Wimbledon, Kentucky Read online

  Bill propped himself up. “You’re out of your mind. There’s no way they’re ever coming back to this house. You saw the way the Johnstons fled as soon as they thought they might have to deal with this issue. They acted like we were a couple of lepers. And good luck getting Bret Hammersmith to do anything for anyone else. That man has not a generous bone in his body. You remember how much he bitched and moaned when Kenny Parker was chosen for the Make-A-Wish Foundation? All I heard for weeks at our poker night was ‘spoiling him’ this and ‘entitlement’ that.”

  “But we can’t do this alone!” Laurel said.

  “Maybe not, but you can sure as hell count out Melanie and Bret.”

  “But they’re our only scientific friends!”

  “We can make more friends.”

  “No, Bill,” Laurel said, pounding the pillow that they kept wedged between them at night, “we will not make more friends and we will have another dinner party. You heard what that man said on TV tonight. They’re willing to use force against us if we don’t figure it out. We’re being held responsible, and if something were to happen to you and me…just think of poor Trevor.”

  Bill considered that, but decided Trevor would make a cute enough orphan that he might just luck out and snag some rich foster parents. But there was still the issue of Bill’s life being in jeopardy, and it was just too damn late at night to have to put deal with that morbid of a topic.

  “Fine.” Bill flopped onto his side with his back to his wife. “You have my permission to have this dinner party, but only because you always cook better food when we have guests, and I don’t think a damn person will show up, so that means a feast for me. You understand? I’m only agreeing so I can get a feast.” He looked over his shoulder to make sure she had heard him.

  Laurel narrowed her eyes at him. “Oh, don’t worry…you’ll get a feast.’

  Bill had no idea what she meant by that, but he quickly fell asleep in spite of it.

  CHAPTER TWO

  BILL HAD LEFT FOR WORK long before Trevor and Laurel awoke. Laurel dressed her son, fed him, and walked him to the door to catch the bus. “Will you tell your father to start making a list of people for our dinner party?”

  Trevor agreed just as the bus was pulling up to the curb.

  Laurel kissed her son good-bye in the doorway and waved to her husband, who nodded back curtly, yanked a lever, and opened the bus door for his son.

  Once she was satisfied with the begrudging look on Bill’s face as Trevor relayed the message, she went back inside.

  She could only watch the news for a few minutes before the novelty of seeing the familiar sights of her town through the thirty-two-inch screen began to grow old. There was Wimbledon Elementary School in the background as the reporter covered the local controversy surrounding the wizard mascot. That was nothing new to Laurel, as she’d endured endless debates over the harmful effects of wizard-centric stories on children during five months’ worth of PTA meetings before it was finally resolved that the mascot would remain a wizard until a better W-word mascot than “wombat” could be decided upon.

  But that story was still news to the rest of the country, which was suddenly so obsessed with Laurel’s modest little town.

  The next channel over was a story on the local distillery, which was the only one in Kentucky that still brewed moonshine in X, XX, XXX, or XXXX varieties. Behind the lead reporter, Laurel could see Wally, the town drunk, wandering into the front doors of the brewery with an XXXX jug in his hand. She knew the jug was empty; Wally went to refill it every morning around this time.

  Even though Wally was a drunk who would occasionally proposition children, everyone had grown to love him for his good environmental sense. Not only did he reuse the same jug for his moonshine, but he always walked to work, always recycled the cardboard boxes that he slept in when he couldn’t find his own house, and sometimes drank his own urine. Plus, because drugs were rarely an issue in the town, most of the awareness weeks could focus on teaching the kids how to say no when Wally started talking to them, so no one considered him all that threatening.

  Laurel allowed herself a moment to reflect on just how lucky she was to live in a community with such a friendly town drunk, then changed to another channel.

  The reporter on this station was in the middle of an interview with Old Carter, who owned the local grocery. He was indulging himself in one of his rambles that everyone in town had learned to head off before they got started, but this poor reporter from the outside world obviously hadn’t been warned, or if she had been, she didn’t realize just how incoherent Old Carter could become.

  “Nah, I don’t feel a thing, really,” he said, staring directly into the camera lens in a way that sent shivers down Laurel’s spine. “I’ve seen worse winters in my days, and those days are getting longer. That’s what you young folk don’t understand. Days get longer! You keep going on with your same calendar with the same length of days and you think it’s August, but you’re all wrong. It ain’t even February yet! You’re counting the days wrong.”

  The reporter decided to ask a follow-up question to get things back on track.

  Rookie mistake, Laurel thought.

  “So, Mr. Carter, what do you think we can do—besides change the calendar—to get things back on track?”

  “Easy,” Old Carter replied, looking away from the reporter and right back into the lens. “Grow more body hair. God gave us body hair for two reasons: the first is to shame little boys and girls away from premarital sex, and the second is to keep us warm. The third is to help us identify whales as mammals. It’s important that we do that. I think if more people identified whales as mammals, we’d all be a lot more inclined to shut up about whaling and just eat the damn things. I hear they’re useful in makeup, too. Women need to wear a lot more makeup, in my opinion. Now that they all wear pants, I have a real hard time telling them apart from men. More makeup is just a courtesy!”

  Laurel sighed. “I hope people are smart enough to realize he’s insane.” She was just about to turn off the TV when she saw the shot cut from Old Carter to her front yard.

  She looked at the bottom corner of the screen and saw the word LIVE. Carefully, she tiptoed to the window by the front door and peeked out. Yep, there was the news van.

  She could have asked herself why they would be in her front yard, but she already knew.

  How could they have tracked me down so fast? Somebody must have talked. Probably the Humphreys. They always seemed like rats to me. See if I invite them to this next dinner party.

  She saw a reporter get out of the van and head down the sidewalk toward her front door. She jumped away from the window, panicked. But she knew she’d have to talk to one of them sooner or later, and better to get things straightened out now than make Trevor deal with it when he came back from school.

  There was a knock on the door, and Laurel went to answer it. But before she opened it, it occurred to her that she was about to be on television, so she ran upstairs to get herself together.

  Even Old Carter might have thought she had on too much makeup when she finally came down the stairs fifteen minutes later. Not surprisingly, the reporter was still there. So were three more behind him, who’d all been just a minute late on getting the scoop first.

  I hope they don’t lose their jobs!

  She flung open the door, startling all of those gathered only inches outside of it.

  “Hello!” she said with a grand, sweeping gesture of her arms. “My name is Laurel Sapphire, and I’m…” She blanked. She couldn’t think of how to finish that sentence. What was she? “…a hairdresser.” She hoped that would do.

  “Eugene Thornton, News 5,” the closest reporter said, introducing himself while subtly and skillfully using his elbows to block out his competition. “Mrs. Sapphire, is it true that it was at your dinner party where this horrifying discovery was made?”

  Laurel was so preoccupied with the sight of Eugene’s abnormally bushy black eyebrow
s that she was completely caught off guard by the phrase “horrifying discovery.”

  She wrenched her gaze slightly lower to meet Eugene’s eyes. “Y–yes, it was at my dinner party, but it wasn’t all that horrifying.”

  “Tell us, Mrs. Sapphire, how did everyone react? Was the overwhelming sense of dread palpable?”

  Eugene inched the microphone closer to Laurel’s mouth, and she began to wonder if she was expected to touch her lips to it. Either way, she wasn’t sure she thought Eugene was a very good reporter. Or person.

  “There was no overwhelming sense of dread,” she replied.

  “What then? Foreboding? Anxiety? Unease? Ooo! Trepidation?” With each new word, Eugene’s caterpillar eyebrows rose slightly higher.

  “No!” Laurel only barely kept herself from stomping her foot.

  “No what?”

  “I mean, no, those are just other words for dread! We didn’t feel that!”

  “Yes, I expect what you felt couldn’t be described in words. Too horrible.”

  “No. Not at all. We all just kind of shrugged and said how weird it was. Then we started discussing our fears of the government takeover of health—”

  Eugene clearly wasn’t listening to anything else she had to say. Instead, he only stared at her, aghast. “You just shrugged? How can you expect the world to have faith that you’ll solve this crisis if it means nothing more to you than a little shrug?”

  Laurel shrugged at his question before she realized what she was doing. The small but growing gaggle of reporters gasped, thinking her doubly irreverent for shrugging about shrugging.

  She would have done just about anything short of eating the microphone that was shoved in her face to be able to take back that shrug.

  “I just—I mean—I don’t want people to put faith in me to solve this problem. I don’t know anything about it.”

  That wasn’t good enough for Eugene. “But the world leaders have decided that it is the responsibility of Wimbledon to fix this, and since you were the one who started the problem, well, naturally—”

  “Now you listen here, Eugene.” Laurel had had enough of his putting words and microphones into her mouth. “I didn’t start this problem. I don’t know what did—none of us do—but it wasn’t a little conversation. I don’t even see why it’s that big of a problem yet.”

  “Don’t see!” the woman standing just over Eugene’s shoulder piped up. Laurel recognized her as the one who had interviewed Old Carter. “People are cold and getting colder by the minute!”

  Laurel didn’t like that woman at all. “People aren’t getting colder by the minute, they’re just staying as cold as they are. It’s not getting colder and colder. We’re not spiraling into an ice age, I—”

  Eugene had just gotten his sound bite. “There you have it, folks. For the time being, we need not panic, for we have not yet reached the critical stage…”

  Finally, thought Laurel, they try to calm viewers instead of getting them worked up.

  “…but what about our children?” Eugene continued.

  Laurel’s stomach sank.

  “And what about our children’s children? What sort of frigid temperatures will they have to endure? What sort of legacy are we leaving for those who follow in our chilly paths? How will we feel when our children’s knowledge of the wonders of summer, of flowers, of tanned skin and beach trips is limited to our own storytelling abilities by the fireside? Are we so selfish as to say, ‘No, it’s not my problem’?”

  Laurel had reached her limit. She turned around, walked inside, and slammed the door behind her.

  * * *

  She knew right away what she needed to do, so she made directly for the landline, grabbed the Rolodex off of the side table, looked up Hammersmith, Bret, and made the call.

  The possibility that Bret wasn’t answering the phone because he wasn’t home never crossed Laurel’s mind. She knew he was there; he never worked before noon, stating a distrust for the adage “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.” He usually stayed up until sunrise and slept until lunchtime.

  “Bret,” Laurel said to his answering machine, “it’s Laurel Sapphire. I know you’re probably still asleep, but I’m warning you right now, if this call woke you up, you better get your butt out of bed and come answer the phone. If not, your wake-up call will be much less pleasant than this one.”

  Then, “Call me back.”

  She hung up the phone and called the next number from her Rolodex: Johnston, Melanie (cell).

  Melanie would undoubtedly be teaching right then, but she’d happened to mention to Laurel that she always kept her cell phone on her in case there was some sort of emergency with baby Patricia.

  Melanie’s cell phone went to voicemail, too, and Laurel suspected that it wasn’t because Melanie didn’t have it on her. Caller ID was cramping Laurel’s style.

  She didn’t even bother leaving a message, since she knew no words would get through to Melanie, so long as Melanie’s husband, Cooper, was telling her not to talk to any of the Sapphires. Laurel had no doubt that this was the case. She thought back to all the times she’d cautioned Melanie against marrying that ass.

  Next, Laurel called Leinenkugel, Frank, the owner of Frank’s Body Shop, who was notorious for sweating more than most people knew was possible.

  No answer. She left a message.

  On to Angus, Georgina, Laurel’s fellow hairdresser and co-owner of their salon. Georgina always seemed to let her mouth wander until an uncomfortable topic was reached, at which point she began to hammer said topic home until the other party found a viable excuse to escape. Although Georgina was best known for bringing up politics and religion during a good shampoo, Laurel guessed Georgina might be just as useful during a dinner party.

  No answer.

  She must have already been at work, in which case she’d probably instructed Gavin, the receptionist, to say she wasn’t around.

  Laurel paused before looking up the last number, knowing he would be of some use, but wondering if he was worth the annoyance. No, he would have to come.

  She dialed the number for Knowles, Jack, the town’s resident poet, philosopher, and tree hugger. She tried to avoid speaking to him whenever possible, though it seemed like he was always protesting something wherever she went. He was a man about town, that was for sure.

  He didn’t answer either, but she decided to listen to his answering machine’s message, indulging in the bit of evidence for her personal case against him.

  “Salutations, my dear brother or sister under the Great Mother we call Planet Earth. I hope your travels along the winding and sometimes viciously cruel path toward your ultimate oneness with life have been treating you well. As it is, it seems that my own path has gently guided me away from my telephone, but if you leave a message, it would greatly increase our odds of connecting to each other if or when my path guides me back to my living room. Remember: do not give up hope, for when we do, we give up our essence.”

  Laurel felt physically ill after listening to what she considered a bunch of convoluted dribble. Bill usually referred to that sort of thing as mental masturbation, and Laurel couldn’t think of a more appropriate example than what she’d just heard.

  “Jack, it’s Laurel Sapphire. I have something of critical importance to”—she tried to think of something that might intrigue him—“universal oneness…that I need to discuss with you. Call me back.”

  She grabbed a Post-It off the table next to the Rolodex and jotted down the names she had just called before making directly for her front door.

  Flinging it open, she found herself facing the backs of half a dozen reporters, who were busy using her house as the backdrop for their coverage. Once one of the cameramen noticed her, it wasn’t long before a chain reaction led all of the news people to turn their focus to Laurel and the Post-It she waved in the air.

  “Excuse me, newspeople!” she called. “I think I have something you might be int
erested in!”

  They flocked to her, but it was Eugene who made it to her first.

  As he reached out to snatch the Post-It from her hand, she jerked it out of his reach and smacked his arm away.

  “Nuh-uh, Eugene,” she said triumphantly, delighted by having the upper hand. “You in the back.” She pointed at an awkward redheaded reporter whose face she recognized but name she could never remember. Around the Sapphire household, he was The Reporter Better Suited for Radio.

  He stepped forward and she asked his name.

  “Malcolm Goldman, News…uh, News 6,” he said.

  “Well, Malcolm, have I got a scoop for you!”

  She handed him the yellow piece of paper and began explaining. “This is the guest list for the upcoming conference to be held at my house at five-thirty this evening. We’ll be discussing the crisis, and I’m sure we’ll come up with some sort of solution. You should have no problem tracking down each of these people, and I’m most certain they will all be just as willing as I was to have a little chat with you regarding their thoughts on what should be done.” She smiled at Malcolm, then added, “especially Mr. Knowles. He’s quite the wordsmith.”

  When Laurel considered all the hot water Jack Knowles meaningless words were about to land him in, she couldn’t help but grin.

  She shut the door behind her, leaving Malcolm Goldman looking stunned and entirely unworthy of such a big break.

  She knew it wouldn’t be long before the media flushed out all her dinner party guests—she gave the cameramen twenty seconds before one of them was able to get a clear shot of the names on the Post-It and the scramble commenced—so she hurried to the kitchen and began the grocery list for that evening’s menu.

  CHAPTER THREE

  LIKE ALL NARCISSISTIC GOSSIPS, GEORGINA had a sixth sense for when someone was talking about her. So, in spite of her loud blabbing to Mrs. Willeford, who sat in the barber chair in front of her, Georgina knew the instant her name had been mentioned on the television behind her, even though the volume was muted.