Lizz Lund - Mina Kitchen 01 - Kitchen Addiction! (22 page)

We
drove along in amicable silence and moved easily and non-stoppedly past only
green traffic lights all along Manor Street.  I frowned and silently cursed my
red traffic light mojo.

Vito
looked over at me.  “You want I should pick up some groceries or Pepto-Bismol
for Ethel?” he asked.

Now
that I remembered I was without my pocketbook, bank card or checks, I nodded
yes.  I grimaced while thinking about spending the better part of the day on
the phone with the police, the bank, credit card companies, the car dealer and
a locksmith.  “That would probably be a good idea,” I said out loud, regarding
the locksmith and all.  I also wondered if it would be too personal to ask Vito
to pick up a few dozen pregnancy test kits.    “Would you mind if I borrowed a
little cash?” I asked.  “I have some… umm… personal things I have to pick
up.”

“No
problemo,” Vito said, preventing me from divulging any personal information by
holding up a hand.  He pulled up to the drop-off at the Chestnut Street
entrance, parked and reached for his wallet.  It was stuffed with wads of
monopoly money.  Except this was genuine cold, hard cash.  Well maybe it was a
little warm, but that was only because Vito had been sitting on it, right?

He
pulled out four fifty-dollar bills and handed them to me.  “Just get what you
need, Toots.”

“Thanks
again, Vito,” I said.  I opened the door. My leg was inches from the ground
when Vito stopped me.

“Hey,
Toots.” I turned around.  “What time you think you’ll be done work?  When
should I pick you up?”

Oh. 
I’d hadn’t even thought about a ride home.  And I hadn’t really thought about
thinking about how long I would actually be at work – that is, if I had a job
left.

I
shrugged.  “I’m not sure.  I call you.”

Vito
nodded and put his mirrored specs back on.  As he pulled away and waited for a
break in traffic, I thought I saw him look in the rearview mirror and insert
his bridge.  I shuddered and held up a virtual hand inside my brain to halt
that image: I just didn’t want to know. I trudged off to the Armstrong Building entrance and entered.

What
greeted my arrival were wafts of burnt electrical fumes and taped up ‘Out of
Order’ signs across the bank of elevators.  Great. I’d have to walk up the
seven flights of stairs to EEJIT. Again. And work in stale smoke. Again.  With
How-weird. And possibly getting konked on the noggin. Again. I wondered which
was worse.

I
walked over to the vacant reception desk, and let myself in behind the counter. 
I found the phone set and dialed Howard’s extension to ask him to let me in
once I climbed Mount Staircase.  No dice: I got his voicemail.  I hung up.  I
dialed Bauser’s line and got his voicemail, too.  Same for Norman.  Since I
knew Norman would rather be anywhere, even EEJIT, than home with his
step-daughters, I wondered if Effhue, Ltd. had actually closed EEJIT officially
for the day.

So
I tried calling EEJIT’s main number, and got a new outgoing message.  “Hello
and welcome to the voicemail system for EEJIT.  Our Lancaster location is
temporarily closed due to maintenance difficulties.  If you know your party’s
extension, please dial it at any time to leave a voicemail message.  If this is
an emergency, please press 2 for Howard Blech.  Thank you for calling, EEJIT.”

I
hung up the receiver and blinked.  Number one:  the outgoing phone message was
ordinarily left by me, as part of my duties as office manager.  The last time I
changed it was last February because of a snow emergency.     Number two:  not
only was the outgoing message voice not mine, it was Lee’s, which brought home
that she was obviously ‘in the loop’ and I was not.  Lastly, number three:  if
Lee was performing one of my duties, that couldn’t bode well for the rest of my
job description.

I
decided to call Bauser’s apartment to see if he and Norman were still there. 
The phone rang four times.  I was about to hang up when Bauser answered.

“It’s
me,” I said.

“Hey,”
Bauser said back.  “Isn’t it great?  A paid day off after all!”

“It
would be great if I had known,” I said.

“How
couldn’t you know?  You’re supposed to leave the outgoing message,” he said.

“I
didn’t.  Lee did.”

“Crap. 
Hey, Norman.” I heard the two of them conferring in the background. Then Bauser
came back and said, “Norman said he thought How-weird got Lee to do it because
of your getting konked on the noggin and all.”

“Nope.”

“Crap.”

“Well,
Norman called in to check for both of us. But I stopped by early this morning
to make sure, and saw the signs on the doors.”

“What
signs?”

“The
notices taped to the entrance, Mina.”

I
looked over at the glass doors to the Queen Street entrance, and saw two
letter-sized leaflets taped to the doors.  I sighed.  “I came in the Chestnut Street side.  Vito drove,” I explained.

“You
mean you’re in the lobby? How’d you get in without your ID?”

“I
opened the doors and walked in.”

“Mina,
the building should be on off-hours security. The lobby doors should be
locked.  That means you had to have your ID to get in.  Where are you calling
from?”

“The
front desk.”

“Where’s
the guard? Can I talk to him?”

“No
guard.”

“Maybe
you should leave.”

A
shadowy realization slunk behind my forehead and I began to understand I was
probably risking another bonked noggin.  “Yup,” I answered, hung up, and
hustled out the building and across Chestnut Street.  Mostly because I heard an
elevator bell ding from the allegedly non-functioning elevator bank just as I
exited the lobby, stage right.

I
walked across Chestnut Street, shaded my eyes and looked toward the office
building’s glass lobby walls – but I couldn’t see a thing except reflections. 
Well, now I had a predicament.  All paid off and no place to go.  Especially
with no car and no pocketbook.  I winced, realizing there was probably another
dry cleaning ticket in my wallet that needed picking up.  But, since the jig
was up, and Mrs. Phang admitted she was really from Hawthorne and not Vietnam, she probably wouldn’t be as persnickety about my not having an actual ticket. 
Especially as she might not have to fake an accent in front of me anymore. 
Unless, of course, a real dry cleaning customer was present.

I
shrugged.  The sun was shining, the air was clear, and only fluffy white clouds
floated in the clear blue sky.  A real break in the weather.   I decided to go
window shopping at the artsy stores along Queen Street.  I couldn’t remember a
day this perfect.  What could go wrong?

I
traipsed along Queen Street, feeling halfway between playing hooky and summer
break.  I thought about calling Howard at home and asking, “What gives?” about
Lee’s leaving the outgoing message.  But I thought better about it, held my
breath and counted to ten.  There was no point in ruining a perfectly
legitimate bonus day off.  Anyway, I’d probably find out soon enough at work
tomorrow.  I highly doubted that Effhue Ltd. would sanction a second paid day
off, fumes or no fumes.

I
reached the corner of Queen and Lime, just across from the House of Happy. 
Across Lime there was an actual payphone.  But then I realized I had to have
actual change.  But maybe I’d get lucky. I fingered the change slot, just in
case – and found a forgotten quarter!  Was this my lucky day, or what?  I
popped the quarter in and dialed Bauser’s.

“Hello?”
Bauser answered. 

“It’s
me,” I said. 

“Mina,
jeez, where are you now?  What happened?” Bauser asked.

“Corner
of Lime and Queen, at a payphone.”  A mechanical woman’s voice broke in and
advised we had thirty seconds left to our conversation. “Hey, Bauser, can you
call me back?  I was just lucky and found a quarter to call you.”

“You
can’t call back payphones anymore.  Drug dealers.  Talk fast.”  The woman’s
voice interrupted again and told us we had ten seconds left. “Why don’t you
just stop by? You’re not that far away,” Bauser said.

I
was about to answer when the mechanical female voice broke in again and
pleasantly advised our conversation was terminated.  I banged the phone a few
times with the receiver for good luck and hung up.

That
was when a remodeled Volkswagen bug careened the wrong way up Lime Street, cut a right onto Queen and headed straight for the payphone.  And me.  It ran
up over the curb and onto the sidewalk and splashed a few weeks worth of
stagnant puddle sludge on me.  As I jumped back, it did a U-turn to go the
right way down Lime and pulled up to a stop at the traffic light in front of
me.   The driver’s head looked like a pumpkin.  Mostly because the driver wore
a Halloween pumpkin head rubber mask.  As the light turned green, Pumpkin Head
looked at me, waved, and sped off.  As the Bug screeched away, I decided to
accelerate my stride and my arrival at Bauser’s before I got attacked by
another vegetable.

Bauser
lives in an oddly split shotgun-style apartment on Water Street, off of
Chestnut Street, fairly close to both St. Bart’s and EEJIT.  The building’s
front door opens off Water and into a trim closed off hallway that once served
as a fairly impressive foyer.  The door on the left is Apt. #1A, a small
studio.  That apartment had seen a former life as a small dining room with a
butler’s pantry.  A rotating squad of art school students, mostly guys, lived
here for a few semesters until the next art student moved in.

Apt.
#1B is at the end of the hallway, and is a large efficiency with a normalish
sized kitchen, and is the home to a retired shoe salesman, Harry, who’s mostly
out of town between rotating visits to his two daughters in Indiana and California.   Which means it’s usually empty.  Which is good for Bauser when he wants to
blast his retro-punk records, since his apartment is directly overhead.

The
next first floor apartment is to the right of the entrance.  It’s another
studio, and houses a male nursing student no one’s ever seen because he works
nights as a bartender in-between days studying physiology and medicine.   But
he’s definitely real, Bauser says, because his mail and newspapers get picked
up.

Bauser’s
apartment #2B is on the second floor, up a once grand mahogany staircase, and
occupies most of the second floor.  It even boasts a ‘deck’ on top of the
kitchen to Apt. #1B.  Bauser’s ‘deck’ is adorned with a portable screened in
gazebo that you enter and exit via a zippered flap.

I
knocked on Bauser’s door, and Jim answered.

“A-WHOOO-WOO-WOOO-WO-WUUU,”
Jim bellowed neighborly.  I winced and hoped the folks on the other side of
town didn’t mind the racket.  Then I heard scuffling, some admonishments from
Bauser, and tumblers opening.  Bauser opened the door with one hand, holding
Jim back with the other.

“Hey,
come in,” he gasped.  He let go of the door and wrapped both his arms around
Jim’s neck.  It looked like he was trying to saddle a small long-haired pony. 
Which was not a bad feat for a large dog with only three legs.

I
let myself in and closed the door behind me, and Bauser let loose of Jim.  Jim
jumped up on his leg and put both paws on my shoulders in greeting.  He tried
to hop back down but his foot skidded on the wood floor and he slid sideways. 
His shoulder hit the floor, he shook his head, scrambled up, and grinned up at
me sheepishly while wagging a slightly embarrassed tail.  I patted him on the
head and he trotted off to his spot on his recliner.  It was the ‘His’ match to
the ‘His’ and ‘His’ recliners Bauser had bought for them from the White
Elephant thrift shop.  Which was just as well, since they both were a little
worse for the his ‘n’ his wear.

I
looked past the shredded recliners, the huge flat plasma screen TV on the
facing brick wall, and into the ‘porch’ tent at Norman, who lay sprawled out on
a plaid, folding pool-side chaise lounge circa 1955,  with ‘Nerd World’ magazine
spread across his chest and his eyes closed.  I looked at Bauser.  “He’s
actually been up since about 4:00,” he explained.  “He got on the phone to
coach the girls through feeding the horses and mucking the stalls.”

“Haven’t
they ever done that before?” I asked.

“Yeah,
but I got the impression mostly as observers.  I think they mostly participate
by IMing.”

“Huh?”
I asked. 

“Text
messaging,” Bauser spelled out while rolling his eyes at me.  Bauser might live
in the past as far as music is concerned.  But he’s on the bleeding edge with
the rest of technology.  And he loves to needle me about my vinyl.

Bauser
looked at me funny and sniffed.  “Is that you?” he asked.

“I
got splashed by a Pumpkin Head,” I said.

“Pew.”

I
sighed, went into the kitchen and mopped myself off with some paper towels. 
Bauser handed me a clean Steelers T-shirt and I went into the bathroom and
washed up and got out of my stinky puddle top.  “You want a beer?” Bauser asked
when I was out.

“It’s
ten a.m.,” I said.

“It’s
Saturday,” he said.