When they heard sirens near the main stage, Rick said, “Maybe one of the fairgoers melted. Let’s go see if there’s some video.”
More sirens screamed. Now police cars, fire trucks, and an ambulance were heading toward the main stage. The music stopped abruptly.
“What happened?” Evelyn asked a woman running from the area, clutching her baby protectively.
“Some TV lady started staggering around and grabbing her throat,” the woman said. “Her face swelled up something awful. Even her eyes were swollen shut. She looked horrible. I didn’t want my Becky to see it.”
Yes! thought Evelyn triumphantly, but she made concerned noises.
Rick was running surprisingly fast for someone with a heavy video camera. He loped past Evelyn. Other fairgoers were running after him, eager to see the tragedy. Evelyn felt a sharp elbow in her ribs. A small boy darted between her legs and she fell on the dry grass.
By the time Evelyn brushed herself off, the excitement was almost over. She saw the paramedics loading a stretcher with a small figure strapped to it. The figure was absolutely still, although the ambulance left with lights flashing and sirens howling.
Evelyn composed her face into a sorrowful mask to hide her glee. She didn’t know if Tiffany was sick or dead, but she was definitely out of action. The fair was hers now. Evelyn would return to her rightful place on camera.
She went looking for Margaret. The satellite truck would be the logical choice. At least someone there could tell her where Margaret was. Evelyn was about to enter when the door opened slowly. Out stepped Tiffany. Her hated rival looked disgustingly healthy.
“How? What?” was all a stunned Evelyn could manage.
“Oh, Evelyn,” said Tiffany, her blue eyes tearing artistically. “Margaret started gasping and choking and staggering around like she was having some kind of fit. Nobody knew what happened to her, and by the time the ambulance got there, she wasn’t breathing at all. It was terrible. They don’t think she’s going to make it.”
“Margaret?” Evelyn said. “Are you sure?”
What had gone wrong? Margaret was a brunette. If rue plants made blondes sick, why was Tiffany well and Margaret dying? Damn Granny and her crazy country remedies.
Blonde Tiffany had eaten no more salad than anyone. But brunette Margaret had the severe symptoms. Evelyn had eaten the greens, too, and they’d had no effect on her. They certainly weren’t poisonous to one brunette-why another?
“I must see Margaret,” Evelyn said.
But Jason, her producer, stopped her. “I’m sorry, Evelyn,” he said. “You can’t do anything for Margaret. We need you to carry on with the fair coverage.”
But she couldn’t. Evelyn couldn’t concentrate. She missed her first cue for the live remote at the food booths. When she was finally on the air, she looked sweaty and disheveled. Several viewers called the station, asking if Evelyn was drunk. But it was shock, not booze, that slurred her speech.
Evelyn’s “Bubba bites,” the interviews with the boring fairgoers, were dropped to make room for the special report on the death of Emmy-award-winning producer Margaret Smithson.
Tiffany narrated that report. Everyone agreed that she did a splendid job, showing just the right amount of professional sympathy. Tiffany’s story about sharing her salad with the deceased was especially touching.
Evelyn drifted in a fog, waiting for the autopsy results. Maybe the pathologist would find something that would exonerate her. Maybe Margaret had been stung by a bee and gone into shock. Maybe Evelyn didn’t kill her mentor and best friend.
But when the report was released, Evelyn knew there would be no reprieve. Margaret had extensive swelling of the face, lips, and tongue. She’d suffocated. The details were too horrible to think about.
The pathologist said the severe symptoms were caused by an overdose of Coumadin. Margaret had been taking the blood thinner for her heart. The pathologist believed Margaret had mistakenly taken a double dose of Coumadin and died from it. Her death was an accident.
Only Evelyn knew it was no accident. Only Evelyn knew she’d killed her best friend. And she couldn’t figure out how.
At the station, Evelyn stumbled through her standups, missed deadlines, flubbed her lines. She felt numb. She didn’t care, not even when the station did not renew her contract. She knew Tiffany would take her anchor spot.
She didn’t know why Margaret died, and that made her crazy.
Margaret had only had one-third of a normal dose of Coumadin. It shouldn’t have killed her, even if she was already taking the blood thinner. The sun, celery, and rue might intensify the effect, but Margaret was a brunette. It should have been blonde Tiffany who swelled up from the sun exposure. It should have been Tiffany who died.
All Evelyn could do was ask herself, “What went wrong?”
She found out at Margaret’s memorial service. Margaret’s grieving family displayed photos of their daughter throughout her too-short life.
Evelyn saw the first-grade picture of a grinning gap-toothed Margaret. The little girl was blonde-and not just blonde, but so pale her hair was almost white. In high school, a teenage Margaret used too much eyebrow pencil and mascara to darken her pale brows and eyelashes.
By college, Margaret was a stunning platinum blonde. It was only after graduation, when she got her first job at a little station in Sedalia, Missouri, that Margaret had dark hair. She was a brunette in every photo after that.
“You were Margaret’s best friend,” said her mother, a plump gray-haired woman in black. She took both of Evelyn’s hands in hers.
“I didn’t know she was a blonde,” blurted Evelyn.
“Oh, yes,” she said. “Margaret had lovely hair. Natural platinum. But Margaret said she couldn’t take the ‘dumb blonde’ jokes at work. She said when she dyed her hair dark, her IQ went up 50 points.”
That’s where I went wrong, Evelyn thought.
Margaret was blonde. And Tiffany? She remembered why Dolly Parton said she wasn’t offended by dumb blonde jokes. “… I know I’m not dumb. I also know that I’m not blonde.”
Tiffany must have dyed her hair blonde. She recalled her nasty remarks about Mr. John being the city’s finest colorist… “so natural.” Of course. He certainly made Tiffany look natural. That’s why the poison salad didn’t bother her. She wasn’t a real blonde.
It was the ultimate blonde joke on a dumb brunette. It never occurred to Evelyn that Tiffany was a bottle blonde. She should have known. Everything else about her was fake. And in TV, mistakes start at the top.
Evelyn realized Margaret’s mother was still holding her hands and talking. “I told her, ‘Margaret, it is a sin and a shame to cover up that beautiful platinum hair.’ And you know what she said? ‘Mother, I would rather die than be a blonde.’
“Evelyn? Are you okay? Why, you’re white as a sheet, dear. Sit down here. It’s not healthy to be that white…”
Lah Tee Dah by ANGELA ZEMAN
HERMIONE LISTENBERGER CONTEMPLATED her name as she plucked a slow riff of perfect, clear notes from her six-string acoustical Gibson (the three-quarter size model to better fit her small frame).
The ringing tones mellowed the acrid air with a leisurely sweetness she hoped would entice the West 50th Street subway patrons to slow their mad pace. In a few moments, after the number 9 train resumed its screaming rush downtown, she’d segue into her next tune.
Just this morning she’d re-strung the guitar with all steel strings, although this type of guitar was really created for nylon. As the train sat gathering its strength, she took advantage of the relative quiet to listen hard to the steel’s sharper delineation of each note. As she had hoped, the sounds lingered longer, blending and reaching deeper into the tiled subway tunnel. The tunnel itself was her sound system.