"He was robbing his own house?"
Ed Hooper scrambled to his feet. "Who do you think you are anyway, Rambo?" He put his hand to his heart. "Scared me half to death. Jeez, don't you have anything better to do than run around the neighborhood in the middle of the night? Why aren't you home in bed like a normal person?"
Matt grabbed him. "What the hell were you doing climbing the ladder with a bag over your head?"
"It was my wife's idea. She took one of those magazine quizzes and only got two out of twenty points for sexual excitement. She figured it might be exciting if I pretended to be the flasher. She figured this would push her into the top ten percent."
Matt clapped his hand on Ed Hooper's shoulder. "Mr. Hooper, this is a family neighborhood. I don't think you should be playing games in your backyard. Keep It in the bedroom, okay?"
"I guess you're right," Ed Hooper said. "You need an extra grill for Saturday?"
"I feel a little silly," Matt said on the way home.
"I thought you handled that very nicely. You know, you're pretty conservative for a guy who has a tattoo and a motorcycle."
When they got back to the house a taxi was parked at the curb and the driver was unloading suitcases. Elsie and the boys stood on the sidewalk.
Jason was the first to see Lizabeth. "Mom!" he shouted. "Look at us. We're home!"
"Six hours in a taxi cab," Elsie said. "I feel like Humpty Dumpty when he fell off the wall. All the king's horses and all the king's men ain't never gonna get me back together again." She squinted at Lizabeth. "You two sure worked up a sweat. What are you doing out here?"
"Running," Lizabeth said. "Great cardiovascular exercise."
"It's two o'clock in the morning."
"No traffic this time of the night," Matt said.
Elsie grabbed her suitcase and headed for the house. "I just want to go to bed. I'm going to have a nice tall glass of cold milk and go to bed and sleep for a thousand years."
Lizabeth ran after her. "There's something I should explain to you about the kitchen."
"Tomorrow. I'm too tired to listen tonight." She hauled her suitcase through the front door and came to an abrupt halt when she saw the new refrigerator, gently defrosting in the living room. "What the devil?"
"It's only temporary," Lizabeth said. "We're remodeling."
Jason ran on ahead. "Oh man, look at this! Someone trashed the kitchen.".
Billy was right behind him. "Boy, I'm glad I didn't do this. We're talking Cinder City here."
"It was a meteor," Matt said. "It came right through the window. I was standing there, minding my own business, cooking bacon, and this meteor landed on the frying pan and set the bacon on fire."
Lizabeth hugged Billy and Jason. "I'm glad to see you, but why are you home so soon?"
Elsie snorted. "Turned out Paul wanted the boys down there because they were having this big picnic to kick off his candidacy for governor. Paul thought it would look good if he had a family image. You know, Mr. Mom sort of thing."
"It was supposed to be Saturday, and it would have been boring," Jason said. "Everything Dad does is boring."
"You were only there for one day!" Lizabeth poured a glass of juice for her son. "How could everything be so boring in just one day?"
Jason giggled. "Dad said it was the longest day of his life."
"You don't seem too upset by it."
"It was kinda fun," Billy said. "First of all, Jason got air-sick and threw up on Dad in the airport, and there were all these photographers who took their picture. Then when we got to the house, someone put a sweat sock in the toilet…"
"It wasn't me," Jason said. "I swear it wasn't me."
"Anyway, the toilet overflowed, and there was toilet water everywhere. Dad yelled at Aunt Elsie and said she was incompetent, and Aunt Elsie told Dad what she thought he should do with the sock when he got it out of the toilet. It was great, Mom. You should have been there."
"Anything else?"
"It sort of went downhill after that," Elsie said.
Jason drank his juice and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. "Billy and I were going to get up early and make Dad breakfast in bed, but Dad didn't have any good cereal. He didn't have Fruit Loops or Cap'n Crunch or anything."
Elsie had her lips pressed tight together, trying not to laugh. "So they made him an egg. In the microwave. Just put the raw egg in there and exploded it! Lord, what a mess. I've never seen anything like It."
"I didn't know it would explode," Jason said. "I swear I didn't know it would explode."
Lizabeth looked at her younger son and raised an eyebrow. "Did you get to go swimming?"
"Yeah, but they have all these rules. You can't swim here and you can't swim there. And you have to stand still while you're waiting in line. And you can't run. They don't let you take any toys into the water. Not even a ball. And they make you practice swimming the whole time. You never get to have any fun."
Billy grinned at his brother. "It was fun when you dumped Dad in the pool!"
"Oh yeah!" Jason said. "Mom, he did the most awesome belly flop!"
"He was swimming with you?" Lizabeth asked. Didn't sound like the Paul she knew.
"No," Billy said. "He came to see how we were doing, and he had on this white suit and blue shirt with a red tie, and Jason dumped him in the water. Man, was he mad! And there were all these photographers there who took their picture."
"It was an accident," Jason said. "I slipped getting out of the pool and grabbed Dad's pants leg."
Lizabeth smiled at Jason. "I'm afraid to ask about the tennis lesson."
'The tennis lesson wasn't so bad," Elsie said. "But you probably want to get some rest before you hear about dinner."
"I can't believe he sent you home after just one day."
Elsie headed for the stairs. "Paul said he could see things weren't going to work out like he planned."
"Well, I'm sorry your vacation was cut short, but it's nice to have you back," Lizabeth said.
"We would have been home sooner," Billy told her, "but we missed the plane because Dad smashed his thumb in the car door. He had to go to the emergency room and have a hole drilled in his thumbnail. Boy, can he cuss!"
"That’s when he called a cab," Jason said. "He said he didn't care what it cost, he was going to make sure we got back to Pennsylvania."
Nine
"This here's one heck of a barbecue," Elsie said to Lizabeth. "Must be a hundred people here." She rolled a hot dog over on the grill. "You spot the flasher yet?"
"No. This is harder than I thought. Half the men in the neighborhood fit his description." She wasn't so sure she wanted to identify him, anyway. He'd stopped flashing her, and he'd never really done any harm to anyone.
Matt ambled over and put his arm around Lizabeth. "Great barbecue." He took a hot dog from Elsie and stuffed it into a roll. "We've got seven different kinds of potato salad, six bowls of three-bean salad, four casseroles of baked beans, and something very strange with curly noodles that I'm afraid to eat. The desserts are even better. Brownies as far as the eye can see. Mrs. Kandemeyer made cupcakes, Joan Gaspitch made chocolate-chip cookies, and Eleanor Molnar brought a sheet cake that says 'Best Wishes to Lizabeth and Matt Hallahan.' "
Lizabeth winced. The dining room table was loaded with wedding presents. She felt like a fraud, and she knew she was a coward. "We need to tell these people we're not married."
"Not me," Matt said. "I'm not telling them. Besides, I like being married. I'm not too crazy about sleeping on the couch, but I like the rest of it. I don't have to eat breakfast by myself, and I get to play soccer with the kids after work, and you play Monopoly with me at night." He spread mustard on his hot dog and loaded it with relish.