Hey! Shelly! Lookit this!
“But seriously, if you could keep the end in and burning-”
“No.”
“Sure, I see what you mean! Just strap a couple together, flames on the ends…”
“No, Leslie.”
“Totally! Think American Gladiators-” Leslie paused and looked at her friend Nicole who was standing, hands on hips, with the usual glint in her eye. “Look, I’m not saying that I would do it. Just that I would tell others to.”
“You are not to mention it to anyone when they show up this week. We are going to have a safe and uneventful time without fire.”
“Yes’m.”
“What was that about fire?”
The voice came from behind and substantially above the girls, deep and rather intimidating sounding. Leslie just rolled her eyes.
“Nothing that would concern you, Jayne.”
“What about me, darlin?”
“Or you Jamie.” Nicole added. Then they turned around and pounced on Jamie, hugging her tightly.
“Jaaaaamieeeeeeeeeeeee! We’ve missed yooooooooou!” they squealed, attracting several strange looks from other customers.
The group of four stood at an outside display in front of the local Michaels where both Nicole and Leslie worked. They were on restocking duty and had been filling the stands with tall tiki lamps when Leslie had thought of the American Gladiator thing. For the past three weeks, the girls had been applying and attending weddings and were now finally able to begin settling into the summer pattern, which meant having as many people as could come invade the Trautman house for a party. It was going to be quite a shebang.
When she was released, Jamie asked, “When does Shelly arrive? Is she bringing Seth?”
“They’ll be here sometime tonight. Tom and Katy have to attend someone’s wedding and Greg couldn’t get off work, so it’ll just be all of us and a handful of others. I tried to talk Denny into coming, but he’s being a bum.”
“Which means he also couldn’t get off work.” Nicole added.
“Right. Whatever. Bum.”
“But speaking of work…” Jayne glanced at his suburban shopping surroundings incredulously. “What is this place?”
“A place forgotten by God.” Leslie whispered conspiratorially. Nicole and Jamie both elbowed her. “Or a place filled with crafty things that you would be unable to appreciate.”
“Hey, I like crafts as much as the next guy.” Jayne muttered thoughtfully.
The girls were thunderstruck.
“…providing the next guy had been killed by a pair of knitting needles and yarn.”
“Yeah, something like that, Leslie.” Jayne remained in his thoughtful mode for a moment before asking, “Do they sell yarn and knitting stuff?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“Do you think you could show me where it is? I’d like to send my mom some stuff. Y’see she knits, made me my hat and-”
“Say no more, I’ll lead you straight to the wall o yarn.”
Leaving Nicole and Jamie to catch up and plot against them, Leslie did as she said and began to guide her friend to the far corner of the store where knitting supplies were hoarded. They had barely made it past the cash registers when she was accosted by two people, the two worst people that could find her, her mother and the general manager, Steve.
“Leslie, we need to talk to you.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be stocking the tiki lamps?”
Freezing mid step and spinning on her heel to face them, Leslie grimaced but turned it into a weak smile. “Yes. This gentleman asked to be shown to the knitting section so I was just helping him and was about to return to that.”
“I saw you four talking out there, you know you’re not supposed to take any extra breaks right now while we get everything set up.”
“Yessir, you see it was just my friend Jamie from out of town arrived so we only stopped-”
“Jamie’s here? How exciting. That must make you Jayne!” Marla smiled and held her hand out to the large man. “I’m Marla, please don’t call me Mrs. Trautman while you’re with us.”
“With you?” Steve turned an appraising eye onto the man and smiled, supporting one elbow with his hand and fiddling with an earring. “How lucky you are, Marla. I’ll show this gentleman to the knitting section posthaste.”
Marla and Leslie watched Steve guide Jayne effusively chatting all the way until they disappeared behind a row of cake toppers. Laughing quietly at the pair, Marla turned to her daughter and became very serious. “Leslie, I need your help. Steve doesn’t know it yet but almost all of the high schoolers that we have working tomorrow during the kids thing have asked off. I told at least half of them no, but you know they won’t show up. If they don’t, I’ll really need you and Nicole helping out. Since Steve will be at that conference, I’m in charge.”
“Not that I could turn you down anyway, being my mother and all…but I really wanted to spend time with the guys.”
“I know, but I need you…or I might. Let’s see what tomorrow brings, okay?”
“Yes’m. Nicole and I are off in a few minutes, so I’m gonna go help her finish up with the tiki lamps. I think I might buy some too.”
“…as long as you promise not to burn my house down.”
“Of course not!”
Shelly and Seth and Boromir arrived later that afternoon and there was much fun and horseplay in and around the pool. It was quickly discovered that Gracie, oddly enough, was not a large fan of Seth in any way but absolutely adored Jayne and Boromir. She would jump and chase them to the edge of the pool, two feet closer than any others could get her, but then would immediately shy away. When asked, Leslie explained that the pup had a bad experience regarding water when she was little and now preferred dry paws. Later on they all went to the Trautman’s church’s softball game, where the boys were asked to play until some of the other teammates showed. It was a blissful summer day and evening.
This bliss was shattered the next morning at nine when Leslie received a call from her mother. Nobody had showed, like she predicted, and a small hoard of children (small being twenty to forty) were to be arriving at the store for the company sponsored fun day in an hour and a half. She officially called her daughter and Nicole in while begging them to bring whoever would be willing to help. Leslie neglected to mention the “willing” part and ousted everyone from their makeshift beds. In an hour, everyone was clean and as prepared as could be expected. In two cars they arrived at what would surely be the Michael’s Madhouse in another thirty minutes.
Nicole, who had been through a bake sale fiasco at an earlier fun day, knew what it took to get everything set up; she looked around at the empty tables, unpacked boxes and piles of untouched balloons and sighed. “We are all going to die.”
Just then Marla appeared, arms filled with stacks of paper, and muttered a prayer of thanks at seeing them there. She set the stacks down and stopped to think. “All right, I think this will be enough to get things rolling. Remember, the fun day only lasts a few hours and you can all go home at two. By then I should have a couple of the other workers in helping with basic store stuff.
“First of all, Jamie and Shelly, you need to help me set up inside so I can get the coloring things arranged properly. Nicole, Leslie, I need you to go set up the displays. Er…Jayne? I’m thinking that you can handle traffic concerns, right now we need to keep that one section of parking lot empty so we can have our people arrive-a cop, an ambulance, and a small troupe of mimes-and set up without having any cars in the way. We’ll also need you to make sure the kids are safe if they get away from their parents while wandering around out there.”
The girls snickered at the thought of Jayne herding small children. Boromir and Seth smirked triumphantly and then looked to Marla for their own assignments. Boromir stood at ease, but very formal, as though he was accepting an assignment from a king. Seth, on the other hand, slouched lazily against a support beam and gave off an inexplicable air of “I’m too cool to be here, but I’m gracing you lowly creatures with my presence anyway.” Taking note of both stances as well as accounting for their behavior the night before, Marla nodded.
“All right…Seth, I don’t want you scaring any customers, so you’re on mop and toilet duty. If something gets spilled or clogged, you’re on it. Boromir, you’re pleasant enough, I need you to run our bake sale table.”
The entire group of friends, excluding the two in question, cracked up. Marla called them to attention by raising her hand in the air, a surprisingly effective method for one so small. “What are you all still doing here? Move out! Go!” Scattering, the crew obeyed the dreaded Miss Marla with alacrity.
“Hey, you! I’m talking to you! Get off that guard rail ya little monkey! You’re gonna get yourself killed!” Jayne was knee deep in ankle biters, all of whom seemed rather impressed by his size but deaf to his entreaties. A mother of four with two best friends tagging along had dropped them off with him saying “I really just need to go get something from the store, I’ll be right back.” Not quick enough to wave her off, he found himself with six children that had mad impulses to break away. As though that were not problematic enough, the woman had purchased four brownies and two cookies for them and they were running on a sugar high that could have killed King Kong. Jayne was growing impatient when Jamie and Shelly managed to get a momentary reprieve from the coloring tables to deliver bottles of water for the entire group of out door workers. Toting a bucket between them, they approached.
“Hey Jayne, wanna drink?”
“Only if that clear liquid is vodka.”
“Come now, Jayne! Jamie and I are only here to help!”
“Then take care of these brats! Gorramit, I’m going to step on every little one of them and turn them in to nothing more than unpleasant memories!” the snarl was caught by half of the children and two began to cry. The other kicked Jayne in the shins. With a speed generally not reached by man, Jamie swooped down and gathered the two crying ones while Shelly quickly snatched the offending kicker and pulled him away from Jayne. They managed to wrangle the other three into following them into the store with promises of air-conditioning and crayons.
“We’ll just take them in to color for now, tell their mom where they’ll be if she comes back out.” Shelly said, beginning to drag the group away. Jamie agreed and asked Jayne to finish passing out the bottled water.
“Sure, darlin. I’ll try not to drink it all myself, but it’s hotter’n hell’s ass out here.”
Once across the road and onto the sidewalk, Jamie rolled her eyes. “Such a colorful vocabulary that one has.”
“Maybe you should train him up better, eh?” Shelly winked.
“Bite me-yeaough! What the-” One of the little ones in her arms had bitten her. “Now I see why Jayne was so anxious to get rid of this crew.”
Boromir, stationed strategically by the door, was frantically trying to do math while restocking the fast-disappearing cupcakes and brownies. Across from him sat a pleasant woman with rather vicious looking hair who was laughing at his efforts while people filled out tickets for a raffle. Periodically, when the lines were low, she would come over to flirt with him but had currently settled on whooping and making catcalls over the din of children. He spared his eyes to give Shelly and Jamie a desperate look before returning to his task at hand. Inside, they got the children set up making rubbings and coloring pictures of strange clowns and puppies.
“Man, Miss Marla wasn’t joking about needing our help.”
“Not in the least-hey, have you checked on Seth recently?”
“Not since the clogged toilet in the ladies’ room.”
“I wonder how that went over…”
“Have you ever unclogged a toilet?!” Leslie hollered, hands on her head, eyes wide with something akin to surprise, horror and confusion.
“No.” Seth replied simply. He was standing next to a toilet out of which protruded the handle of a mop. The water, though oddly clean, swirled threateningly close to the edge.
“What in the world made you think that it would be a good idea to unclog a toilet with a mop?”
“No idea.”
“I-you-freaking-argh-can’t-no-GET OUT. Go…sweep or something.” Leslie pointed a shaking fist at the door, outside which stood three or four timid looking women. With a deep breath, Leslie prepared a short explanation in her head and stepped out to deliver it.
Nicole, meanwhile, was ringing people out and able to watch pretty much everything unfold as the hours passed. Miss Marla was pleasantly unaware of the near-death experience of the six children as well as the reason to why they suddenly needed a new mop. In her eyes, things were going well. No children were lost and nobody was hurt. When their time ended, the crew stumbled around to close up the “fun day” tables and put things away. Marla thanked them profusely and promised an excellent meal of ribs and various other tasty goods when she got home that night. After receiving instructions on how to begin the ribs, Leslie and her weary friends went home.
Around nine o’clock that night, a car pulled off the road in front of the house. Two people got out, bearing a couple of bags and four tall objects. As stealthily as possible, they sneaked in through the front door and burst into the living room, waving what turned out to be four tiki lamps.
“HEY GUYS! After seven hours in the car, WE MADE IT!” Ewy did a little jig. Cor stopped him and made him look around the room. On the couch were Jamie, Nicole and Shelly, fast asleep on each other’s shoulders. Seth had retired on the love seat with his feet in the air and his hair spilling out gracefully from one corner. On the floor Jayne was curled up with his head resting on Gracie who opened her eyes and wagged her tail half-heartedly in greeting. Boromir had conked out in the recliner by the sliding glass door.
From the computer alcove Leslie greeted them with an exhausted nod. Her feet were up on the desk and her hand was lazily directing a mouse for some online game. Ewy and Cor shrugged, setting their stuff down in the gathering area before making themselves comfortable with some pillows by the steps and falling asleep too. It had been a long day for everyone.