13. Joy
JOY
Over dinner with Leah, sitting in the restaurant with her damp hair twisted up into a knot on top of her head, Joy spilled out the story of her fight with Bar. Or parts of it, at least, because she had trouble getting a word in edgewise once Leah realized that Bar had, almost literally, kicked Joy out of bed.
“He’s in so much trouble,” Leah said, twisting the edge of the tablecloth as if it was Bar’s neck. “Everything Hester said about him is true. She should have done a lot more than feed him cold food. Half-frozen, rubbery veal is too good for him. Expired cans of dog food are too good for him.”
Joy felt vaguely disloyal to Bar, but the problem was that she still couldn’t understand what had happened.
“I think we must have had some kind of misunderstanding,” she said.
“Oh, I’ll show him a misunderstanding. I’ll see how well he understands my crutch between his legs.”
“Leah,” Joy said, beginning to be alarmed, because there were times when it was hard to tell if her sister was joking, but she was starting to lean toward definitely not joking in this instance. “Please do not commit assault on the local land baron.”
“You’re right,” Leah said. She folded her hands demurely on the tablecloth in front of her. “I can do much worse things than assault him. He’s just down the hall, right?”
“Please don’t break into his room,” Joy begged, then frowned. “How would you even break into his room? Do you know how to pick locks?”
“I bet a shrew can fit under the door. There’s gotta be a gap.”
“Yes, and then you’ll be in his room as a shrew.” Joy tactfully didn’t point out that Leah’s homemade shrew mobility device for her legs, which were also only semi-functional in shrew form, probably wouldn’t fit under the door. It was built from the base of a toy car and worked perfectly well—it was painted glittery pink and gold, and in Joy’s private opinion, was adorable—but what it wasn’t, was stealthy.
“Hmm, you’re right. I’ll have to use the grappling hook.”
“The what ,” Joy said, glancing around anxiously in case they were overheard plotting what was increasingly sounding like some kind of illicit mayhem. They were the only people in the restaurant at the moment. Doreen and Wick were apparently dining in their own home tonight, and Hester had only appeared occasionally to bring them their menus and food. Mauro was nowhere to be seen, and neither was Bar, to Joy’s mingled relief and disappointment.
Leah opened her purse.
“Don’t tell me you have a full size grappling hook in there,” Joy said. “What is it, a collapsible Bat-Hook or something?”
“You’re right, it does need a name.” Leah began digging in her purse. Joy liked to tease her sister that she was the only twenty-two-year-old Joy had ever met who carried around a purse that was equipped like a middle-aged soccer mom’s. It was, however, mostly to carry her shrew gear. (And occasionally, at times, Joy carried Leah as a shrew in it. There was a specially built shrew pocket so she could look out.)
From the capacious depths of her purse, Leah took out her roller skate shrew-mobile, as they had been calling various iterations of shrew mobility devices that Leah had been using since she was young. Then she removed a small trailer, basically a child’s plaything that was meant to attach to a toy truck, but Leah used it to cart around a few items when she was a shrew, including her phone.
And then?—
“Is that a crossbow ?”
“You’ve got the idea,” Leah declared proudly, displaying the tiny plastic and wire device which, like nearly all of her shrew gear, was adapted from off-the-shelf toys. “It’s spring loaded. There’s a coil of twine here that unravels. The end is a suction cup, at least for now, but I’m having trouble getting it to stick to things, so I’ll probably do a little fiddling with it in the room tonight and replace it with an actual grappling hook. And then see, this pulley reels me up as a shrew—zoop!”
“That looks like something Wile E Coyote would invent,” Joy said. Coming to her senses, she said firmly, “Absolutely no breaking into Bar’s room, shrew-shaped or otherwise. I don’t even want to know what you’d be doing in there.”
“You’re no fun,” Leah complained, sweeping her shrew gear back into her purse. “I can think of so many terrible things to do to his toothbrush?—”
“Leah. No.”
“We could slash his tires.”
“Nothing illegal. I mean it.”
“Okay, how about we fill his stupid overcompensation-mobile with peanut butter?”
Joy was finally coaxed into a smile. “I don’t know if the hotel has that much peanut butter.”
“You’re right, all we need is a jar of it to smear on his windshield and mirrors. If it freezes on there, it’ll take him forever to get it off.”
There was still no sign of Bar in the restaurant, and Joy finally, reluctantly had to admit that a) she was waiting for him, b) he didn’t seem to be coming, and c) there was only so long she could linger over the crumbs of her dessert hoping he would appear. She put her fork down and nudged her sister. “Come on, Vendetta Lass. Let’s go up to the room and do our traditional Christmas Eve gift exchange.”
“Not even a tiny bit of revenge?” Leah asked hopefully as Joy kept pace with her brisk crutching on the way to the stairs. “A frozen trout fillet under the rear floor mat? I know it’s cold now, but it’ll be a nice surprise for spring. He’ll never get the smell out.”
“No dead fish. In fact, I’d like to stop talking about Bar entirely.”
She cast a wistful glance down the hallway at the closed door to the honeymoon suite. Was Bar in there? Outside in the snow?
I don’t care, she told herself firmly, and turned her back on the oh-so-tempting door. Instead she followed her sister into their suite.
As she had told Bar, the Blanchard sister Christmas Eve gift swap was a tradition that Joy had started the year Mom died. The Christmas season that year had been a miserable, mopey experience despite all her efforts to keep both of their spirits up, and she had been dreading a disastrous Christmas Eve and an even worst Christmas. So she had declared that they would exchange most of their gifts on Christmas Eve, with the rule that as many of the gifts as possible had to be something you could do —a new game, a book, a crochet kit. Rather than crying their eyes out that Christmas Eve, they had spent it playing Twister and giggling over a book of bathroom jokes.
Over the years they had developed the gift exchange into a ritual with its own ceremonies and flourishes. Simply presenting gifts was not enough. They had to be presented with style .
So Joy retreated to her bedroom, took out the two wrapped presents she had brought, and cued up some Christmas music on her phone. Just as she punched Play, she heard music start up in Leah’s room as well—not Christmas music, but the Imperial Death March from Star Wars .
Leah flung open the bathroom door connecting the suites. “The annual Giftmas is upon us!” she declared.
“Merry Christmas, Shrew Vader,” Joy returned. “Get ready for ...” Sitting on the bed, she reached behind her back. “—Confettimas!” she yelled, and threw a double handful of confetti over Leah.
Between the loud music playing from both rooms and the wild giggling, it was probably good that they had most of the hotel to themselves. The presents, which had been kept secret, were brought out as they sat on Leah’s larger bed, dutifully cooed over and shaken, and finally opened.
“If I had only known, I would have gifted you a dead fish to slide between his backseat cushions,” Leah said mournfully as Joy exclaimed over her shiny new copy of a murder mystery board game.
“No revenge talk,” Joy said firmly, as thoughts of Bar flitted through the back of her mind, bringing an uneasy mix of hurt and longing. “Stop picking at that paper and unwrap something.”
They had gotten each other a book, as they usually did. Leah’s other gift from Joy was a gem art poster kit. Joy had forgotten that the design was a dragon, and when Leah pulled off the paper, sudden pain whiplashed in her chest. It wasn’t a dragon like Bar, but she had to avert her eyes from the image on the box.
“I think a festive murder is definitely tonight’s mood,” Leah said, putting aside the gem kit. “Do you think Hester and Mauro would like to play too?”
“I don’t know, I can go look for them?—”
The sound of a door slamming somewhere below them made her stand up and go to the window. The wind was blowing, kicking up swirls of snow along with a few fresh flakes, and she saw a bundled figure pass by underneath the window, headed to one of the outbuildings.
“On second thought, it looks like they’re busy.” Joy felt a tinge of guilt.
Leah nudged her. “Sis. We’re supposed to be having fun. Come on, let’s go murder someone.” She began peeling the plastic off the box for the murder mystery game. “Even if it’s not a certain someone, cough cough, if you know what I mean. We can always pretend.”
Joy had to admit that the game was fun and distracting, but she kept listening for—she wasn’t even sure what, a knock at the door, a footstep in the hallway. It wasn’t that she thought Bar would come apologize—well, okay, maybe she was hoping for it.
But when she did actually hear a soft sound nearby, she almost dropped her handful of game cards.
“Just a minute,” she said, jumping to her feet.
“Oh, no worries, take your time,” Leah called after her as Joy darted into the room next door by way of the bathroom. “I’m not going to look at your cards. Not at all! Stay as long as you like!”
Joy tried to tune out her sister’s teasing and looked around. She saw nothing different in her room. But of course Bar wouldn’t have been inside. She wasn’t sure what the sound was that she had heard, a soft whisper of movement. Perhaps it was just a curtain blowing in the draft from the radiator?
She was about to go back to the game when she finally noticed the one thing out of place.
There was a white square laying on the carpet just inside the door, as if it had been pushed beneath.
What on earth?
Joy picked it up. It was a folded sheet of hotel stationery with her name written on the outside. Even without having seen that bold, spiky, male handwriting before, she knew immediately who must have left it.
“Bar!” she exclaimed, flinging the door open.
There was no one in the hall.
Joy slowly closed the door again and, leaning against it, unfolded the paper.
Joy,
May I request the pleasure of meeting you downstairs?
- Bar