I poured myself another glass of wine.
'Okay,' Lula shouted from the top of the stairs, 'don't anybody look. Everybody close their eyes until we get into position.'
'I'm not closing my eyes,' my father said. 'The Italian Stallion here will eat my cookies.'
The drummer beat out a couple heart-thumping bars, the bass and keyboard came on at a deafening level, and the dining room chandelier jiggled and swayed on its chain. Plates danced across the dining room table. A half-eaten cookie fell out of my fathers mouth. And Bob tipped his head back and howled.
My mother ran in from the kitchen with the bag, but it was too late. Lula and Grandma and Sally were onstage in front of us. Grandma and Lula were wearing black leather hot pants and ice-cream-cone bras. Grandma looked like a soup chicken dressed up like Madonna. She was all slack skin and knobby knees and slightly bowed legs. Her blond wig was slightly askew, and her ice-cream-cone bra hung low, not from the weight of her breasts but from breast location. Gravity hadn't been kind to Grandma. Lula's body spilled out of her outfit. The hot pants were reduced to black leather camel-toes in front and what looked like a leather thong in the rear. And the ice-cream-cone bra precariously perched at the end of Lula's basketball breasts. They were in big platform heels and they had spiked leather dog collars around their necks. Sally was in a dog collar, black leather thong with a silver zipper inexplicably running the length of his package, and over-the-knee swashbuckling black leather high-heeled boots with huge platform soles.
My mother made the sign of the cross and staggered into a dining room chair. Morelli had his teeth sunk hard into his bottom lip to keep from laughing out loud. My fathers face was stroke red. And Bob ran upstairs.
Lula and Grandma went into their dance routine and Morelli broke out in a sweat from the effort of maintaining composure. Grandma wobbled into an amp, snagged her heel on the cord, and fell over into the drum set, taking the bass player down with her. She was on her back, under cymbals and the bass player, with only her platform shoes showing. She looked like the Wicked Witch of the East when Dorothy's house fell on her. We all jumped up and rushed to help Grandma, except for my father, who stayed like stone in his seat, his face still red.
We got Grandma up on her feet and fixed her wig and adjusted her breasts.
'I'm okay,' Grandma said. 'I just caught my heel on the wire and unplugged the thingy.'
Grandma bent to plug the amp back in and farted in the black leather hot pants.
'Oops,' Grandma said. 'Someone step on a duck?' She farted again. 'Broccoli in the salad,' she said. 'Boy, I feel a lot better now.'
I looked over at Morelli and saw that he had a cookie in his hand. 'Is that my fathers cookie? You're in big trouble.'
'He's beyond noticing,' Morelli said. 'I've seen that look on people passing by horrific car crashes. Trust me, he's lost count of the cookies.'
'Maybe you should turn the amp back a little,' I said to Sally. 'I think I heard glasses breaking in the kitchen.'
My mother had her fingers curled tight into the front of my T-shirt. 'You have to stop her,' she said. 'I'm begging you.'
'Me? Why me?'
'She'll listen to you.'
'If this works out I think I'll try to get a gig with the Stones,' Grandma said. 'I'd fit right in with them. They could use a chick in the band. I wouldn't mind going on one of them tours. And I can do that walk like Jagger. Look at me walk.'
We all watched Grandma strut around like Jagger.
'She's surprisingly good,' Morelli said.
My mother's eyes cut to the kitchen door, and I knew she was thinking about the booze in the cabinet by the sink.
'What do you think of this outfit?' Lula asked me. 'Do you think it's too small? They didn't have my size.'
'It looks painful,' I told her.
'Yeah, I think I'm starting to get a hemorrhoid.'
'Maybe tomorrow we can go out together and look for new costumes,' I said. 'It would be fun to go shopping together.'
'That's a deal,' Lula said. 'We could have lunch and everything.'
'You name it,' my mother said to me. 'What do you want? Pineapple upside-down cake? Chocolate cream pie? I'll make any dessert you want if you can guarantee me that your grandmother won't wear that leather outfit.'
Stephanie Plum 12 - Twelve Sharp
Twenty
A low cloud cover had rolled in, obscuring moon and stars. Morelli and I walked Bob in the dark, down sidewalks I knew inch by inch from my childhood. I'd rollerskated on them, drawn chalk pictures on them, biked on them, walked to school on them, spied on boys and skinned my knees on these sidewalks. I knew the people who lived here. I knew their dogs, their secret