Chapter 4 #2
I can’t help bursting out in laughter. Leave it to Barb to turn a serious moment on its head.
She’d like us to believe she’s oblivious, but Mirna and I know better.
“Barb,” I say, wiping more tears through my laughter.
“I think all eyes on me would be the opposite of a voyeur. I think that’s an exhibitionist.”
“Eh.” She shrugs. “Same thing.”
It’s not, but I keep it to myself.
We fall silent and my smile fades. “Mirna, I know his family Christmas isn’t mine, but I want to have this. Just once.”
Mirna and Barb exchange looks and I know what they’re thinking. Ordinarily, I’d hate their pity, but right now, I just want them to understand.
Mirna pinches her lips then pushes out an aggrieved groan. “Barb, call Burt.”
I gasp in shock. I never expected Mirna to cave this quickly. “What?”
Her eyes turn shrewd. “In the four years I’ve known you, you’ve never once wanted anything impractical.
You’re the most sensible person I know. Barb’s right.
You need to live a little, and if this is what you want, then we’ll get it for you.
But”—she points a finger at me—“we’re gonna be smart about it.
” She turns to Barb. “What are you waiting for? Why haven’t you called Burt? ”
Barb cringes. “Burt and I aren’t exactly speakin’ right now.”
Mirna puts both hands on her hips. “Why not?”
“I told him he has a shriveled-up pecker, and he told me my boobs were like cantaloupes on bungee cords.”
Burt and Barb have an on-again, off-again relationship. Apparently, we caught them on an off time.
“I don’t give a rootie patootie if you two are CIA operatives charged with assassinating one another,” Mirna says sternly. “You get that man on that iPad of yours and tell him Finley needs his help.”
Barb grumbles under her breath but picks up the tablet resting on the arm of her recliner and Facetimes Burt.
When the tablet stops ringing, I hear him say in a self-righteous tone, “Well, look who came grovelin’ back. Missed my shriveled-up pecker, did ya?”
“Hell, no,” Barb spits in disgust. “Ira’s pecker’s bigger than yours and lasts twice as long.”
“Bullshit!” Burt shouts.
“Believe it or not,” Barb says, trying to act like she doesn’t care what he thinks, but I see the gleam in her eyes. She’s pretty pleased that she riled him up. “That’s not why I called.”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass why you called,” Burt snaps. “Goodbye!”
“Wait!” Barb shouts. Her bluster comes crashing down and panic edges her voice. “I’m callin’ about Finley.”
He’s silent for a moment, then says, “What about Finley?” he sounds hesitant, like he thinks she’s tricking him into staying on the call.
“She needs legal advice. How soon can you get over here?”
“Is she okay?” he asks, now the one sounding panicked.
“She’s fine!” Mirna shouts from across the room. “And we’re trying to keep her that way. That’s why we need you. ASAP.”
He grumbles, then says, “I got a new brace for my dropped foot, so it might take me a few minutes longer to get there than normal.”
Barb shakes her head in annoyance. “Then get here when you can.” She ends the call and drops the tablet on the arm of her chair.
We all stare at one another, and I feel like a pendulum, waffling back and forth on this decision. I’ve spent the last ten minutes convincing my best friend grandmas that I should do this, but now I’m thinking it’s the worst idea ever.
“What am I doin’?” I whisper. “This is crazy.”
“That’s why it’s so perfect,” Barb says as she claps her hands.
“Sometimes the best things in life are the craziest.” She leans toward me, stretching so far over the arm of her recliner to pick up my hand from my lap that I’m terrified she’s going to lose her balance and fall onto the floor.
“You’re the oldest person I know, Finley O’Brien, and given that you’re only twenty-five, that’s plain sad.
You need to be young. Make mistakes. Live.
” She squeezes my hand. “Life is in the mistakes, girl.” She holds my gaze. “You deserve good things.”
Something in my heart latches onto her words. I want good things, so why do I think I don’t deserve them? But it’s also hard to take Barb seriously as she wobbles, her hips balanced on the arm of her chair like she’s mounted a balance beam.
A rap at the front door draws her gaze from mine, and she frowns as she realizes the precarious position she’s in.
Mirna opens the door, and Burt walks in with an exaggerated gait. There’s a brace on his right leg that wraps around his calf and shin and disappears into his shoes. It’s completely visible due to the fact he’s wearing Bermuda shorts and knee-high athletic socks.
“What in the world are you wearin’, Burt?” Barb asks while she’s flailing around, trying to get back in her recliner.
“I should be askin’ what in the hell you’re doin’?” he exclaims as he rushes over to her.
“I’m practicin’ a new sex position to try out on Henry.”
“I thought you were screwin’ Ira,” he snaps, gripping her upper right arm as he tries to drag her back into her chair.
“I am screwin’ Ira,” she says breathlessly, now wiggling backward across the wide recliner arm. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t screw Henry too. We women earned our right to screw whoever we want.”
“Not if some people have anything to say about it,” but I keep it under my breath. Although I wholeheartedly agree with them, I have no desire to get sidetracked for the next hour when all three of them get worked up over how hard they fought to gain women’s rights, just to see them stripped away.
Burt almost has Barb wrangled back into her chair, but I feel badly that he’s doing it alone. I stand, but Mirna motions me back down with a satisfied look on her face.
She’s playing matchmaker, and I’m on board with this plan.
Burt Horowitz is in his early eighties, but most people guess him to be a good decade younger.
He works out at the run-down gym around the corner, and he’s popular with all the older ladies.
He could have his pick, but he has it bad for Barb and won’t give any of the others a chance.
Even when he and Barb are in the middle of a break.
Barb claims he can’t let her go because she’s perfected the art of fellatio, only she pronounces it fillet-a-chato, claiming she has a right to call it that since her technique is like licking a gelato.
She’s offered to give me pointers, but I’ve turned her down—multiple times—claiming it would be wasted on me since I don’t have a boyfriend.
Lord knows if I ever do get a boyfriend again, I’m waiting until we’re engaged to tell her.
Barb’s butt finally lands in the chair with a thump, and Burt stands next to her, huffing and puffing. I’m pretty sure they don’t have any machines in the exercise room to prepare an eighty-one-year-old man to drag his girlfriend across the arm of a recliner and back into her seat.
Finally, his breathing slows enough for him to wheeze out, “Are you in some kind of legal trouble, Finley?”
“No, nothing like that,” I say, then give him a condensed version of what I need as Mirna brings him a kitchen chair to sit in so he can face all of us.
When I finish, he’s quiet for several seconds before he says, “Let me get this straight. A sexy customer from Beans to Go—”
“I didn’t say he was sexy!” I say insistently.
“I said he was sexy,” Barb sasses.
I swing my attention to her. “You’ve never even met him.”
She taps her temple. “I’ve met him in here, where he’s sexy as all get out.” Then she purrs and gives Burt a long, weighted look.
“You need to lower the dose of your estrogen cream, Barb,” Mirna says, disapprovingly.
“Ira disagrees.” Barb waggles her eyebrows.
Burt swallows, glancing between the three of us, looking nervous. “Okay, so one of your customers has asked you to spend Christmas with him and his family up in a Christmas town in Vermont…” He makes a face that appears incredulous, then hesitantly says, “so he doesn’t have to sleep on a sofa bed?”
“That’s the gist of it,” I say. “But he says he’ll pay my missed wages and any trip expenses. And—” I can’t stop the excitement bubbling up in me. “I get to spend Christmas in Hollybrook. The town is like a Christmas Hallmark movie come to life!”
He eyes me warily. “And that’s a good thing?”
“Have you no Christmas spirit, Burt?” Barb demands.
“You know damn good and well I don’t,” he shoots back. “I’m Jewish.”
That shuts her down, but who knows for how long, so I take advantage of the silence.
“I’ve dreamed of this kind of Christmas since I was a kid.
You have no idea how much my mom and I wanted to experience it.
” I pause, realizing how pathetic this all sounds.
I know I should be embarrassed, but I can’t seem to summon it. Not with my friends.
Burt is still watching me, as though he’s waiting for me to yell, “Prank!” But when I don’t, he nods solemnly. “Okay, let’s make your Christmas dream come true. What do you need from me?”
“I need a contract. I have some requests—”
“Demands,” Burt says. “If this guy is as desperate as you’ve made him out to be, then I suspect he’ll give you pretty much anything you want.” He pauses. “I take it we’re negotiating the demands?”
“This isn’t a divorce, Burt,” Barb says in disgust. “Way to take the romance out of it.”
“There’s no romance involved,” I tell her, then turn my attention back to him. “This is not romantic. It’s a business agreement, but I want it to be amicable. I’m going to be spending nearly two weeks with him and his family. So, maybe we don’t call them demands.”
“Okay,” he says with a frown. “Does he have an attorney we’re dealing with?”
“No, he told me to have the contract drawn up, but he needs it by tomorrow night.”
His white wooly eyebrows shoot up. “Tomorrow night?”
“We leave on the twenty-second, and he still needs to book my plane tickets.”
“Do you have the demands”—he makes a face—“I mean, requests ironed out?”
“Mostly, but I wanted to talk to you before I addressed some of them.” I shrug. “I’ve never done anything like this before.”
“I should hope not,” Mirna scoffs.
“You need to do it more often,” Barb says with a sharp nod.
Burt ignores them both. “While it’s unconventional, to be sure, it’s nothing we can’t have done by your deadline, presuming you have everything ironed out by tomorrow morning.”
“I think I can do that.”
He gets out of his chair, then holds out his hand. “I need you to pay me a retainer before we get started.”
“You’re gonna charge her?” Barb shouts in disbelief.
“I have to charge her something, otherwise, I won’t be held by the attorney-client privilege.” He winks. “Even if it’s just a dollar.”
“Oh,” I say, feeling relieved. “I don’t have any cash on me. I’ll have to run to my apartment.”
“Not to worry,” Barb says. “I’ll pay her retainer.” Then she begins to tell him in great detail how she plans to sex him up.
“Barb!” I cry out in protest, putting my hands over my ears.
My cheeks are burning, and Mirna looks like she’s about to stroke out, but Burt’s tongue is practically hanging out of his mouth, his eyes wide like a cartoon character.
“Well, somebody has to get sex in this contract,” she says emphatically. “If it’s not gonna be you, then I’ll volunteer as tribute.” She fans herself. “I can’t help it if all this legal talk makes me hot.”
“You’re hot because you have the damn furnace cranked up to eighty!” Mirna complains.
Barb makes a shooing motion. “I need you two to leave within the next three seconds or you’re gonna see me paying that retainer.”
I run out like my pants are on fire.