Communication. Without it, a couple is just two people. I don’t mean schmaltzy kind of communication and poetry. A man doesn’t have to quote Yates. A woman doesn’t have to write cards. But they have to communicate. If your matches don’t know how, teach them small talk. “Nice hat.” “Do you watch Netflix?” Stuff like that. With practice, the small talk turns big. It’s the big talk that keeps a relationship alive.
Lesson 83, Matchmaking advice from your
Grandma Zelda
I sat Bridget in the sunroom next to the kitchen, and I brought her a glass of water with a tablespoon of sugar in it, just like my grandmother had taught me to do. I held her hand, and slowly the color returned to her face.
“What happened?” I asked her, gently.
“Gladie, I’m in so much trouble. He’s a mean, mean man.”
“Did he hurt you? Are you okay?”
“Do you have any liquor?”
“Bridget, you’re pregnant. Think of Delano.”
She pushed her glasses up her nose and squinted at me, like she was trying to gauge just where to punch me in the face. “How about tequila? I heard that tequila is fine for pregnant women.”
“Really? Okay, I can get you some tequila.” I didn’t know anything about pregnant women. The whole thing made me feel icky. I mean, how did the poor baby breathe in there? And wasn’t it smooshed between her poop canal and her pee pee area?
I didn’t know anything about anatomy, either.
“No!” Bridget yelled, grabbing me and giving me a good shake. “Don’t let me drink tequila! What’s wrong with you? Do you want me to brain damage my baby?”
“No! I mean, only if you want to.” I wiped sweat off my face. Pregnant women were a minefield. I never knew what to say except for agreeing with them.
“Gladie, I don’t want to brain damage my baby.”
“Okay. Noted.”
“Not that I’m judging women with substance abuse problems,” she said, earnestly. “It’s not their fault. They’re gripped by the power of mood-enhancing and mood-altering drugs. It’s not their fault, Gladie.”
I nodded. “Uh huh. I think we might have gotten off track.”
She blinked. “Oh, right. Bradford Blythe.”
“Is that his name? Delano’s father?”
“Remember that bookkeeping conference I went to? Well, there was another conference at the hotel, too. An evil one-percenter conference of…of…of…”
“Of what?” I breathed. “Sex trafficking? Torturers? IRS?”
Bridget took a deep breath, as if she was gathering strength to tell me how much she weighed. “Venture capitalists,” she squeaked. “And there was a bar, and he was tall, and he had an expense account. The evils of the sour apple-tini, Gladie. They’re so good going down.”
She was right. I had never drunk a sour apple-tini, but I had danced on barrels naked once after three Long Island iced teas. I so related.
“Most of it’s a blur,” she said, running her fingers through her curly hair, making it stand up on end. “I remember that he was a terrible kisser, but he could take my bra off with two fingers. And then there was the thing about his penis.”
I bit my lower lip. I didn’t know if I should ask her about his penis or wait for her to give me the skinny. She wasn’t meeting my eyes. She was looking everywhere but at me. I pretended I didn’t care about her baby daddy’s penis. Think about puppies. Think about dirty dishes. Think about…her baby daddy’s penis. Nope, it was impossible to pretend I didn’t care.
“What? What about his penis?” I asked. “Was it freaky? Was it not human?”
“What do you mean not human? Like a dog?”
“No, I mean robotic or something. Bionic. We can rebuild him, make his penis stronger than he was before. Like that.”
“No, not like that. Like he said his penis was very clean and he had had a vasectomy, so we didn’t need protection. No condoms.”
Bridget leaned forward. This time her eyes were on mine, her face less than an inch away from me. Her breath smelled like Oreos and asparagus. “Gladie,” she said, her voice deadly serious. “I trusted a man…when he was naked.”
She had fallen into the classic trap. Naked man propaganda. If I had had a nickel for every time a woman had fallen for it, I would have had a crap ton of nickels.
“So you got pregnant,” I guessed.
“And I got a case of chlamydia. Bastard with his penis.”
“Wow.”
“And it’s not like he ever told me his name. All I got was Brad. Brad. My son’s father’s name is Brad. Can you imagine? Me and a Brad? But I didn’t look for him. A guy from the conference saw me pregnant and reported it back to his buddy. Damned patriarchal, misogynistic, buddy system.”
It was rotten luck.
“And then the threats started. He doesn’t even want Delano. He just doesn’t want me to have him. He’s part of some big family, and he doesn’t want a son wandering around out there to embarrass him.”
She told me about an increasing level of harassment. He had hired a private investigator to stalk her and find out everything about her. She had offered to give him fifty percent custody when he threatened to burn down her house, but he wanted full custody.
“Why didn’t you come to me? To Spencer? He could have helped,” I said.
“You don’t know who this guy is. When I say one-percent, I mean one-percent. Power, Gladie. He’s connected.”
“And now he’s here?”
Tears streamed down her face. “He’s here to ruin my life. Ruin my baby’s life,” she said, touching her belly.
There are times in a person’s life when all fear disappears, and it’s replaced with a titanic determination. Better than any drug. It was best friend superhero superpowers. Nothing could stop me. I was going to protect Bridget and little Delano with my last breath.
I was pissed off.
There was a soft knock on the window of Bridget’s Volkswagen Bug. She unlocked the door, and Lucy slipped into the back seat behind Bridget. Lucy was dressed in tight black yoga pants, a black, long-sleeved angora sweater, a silk scarf on her head, and black stiletto heels.
“I’m here, girlfriends. Where is that no account, mouth-breathing, low-life, belly of a snake, lying penis man? I brought night vision goggles for everyone,” Lucy added, holding up three pairs of goggles.
“Maybe we shouldn’t do this,” Bridget said. “It’s an invasion of privacy. It’s like we’re the Patriot Act or something. And you know, I protested the Patriot Act.”
“I remember,” Lucy said. “You climbed on top of Chik’n Lik’n with that sign.”
“We’re just doing reconnaissance,” I said, taking one of the goggles. “How does this work?”
“Flip the switch. It’s like magic,” Lucy said. I did, and all of a sudden I could see through the night. We were in front of Bar None, and there were people coming and going down the alley next door. They were carrying egg crates, which I assumed were filled with eggs. I still hadn’t boiled an egg.
“Look at that,” Lucy said. “I think that’s a black-market egg thing happening. The truck from Sacramento was delayed, you know. Something about a flat tire. Or was it Aliens?”
“Aliens?” I asked.
“There’s been a lot of alien sightings, lately,” Bridget explained. “Sean the plumber said aliens removed his frontal lobe during a commercial break when he was watching the fights on television.”
“That’s rough,” I said. I didn’t know what a frontal lobe was, but it sounded important.
Lucy grunted. “I can’t wait for the egg hunt to be over. The whole town stinks of eggs. I’m ruined for eggs Benedict for the rest of my life. Anyway, I’m buying the baskets for the little ones. Twenty thousand of them. I don’t know who’s in charge of luring twenty thousand children here, though.”
A man walked up to Bar None and opened the door. “That’s him,” Bridget gasped. “What are we doing? We can’t do this. My baby. My baby. I’ll just run away to Siberia.”
“I don’t think labor rights are very progressive in Siberia, darlin’,” Lucy pointed out.
“I don’t know what to do,” she cried.
“I do. Stay here,” I said. Handing my goggles to Lucy, I opened the door and got out.
Bar None was blaring Fleetwood Mac, and I could hear it before I walked in. I opened the door. Inside, it was practically empty with most of the town elsewhere, busy boiling eggs. But Bradford Blythe, otherwise known as Brad with the clean, spermless penis, was there, sitting at a table with Spencer’s contractor, Urijah.
I sat at a nearby stool at the bar and tried to eavesdrop. “What can I get you?” the bartender asked me.
“Peanuts.”
“Huh?”
“Shh!”
Bradford and Urijah were in a heated conversation. Bradford was angry and Urijah was scared. But I couldn’t make out the words because Stevie Nicks was singing too loudly. I scooted the stool a little, but it would have been suspicious if I had scooted it clear over to their table.
“Here’s your peanuts,” the bartender said. “Usually people come in to drink.”
I grabbed the bowl from him and put a handful of nuts in my mouth. “Thanks.” Bridget’s baby’s daddy stood and walked toward the bathroom. I trotted to the table. “What are you doing with him?” I asked Urijah.
“Huh?”
“Him. Him. What are you doing with him? Are you plotting something horrible? Because if you are, I’m going to make sure you eat through a straw for the rest of your life.”
His face drained of color, and he looked around, as if he was expecting me to have backup. I did have backup, but they were in a Volkswagen Bug outside. “How did you know?”
“I know everything,” I growled. I had him where I wanted him. He had nowhere to escape. I was going to squeeze the information out of him.
“I’m outta here,” he said and bolted for the door. In five seconds, he was gone.
“That didn’t go right,” I said to the empty table. “That was the opposite of going right.”
I looked over at the bathroom sign. It was now or never.
I got to the door just as Brad was leaving. He was very tall and good-looking, and I hated him instantly. He gave me a wolfish grin and put his hand on the wall above my head. “Hey, babe,” he said.
My skin crawled. “You need to leave town,” I said.
“Not before you and I get to know each other,” he purred, gliding his finger along my chin line. I slapped his hand away.
“You’re going to leave town and never try to contact Bridget again.”
He put his hands in his pockets and rocked on his heels. “Oh. I see. That’s why you’re here. Well, you can tell that bitch that I’ve just gotten started. And this little thing you’re doing here is going on my list of complaints. You better hope I don’t get a bruise or bump leaving here, or you’re going to wind up in jail.”
I swallowed. He was serious. He arched an eyebrow and grinned, again.
“Women like you disappear every day, and they’re never found. And you know why? Because nobody cares. Women are an easy commodity. Like eggs. Who cares about a few broken eggs? Nobody.”
Ironic he was talking about eggs because with six days until the Easter egg hunt, a few broken eggs would have triggered a psychotic break in all kinds of people in town. But he wasn’t talking about eggs. He was talking about me and other women, and I wondered how many women had been a victim to his bullying. And worse.
I pushed down my fear because I had to be brave for Bridget. “You leave her alone,” I squeaked. “You know, we have an alien problems here. You wouldn’t want your frontal lobe to go missing.”
“Huh?”
“You heard me.”
I didn’t know what I was saying, and he obviously didn’t, either. In any case, I had made no progress at all. I would have pleaded, begged, and negotiated with him, but I was certain none of that would have helped. Bradford Blythe was a bully, and bullies only responded to being bullied. I was going to have to call in bigger guns. Big, giant guns.
Spencer guns.
Back in Bridget’s car, I sort of told Lucy and Bridget what happened, leaving out the scary threats. “We’re at an impasse,” I said, diplomatically. “But all is not lost. I’m going to have Spencer run him out of town.”
Lucy didn’t look convinced. She had a point. Spencer wasn’t much for running men out of town. He stupidly was a fan of law and order. But Lucy’s husband, Harry, was the run-a-man-out-of-town type. He would do it, if Lucy asked him. I gnawed on the inside of my cheek, thinking about it. I was more or less a fan of law and order, too. This was a domestic situation that had gotten way out of hand, but I didn’t know if it could be resolved, considering who and what Bradford Blythe was.
Bridget started her car. “I wish I had never gone to that conference. I wish he were dead. My life would be so much easier if he was just dead. Dead, dead, dead.”
In my experience, dead didn’t make anything easier. In fact, it usually complicated matters. But I didn’t tell Bridget that. She was overwhelmed and despondent and for the moment, she was fantasizing about making her problems disappear as easily as a stopped heart.
Lucy got in her car, and Bridget drove me home through town. “I promise we’ll get this worked out,” I told her, but she didn’t respond. “Oh my God, look at that.”
As we passed Buckstars, I saw Ruth Fletcher climbing onto the Buckstars sign.
“What’s she doing?” Bridget asked.
“Her worst. She’s doing her worst. Never get on Ruth’s bad side.”
By the time I got home, Spencer was asleep upstairs. I checked on my grandmother to see if she needed something, and she was up watching an infomercial on TV and needlepointing. I sat on the bed.
“I’ve never seen you needlepoint, Grandma.”
“Dumbest activity every invented. Bird’s pedicurist brought it with a tuna casserole. The casserole was delicious so I’m suffering through this stupid handicraft in order not to hurt her feelings.” She put the needlepoint down and studied me. “Uh oh. You’re suffering, too. It’s hard when our friends are in pain, and we can’t help them.”
“I can’t help her?”
“I’m foggy about Bridget, dolly. I’m seeing coffee and tears. That’s it.”
My heart raced. Bridget was one of the kindest people I had ever met, and she was my best friend. I didn’t want to see her hurt. I took a quick shower to wash away the evil Bradford Blythe from me and slipped into bed next to Spencer. I laid on my side, nestled my head in the crook of his arm and put my hand on his six-pack, washboard abs.
“Are you sleeping?” I asked, and Spencer answered with a snore. “Are you awake? Are you? Are you?” I gave him a little shove. He turned on his side and pulled me in close to him, like spoons. “Are you still on vacation? Are you going back to work soon?”
“I wish I wasn’t, but I’m going back in the morning,” he said, his voice low and thick with sleep. “The eggs thing is bad enough, but now aliens are accosting townspeople left and right. Crazy-ass town. I’m a real law enforcement officer, Pinky. I don’t do aliens.”
“I think Bridget needs your help.”
“I told her I’m not going to be a surrogate male figure in the delivery room. I’m not going to sit at the mouth of her vagina to imbue her son with male energy. Nope. Nope. No matter what you say, I’m not going to do it.”
“No, I mean she needs your help as a law enforcement officer. As police chief. As a macho, alpha male who loves me.”
“Uh oh. What have you been up to?” Spencer asked. “Not the murdered girl in the bed, again.”
“No. This is about Bridget. She’s got trouble.” I told him about the baby daddy, or at least part of it. I didn’t tell Spencer about my conversation with him or about the night goggles. But I made it clear that Bridget was scared of him and that he was fighting for custody.
“Sounds like she needs a good lawyer.”
“Right now she’s just scared and needs some breathing room. Can you give her some breathing room and talk to him?”
Spencer turned me so that I was lying on my back and he moved on top of me, supporting his weight with his forearms on the bed on either side of my head. “I’ll talk to him in the morning. Will that do? I’m going back to work tomorrow. I mean, today. It’s past midnight. You know what that means?”
“I turn into a pumpkin?”
“It’s your birthday. You’re a year older.”
“That doesn’t sound like a good thing,” I said. The only light in the room was coming from the clock, but it was just enough to make out his outline and know that he was drinking me in with his eyes. He was giving off heat and enough testosterone to make a bull blush. I reached up and touched his face, and as my fingers reached his lips, he kissed them softly. Sensually.
“It’s a good thing. It means you’re the birthday girl. It means you get what you want for the whole day. That’s why I want to take you out, to give you what you want.”
“What about now? Will you give me what I want now?”
“What do you want?” he asked, his voice seductive.
“A million dollars and a Snickers bar.”
“Hey, baby, I’ve got your Snickers bar right here.”
“And the million dollars?”
“How about something that’s worth a million dollars?”
“You think very highly about yourself.”
“At least let me give you your first birthday present now.”
“It sounds more like a birthday present for you. Not me.”
“Oh, Pinky, you wound me. Don’t you trust me to be…generous?”
“Okay. I’ll let you be generous. Happy birthday to me.”