, “This calls for a celebration!”

Vito
held up a hand.  “Just a second, just a second – we got just the thing,
Miriam,” he said, and went into the kitchen to dispense a Rusty Squirrel for
the newest guest.  I looked at Ma and Mu.  They shrugged.

“Well,
I guess you’ve been too caught up with your news, what to be watching the TV
news and all,” Miriam sipped.

Then
the TV sang out joyfully, “We wish you a Merry Christmas! We wish you a Merry
Christmas! We wish you a Merry Christmas! And a happy New Year!”

Miriam
looked around at us, opened her mouth, and closed it.  That was the extent of
her trout impersonation.  She shrugged and took a really big sip from her Fleet
Cosmo.  She came back up with a pinkish frothy mustache.  In keeping with the
incidental Hallmark Christmas theme in my living room, she looked a bit like
the Little Drummer Boy with his painted on smile.

“Well,
it turns out Henry’s just about burned his fingers off. Involved in some kind
of arson, according to Norma,” Miriam said with a dismissive smirk.  “What an
imagination.  It’s getting so a person can’t even barbeque a brisket around
here without being accused of some goofball scheme,” she said.  “Remember when
she forgot she signed up for call waiting?  And thought the call-waiting
beeping was her wire being tapped?”

Aunt
Muriel, Vito and I collectively rolled our eyes and nodded.  It had taken Aunt
Muriel the better part of a weekend to walk Norma through those instructions. 
And a proportionate volume of Absolut to recover from administering the call
waiting tutorial.

“Anyway,
he and the Mrs. got taken to the hospital on account of the flare up,” Miriam
continued, and sipped.

“Are
they okay?” Aunt Muriel asked.

Miriam
shrugged.  “Except for their eyebrows, I think they’ll be fine,” she said.

“What
happened to their eyebrows?” Ma asked.

“Singed
right off.  They probably look like a couple of peeled eggs.

“Anyway,”
Miriam continued pointedly and turning to Vito after another long slurp, “I
know how you have plans to have, uh… coffee with Henry like usual tomorrow
morning.  You know, like you do every third Thursday of the month?  But since I
heard the news, like I just told you about, Henry might not be feeling so up to
it, on account of being so crisp and all,” she said emphatically.

Vito
nodded blankly. “Oh, jeez, sure.  That’s completely understandable.”

“But
if you like, I could give Henry the book you keep meaning to give him.  I mean,
I’m sure he’ll miss it,” Miriam said breathily, flushed and pleased in thinking
she might possibly be involved in some kind of dramatic secret mission.

Vito
thunk hard, then dropped into a chair.  Along with the penny.  “Oh, yeah! Sure!
Right!” He beamed. “Actually, I got it right here.  I put it in Mina’s basement
here for, uh… safekeeping,” he said and then went thumpity-thump like
downstairs.  For a big, round guy, Vito always surprises me at how swift of
foot he can be.  But I guess that had its plusses in his former career.

I
looked at Aunt Muriel.  She invited Miriam into my make-shift banquet hall to
partake of the repasts.  I just hoped she’d leave soon after, before all the
effects of her cocktail kicked in.

We
all settled back down with our various reinforcements of food and drink. 
“…five G-O-L-D rings!” sang sappily from the flickering tape.  Miriam looked
at me.  I shrugged.  She shrugged back, and chewed.  Miriam had it right.  What
you don’t know can’t burp you.

Vito
came back up the stairs waving a plastic grocery bag crammed full with a lot of
stuff that did not look in any way, shape or form like a book.

“Here
you go!” he said happily, coming in through the dining room and holding the bag
out to Miriam.

“What
kind of a book is that?” Annie asked.

Vito
looked around.  Ma looked at the floor.  Aunt Muriel’s eyebrows shot up and
waved in place over her head.  A thin orange line trickled along Vito’s shirt
collar.

“It’s
a Book Club book.  Vito gets it in installments,” Bauser lied.

“Oh,”
Annie said, and nestled back down into her corner of the sofa.

Vito
nodded his head up and down a lot and smiled.  “Yeah, that’s it!” He grinned. 
“Here, Miriam, I’ll just show yous out here.”

And
he hustled her out the front door.  She flushed and handed her glass and fork
to me on the way out.  From the front porch, we heard Vito bidding Miriam
farewell.  We heard Miriam bidding Vito farewell.  Then we heard what sounded
like a lot of boxes tumbling all over my front walk.  So we all went over and
looked out the windows.  About two dozen boxes of prescription samples lay
littered across my walk and tumbled onto the lawn.  Vito and Miriam were
picking them up and shoving them like Easter Eggs into Miriam’s beach bag size
purse.  Vito looked up at the audience in my living room windows.  He waved and
pointed to the ripped grocery bag he held in his other hand.

That
was when Miriam clapped her hand right over Vito’s mouth.  “My purse broke. I
keep all my samples in here.  My doctor insists I try samples for weeks before
he’ll prescribe the real McCoy,” she shouted.  We all nodded back in
acknowledgment.

 “Well,
I guess it’s getting to be that time,” Aunt Muriel said, giving Ma the ‘high
sign’ to get Annie away from the window.  “Let’s help Mina put some of these
things away.”

Everyone
agreed – including Ike, who stayed on the sofa and put his feet up.  I looked
back out the front window and saw Miriam and Vito gesticulating loudly, their
hands crammed full of samples.  I looked closer: one of the samples was labeled
‘Viagra’.

“It’s
always a surprise, isn’t it?” Annie asked, standing right next to me.  I
jumped. I thought she’d followed Aunt Muriel into the kitchen. “Sorry,” Annie
said, looking out at Vito and Miriam.  “Didn’t mean to startle you.”

“Oh.
Yeah. Right. No biggie,” I lied

“But
you have to agree, it’s pretty surprising,” she said.

“What’s
that?”

“The
lengths people will go to for medications.”

A
dim roaring started to pound in my ears and I realized it was either all the
blood in my body rushing to my head or away from it.  I didn’t blame it. I
figured that most of my blood cells didn’t want to get caught by a U.S.
Marshal’s assistant, either.

“Well,
you know, she is older…” I stalled.

“That’s
why it’s always surprising.  Who’d have thought an old gal like that would have
a boyfriend on the side, with, ermm… issues?” Annie asked matter-of-factly. 
“Nice of Vito to cover for her,” she added.

The
pounding started to fade.  I realized I had been holding my breath for a few
months, then exhaled.

“I
wonder if Vito’s jealous?” Annie mused.  I stared at her, afraid to ask about
the basis for that convoluted logic.  Then, indicating the platter of
half-gnawed canapés she’d been holding, she asked me, “You want another one of
these?”

“Uh,
no thanks,” I said.

“Suit
yourself.” She shrugged, popping a slice of bologna pie into her mouth and heading
toward the kitchen.

I
looked out the window to see Miriam waving bye-bye to Vito, her purse bulging
open with its contraband contents.  I sighed.  That was as close to federal
entanglement as I wanted to get with Mrs. Phang’s pharmaceutical folly.  Then I
shrugged.  It could have been worse.  It could have been Ma’s or Aunt Muriel’s
pocketbooks full of Viagra.

All
the food got put away, as well as divvied up, since I basically had enough food
left over for a small wedding.  Everything else got washed and cleaned and put
away.

I
went into the kitchen to find Ma and Mu arguing.

“Yes,
I am,” said Aunt Muriel

“No,
you’re not,” Ma replied.

“Yes
– I – AM!”

“AB-SO-LUTE-LY
NOT!”

“What’s
the matter?” I asked stupidly.

Aunt
Muriel rolled her eyes at me.  “I told your mother that I would schedule
another massage for her, to make up for what got undone tonight, and she’s
refusing.”

“I
told you, I’m fine!” she said, rubbing her neck.

“Then
why are you rubbing your neck?” I asked.

“You
see!” Aunt Muriel cried.

Ma
turned her head and glared at me.  “Don’t be such a helper,” she hissed.

“Sorry,”
I mumbled.

Ma
looked at me again.  “I know!  I’ll get a massage, if Mina gets one! She could
use it!” I felt the tiny twinge pinching my right cheek again.  That is, the
cheek that’s not associated with my face.

“Well,
Mina? Your mother’s spine turning into a pretzel or not is completely up to
you,” Aunt Muriel warned.