"Cheating on your wife isn't a big deal?"
Ouch, major point deduction there. "No, no, of course it's a big deal, but my taping it wasn't."
"It was a big deal if you got beat up because of it. What if the guy you were videotaping had chased after you with a shotgun? What then?"
"Believe me, if I'd thought there was any chance of me being chased by a lunatic with a shotgun, or any other large firearm, or even a chainsaw, I wouldn't have done it."
"Don't make jokes," said Helen.
"I wasn't making a joke."
"The chainsaw part was supposed to be a joke. Don't do that. This is serious."
"I'm sleeping on the couch tonight, aren't I?"
Helen sighed. "Andrew, you know I'm trying to be supportive of you while you figure out what you want to do with your life. If you want to form a rock band, or become an actor, or aHollywood stunt man, or a cartoonist, or an archeologist, or a professional baseball player, or any of the other things you've dumped after two weeks, I'm standing by you. But I don't want you getting involved in stuff like taking illegal videos of people cheating on their spouses! I just don't!"
"Got it.I'm sorry." I looked at the floor and felt suitably ashamed. If I'd gotten inside thetreehouse earlier, the guys probably wouldn't have seen me, and none of this would have happened. This was all that stupid babysitter's fault for canceling on me. The next time we hiredher the little brat was going to find her unlimited access to Popsicles cut off.
"Good. And now that we've put that behind us, let me make you all better."
Chapter 2
ABOUT A week later, Wednesday night, I was sitting in The Blizzard Room with Roger. We sat in the back corner of the coffee shop, discussing such weighty topics as why we bothered to keep coming to the Blizzard Room.
"The coffee isn't all that great," I said, using my fingers to mark the number of negative points being made. "The service is slow and surly. There's a disturbing non-coffee smell in the air. There's not a table in the entire place that doesn't rock when you touch it." I touched the table, causing it to rock. "Why do we come here instead of someplace masculine, like a bar?"
"Because we're both deeply lame human beings."Roger took a sip of his double mocha latte. I've known him since seventh grade, when we regularly sat next to each other in detention. In the years since then we'd alternated between me getting him in trouble and him getting me in trouble. We even roomed together in college, where he majored in psychology and I at various times majored in theatre, art history, creative writing, popular culture, and (on a dare) women's studies.
While I'm tall and of average build, Roger is short and slightly pudgy.His hair startedsayingadios , sucker!around the time he turned twenty-two, and his nose takes up much more than its share of facial surface area. Despite that, he's never had any problems attracting women, not with those sapphire blue, soulful, "awwwww,he'sso adorable" eyes. I've always been jealous of his eyes. My eyes are kind of a dingy brownish color. It's really not fair.
In fact, it looked like Roger's eyes were getting him attention once again. A gorgeous blonde was doing a terrible job pretending that she wasn't staring at us. Roger noticed this and waved to her. She smiled, picked up her coffee, and walked over to our table.
"Mind if I join you?" she asked.
"Not at all," said Roger.
As the woman sat down, Roger stuck out his hand. "RogerTanglen . This is my friend Andrew Mayhem. He's extremely married."
I shot him a "shut the hell up" look, even though I'm far too married to even consider trying anything. It still would have been nice to see if she'd hit on me, even if I couldn't accept her advances. I hope that doesn't sound too pathetic.
"Pleased to meet you, Roger and Andrew.I'm Jennifer Ashcraft. Mind if I smoke?"
"Of course not.Here, I'll join you," offered Roger, whipping out a pack of cigarettes and offering her one. She took it and let him light it for her with his very cool koala bear lighter. (It's a lighter in the shape of a koala bear, not a lighter used for igniting koala bears.Just wanted to make that clear.)
Jennifer looked to be in her early thirties, with long wavy hair and a face that neither had nor required any makeup. She wore jeans and a black blouse thatfitvery tightly and seemed designed to send the message "Hey, everyone, we've got nudity under here!"
"You two look like nice, strong men," she said, glancing around to see if anyone was listening. "Would you say you consider yourselves open to new experiences?"
"Yes," said Roger, too quickly.
She stared me right in the eye. "And you?"
I made a play of scratching my forehead so that my wedding ring was blatantly visible, in case she'd missed Roger's "extremely married" comment."Uh, yeah, sometimes."
"Good." She opened her pocketbook and removed an envelope. "Inside this envelope is five hundred dollars. What I'm going to ask is very unusual, and you may not want to do it. If you decide not to accept, the five hundred dollars is for you to forget all about me.Deal?"
"Sounds great," I said. "I'll just pretend you were my algebra lessons in high school."
Roger glared at me as if my sparkling wit might scare her off. "What do you want us to do?"
She leaned forward confidentially. "I want you to dig up my husband's grave."
Roger and I simultaneously leaned forward. "I beg your pardon?" I asked.
"My husband was buried last night, and I want you to dig up the coffin."
It was clear from Roger's expression that he considered this task quite a bit less appealing than wild kinky sex. "You're kidding, right?"
She shook her head. "I'm completely serious."
"Is this the kind of thing you usually ask people in coffee shops?" I inquired. "Are you sure you didn't walk in here by mistake thinking it was Maude andVinny's DiscountGraverobbing Emporium?"
"I told you it was unusual."
"And you were damn right."
"Is this a no?"
I hesitated. "It's kind of a no, but it's the sort of no where I acknowledge that you haven't discussed payment yet. I seem to have left my exhumation price list at home."
"Twenty thousand dollars."
Roger and I glanced at each other. That was incredible money for what basically amounted to an evening of illegal manual labor. It would certainly buy Helen a new video camera and pay off the car damages...
No, no, what was I thinking? This wasgraverobbing ! This was ghoulish behavior! This was sick, sick, sick! This could put me in jail, in an asylum, or on a sleazy daytime talk show. The best thing—no,theonly thing—to do was tell Jennifer we were flattered she'd thought of us to fulfill her disinterment needs, but that we had to pass.
"Twenty thousand cash?"I asked.
"Of course."
"Answer this important question: Do you want your husband dug up for some sort of unholy ritual?Because I don't do unholy rituals."
Jennifer smiled. "Don't worry, there's no witchcraft involved."
"And I don't do college-style pranks, either. If you want him dug up to leave in the passenger seat of your mother-in-law's car, find somebody else."
"I don't know, that might be kind of funny," said Roger."If I had a mother-in-law."
"Shut up, Roger."
"It's nothing like that," said Jennifer. "The body will never leave the coffin."
"Why, then?If you don't mind my saying so, you don't look all that upset for somebody whose husband just passed away."
"You're very perceptive."