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  “Are you a Frank Zappa fan?” I asked, trying to figure out why her Crock-Pot creation smelled so weird.

  “Who’s that, dear?” she asked as she heaped a large lump of the odd-smelling goo onto a plate for me. “Is he a friend of yours?”

  “Um, no, he’s a singer who named his daughter Moon Unit,” I muttered, examining the bright orange pile on my plate. “I thought maybe that’s where you got the name.”

  “Oh, sweet baby Jesus, no,” she giggled. “It came to me in a vision from the aliens.”

  Rena’s aunt Phyllis, I mean, aunt Moon-Unit, is one of the kookiest people I know. She’s also one of the most generous and loving, but she was best in small doses.

  “Is everything all right at the shelter? I was listening to my police scanner and heard all about the break-in,” Aunt Moon-Unit said, handing me a pile of Ritz Crackers to scoop up the dip.

  “Yep,” I said, not a bit surprised that she owned a scanner. “It was some kids looking for drug money. One of my gals beat the hell out of them. Um, Aunt Phyl-Moon-Unit, is this dip supposed to be orange?”

  “Oh yes,” she informed me, filling four more plates with the offending dip. Was she expecting company? “I added orange rinds to zest up the Thousand Island dressing, Miracle Whip, and sweet pickle relish, but the color wasn’t quite to the trolls’ liking, so I added orange food coloring. Can you see them?” she asked.

  I examined the orange vomit and tried to find some rinds. “I don’t know.”

  “Oh, they’re not in there,” she told me solemnly. “They’re on the couch next to you.”

  “The orange rinds?” I asked, bewildered.

  “No, dear, the trolls. Can you see them?”

  I glanced to my left and right. After the day I’d had, I half expected to see trolls. “Um, no. Sorry.” This was going to be a long evening.

  “That’s all right, dear, sometimes I have to wear 3-D glasses to make them out. They’re very sneaky bastards. Quite violent too, kind of like our little friend Mariah Carey.”

  “You know Mariah Carey?”

  “Of course I do. She’s one of the most passionate Bigfoot followers I’ve ever met. I knew immediately that was her handiwork when I listened to the police scanner earlier.”

  “Really?” I asked, beginning to piece together the horror of the evening that lay ahead . . . locked in a room with Aunt Moon-Unit, Mariah Carey, and God knows who else, discussing Sasquatch.

  “Oh yes,” Aunt Moon-Unit said gleefully. “When I heard broken noses and damaged testicles, I knew Mariah had been involved.”

  I had absolutely nothing to add to that, so I stayed silent. I wanted to know who the other plates were for, but I knew the answer might be too alarming for me to handle.

  “Well, dear, we should get going, but I want to ask you a question first. I need you to concentrate and become one with the earth. Let all of the static that the government has planted in your brain flow gently out of your ears.”

  “Okay,” I said, feeling slightly nauseous. Rena was going to owe me so big time. I couldn’t decide who I disliked more . . . Rena or David Hasselhoff.

  “Can you feel it?” she asked.

  “Feel what?” I whispered, getting a bit freaked out.

  “The chi. The chi in my house is off. Listen,” she demanded.

  I listened . . . and heard nothing.

  “There it is,” she hissed, scaring the hell out of me. “Do you hear it?”

  “Um, no. What exactly does it sound like?” I needed to be shot for encouraging this, but I couldn’t stop myself.

  “It sounds like feral cats fornicating during an ice storm,” she whispered.

  Before I could ask her what that sounded like, she grabbed my arm and yanked me to the floor. Holy Lutheran Jesus, she was strong for an old lady.

  “Don’t move. The bad chi wants to embed itself within our neurons.”

  I eyed the front door. I could be out of here in six seconds . . . but what if she was right? I simply could not afford bad chi embedding itself in my neurons, whatever the fuck that meant. I knew I’d taken a trip to Crazytown when I stayed huddled on the ground with someone who’d renamed herself Aunt Moon-Unit. My life was deteriorating quickly.

  “It’s gone,” she said, hopping up as if nothing weird and disturbing had just happened.

  “Are you sure?” I asked, slowly standing up, looking around for some kind of evil green mist.

  “Absolutely,” she chirped, clapping her hands together and doing what appeared to be a hip-hop step. “It will be back, but I’ll be ready. I need to find the source and kill it.”

  “Ookay then.” I wanted out really bad. Bigfoot was starting to sound like the better end of the bargain. “Should we clean up the plates of orange shi-dip before we go?”

  “Oh no,” she laughed, grabbing her purse and a stuffed Bigfoot doll. “That’s for the trolls. The plates will be licked clean by the time I get home.”

  “Of course they will,” I muttered as I speedwalked out of her chi-infested house. From now on, I would sit in my car in the driveway and beep till she came out.

  Apparently the Sasquatch Society used to meet at the community center until they got kicked out for scaring the living daylights out of small children, neighborhood dogs, and senior citizens. Roaring and wearing full-face and body camouflage in public was against the rules. Who knew? So now they met at the public library. I followed Aunt Moon-Unit through the stacks to the meeting room with my head down. God forbid I ran into someone I knew . . .

  “Aunt Moon-Unit, can we sit in the back?” I asked, wanting to have a quick and unencumbered escape route.

  “Oh no, silly girl,” she said, dragging me toward the front row. “We’ll miss too much back there. Besides, the homosexual twins like the back row and I’m not real fond of them.”

  I froze. A gnarly tension gripped my insides and my head started pounding. “What did you just say?”

  “Oh my,” she giggled. “I don’t want to sound homophobic, because I’m not. Most Martians and hobbits are gay and lesbian and I love them, but those old rug-munching sisters are just mean. They give all nice respectable muff divers a bad reputation.”

  I turned around to flee, but the crowd of overexcited Bigfoot believers made it impossible. Trying to make myself tiny (which is difficult for someone who’s five foot ten with tons of wild blond hair), I followed Aunt Moon-Unit to the front. I sat down on the hard metal folding chair and slid as low as I could go. I will never make a bet with Rena again. Ever . . . but wait, I already had and it sucked large cowballs. My mind drifted to Mitch. Why in the hell did I make that bet? I’d take Mitch and his perfect ass over Cardboard Brett Favre any day of the week. Maybe I could see him secretly . . . no. I am never going to date a cop again. Ever. Why would he want to see me anyway? I’d told him I had multiple husbands and was in a punk rock–folk-thrash band. Plus, eating with Mrs. C and Edith for two weeks would kill me dead. No guy was worth that, no matter how bitable his lips were.

  I glanced around and tried to spot the old hags . . . nothing. Thank you, Jesus. Could there possibly be two sets of mean twin sister lesbians? I racked my brain for ways to escape without hurting Aunt Moon-Unit’s feelings or defaulting on the terms of the bet. My mind was blank . . . and then the meeting started. I had gone to hell.

  An eerie hush fell over the room as a fully camouflaged woman, roughly the size of a Sub-Zero fridge, shimmied toward the front of the room on her stomach. She was trailed by a short, skinny little dude, who if I’m not mistaken, was beatboxing with his mouth, alternating with humming the theme from American Idol. He walked in a low squat behind the crawling woman, reminiscent of a chimp . . . or a tiny caveman.

  “That’s Kim and Hugh Jensen Johnson,” Aunt Moon-Unit whispered excitedly. “They’re our leaders.”

  Oh. My. God.

  Kim Jensen Johnson reached the front of the room and leapt to her feet. An impressive move for a gal that size. Hugh Jensen Johnson jumped
up on the table behind her and channeled Mick Jagger . . . in a bad scary way. The crowd went nuts . . . Wait a minute, the crowd was nuts.

  “My people,” Kim yelled above the roar of Yeti fanatics. She then bent at the knees, lifted her hands like they were claws, and growled at the audience. All around me people lifted their own hand-claws and growled back, except for Hugh. He was balancing on his hands and grunting out a barely recognizable version of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

  “There have been sightings,” Kim shouted, “and one of our members has a new theory that gives me chills and makes me want to break-dance.”

  Which she did. Hugh, clearly not one to miss an opportunity, sang a warped version of the lyrics “I like big butts” while his wife sweated and grunted on the ground, performing moves that should never be seen in public. The crowd went ballistic.

  “This is so exciting,” Aunt Moon-Unit shrieked above the noise, as she growled and rocked out to Hugh’s attempt at music.

  Kim Jensen Johnson, sweating like a pig, stood and raised her hands above her head . . . The room got quiet; even Hugh put a cork in it. “I have news,” she said, looking to the heavens. “We are being considered to head up a team for the reality TV show Searching for Sasquatch.”

  “Never heard of it,” a grossly familiar voice yelled from the rear of the room.

  “Sounds like a pile of shit,” its evil twin chimed in.

  “It’s a new show, you mean old biddies. It’s not a pile of shit, and don’t you dare back-sass my honey pie,” Hugh yelled back, taking a short break from providing background music. Sensing his lapse in song, he immediately morphed from speech back into the theme from The Dukes of Hazzard.

  “Bless his heart,” Mrs. C said loudly. “He clearly donated his brain to science before he was done with it.”

  Edith, not to be outdone by her sister, shouted, “Hugh, guess you forgot to pay your brain bill this month, bless your heart.”

  “Nope,” Hugh told them, grinning from ear to ear. “I have a direct withdrawal from my bank account. Unlike you gals, and I use that term loosely, who are a few bearded ladies short of a freak show.”

  Hugh had just gone up in my estimation from weird boom box guy to superhero. The crowd of fictional-hairy-myth enthusiasts whooped their approval of Hugh’s comeback. The old ladies shouted insults at everyone. This might be a fun evening after all . . .

  “Now, now,” Kim bellowed, quieting the crowd. “Mrs. C and Edith, if you don’t have anything nice to say, then don’t say anything at all. Do you understand me?” She eyeballed them in a way that had me trembling. She was a tough mambajamba.

  “Yes,” they muttered, pissed.

  “Yeti believers.” Kim Jensen Johnson rocked back and forth like a preacher. “Our sister Boo would like to share some amazing evidence she has uncovered. Boo Carey,” Kim boomed, “come and testify!”

  No one stood and no one spoke. Was Boo here? Was she even a real person?

  A shuffle and some swearing erupted on the left side of the room and from out of the crowd came a bruised and bandaged Mariah Carey dragging a girl who looked alarmingly like her minus the blue hair. People smiled and patted both Mariah and Boo (I assumed) on the head as they passed.

  “She’s coming,” Mariah grunted in her manly-man voice. “She’s being a little shy.”

  Right on cue, Hugh had his out-of-tune way with the death march song. Kim rolled her eyes and whacked Hugh in the back of the head. He immediately changed his song to Queen’s “We Are the Champions.”

  “Come on up here, sweetie,” Kim said, reaching out for the very timid Boo. “And bring your sister with you. Everyone here is your friend. Right, my Bigfoot disciples?” The rabid followers clapped their approval and yelled bizarre yet encouraging comments to Boo. She quietly stood in front and pulled a worn and tattered novel from her purse. Mariah stayed close and gave her sister a quick hug.

  “I believe,” Boo whispered, not sounding even remotely like a linebacker, “that Bigfoot has lived in relative peace with humans all these centuries because he is a shapeshifter.”

  The crowd gasped and began muttering excitedly.

  “Do you have proof?” someone asked from the middle of the hubbub.

  “Yes, I do. This book I’m holding in my hand has a secret code written into it, proving without a doubt that Bigfoot is an immortal shapeshifter living among us.”

  “Makes sense,” said a partially bald woman sitting next to Aunt Moon-Unit.

  “Of course it does,” Aunt Moon-Unit agreed. “I myself was leaning toward the cyborg theory, but this one is so simple it’s brilliant.”

  I looked around and felt like the sane orderly in the loony bin. Were all these people buying this shapeshifter crap?

  Yes, they were.

  I swallowed hard, realizing I was going to be with these people for the next two months because of that fucktard David Hasselhoff. Giving up swearing was going to be a losing battle. Thank Jesus I hadn’t made a bet concerning that. Little snippets of conversations about naked shapeshifters, the diets of dragons, and the merits of mind-reading Pygmy trolls rolled over me. I felt like I was high on something. Mariah Carey waved frantically until she caught my attention. She gave me a thumbs-up and I gave her the finger. She thought that was hilarious and proceeded to call me a string of swear words even I wouldn’t use.

  Making my escape was easier than I expected. Aunt Moon-Unit was going to Taco Bell with Hugh and Kim Jensen Johnson. After they promised to get her home safely, I ran. Fast. I didn’t pass Go or collect my two hundred dollars. I ran for my life.

  Chapter 6

  Running for your life while looking over your shoulder for mean gay women and Sasquatch enthusiasts is a bad idea. A very bad idea. Thankfully I turned my head before I took out a stack of encyclopedias and a cute old guy with a walker. After apologizing and promising to slow my pace to a walk, I spotted the best man-butt I’d ever seen in my life. What was a man-butt like that doing in the public library on a Thursday at this time of night? And why couldn’t I have a man-butt like that for myself? I would take such good care of it . . . I would grab it and love it and talk to it and show it off. I wondered if the face matched the butt and the rest of the ridiculously gorgeous body that belonged to the butt. Damn, if he would just turn around . . . yessss. Oh shit, no, no, no, no. I know that man-butt—

  It was Mitch. The hot cop who made my girlie parts sing and could cause me to have to break bread with hateful rug-bumpers for two weeks. Damn it to hell, how did he look better than he had this afternoon? It wasn’t fair. Sexy man-butt or not, it didn’t erase the fact that jumping him in a public venue could make me lose Cardboard Brett Favre and have to dine with mean old hags. Besides, he was a cop and cops were untrustworthy, married Dallas Cowboys fans.

  Maybe he wouldn’t see me if I stood really still. That was stupid . . . Please, Lutheran God, let him walk by and not notice that I’m trapped between the two tables he’s headed toward. Please, please, please . . . damn.

  He stopped dead in his tracks about three feet from me. His eyes started at my hot pink toenails and girlie-sandaled feet, then slid slowly up my bare (thankfully shaved) legs. They paused at my strapless sundress-clad breasts for I’d say twelve seconds too long. From there his gaze traveled lazily to my neck, my lips, my eyes . . . I saw delight and something I couldn’t define flash in his beautiful icy blue eyes as recognition hit. A slow sexy grin spread over his face and I had to remind myself to breathe.

  “Hi, Goldilocks, I’ve been thinking about you,” he said, walking toward me.

  “That’s not my name,” I said, backing up into the table. “And you shouldn’t be thinking about me . . . because I have, um, some unresolved issues about some, uh, stuff and I have to go, you know, to work right now.” I slapped my hand over my mouth before I could dig a deeper stupid-hole.

  “Do I fluster you, Goldilocks?”

  “Of course not,” I laughed, beginning to like the Goldilocks thing. “
Why would you ask that?”

  “Because it’s nine thirty on a Thursday night,” he chuckled, pinning me with those damn eyes.

  “Oh, right.” I felt the heat crawl up my neck. “What are you doing here?” A change of subject was in order. And what in the hell was he doing here?

  “Checking out a book.” He stepped closer and held up some odd-looking purple police manual and a Stephen King novel.

  “You can read?” I asked, trying to be conversational . . . and failing.

  He threw his head back and laughed. My knees buckled . . . he was even hotter when he laughed. I just wished I had made a joke instead of a joke of myself.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that. I’m sure you can read. I would imagine you had to know how to read to become a cop and um . . . Okay, fine,” I huffed. “You fluster me.”

  “Feeling’s mutual, Goldilocks,” he said, moving closer. “What are you doing here?”

  “Bigfoot meeting,” I mumbled, glancing wildly around for an escape. I was forty-two seconds away from tackling him to the ground and shoving my tongue down his throat.

  “Oh,” he laughed, “you’re one of those.”

  “No, I’m not. I lost a bet.”

  “I see,” he said. Clearly not seeing at all.

  “I said that David Hasselhoff was a big star in France and he’s not, he’s a big star in Germa . . . oh my God, please forget I said that. Suffice it to say, I’m here against my will. I am not a Sasquatch devotee or a David Hasselhoff fan.”

  I tried to back away, but the damn table was bolted to the floor. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted danger . . . more danger than what stood in front of me invading my personal space. Crap. Mrs. C and Edith were headed my way.

  “Hide me,” I squeaked, pulling Mitch flush to my body. All I needed was for them to tell Mitch my boobies were impostors. The fact that it was untrue was irrelevant; having to explain would be mortifying.