The Merchant of Menace jj-10 Page 4

  “I know how to load programs, Mrs. Jeffrey. I just hope you have enough RAM.”

  For some reason, Pet's behavior made Jane want to be a child for her. Show her how it was done. She nearly said, "Ram, schram, bippity barn" with a girlish laugh, but forced herself to reply only, "I don't know, Pet. Can you tell when you turn it on?"

  “Is it an old computer?" Pet asked.

  “No, only about two or three years old.”

  Pet allowed herself a slight smile. "That's very old for a computer."

  “Then you may use my laptop. It's only a few months old. It's downstairs, too.”

  Pet and Todd went down the basement stairs and Jane quietly closed the door behind them. "Oh, dear. Poor little thing," Jane said to Shelley. "At least she forgot about brushing her teeth. I guess there's hope for her."

  “You never know," Shelley said. "She could get a figure and contacts and take down her hair someday and turn into a blues singer in a slinky purple-sequined dress.”

  Jane shook her head. "No, I think she's going to get stronger glasses and go around in a lab coat with a pocket protector."

  “Pocket protector! Oh, I know who she is now," Shelley said. "There was a Sam Dwyer sitting in the hall with me waiting to see the teacher at the same time I was last week. A real, live grown-up geek of the first order. Not really too bad-looking, but the tidiest man I've ever met. Real short hair, glasses as thick as Pet's, and a very narrow tie that he must have been babying along since the seventies. I tried to make conversation with him, but it was heavy going. He simply didn't want to talk to me."

  “Imagine!" Jane said, grinning.

  “I was irritated," Shelley admitted. "I was just curious about him and he wouldn't tell me anything about himself."

  “Sounds like both of them need to hang out with a blues singer in a slinky purple-sequined dress.”

  Shelley took another cookie. "These things are addictive," she complained. "It's a shame they're so ugly. Now that I think about it and have met little Pet, I'm even more curious."

  “You're as nosy as Lance King," Jane said.

  Shelley drew herself up indignantly. "But my motives are pure, unlike his. I don't want to wreck people's lives, just know about them. And maybe be helpful. There aren't that many single men in the neighborhood and I thought maybe Suzie Williams—”

  Jane yelped with laughter. "Suzie Williams? He doesn't exactly sound like Suzie's type!" She was the one who'd accompanied Jane to meet the Johnsons, and she made no bones about wanting to get out of selling lingerie at the local department store via marriage to a man who could support her in style.

  Shelley said, "Suzie's 'type' of man is anyone with decent table manners and a balanced checkbook with lots of lovely money in it. Or so she claims."

  “I think it's all a facade. I think Suzie wants to be in love," Jane said. "You'll see. Someday she'll fall head over heels with a dashing but unemployed race-car driver with long hair and a dazzling come-hither smile. Sort of like that sexy World War One guy in the pizza ad."

  “You don't think she's the one to bring the Dwyers, father and daughter, into the human race?" Shelley asked.

  “I think she'd scare them to death. I imagine you scare them."

  “I only scare people when I need to," Shelley said smugly.

  Jane opened the basement door, listened for a moment, nodded approval of what she heard. "Want more coffee?" she asked Shelley.

  “I wouldn't object violently. Where do you stand on the Lance King thing?"

  “Oh, I forgot to tell you. Julie called this morning and said she'd uninvited him and he took it like a man.”

  They were both silent for a moment while Jane refreshed the coffee cups. "I don't believe it," Shelley said when Jane sat back down.

  “I believe he said it," Jane said, frowning. "But I don't believe he meant it. I'll bet he's down at city hall or the newspaper files or someplace else trying to dig up something to ruin me with. He's not going to find anything. I've got plenty of sins on my soul, but I don't believe any of them are public record.”

  Jane's son Mike came home from college that evening. He wasn't due to come home until the next day, but cheerfully explained that he'd come sooner so he could set up the electric train. Jane opened her mouth to object, but remembering the classes she'd cut in college for far less valid reasons, said nothing.

  “What's happened to the house next door?" Mike asked when he'd dragged his belongings into the house and dumped them in the living room.

  “New neighbors," Jane said. "They're really into decorating for the holidays in a big way. Be sure and take your things upstairs right now. We have to keep the house really clean for a couple days. There's a neighborhood caroling party tomorrow night and everybody's coming here afterwards. And the next afternoon I'm having a cookie party. Then we can slob out until Christmas Eve when your grandmother's coming to dinner."

  “A cookie party. That's great. I remember you used to go to those parties when I was a little kid," Mike said. "We ended up with all kinds of good stuff. Remember those stained-glass cookie things? Let's make some of those."

  “Pick up some Life Savers and gingerbread mix next time you're out and we will."

  “How about tonight? I haven't had dinner and want to go pick up a hamburger," Mike said. "Where are Todd and Katie? I'll take them along.”

  Jane bellowed up the steps for the other kids and watched the reunion of the siblings. The younger two were of ages that couldn't openly show affection for a big brother, but they were obviously glad to see him.

  Katie gave him an air kiss.

  “Hey!" Todd said when Mike gripped him in a bear hug. "What's with the mushy stuff? You were just here at Thanksgiving."

  “Yeah, but I didn't have presents with me then. Help me take my junk upstairs.”

  Katie trailed along after them, pretending that she was going that direction anyway. Jane caught a snatch of the conversation and called after them, "Katie, quit asking about Mike's friends. You are not in the dating market for college boys."

  “Oh, Mother!”

  Jane stood in the middle of her still-clean kitchen. Lance King didn't matter, the scratchy blare of a reggae version of "We Three Kings" blasting from next door was of no consequence. The fact that she had to feed at least thirty people this time tomorrow wasn't even much of a concern. She had her kids home and they were pretty neat kids.

  Life didn't get much better.Six But life could — and did — get considerably worse the next day.

  It started with the anonymous note stuck into the front storm door. Jane noticed it as she came in from getting the morning paper. Handwritten and copied on bright pink paper, the note was signed A Group of Concerned Neighbors.

  In Jane's experience a "group" with no name attached usually meant one disgruntled, cowardly individual.

  The gist of the note was that the Johnsons' Christmas display was a detriment to the neighborhood. It created noise and light pollution. "Light pollution?" Jane snorted out loud. Furthermore, the Concerned Neighbor went on, it would create a traffic problem as word spread and more and more people came to look at it, thus endangering the welfare of the children who might not be used to so many cars on the street and possibly drawing the attention of a lot of "less than desirable" outsiders. Moreover, the Group of Concerned Neighbors said, going overboard on political correctness, the display was largely Christian in intent and was offensive to Jewish, Moslem, and atheist residents. It might, the Group said, even violate the constitutional right to separation of church and state.

  Jane stared at the note and muttered angrily, "Get a life!" as she headed for the phone. When Shelley answered, Jane said, "Have you opened your front door yet? No? Do so. I'll wait.”

  It took Shelley a surprisingly long time to return. "Assholes," Shelley said, rattling paper furiously.

  “What took you so long?" Jane asked.

  “I ran out the sidewalk to see if the perps of this trash were still on the street. Th
ey weren't.”

  “I could have told you that. This is a 'dark of the night' communication."

  “So what do we do about it?"

  “Well, we certainly don't want to violate any constitutional rights," Jane sneered. "But there's a section urging neighbors to call city hall and make their feelings known. I suggest we organize people to do just that. I'll call the people on this side of the block, you call the other side.”

  Before she called any neighbors, she called city hall herself. She gave her name and address and said, "I'd like to make known my feelings about the house decorations next door to me."

  “Yes?" the city clerk said wearily. "I've gotten several calls."

  “I like the decorations." This was an outright lie, but Jane's constitutional rights provided for free speech, which included lying for a good reason, she figured. "And I like the Johnsons.

  And I dislike the mean-spirited jerks who put this note in my door.”

  There was a brief silence, then the clerk said, much more cheerfully, "Thank you, Mrs. Jeffry. I'll see that your comments are passed up the line.”

  Jane called Suzie Williams next, who said, "I'm just on my way to work, Jane, but I'll call the city clerk when I get there. That house looks like a combination of Disneyworld and a train wreck, but it's their house and the Nazi busybodies haven't got any damned business interfering."

  “Hey, Suzie, before you go, do you happen to know Sam Dwyer? Down the block. Single. Has an owlish-looking little girl?"

  “You bet I do," Suzie said with a rich chuckle. "Gotta go spend another fulfilling day stuffing little old ladies into corsets. Tell you about him later.”

  Jane got out her address book and called everyone else on her side of the block that she knew. Two of them tried to convince her that the note was perfectly correct and Something Must Be Done. Another two were as outraged as she and thanked her for suggesting they call the city offices. The rest were either neutral or not answering. She thought she'd won over a couple of the neutral parties.

  Her last call was to Sharon Wilhite. "Not to worry," Sharon said. "It would take years of legal wrangling to impose somebody else's standards on the Johnsons. Since they're renters, only their landlord could stop them."

  “I wonder who the owner of the house is?" Jane said.

  “Me," Sharon said with a laugh. "I bought it as rental property a couple years ago. And I don't much like people trying to use the Constitution to be rude. I'll call the city before I go to work and make sure they know it's okay with me.”

  Jane hung up. "Constitutionalize this!" she said, wadding the pink paper up and throwing it in the trash. Then she fished it back out and left it on the counter so that the Concerned Citizen, who was sure to be one of her guests this evening, would see what her opinion was.

  She suddenly realized that she hadn't ever invited the Johnsons to the party. That was really rude, having a block party next door and ignoring them. She didn't have a telephone number for them, so she threw on a coat and boots and went next door. Though she could hear a television newscast, it took a long time for anyone to answer the doorbell and she was about to give up when Tiffany opened the door. "Oh, Miz Jeffry, come on in," she said. She was wearing a new-looking, but tacky robe — fluorescent pink with little white bobbles outlining the yoke.

  Jane followed her into the house and they were just sitting down as the sound of a computer printer started up. Tiffany looked startled, then trotted to a door at the back of the living room and said, "Billy, Miz Jeffry's here to visit." She shut the door firmly. "Billy plays them computer games and sometimes prints out hints and stuff," she said.

  Why's she explaining? Jane wondered. Andthen had the realization that Tiffany was lying. Billy was printing out something else entirely. She was sure of it. Maybe someone had put the Concerned Neighbor note on their door, too, and he was writing a rebuttal to pass out.

  Jane explained about the neighborhood caroling party and suggested tactfully that the John-sons join the others and perhaps could turn off their own sound system tonight. "It's hard enough for some of us to carry a tune at all, without hearing something else at the same time," she said. "Then everybody's coming to my house for a supper. Nothing fancy."

  “That's real nice, Miz Jeffry—"

  “Please, call me Jane."

  “Okay, Jane. Can I bring something to the dinner? I could do up some hog jowls and beans. Or a mess of beets—?"

  “No," Jane said more forcefully than she intended. "I've got everything taken care of. All we need is you and Billy to join us."

  “We'd be proud to," Tiffany said.

  In for a penny, in for a pound, Jane thought dismally. "Then tomorrow, I'm hosting a cookie party and I'd like for you to come to that, too. Just you. It's a girl thing."

  “What's a cookie party?"

  “Everybody brings two dozen of their best cookie recipe," Jane explained. "All the plates are put out and then everyone goes around and chooses two dozen of other people's cookies. That way, everyone goes home with a nice variety. Sometimes the ladies make up pretty little recipe cards to go with their contribution. But you don't have to. Some like to keep their recipe a secret and that's okay."

  “Oh, Mi— Jane, what a nice neighborly idea. I'd love to come. I got a real good recipe for my granny's tarts. That's okay, isn't it, if they ain't exactly cookies? Or maybe I could make some of them little fluffy things.”

  Jane had visions of bottled marshmallow dip slathered on graham crackers. "That's fine, Tiffany. Just so it's not a cake or pie that has to be cut. Now I better get going. I've got a lot to do today.”

  Jane was as good as her word. Purse-sized notebook in hand, she started with the grocery store. She'd been so compulsive that she had several lists. First, the list of dishes she was serving, with the ingredients as subheadings, then she'd rearranged the individual items into shopping aisles so she wouldn't have to go back for celery when she already had the onions. I'm so well organized, she preened silently, Shelley would be proud.

  She was able to get her groceries in record time and even made it home before the bags of ice started melting. To her surprise, Mike was awake, dressed, and watching for her. He brought in the bags of food and put the ice in the basement freezer while she set everything out in the order she was going to need it. "Mike, I need a favor. I have two hams ordered and ready to be picked up. I've already paid for them. Could you run and get them from the ham shop?”

  While he was gone, she started cooking. She filled several disposable aluminum pans withpackaged scalloped potato mix, added thinly sliced red and green pepper rounds, and topped them off with extra cheese. No room in the fridge for them until it was time to put them in the oven, but she'd cleared a space in the garage, put down brown paper, and they could sit there under foil keeping cool until later. She threw together the five-bean salad, tossed it with the dressing, and added the big bowl to the garage stash of food.

  The cats were charmed by this unusual activity. Jane noticed them watching her and laid a cardboard box over the food.

  When Mike returned with the hams, she asked him to take them to Shelley's. "They're going in her oven this afternoon since I don't have room," she explained. "Oh, and take along the parsley to decorate the plates. God, I'm good, aren't I?”

  Feeling devastatingly domestic and terribly smug, Jane took on the dining room. She'd already struggled to get all the table extensions put in place, which hardly left room to squeeze around the end of the table, and had put the big red tablecloth and centerpiece in place. Now she put out the sturdy paper plates (she'd sprung for far more than was sensible for them because she loved the colorful wreath pattern around the edges), cups, and plastic silverware. She fished around in the drawers of the china cabinet for hot pads and scattered them artistically.

  Jane closed the door on the dining room after a last, admiring look, to keep the cats and Willard out of the room, and she tackled the broccoli.

  “Anything I can do?" Mike a
sked, coming in the kitchen door. "By the way, Mrs. Nowack said parsley is passé and she's doing a pineapple and Chinese mustard sauce for the ham."

  “Parsley is passé? How dare she?" Jane said with a grin. "I'm the hostess with the mostest today."

  “Be careful," Mike said, pouring himself a soft drink and sitting down at the table.

  “Of what?"

  “Of getting too cocky.”

  Jane went on cutting broccoli flowerettes. "Are we talking about me or you?"

  “Me, I guess," Mike admitted. "School?" Jane asked.

  “Yeah. Do they send my grades to you, like they did in high school?"

  “Either that or you'll send them to me. Won't you?”

  He nodded. "You're not gonna like them much. All C's, unless some instructors take pity on me."

  “Oh, Mike," Jane said, knowing she sounded terribly disappointed in spite of her resolve to be supportive. "You were a straight-A student in high school."

  “Yeah, but I knew why I was doing it. I was working at getting A's so I could get into college and now I'm there and don't know why. See what I mean?"

  “Not exactly."

  “I don't know what's next… why I'm doing this… where I'm headed."

  “But you know wherever you're headed you need a college degree to get there.”

  “Sure. But in what? One of my nerdy roommates knows he wants to be an accountant so he's taking all these math and business courses besides the basic stuff and he's acing everything. Mom, he doesn't know the difference between a fork and a spoon, but he knows what he wants to be. Another one is taking all this science stuff and likes it so much he wants to talk about it all the time. Genes and DNA and that. I'm just taking all this dumb college freshman stuff. English, algebra, earth science. I've already aced those in high school."

  “And now you're getting C's in the same things? They're that much harder?"