Polkacide (7 page)

Suddenly, I heard Eddie's
voice in my left ear. "Haven't you met Peg's niece yet? Show
engineer Glynne Corcoran?"

I watched as Glynne pulled
the headsets over her ears and plugged the cord into the control
board. "My father hired her?"

"More like Peg hired her.
Trying to keep her out of trouble. Glynne's fresh out of
rehab."

Up on stage, Glynne pulled a
record out of its sleeve and loaded in on the turntable.
"Alcohol?"

"Meth." Eddie shrugged. "So
needless to say, she's got a few issues. Addiction can be a
bear."

As a recovering smoker, I
could identify.

Suddenly, Peg's voice burst
in over the music on the PA. "Okay, everybody! It's time for our
closing theme, recorded by none other than Polish Fly, starring the
one and only Polish Lou! Let's step it up for 'The Polka Prince
Polka!' One, two, three!"

With that, a familiar song
filled the former activities hall, starting off with a royal
fanfare on trumpet followed by the sound of exploding fireworks.
Then, a wild accordion riff took over, hurtling into a traditional
fast polka arrangement with clarinet accents.

It had been Dad's theme song
since the Sixties, when he'd written and first recorded it. He'd
closed every performance and radio show with it for the rest of his
career. I was glad Peg was keeping up the tradition.

As the dancers twirled
ecstatically through Polka Central, whooping and waving their
hankies, Peg darted out of the crowd and dashed straight for us.
Before we could get away, she grabbed Eddie and spun him around
three times, then let him go and headed for me. I tried to duck but
ended up spinning three times with her before she let me go,
too.

Peg whooped and danced a few
steps by herself, then raised the mic. "That's it for another
edition of
Kocham
Taniec
, folks! Join us next Saturday and
Sunday for more fabulous polka music and fun the way Polka Lou
intended! The Polish Princess Lottie Kachowski and I wish you a
beautiful day!
Piękny dzień!

"And remember,
Kocham Taniec!
" She held
the mic out to the crowd, and everyone said the same thing in
unison.

"I love
dancing!"

As the crowd erupted in
hooting and applause, Eddie socked my upper arm playfully. "'Polish
Princess,' huh? I
like
it."

Peg winked in my direction,
then lifted her gaze to Glynne onstage. Nodding, Peg raised a hand
with all five fingers extended; with a flourish, she flicked one
finger down at a time, counting to zero. Glynne manipulated
controls on the board, and the music faded to silence by the time
Peg had curled all five fingers into a fist.

With that, the show was
over. It had ended exactly on time; the digital counter atop the
control board read "09:00:00."

I was impressed. As much as
Peg grated on my nerves, she clearly knew what she was doing when
it came to hosting
Kocham Taniec.
She hadn't done half bad. Dad had trained her
well.

Which, I hated to admit,
made an unexpected feeling rise up within me:
jealousy.
I couldn't believe it, but
I was actually a little jealous of Polish Peg for mastering the
radio show. Not that I'd ever had any interest whatsoever in being
involved with it in any way...but still. It was part of Dad's life,
and Peg was an expert at running it.

Which brought up another unexpected
emotion, actually. This one was even harder for me to believe.
Never in a million years would I have expected to feel this
way.

I never would have thought
I'd feel the slightest bit
intimidated
by obnoxious Polish Peg
with the Clown wig afro and the owl-eye magnifying glasses with the
polka dot red frames.

But lo and behold, I did.

Chapter 11

After the radio show ended,
Peg looped her arm around mine and led me up the few steps to the
stage. Eddie followed.

"Of course you've been to
the nerve center of Polish Lou Enterprises, Lottie." Peg patted my
arm and smiled.

"Of course." It was a lie,
but I said it anyway. I was feeling intimidated,
remember?

"I'll give you the grand
tour anyway." Peg guided me across the stage past the tables of
equipment. Glynne was working with the reel-to-reel tape recorder,
playing something back, and didn't look up as we passed.

Peg walked us to the gray
curtain behind the tables and parted a section for us to pass
through. I entered first and took a quick look at my new
surroundings.

The backstage area was set
up like an office...an incredibly
cluttered
office. There were four big
desks arranged in a row, all facing stage right; the desks all had
old-fashioned black rotary telephones and were overflowing with
piles of paperwork, mail, ledger books, CDs, and discarded fast
food containers. Only one of the desks was equipped with a
computer. A desktop model with a monster of a tower and a giant
monitor in a dirty white shell, it looked at least ten years out of
date.

Six filing cabinets hulked
at the edges of the office space, three at stage right and three at
stage left. Each cabinet had at least one overstuffed drawer stuck
open with sheafs of paper. The tops of the cabinets were stacked
with record albums, t-shirts, posters, and/or boxes of junk that
might or might not have been mementos.

Even the floor was heaped
with newspaper, garbage, and odds and ends. Extension cords were
tangled everywhere. One of Lou's favorite old accordions--black
with chrome trim and his signature embossed in gold above the
keyboard--lay in a corner. In another corner, a ten-foot-long
placard with "Polish Fly" in bold black letters and the band's
insect mascot between the words stood on end, leaning against the
wall.

The place was a shambles, a
complete mess...yet it felt a little like a museum to me. Like a
monument to the father I'd once known, a man who was larger than
life in his accomplishments and sloppiness alike.

"Here we are, Lottie." Peg
gave my arm a squeeze. "Home sweet home. Welcome to the nerve
center."

"Pardon our dust," Eddie
said from behind us. "And our trash, and our avalanches waiting to
happen."

Peg let go of my arm and
picked her way to the middle of the office area. "We've been busier
than ever since Lou died. You wouldn't believe the gifts and
condolences that have poured in over the last few days. Plus the
offers to reissue his recordings."

"Don't forget the movie deal," said
Eddie.

"A studio wants to option
Lou's life story." Peg lifted a framed photo of Lou from one of the
desks and smiled. "He's a bigger star than ever."

"And on top all that, we've
got to manage Polish Fly and organize Polkapourri 25." Eddie walked
past me with hands clasped behind his back and gave me a look. "So
if you ask me, there couldn't be a better time for you to come on
board. We sure could use the help. There's only so much three
people can do."

Peg replaced the photo of
Lou on the desk. "How are you with computers, Lottie?" She tipped
her head to one side and peered at me through her Coke bottle
magnifying lenses.

"Computers like that one?" I pointed
at the Stone Age desktop with the giant tower and
monitor.

Peg laughed. "Not
exactly.
Real
computers. From
this
century."

I shrugged. The truth was, I
had a real flair for the information technology realm. In college,
I'd studied recording, a field that required killer computer
skills. I'd even worked in the music industry before meeting up
with Luke and starting the club. But I didn't want to put all my
cards on the table just yet. "I do all right when I have
to."

"Well, I've been planning to
modernize." Peg grabbed a handful of overloaded files from one of
the desks and shook them. "Go paperless. It's long
overdue."

"Okay." I kept my voice neutral. I
wasn't quite sure where she was going with this.

"It's a massive job, as you
can see." Peg spread her arms and slowly turned in a circle, taking
in the mountains of paperwork ranging over every surface. "Much,
much more than we can do in one week. But maybe we can make a dent
in it now that we've got help."

"Sure." I looked over at
Eddie, who was nudging the accordion on the floor with his toe. He
glanced over his shoulder at me and smiled. "I'll do what I can," I
said, as much to him as to Peg.

"This is on top of
everything else, of course," said Peg. "And Polkapourri is always
our number one priority. Think you can handle all that?"

Her bossy comments made my
hackles rise. She was using a take-charge attitude to try to keep
me in my place...though in reality, I was now her equal at Polish
Lou Enterprises.

My impulse was to open fire
with both barrels at that moment, but I caught myself. I was still
on unfamiliar ground, in a difficult situation. Better for now to
go with the flow and let her think she had nothing to worry
about.

"I can handle it." My weak smile
probably wasn't very reassuring, but it was better than the full-on
scowl trying to force its way through. "When do we
start?"

Peg grinned and clapped her
hands together. "Now's as good a time as any. Where to begin...?"
Chewing her lower lip, she drifted through the office space,
running her eyes over the mountains of paper. "How about organizing
last year's merchandising receipts?"

"Glynne and I are almost
done with that," said Eddie.

"Let's see then." Peg
circled the desks again, tapping some of the piles with a
forefinger...then finally resting her hand on an overstuffed file
wrapped crossways with thick rubber bands. "
I
know. The
crank file.
"

"Really?" Eddie grimaced. "How's that
a priority?"

"It's clutter. It's in the
way." Peg picked up the folder and walked toward me. "Now that
Lou's gone, we don't need most of it anymore."

"Okay." I extended a hand.
"What do you want me to do?"

Peg gave me the folder.
"Sort these letters and throw out all the ones made out to Lou.
Keep the rest and log them in a spreadsheet on the new
computer."

"What new computer?" said
Eddie.

"The one we're buying at
Mall-Mart while Lottie holds down the fort." Peg faced him squarely
and planted her hands on her hips. "Got a problem with that,
Kubiak?"

Eddie grinned and smacked the ancient
desktop computer's huge monitor. "I just can't believe we're
putting The Paperweight out to pasture!"

As the two of them talked, I
pulled the rubber bands off the folder and skimmed some of the
pages inside. It didn't take long to get the gist of the sheaf of
typed and handwritten letters. "These are death threats!" I flipped
through a few more, and the theme remained the same. "Death threats
against my father!"

"He was a celebrity," said
Peg. "It's par for the course these days. Some of the threats were
against me, too, or both of us together. People are crazy,
huh?"

I was amazed at how many letters were
in the file...more amazed at how many people had wanted to kill my
father. "Dad never said anything about this to me."

"I'm sure he didn't want to
worry you." Peg walked over and put her hand on my arm, stopping me
from flipping through the letters. "Are you all right with this,
Lottie? You don't have to do it if you don't want to."

"No, no, I'm fine." I nodded briskly.
"It's just kind of a shock, that's all."

Peg's eyes, enlarged to
giant size by her powerful polka dot glasses, locked on mine. She
tipped her head to one side, and then her expression
changed.

For a moment, all the
aggressive goofiness seemed to dissipate from her gaze like clouds
burning away before the summer sun. A keener focus seemed to pierce
the fog of her clownish persona. I swear, I felt an unexpectedly
sharp intelligence trying to bore its way through my
defenses.

For the first time, I found
myself wondering if Peg was smarter than she let on.

"Well, sweetie, if you
change your mind, let me know." Peg patted my arm gently, then
pulled away her hand. "There's plenty of other work to do, believe
you me."

"I'll be fine, thanks." With that, I
closed the folder and looked around for the best place to sit and
review the letters.

"Then Ed and I have some
computer shopping to do." Peg swung an arm through the air,
gesturing for Eddie to join her. "C'mon Ed. Let's go find Glynne
and catch up to the 21
^st
century."

Eddie pretended to wipe away
a tear. "I never thought I'd hear those words spoken around here."
Then, he put his hand on the old computer's tower and gave it a
shove. The tower toppled off the edge of the desk and crashed to
the wooden floorboards below. "
Whoops!
Now
what have I done?"