EXCERPT

Strangle a Loaf of Italian Bread
by Denise Dietz

One
Wednesday

Members of the jury had been chosen from a box of crayons, with colors ranging from Burnt Sienna to Laser Lemon to Fuzzy Wuzzy Brown. The jury’s foreman, a woman of indeterminable age, wore a somber pantsuit, enhanced by tummy-liposuction, and a somber, surgically-enhanced face. Her skin tone was Crayola Peach (formerly known as Flesh). The diamond on her third finger was as big as Poland, and she looked as if she was about to hype the benefits of a miraculous arthritis capsule whose side effects might be nausea, diarrhea, insomnia, memory loss and erectile dysfunction.
     Instead she said, “We the jury find the defendant—”she paused for dramatic effect “—not guilty.”
     With a triumphant smirk, the racist defendant turned and shook his black lawyer’s hand.
Ellie Bernstein turned from the TV to Jackie Robinson. “I’ll bet you a can of albacore tuna that the racist defendant will be shot on the courthouse steps,” she said, “or killed in his sleazy apartment, gunned down by the victim’s husband, father, brother or fiancé.”
     Her regal black Persian continued tongue-bathing his ears with one padded paw, as if he couldn’t believe his human was dumb enough to think he’d take that bet, so Ellie smiled at her cat and rested her eyes.
     When she opened them again, the Law & Order rerun was over and the peachy jury foreman was touting the benefits of a miraculous arthritis capsule with an X in its name. Only this time she was a soccer mom.
     Ellie sat at the kitchen table. Her left hand cradled the side of her face. Her left elbow anchored a free weekly paper, The Big Mouth Shopper, whose pages were chock-a-block with discount coupons and classified ads. In her right hand she held a pair of scissors like a weapon, the twin blades positioned downward, their sharp points embedded in a prominent display ad for used pickup trucks. If her hair had been blonde rather than red and she had lost eighty-five rather than fifty-five pounds, she could have doubled for Grace Kelly in Dial M for Murder.
     Still half asleep—or, technically, half a doze—she stared at the scissors. Had Eleanor Bernstein, diet club leader and trivia maven, subconsciously wanted to stab the jury foreman/soccer mom?
     Oh, God, it was tempting. If incapacitated, the aging actress would stop popping up on a different TV show every week and driving Ellie nuts with the itchy notion that she’d seen the jury foreman/victim/bereaved relative/judge/perp/soccer mom before.
     With an unrepentant smile, Ellie placed the scissors on the table, picked up the remote control, and aimed it at the small TV that perched atop an old, pre-divorce, faux-cedar microwave cart. She usually ate her supper while watching Jeopardy or M*A*S*H reruns or Sunday/Monday night football, but on this cloudy Wednesday afternoon, alone in her kitchen, she had opted to have detectives Briscoe and Logan keep her company while she clipped coupons.
     Ordinarily, during her down-time she’d be reading a book, preferably a complex mystery novel. However, she had to admit that she derived pleasure from clipping coupons. Not that she ever used them; three or four months later she’d clean out her purse and trash the outdated vouchers. But clipping coupons gave her a weird sense of purpose.
     Or maybe it was simply osmosis. Her mother had always been, and still was, a copious coupon clipper. Mom even had a “coupon organizer” that she carried around in her seemingly bottomless handbag. Often, she’d spend a hundred dollars to save five.
     Ellie’s brother was even worse. At thirty-eight, three years younger than Ellie, Tab “temporarily lived at home.” He had tanked at three commercial ventures and nobody in their right mind would lend him the money to invest in a fourth flop. Tab did, however, have access to Mom’s credit cards, and if Ellie had a dollar for every time he’d held up a new shirt (sweater, shoes, CD, Harley accessory) and said, “I couldn’t pass this up, it was such a bargain at 20% off,” she could retire from the diet club business. Not that she wanted to retire. And even if she did want to retire and finish writing the mystery novel that lurked inside her head, she had an inheritance from her grandmother Eleanor—for whom she’d been named—that would keep a dozen Jackie Robinsons in albacore tuna for a long, long time. Tab, who had charmingly and smarmingly sponged off Grandma Eleanor for years, had not been “bequeathed” one red cent. Quid pro quo.
     On the last classified ads page Ellie struck gold: a fifty-cents-off coupon for a giant bottle of Hellmann’s Light Mayonnaise. Surrounding the coupon, like Indians circling a wagon, were a chimney sweep ad, a “free Corgi-Shepherd puppies to good home” ad, a coupon for a free appetizer at Uncle Vinnie’s Gourmet Italian Restaurant—with the purchase of two entrées—and a personal ad that extolled “romantic candlelight dinners and long walks along a moonlit beach.”
     Beaches in Colorado Springs were a tad difficult to find, Ellie thought with a grin. Long walks along a moonlit mountain trail or along a moonlit, boulder-strewn path would be more apropos. She, herself, liked early morning jogs along an aspen-strewn footpath. She loved to watch tie-dye colors sluice the horizon. In the spring and summer, when her heart was high, Disneyesque birds chirruped “Whistle While You Work,” or even better, the upbeat opening to the rondo of Beethoven’s “Violin Concerto in D, Opus 61.” In the fall, gaudy leaves fragmented like the inside of a kaleidoscope. In the winter, shrubs sported white tonsures while tree branches boogied at a skeletal extravaganza, a Bare Branch Ball aptly chaperoned by Mother Nature and her Greek chum, Boreas.
     Often, while taking her crack-of-dawn treks, Ellie pictured a dog by her side. Lassie or Rin-Tin-Tin. Or, even better, an Irish setter, color coordinated to match her hair. “Accessorize,” she could hear her mother say. “A lady should always accessorize. It’s even more critical when you’re fat.”
     Someday, Ellie thought, she’d stop wincing over matriarchal memories. Yeah, and someday pigs would fly.
     “Don’t worry,” she told Jackie Robinson, just in case he could read her mind. “Even if I were crazy enough to adopt a dog as an accessory, it would be smaller and probably thinner than you. At any rate—” she glanced at her watch “—we’ll soon have a chance to try one on for size. A dog, I mean. A guest. A short-term guest, so don’t get your tail in a twist.”
     Jackie Robinson responded with a pointy-toothed yawn, not unlike a miniature, land-locked, furry feline shark, so Ellie refocused on The Big Mouth Shopper.
     Above the “Chimneys R Us” ad was an open-auditions announcement for the John Denver Community Theatre’s production of Hello Dolly.
     Ellie thought about trying out—briefly.
     Only one thing would impede her audition.
     Actually, two things.
     She couldn’t sing and she couldn’t dance.

 

 

 


©2009 by Denise Dietz
Excerpt from
Strangle a Loaf of Italian Bread
Five Star Publishing
Hardcover
ISBN: 978-1594147609

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© 2009 Eclectic InterNetWorks
& Denise Dietz