Free The Grand Finale by Janet Evanoich Page A

Countertops held robot innards, computer equipment, and sacks of rice, whole wheat, and corn. There were toys everywhere: decapitated dolls, fuzzy bears, motorized skateboards, boxes of puzzles. Jake sat at a massive oak desk, intently staring at a soggy particle of cereal speared on a long skewer. Berry moved behind him. “I feel like I’m visiting Gyro Gearloose.”
    “Most of this stuff belongs to my sister’s kids. I’m the toy fixer. The trouble is they breakthem a lot faster than I can fix them.” He looked around the room. “Some of this is mine. The kites and planes and wind socks are mine.”
    Berry looked sidewise at him. “You told me you didn’t have any toys.”
    “There are all kinds of toys. These are little toys. I didn’t think we were talking about little toys.”
    “So you have exploding cereal and a bunch of little toys. Are there any other surprises I should know about?”
    “I almost never have surprises. My life is an open book.”
    “Un-hunh.”
    “Go ahead, ask me anything,” Jake said.
    “Did you give me that exploding cereal on purpose?”
    Jake feigned outrage. “ Moi? ”
    Berry sat on a tricycle. “Okay, so go ahead and tell me. What’s this big plan you’ve got?”
    Jake leaned forward, resting his elbows on the desk. “We’re going to get married, buy a couple dogs, and have a whole bunch of kids. Maybe a hundred. Although I’m negotiable about the kids. One or two would be enough.”
    “I don’t want to get married. Been there, done that.”
    “Not ever?” Jake asked.
    “Maybe someday, but not for years and years.”
    “I don’t want to wait years and years. I’m pretty much ready to get married now. Today or tomorrow would be good.”
    The man was insane, Berry thought. Fun…but insane.
    “I have work to do. I don’t have all day to stand here and talk about marriage,” she told him. “I have to make pizzas. I have to wash the floor. I have to study for an art history test. And by the way, you’re a nutcase.”
    “I’m not a nutcase,” Jake said. “I’ve met a lot of women and I’ve waited a long time for the right one to come along. And you’re the right one.”
    “How can you be sure?” Berry asked. “How do you know?”
    “How long do we have to discuss this?”
    Berry looked at her watch. “Seven minutes.”
    “Not nearly long enough,” he said. “You’re going to have to go with the short version. I know, because I just know.”
     
    Mrs. Fitz spooned sauce on the pizza rounds laid out on the paddles, and Berry added green peppers, onions, and crumbled sausage. Six large pizzas, always the same, every day, for the lunch buffet at the Hill Top B&B.
    “How did you come to live at the Southside Hotel for Ladies?” Berry asked.
    “When my Edward died I couldn’t see living in our big house anymore, so I sold it and bought a racehorse.”
    Berry froze in mid-pizza making. “ What ?”
    “His name was King Barnaby Von Big Bucks. Didn’t seem like I could go wrong buying a horse named Von Big Bucks.” Mrs. Fitz sighed. “Just goes to show.”
    “Why on earth did you buy a horse?”
    “I took one of them senior citizen bus tours of big houses with gardens and such. And this one house was a horse farm and one thing led to another and I ended up selling my house and buying a horse.”
    “Must have been some horse.”
    “Yeah, he was a beauty.”
    “What happened?”
    “Turned out he was pretty, but he wasn’treal fast. I think that horse liked coming in last. I owned him with two other people and they wanted to send him to the glue factory, but I just couldn’t do that. So I bought them out with the rest of my house money and gave King Barnaby to some nice young couple that had a lot of land and wanted a horse as a pet.”
    “And then you were broke?”
    “Well, I didn’t have my nest egg anymore, but I had social security and some money from Edward’s pension. It was enough to pay for my apartment but not enough to buy one