The Broadway Album turned out to be a double peace offering. From Sam Goody to me, and from me to my mother. I offered it along with an apology for freaking out on her in Bellarosa.
“Oh, Cassandra!” Mom gushed. “I knew I could depend on you!” Then, after a beat, “Why is the case broken?”
I had insisted we listen to it immediately, you know, to make sure Barbra still played just fine and also to avoid talking about bimbo dresses and Singles’ Nights at Oceanside Tavern. We were so unused to speaking one-on-one, and yet I knew when Kathy was girding herself to bring up awkward subjects. I could see it—she’d take a breath and square her shoulders and … That’s when I’d cut her off with an observation about Barbra’s impeccable phrasing or Sondheim’s lyrical genius. I knew this strategy wouldn’t last indefinitely, but it had succeeded in getting me through the weekend and the drive to work.
For his role in this tenuous peace with my mother, I thought Sam Goody deserved a genuine thank-you. Though I had gone to the store with that in mind, I’d never actually uttered the words.
Besides, our last two conversations had not been unpleasant.
Also, I was curious to hear more about what had happened at Wharton.
And how he ended up working at the mall.
And what his next plan would be.
And if there was “life beyond the Ivy League.”
For all these reasons, I should’ve swung by the music store on the way to work. But I didn’t. And I’d barely crossed Bellarosa’s threshold when Drea hijacked the rest of my day.
“Cassie! Did you get my messages? Why didn’t you call back? Do you want me to drown you in the Wishing Well?!”
I’d gotten her messages, proving there was no shortage of creative and extremely specific ways to be killed for the crime of ignoring Drea Bellarosa when she had major news. I had the weekend off from Bellarosa, but that hadn’t stopped her from leaving a series of increasingly dramatic messages on my answering machine.
“Cassie. This is Drea. I’ve got news! Why aren’t you picking up? I’m gonna be super pissed if you don’t pick up. Pick up!”
Her threats got more violent and well detailed with every call back.
“Cassie. This is Drea. If you don’t call back, I’ll strangle you with a scrunchie!”
“Cassie. This is Drea. If you don’t call back, I’ll bludgeon you with a thousand-page book on Greek astrology!”
“Cassie. This is Drea. If you don’t call back, I’ll slash your throat with a Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch CD and make it look like a suicide and everyone will think you did it because you felt so guilty for making fun of me for liking ‘Good Vibrations’ when you were hiding your secret forbidden love for the lesser Wahlberg brother the whole friggin’ time!”
The abuse came to an end only because the tape ran out before she did. So I shouldn’t have been at all surprised when she pounced on me Monday morning.
“Seriously, Cassie! Why didn’t you call me back?”
“I didn’t call you back,” I replied calmly, switching on the computer, “because I spent the weekend helping my father set up his new bachelor pad.”
When I wasn’t avoiding conversation with my mother at home, I was avoiding conversation with my father in his condo. I got seriously nostalgic for the days when I was medically prohibited from talking.
“Ouch,” Drea replied. “I’m sorry. That sounds awkward as hell.”
Yeah, it was. His marriage of twenty-one years was over, and yet Frank couldn’t stop asking about America’s Best Cookie.
“Wait,” Frank had said as we tore the plastic covering off the mattress he’d bought for the “second bedroom,” which he had gone out of his way not to call the “guest bedroom” because I was his daughter, not his guest. “You’re not in the seasonal management training program?”
That succinctly summed up the shitty weekend that had left me too emotionally drained to respond to Drea’s messages when I got home last night.
“So, what was so important?”
I surveyed the Cabbage Patch Dolls on the couch. Two boys, two girls, one preemie. No new additions, so I assumed she hadn’t gotten the next clue from Sylvester.
“Slade Johnson was in the hospital!”
“Oh my God. Is he okay? What happened to him?”
My concern took Drea by surprise. Maybe it’s because I’d recently been rushed to the hospital myself, but I felt more sympathetic toward Slade than he probably deserved.
“You really haven’t heard?”
I shook my head. And I could tell from Drea’s rapturous expression that this story was just getting started and my misplaced sympathy would sort itself out soon enough.
“He’s got hypercarotenosis!”
Drea barely gave me enough time to recall the AP Bio definition.
“He OD’d on Brazilian tanning pills and turned orange!”
Yep, that’s what I thought it meant: a temporary change in skin tone caused by excessive levels of beta-carotene, the photosynthetic pigment that gives carrots their color. And, apparently, egomaniacal tanning addicts who think if a daily dose is good, then a dozen doses in a single day is even better.
“It’s been three days, and he still looks like a radioactive Oompa Loompa!”
Then Drea lost all composure and started hawnking her ass off. I found Slade’s predicament a lot less funny than she did.
“Why aren’t you laughing?” she said breathlessly. “Can you think of a better punishment for such a narcissistic prick?”
No. I couldn’t. And that’s exactly why I wasn’t laughing. It was a little too perfect for comfort. What had Zoe said when she snuck up on me in B. Dalton?
He will pay.
Did she do this to him?
Drea addressed the concerns written all over my face.
“If you’re worried about this getting back to Ghost Girl, you can relax,” Drea said. “Slade is already on probation for underage drinking. He can’t tell the cops he bought a batch of sketchy drugs or he’d get in as much trouble as she would.”
I doubted the “Brazilian tanning pills” were even illegal. More likely, they were over-the-counter megavitamins from General Nutrition Center, making this the perfect not crime. I just didn’t understand why Zoe would go out of her way to exact revenge on my behalf. She barely even knew me. But I had no time to consider her motivation because Gia poked her head into the back office.
“I hate to interrupt all your hard work,” she said with sarcastic emphasis, “but you have a visitor out front.”
“Who is it?” I asked.
“See for yourself,” Gia replied.
Sylvester stood under the crystal chandelier, studying a display of silk scarves as intently as I imagined he’d inspect the grain in a plank of purpleheart. In his coveralls and flannel, he could not have looked more out of place amid Bellarosa’s bedazzlery. And yet, he didn’t look the slightest bit unnerved by the confused looks he was getting from boutique regulars.
“When you didn’t come back to the shop, I thought I’d come to you,” Sylvester said, holly jolly as ever. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“Of course we don’t mind!” Drea said. “What have you got for us? What’s the next clue?”
Sylvester looked at me. “Is she always such a straight shooter?”
I nodded.
“I like that in a woman.” Then he ho-ho-hoed.
“Let’s get right to it,” Sylvester said. “En Tatws Ugain means—” He paused just long enough to build suspense but in a charming way that didn’t feel like he was holding the information hostage. “One Potato Twenty.”
“One Potato Twenty?” Drea asked. “What the hell is that?”
I also had never heard of anything called One Potato Twenty.
“That was the baked potato place,” Gia replied as she passed by with an array of statement necklaces looped over her arm. “It offered twenty different toppings. Bacon, sour cream, chili, cheese…”
“That’s right,” Sylvester confirmed. “Closed up a few years back.”
“So One Potato Twenty isn’t around anymore,” I clarified. “Where was it located? Do you remember?”
“Of course I remember,” Sylvester said good-naturedly.
And before he even spoke, I had the answer to my own question:
“America’s Best Cookie.”