Chapter Sixteen
Popping out of a lifetime rut was surprising enough. But then, Friday morning, Mom and Pop walked me to the Meiers Corners Sparkasse Bank (lobby open at seven) to support me. I was grateful.
Sitting in Mr. Sparkasse’s office with my parents behind me, I pasted on a trembling smile and told Mr. Sparkasse, “I need a loan.” I swallowed hard and named a figure that was ten times my entire net worth.
“I see. And for collateral?”
“I was hoping we could do a signature loan. But I have musical instruments.”
“I’m sorry.” Mr. Sparkasse’s smile became strained. “I’d need something more substantial.”
“The Wurstspeicher Haus,” my father said. “We will expand our mortgage, ja?”
I whipped around. My dad stood with legs spread, arms folded, and the mule look on his face. “Pop, no.”
“Ja.” Mom linked arms with him. “We support Junior.”
I swallowed hard again, for a different, better reason.
“I’m so sorry,” Mr. Sparkasse said. “But I can’t. Your business is already mortgaged to the limit. And there’s another issue.” He placed fingertips together. “Ours. Unfortunately, our loan reserve was seriously depleted after the hike in insurance premiums.”
“You too?” I said. “Damn CIC.”
Mr. Sparkasse shook his head. “Wrong alphabet. I’m talking FDIC.”
That made me sit up. “The Feds? Why?”
“Because of all the failed banks. Federal Deposit Insurance premiums were raised for the surviving financial institutions. Like a car accident raises your auto insurance. I’m so sorry.”
I tried a few more tacks (including my best sausage-selling smile) but Mr. Sparkasse continued to be sorry until we left. Good thing I had a backup plan. Woot. Too bad it involved two mobs of angry vampires. I’d have to work not to get caught between.
As we walked home I could see my parents exchanging worried little looks. “Junior,” my father said. “I’m sorry you are disappointed. Your mother and I want to cheer you. How about a bratwurst cookout for lunch?”
“But what about the store?”
“For an hour?” my mother said. “We will close the store.”
I’m not sure you can understand how remarkable that was. The last time they closed the store was when I was born. Even then, Mom worked the register until her water broke and Pop opened up again as soon as the cord was cut.
“You shouldn’t.” I couldn’t quite keep the hopefulness out of my voice.
“It’s no problem,” my father said. “We want to.”
“We will invite Uncle Otto,” my mother said. “Make it a party. Why don’t you call him, Junior?”
“Well, if you’re sure.” My cell phone was already out, and seconds later I was explaining to Otto.
“What the heck?” Uncle said, in tourist mode so he pronounced it vat der heck. “I need to walk Toto anyway, ja? We will be there by noon.”
Aunt Ottowina was elbows-deep in smorgasbord, but Aunt Hattie, who lived at the B&BS with Race, was eager to join the party.
At eleven fifty Pop fired up the grill. I hung up my apron and headed for the PAC to put up my posters announcing the change in tonight’s venue. Not that I expected any audience to see them, not with the GObubbles probably being addictive. Dreams beyond the rainbow, I guess.
As I returned I saw Uncle Otto and Aunt Hattie coming the other way on the sidewalk. Auntie held Toto’s leash and Uncle spun with his ever-present broom. I waved. Toto yipped and Auntie unsnapped his lead. Smiling, I crouched to gather up doggie kisses.
And heard the hiss of a spray can.
I sprang to my feet, took a few steps toward the sound. The Cheese Dudes were just inside the mouth of the narrow walkway that separated our stores.
Dude One had a can of bright silver spray paint. He was spritzing Sistine Chapel art on our wall—not Michelangelo, but naked. The naughty bits were rather heroically sized.
I was too flabbergasted (by both Dudes and naughty bits) to move. Uncle Otto shouted, “Stop that!”
“What?” Cheese Dude Two jumped. He saw Otto, spun, and ran for the cheese store. Screeched to a stop when he saw me. “Hey. It’s business hours. What the heck are you doing outside? Darn it.” He ducked into their store.
Cheese Dude One kept spraying. He sneered at me over his taped, Hubble-lensed glasses.
Otto pushed off with his broom and spun up to Dude One. “I said stop!”
“Make me.” Dude One sprayed. Much more and he’d spray a tripod.
Otto swatted the Dude’s bony hand with the broom. The can dropped with a clatter.
“Ow! You want to fight?” The Dude whipped something out of his shirt pocket.
“What is all this racket?” My father stuck his head out the side door.
The Dude made shoving motions at Uncle. I couldn’t see what he was doing but there was a snort and a couple seconds later Uncle was falling backward. I wasn’t totally surprised, Otto being top-shaped. Without the broom or his ever-present sweeping to balance him, he probably had just tipped over.
Cheese Dude One waved a couple finger-sized sticks that looked like string cheese. ”Whoo-hoo! Snort Limburger jalapeño sticks, buddy.”
Ooh, this was bad. Not just because Otto lay on the sidewalk twitching, tears running down his face, cheese like cotton wads up his nose. But because Toto had jumped Uncle and was trying to hump his face.
“War!” my father crowed and ran back into our store.
I dashed across the sidewalk to help Otto. Cheese Dude One saw me coming, screamed “Keep away from me!” I didn’t listen, intent on Otto.
The Dude grabbed my arm. I swung like a gate, my mouth opening in surprise, which was when the Dude shoved a dynamite stick of cheese mace past my epiglottis.
Pain, shock…my throat swelled and my face was a running mass. I stumbled to my knees. Nothing worked. Everything warped like a nightmare.
Aunt Hattie shouted, Toto barked. My father shot out the front door of the store, a Wurstspeicher Haus apron girding him like armor, brandishing five pounds of summer sausage. “Rosalinda! Sales maneuver twenty!”
Yeah, my folks really had numbered these things, both the Business Truths and Sales Maneuvers—though there were so many Maneuvers I could never keep them straight. You thought I made that up, didn’t you? Sorry, no. They even had the Business Truths printed and laminated. Pop carried a pocket version in his wallet, alongside his Wurst Sellers membership card and a picture of me playing my first musical instrument, an Oscar Mayer Wiener Whistle.
Mom shot out behind Pop. They grabbed each other’s wrists and started twirling, spinning like a pair of demented skaters. Each turn swept them closer to Cheese Dude One.
Dude One hopped out into the sunlight, brandishing his last stinker cheese stick like a limp knife. He feinted as Mom and Pop neared, jumping from foot to foot, his pocketful of Nintendo DSi and pens rattling, a geeky prize fighter seeking his opening.
At the last moment, Mom let go of Pop. He sailed into Cheese Dude One, knocking the Dude into the brick of our building.
The Dude shoved Pop off, just far enough to swing his deadly cheese into position.
Pop slung his wurst like a machete and whapped the Dude’s cheese hand. Summer is a dense sausage—five pounds makes a hell of a whap.
The Dude dropped his jalapeño stick with a howl. Pop swung the wurst again, hit the Dude in the chest. The DSi popped out of his pocket and crashed to the sidewalk, but those things are built to withstand family vacations. It was fine.
“My system!” It was fine, but Dude One wasn’t. His face boiled bright red—and he leveled Pop with a good right cross. Pop went down with a small sigh.
“Gunter!” Mom dashed to him, fell to her knees and cradled his head.
Aunt Hattie shouted, “How dare you!” She snatched up Uncle Otto’s dropped broom and bashed the Dude in the head.
Dude One raised his skinny arms in a vain attempt to cover. “Cut that out!”
“You cut that out.” Aunt Hattie’s cackle was somewhat maniacal under the circumstances.
“You!”
“You!” Hattie started spinning the broomstick like a ninja, flutter-punching Dude One’s stomach. I watched through my tears, awed. What had Großmutter Stieg taught her grasshoppers with their little Christmas-present brooms?
“No, you—hey, look out!”
In the past, Hattie’s aim had never been very good. The broom had dropped to the Dude’s groinal area. She pulled it barely in time.
But she pulled too hard. The stick hit sidewalk—and rebounded straight up between the Dude’s legs.
Dude One clutched his cheese curds and went down, another victim of Hattie’s poor aim.
She cackled again. Hmm. Maybe Hattie’s aim was better than we knew.
“Gut job, Hattie.” Pop creaked to his feet, Mom assisting. Toto yipped circles around them.
Cheese Dude Two’s white face pressed against the window of his store. Pop brandished summer sausage. “Coward! Come get your own whipping!”
Dude Two disappeared.
Pop strutted, hand raised in the age-old sign for owned. Mom blew the Dudes a full ear-and-tongue raspberry. Toto barked. Aunt Hattie did a rather obscene victory dance.
I closed my eyes. It’s important for the younger generation to move out of the house. Some things make it critical.
An electronic “Cheese, Marvelous Cheese” assaulted my ears. I opened my eyes to see Dude Two emerging from his store with a tray of… “Duck,” I tried to scream, but my mouth was still swollen and burning from Limburger jalapeño and it came out “Cock!”
LLAMA cheese balls sailed at us, a whole barrage, Cheese Dude Two flinging pus and mayonnaise fast as a semiautomatic.
Yeah, Limburger jalapeño is a caustic substance, but LLAMA balls are classified as weapons of mass destruction.
Mom and Pop ducked (hey, they’d understood me when my vocabulary was goo-goo and ga-ga). I wasn’t so lucky.
Balls hit sidewalk, spattering me with goop. Uncle Otto, wobbling to his feet, got smacked in the head and went down again. Aunt Hattie darted to his rescue, slipped on cheese slime like a grotesque Slip ‘N Slide and landed on her butt.
Toto barked and darted, erratic as a mosquito. Cheese balls plopped all around him but didn’t hit. He stopped to sniff a puke-green one covered in fur. Or that may have been oregano. With a leg-lift, Toto gave his opinion of that.
Mom peeked out from behind her pole. Dude Two’s eye twitched toward her.
“Mom,” I croaked—just as Dude Two launched a ball at her head. She screamed.
“Rosalinda!” Pop leaped in front of her in true heroic form, almost as good as Glynn, and took a Limburger-pus-and-onion full in the face.
All motion stopped.
Pop’s nostrils flared. Sharp odor wafted potent in the air. His face turned white and his mouth dropped open.
Limburger goop dribbled in.
Sputtering, Pop tried to spit and choked. He doubled over, gagging. His foot hit the edge of the curb and twisted. He fell like a badly thrown bowling ball—hard and into the gutter.
“Oh, Gunter! My brave Gunter, what has that horrible man done?” Dropping, my mother ran her hands over Pop in anxious waves—got a good whiff of what she was wiping, snagged her handkerchief and used that instead. Mom may have started out as a Giraldoni, but she’d lived with the Stiegs long enough that she was incredibly practical. I guess in the ways that counted, she really was a Stieg.
“Enough!” Aunt Hattie scrambled to her feet, snatched up Uncle Otto’s broom and poked it threateningly at Cheese Dude Two’s crotch. I lurched to my feet and backed her up with my best Crouching Tiger, Puking Dragon position.
Dude Two reached for cheese ammo, but his fingers met empty tray. He fell back.
Toto jumped the Dude’s leg.
“Aw, that’s so wrong.” Lobster-red, Dude Two whapped at Toto with the tray. When the dog danced back, Dude Two grabbed pill-bug Dude One and hauled him into their store. The door slammed, and a moment later we heard the click of the lock.
The battle was over. We’d won.
But at what cost? I sluiced goo off my shirt. Aunt Hattie scooped cheese off her neck, tried to flip it into the gutter, but the stuff stuck like snot. She had to practically shake her hand off her wrist to get rid of it. My dad and Otto looked like ads for LLAMA facial masks or cheese zombies. Everybody was covered with cheese goo and bits of cheese turds, except Toto.
Toto, his coat pristine, trotted a zigzag to pee indiscriminately on cheese balls, the forgotten spray can and the broom.
Until he trotted up to Otto, still on the sidewalk. Toto tilted his little head at Otto and I could see the evil little light enter his doggy eye. He glanced at his own hindquarters, then glanced back at Otto’s face.
Lifting his hind leg, he exposed his little doggy faucet.
Hattie, shaking cheese slop, flung a gob at Toto, catching him square in the nuts. He yowled.
Yep, Aunt Hattie’s aim had definitely improved.
Twyla called soon after with the news that her cousin had identified the addictive drug in the GObubbles and was formulating an antidote. Twyla was with her now and would drive the stuff back when it was done.
Fortified with that good news and the bratwurst, I could almost face the doom that was Plan B. Without insurance the PAC couldn’t open. Without the PAC we couldn’t perform.
Or could we?
My insane plan was actually quite simple, and on some level beautifully poetic. The PAC wasn’t insured, but the musical was. And so was Fangs To You.
It took a while to convince Director Dumas et alia (musical term for the rest of the gang) but what alternative was there? Finally I just forced the issue.
“Everyone grab something and follow me.” I hit the pit for my stand and music. “We’re taking this show on the road.”
Nixie grinned. “Invading Camille’s!”
“Blowing down her doors.” And when Twyla brought the GObubble antidote, I’d back up Plan B with Plan 2-B, a soliloquy hopefully worthy of Shakespeare, designed to bring the good folk of Meiers Corners back to their senses.
I sure hoped Twyla got there pretty soon.
We headed out. Julian followed with two stands, cello, bass clarinet and alto sax. Besides being strong, vampires were apparently quite dexterous. “Camille won’t like it,” he cautioned.
“Yeah.” I grinned back at him. “Icing on the cake, isn’t it?”
The vampire guards at Fangs To You were bigger and tougher than normal, and weren’t going to let us pass.
But Julian and his lieutenants, Elena’s husband Bo and his lieutenants, and Glynn, stood in a line—and smiled.
Seven versus two. It didn’t hurt that Team Emerson’s fangs were way longer. Still, I thought we’d have trouble until Glynn went toe to toe with the biggest and grinned down at him. “Please tell me you’re going to put up a fight.”
The bouncers stepped aside.
“Too bad.” Bo shouldered his way in, toting a tree costume. Since he was a big, blond Viking, shouldering the door meant it slapped open like a storm hit it. “I was hoping for some action.”
“There’ll be plenty, don’t worry.” Glynn set down my sax and nodded at the parting crowd.
Camille sauntered through.
A gold, sequined tube top stretched over big round breasts. Gold lamé skinny pants shimmered on her slim hips. The whole outfit was at least five hundred bucks of overpriced yellow—the color washed her out. She was more of a winter.
Her mouth moved. No words came out.
Or rather, words came out, but we couldn’t hear them over the roaring. Not roaring of the crowd, though. She grimaced, made a cut motion across her throat. A guy juggling chainsaws on the raised marble walkway caught them, stopped them and slunk off through the door marked Storage.
She resumed her smile, strained, and her saunter, cocking a hip two inches from Glynn. “Darling. So good to see you again. You can stay.” Then she hissed at the rest of us. “You will leave,” and underlined her Ms. Nasty Buns status by kicking Toto. Yipping, the dog fled.
I detest mean people. I jammed my stand under my arm in lance position, blade out. Dropping my head, I pushed off and hit ramming speed.
She dodged. I bulled past her like I’d missed.
Headed for my real objective, the raised walkway under the second floor gallery. With its stars-in-the-ceiling lights and the steel, glass and marble walls throwing the sound out, it would make a dandy stage.
Camille dashed in front of me, blocking my way. “You’re going nowhere, slut human.”
I got the impression “human” was a more deadly insult than “slut”. I glared into her red eyes. “Sorry, got a show to do. Move.”
“Make me.” She folded her arms and glared back.
“Sure. Just remember you asked for it.” I reviewed my hapkido. Grab and throw? Pressure point attack? Hapkido’s primarily defensive. If she’d grabbed me first, I’d have had a lot more options.
Glynn solved the problem for me by picking her up and tossing her across the room. When I goggled, he shrugged. “The show must go on.”
That just made me one happy slut human.
But as much fun as one-upping Camille was, we wouldn’t win anything unless Twyla got here with the antidote. I kept casting glances at the door, but a watched pot never boils. Well, unless you’re an X-visored Cyclops.
Our actors and crew set up the stage while the vampire lieutenants organized the floor to make a rough audience. The pit set up to one side, Julian positioning his open cello case on its back like a big tip jar, a hopeful twenty tossed in for seed.
Camille screeched the whole time, alternating between threatening bloody war and flaming lawsuits. She had to be physically swatted down a couple times. The last time she retired to her upstairs domain, shoving rudely through a clump of Munchkins to get to the elevator. In retaliation, Toto peed on her leg as she passed.
Good thing she was wearing the gold. Didn’t show the, er, dirt.
And then, without scenery or mood lighting or anything but ourselves and what we could carry, we put on the best damned show of our lives.
The mixed audience of MC natives and tourists was cold and unresponsive at first. Camille had infected them with a nasty sort of cynicism coupled with a jonesing for superficial highs.
But then Twyla banged in. She raced through the crowd, armed with several cans of aerosol. Giving me a brief thumbs-up, she sprayed the front row. Frowns turned puzzled. Cleared. Smiles broke out. Twyla covered the whole room.
Within moments feet were tapping to the Scarecrow’s zombie ditty, “Brains Ain’t Everything (Unless You Don’t Got One),” and laughter followed Toto’s antics. The aerosol must have been lighter than air because even Camille came down from on high to watch Dorothy skip off to Oz. She was almost smiling. By the end of the first half, the audience was detoxed and cheering. Good deal, because I had that 2-B pitch to make.
Before the applause died down at intermission, I stood. This would be the hardest sell of my life. I’d known some of these people since childhood, but thanks to Camille, they were as much strangers as the tourists. I could only hope their personality damage, without the addictive GObubbles, was reversible.
“Ladies and gentlemen. Let me introduce myself. I am Gunter Marie—”
“We know who you are, Junior,” someone yelled rudely from the bar.
“Okay. So you know me.” I blew my frustration out as a stream of air. “A lot of you know me, have known me all my life.”
“Since diapers you were wearing!” someone else shouted from the back in crude imitation of the mayor.
“Diapers.” I whirled toward the voice. “You not only know me, you know about Mayor Meier. You know everything about everyone in town, the good and the bad. Why is that?”
“Because this is Meiers Corners!” A dozen people raised beers high.
“Exactly.” I hid a grin of triumph. They’d played right into my hands.
But now came the tricky part. I tried to read faces, but thanks to Fangs To You’s goth lighting, they were only shadowy red clumps. “Could someone raise the floor lights, please?”
A moment passed, and then a moderate white light clicked on. Tables of folk blinked, shaded their eyes.
“We all know each other’s secrets.” I scanned the crowd, gauging them. “That’s one of the bad things. Change is ice-age slow. You’re remembered in your diapers, frozen forever in time. You can grow up and become a responsible adult and everyone still remembers you blowing up the toilet in ninth grade with a cherry bomb that wasn’t even yours.”
“Whose cherry bomb was it?” shouted Mrs. Gelb from the bar.
“Nix—never mind!” Sheesh. I got to the point. “There’s no place like home!”
“So why would you want to live there?” yelled Anna Versnobt from the back. Several people snickered.
“Because there are good small-town things too. People aren’t just nosy for titillation. They’re nosy because they care.”
“One good thing, whoop-di-doo,” Versnobt said.
“There’s more. We make eye contact driving at a four-way stop and wait for the other guy rather than just bulling through.”
Someone shouted, “That’s so important?”
“It is,” I shouted back, letting my anger show. “In Meiers Corners, you’re not a number in a crowd. You’re an individual worthy of simple courtesy.”
The laughter died.
Still, Versnobt made one last attempt. “Everybody knows everything…including crap that should stay private.”
“Meiers Corners’s greatest strength of all. Despite knowing each other’s weaknesses, we’re friends anyway.” I looked around the room, meeting eyes. Some slid away in shame, but I kept going.
“We know the dirt, but we’re still friends.” I thought about the Cheese Dudes that morning. “Sometimes fighting friends.”
My parents exchanged a glance.
“The point is, you’re doing it wrong. There are good and bad things about a big city, and good and bad things about a small town. If you want big city, good and bad, live in a big city. You’re just taking what’s good about Meiers Corners and corrupting it. Killing it.” I paused for effect. “We care about each other. We love each other. Act like it.”
Someone applauded. Anna Versnobt, of all people. Others joined her. More.
I smiled my relief. And capitalized on the moment by waving my hand toward the open cello case and its lone twenty…which was gone. Dammit, someone had stolen the seed money.
Anna Versnobt, face red, slunk up to the case and put the twenty back.
More applause broke out, harder.
Dumas, bless his performance timing, took that as his cue to start the second half of the show.
At the end, when Dorothy tapped her heels together and said, “There’s no place like home” I heard a few sobs.
After that, the five thousand dollars collected in the cello case seemed almost anticlimactic.
