Amy felt certain she was going puke. “Please tell me this isn’t happening.”
Chad stood, put his hand over his heart and began to sing in an off-key baritone about the moon and pizza pie and amore.
When he finished, Jeremy pulled out a chair for her to sit. Chad whipped the lid off a serving dish, exclaiming, “As the Italians say, mangiare mangiare, amore.”
“Pizza,” Jeremy said. Like she couldn’t see that for herself. “How do you say pizza in Italian?”
“I think it’s pizza,” Chad answered.
“I am not doing this,” Amy said.
“Just sit and we’ll have a nice meal,” Chad said, beginning to get nervous. The whole cafeteria watched - everyone painfully aware of a man pleading his case for the woman he loved.
Amy sat. But only because she didn’t want to cause a big scene in the middle of the cafeteria.
“You can go now, Jeremy. Thanks,” Amy said, giving him the I-will-deal-with-you-later look.
Jeremy fist-bumped Chad. “Good luck, dude.”
Amy smiled at their audience who now went back to stuffing their mouths, trying not to look like they weren’t engaged in group-stare.
Chad reached across the table and took her hand. In return, she grasped his pinky and bent it backwards. He squeaked.
“Listen to me you ignorant fuck,” Amy said harshly, “if you ever pull a stunt like this again I will personally castrate you. You will have one less ball than Mr. Bolster. I don’t want to have any sort of a relationship with you ever. Do you understand?”
Chad’s red face bobbed up and down. Amy got up and slammed her chair back under the table. She turned to leave and that was when she saw Jordan. She was standing in the middle of the cafeteria watching the scene with Chad. Confusion and hurt were etched across her face.
Amy grabbed Jordan’s hand and dragged her out of the cafeteria. She threw open the first door she saw, a linen supply closet, and stepped inside. She turned on the light and faced Jordan.
Amy said, “Take me to lunch. I have to get out of here.”
“That’s why I dropped by. To apologize for the fiasco last night. For threatening to beat up your mother. For the lesbian on stilts not being funny. I wanted to make it up to you by taking you out to lunch. I should’ve called first. I wasn’t stalking you. It probably looks like I was, but in reality I wasn’t.”
“Stop talking,” Amy said.
“Why?”
“So I can kiss you.”
Amy threw her arms around Jordan’s neck and kissed her. And when an orderly opened the door, goggled at them a full minute before grabbing a stack of linens and then shutting the door, neither woman noticed.
Nobel SurPrize
Back at The Original Dinerant, Jordan nibbled on a blue-corn tortilla chip. She had never seen anything so sensual, so intoxicating, so downright sexy as when Amy took a huge bite of her taco.
So far Jordan had refrained from asking anything further about that man in the hospital cafeteria. For one thing, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. On the other hand, it was going to bother her until she did. “So what was with that guy?” Jordan asked. She tried to make her voice sound light and carefree, however it came out sounding more like Alvin Chipmunk, “Somebody escaped from the psych ward?”
Amy reacted like Jordan had thrown a bucket of ice on her. “What guy? Oh, that guy. He… he… he… We went out for drinks one night. He can’t take no for an answer,” Amy said and shoved a blue chip in her mouth, signaling the end of the conversation.
Jordan dropped the subject. “How’s your taco?”
Amy froze with her taco halfway to her mouth. “Uh oh.”
Jordan froze with her tea glass halfway to her mouth. “Uh oh what?”
“Petronella is in the building,” Amy whispered. “And she’s coming this way.”
Jordan’s first instinct was to hide. It was too late to crawl under the table, so she did the next best thing. She draped her napkin over her head.
Two seconds later, she heard an icy voice say, “Hello, Jordan.”
“Petronella,” Jordan said back. Sighing, she took the napkin off her head.
Petronella looked down her nose at Amy and said, “I am sorry, but I do not know your name.”
“We met once,” Amy stammered. “Here, in fact. I mean in this restaurant. Not at this table. You were leaving. You probably don’t remember me.”
Recognition flashed across Petronella’s face. “Oh yes, the girl with toilet paper stuck to her shoe.”
“Yep. That was me.” Amy chuckled nervously. “I don’t have toilet paper on my shoe today.”
Petronella leaned to see. “Indeed you do not. Good for you.” Petronella’s skinny neck swiveled back to Jordan. “I saw you at my poetry reading and…”
Jordan cut her off, “We came to see the show. You just happened to be there.”
“Be that as it may. You observed what happened, am I correct?”
“Yes, I saw,” Jordan said. “It was quite colorful.”
Petronella ignored the obvious pun. “Did you see the reviews?” she inquired.
“If you mean those little ezine-online thingies, not really,” Jordan said.
“And the City Pages and the Arts and Entertainment section,” Petronella added.
“Yeah, whatever,” Jordan said.
Petronella pulled out a chair and sat. “I need your help.”
“First, what could you possibly want from me?” Jordan asked. “And secondly, why should I do anything for you?”
Petronella ignored the questions. Which was not unusual. If she didn’t want to know about something, she ignored its existence. Just like she was ignoring Amy right at the moment. Petronella scooted her chair several inches closer to Jordan. “I need your little inventor friend… what is her name, Einstein?”
“Edison,” Jordan corrected.
“Yes, of course. I need Edison to build me a machine.”
“What kind of machine?” Jordan asked. She wondered if it was too much to hope for Petronella wanting a time machine to blast her back into the past. Or the future. Or anywhere but here.
“A machine like the one that attacked me last night.”
Jordan paled. “Why?” She squirmed in her chair. Did Petronella know she was responsible for the paint-spraying incident? Was she playing some type of game, hoping to trap Jordan into admitting her culpability? Jordan looked to Amy for help. But Amy was nervously stuffing blue-corn tortilla chips in her mouth.
Petronella continued, “I tried to find the machine after the show. I was going to gather up the parts and see if Einstein could put them back together. But, unfortunately, the terrorists made off with it before I could.”
“Terrorists?” Amy said through a mouth full of blue goo.
“Yes,” Petronella said. She had the gleam of a zealot in her eyes.
“Terrorists for what?” Jordan said.
“There are certain people, Jordan, who wish to see me harmed.”
“Really?” Jordan said, trying hard to appear appalled at such a thing. “Who would want that?” Besides me, she added inside her own head.
“People who dislike poetry,” Petronella said like it was obvious. “Republican people, no doubt. But their little plan backfired.”
“It did?” Amy chirped up.
Petronella did not look at her. “The audience loved the paint splattering. They thought it was part of the show. My reviews were fantastic. There is talk of short-listing me for the Nobel.”
Amy choked on a chip. Petronella glared at her. Amy smiled weakly and thumped herself on the chest. “Sorry. Wrong pipe.”
Jordan smirked.
“So,” Petronella continued, “I would like your little friend to build me another paint machine. I will go on tour with it. I will call it my Rainbow Tour.”