Toil & Trouble Read online

  “I heard that you’re going to be hosting a haunted house here,” she says at last.

  “Uh, that’s right.” Please don’t kill me! the voice in his head squeaks manfully.

  “I’d like to speak to your manager about it.”

  “Um,” Howie says, “sure. Just a second. I’ll go grab him.”

  He leaves Annie Fabray staring disdainfully at the wizard raven. She huffs.

  You just say FUCK THE HATERS, little bird, Howie thinks as he heads up the stairs.

  +

  Arthur is trying to convince Kristy that an ice palace haunted house is an inherently flawed plan—surely ten year old boys don’t want a princess-inspired Halloween party?—when the door bursts open.

  In comes Howie, whose eyes are wide with the kind of fright that either means a) imminent doom is upon them, or b) he has run out of Poptarts.

  “Some lady wants to see you about the haunted house,” Howie reports. “Annie Fabray. Or as I like to call her: Lizzie Borden And Voldemort’s Love Child, Probably.”

  “Annie Fabray? Like, Angelica Fabray?” Kristy says.

  “Um,” Howie says, “I guess?”

  Kristy gasps. “She runs The Yarn Yarn!”

  Arthur and Howie stare at her, lost.

  “Did you just have a stroke?” Howie finally asks.

  “No, it’s, like, a pun! Yarn like knitting and yarn like stories—”

  “Weaksauce,” Howie declares.

  “Seriously weaksauce,” Arthur agrees.

  They fist bump.

  (Arthur has reconciled himself to the art of fist bumping.)

  “It’s an arts ‘n crafts blog!” Kristy explains. “She’s like the most popular blogger in town!”

  “Is that really saying much?” Arthur has to ask.

  “And really, she’s only the most popular non-anonymous blogger in town,” Howie says. “My mom’s romance novelist blog is a real people pleaser. ‘The Do’s and Don’ts of Describing Nipples’ got mad hits, yo.”

  “And that’s awesome, Howie,” Kristy says impatiently, “but this could be really big for us! It’s amazing that she even came in here, after ...”

  “After what?” Arthur asks. Dread stirs in his soul.

  “After ... the review she gave us,” Kristy says. She looks down at the floor and squeaks, “It was not great.”

  “We have reviews?” Arthur says.

  “We have one review,” Kristy says. Howie moves toward the computer on Arthur’s desk. “Don’t look it up, Howie! It will just make you cry.”

  “Cry?” Howie snorts, and does not heed Kristy’s warning.

  Arthur suspects he might regret that.

  While Howie is Googling away, Kristy keeps talking. “But you see, this is an amazing opportunity. Like, amazing. The entire local arts ‘n crafts scene follows her lead! If the accident at Holly’s makes her decide to switch stores, people are going to listen!”

  “You mean we could steal Holly’s customers?” Arthur is suddenly overcome with a feeling he can only describe as Macbethian.

  “If she likes you,” Kristy replies significantly.

  There’s an aghast little cry from the computer area.

  Arthur and Kristy turn to see Howie staring at the screen with a look of quiet agony. Arthur hasn’t seen him that troubled since they watched the finale of Battlestar Galactica.

  “I didn’t know it was possible for one sentence to hold so much cruelty,” Howie says, sounding a little choked up. “And I’ve read A Clockwork Orange. Multiple times!”

  “I told you,” Kristy says.

  “You are wise and I should always listen to you,” Howie concedes.

  Kristy beams at him. Then she turns her attention back to Arthur, and her expression becomes so serious that it’s a bit unsettling.

  “You can do this,” she says, placing a hand on each of Arthur’s shoulders. “Just be direct, and confident, and give her a reason to respect you. And be sure to mention that we are totally capable of having a haunted ice palace with adorable snowman ghosts.”

  “Kristy, no one’s going to want a haunted ice pala—”

  “Just trust me,” Kristy interrupts. Arthur’s not sure if he’s ever heard her sound so solemn before.

  “I trust you,” he says, perhaps not quite truthfully.

  “Good,” Kristy says. “We’ll leave you to her. Come on, Howie.”

  Howie stops for a moment and puts his hands on Arthur’s shoulders. It’s a bit more charged than when Kristy did it.

  “If she eviscerates you and devours your innards,” he says solemnly, “know that I will always love you, and that you should have just rolled with the sex-on-the-table thing while you still had innards. And outards.”

  “We eat there,” Arthur says staunchly.

  Howie wriggles his eyebrows. “You say that now.”

  “What does that even mean?” Arthur asks.

  Howie shrugs. “I don’t know, man. I’m still kinda freaked out from reencountering my nemesis.”

  “‘Nemesis’ might be a little strong a word—”

  “Good luck and Godspeed, my best beloved.” Howie kisses him, the sort of kiss that you give a sweetheart who’s headed off to war.

  That’s encouraging.

  When they break apart, Arthur says, “Maybe you could stay with m—”

  “Yeah, no, you got this. Peace out, boo.” Howie flees the room.

  Arthur sighs.

  +

  “Mrs. Fabray,” Arthur says five minutes later, sitting behind his desk and hoping to exude professionalism and quiet authority. “My name is Arthur Kraft. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  “I’m sure,” the formidable Annie Fabray says.

  Perhaps sitting at his desk had been a bad idea. He tries very hard not to glance at the blog entry reviewing the store, which Howie left up on the computer screen. The headline ‘ARTIE KRAFT’S ARTS ‘N CRAFTS? MORE LIKE ARTIE KRAFT’S PIT OF GOOEY INCOMPETENCE’ insists on shoving itself into his eyeballs.

  That’s just ... not helpful.

  “My associate tells me that you’d like to discuss the haunted house event we’ll be throwing at the end of the month,” Arthur says.

  “Yes. I’d like my son to attend, if we can come to the right arrangements beforehand. You see, it’s his tenth birthday, and I think this event may have the makings of a suitable birthday party.”

  “Absolutely,” Arthur says. “We’d love to—”

  “I’d like you to meet with Tyler later this week. At the meeting, he’ll explain to you his specific wishes for the event. I’d like you to follow his specifications exactly.”

  “Um,” Arthur says.

  “Unless that’s too challenging for you,” she adds, “and you plan to have the event be more of the same generic frippery and nonsense as the decorations downstairs.”

  “Oh no,” Arthur says after a moment. “Certainly not.”

  “Good,” she says crisply.

  They stare at one another.

  “It goes without saying,” Annie Fabray says then, graciously, “that I’ll mention the event on The Yarn Yarn.”

  Arthur has to admire her moxy. She doesn’t even explain what The Yarn Yarn is. For a brief and near-irresistable instant, he almost follows in Howie’s footsteps and asks, ‘Did you just have a stroke?’

  He fights the urge.

  Howie really is a dangerous influence.

  “I assure you,” Arthur says, “we are all too happy to meet whatever specifications your son provides.”

  Annie Fabray smiles. “I thought so.”

  +

  Arthur meets with Tyler Fabray a few days later. He’d expected a quick chat, but instead Annie Fabray marches her son upstairs, sits him down in the chair opposite Arthur’s desk, and orders, “Make sure not to leave until you’ve struck a satisfactory bargain.”

  “Okay, Mom,” Tyler says agreeably, like he’s used to striking satisfactory bargains with confused adults.

&nbs
p; After a moment, Arthur pushes a bowl of candy across the desk. He put it there this morning. Halloween candy has always struck Arthur as sort of exotic. His parents used to give out little boxes of raisins to trick-or-treaters.

  “Help yourself. It’s nice to meet you, Tyler. I’m Arthur.”

  “Blood,” Tyler replies, after helping himself to a giant fistful of candy.

  “Pardon?” says Arthur.

  “There should be blood. And guts. And monsters. And a chainsaw. Do you even have a chainsaw?”

  “Do you?” Arthur asks, flummoxed.

  “I’m ten,” Tyler says, rolling his eyes. “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-seven,” Arthur says.

  “When I’m twenty-seven,” Tyler says, “I’m gonna have a chainsaw.” He gives Arthur a look that plainly states that somewhere along the line, Arthur’s life went very wrong.

  Clearly his mother’s child, then.

  “You should also have some Taylor Swift music,” Tyler adds generously. “For the girls.”

  “All right,” Arthur says. That, at least, seems doable. “We have a staff member who’s quite the Taylor Swift expert, in fact.”

  He doesn’t know why he expected Tyler to be impressed by that.

  Tyler is not. “I don’t care. It’s not for me. It’s just for the girls.”

  “Of course,” Arthur says.

  “But it can’t be happy music though, that’s stupid. It has to be creepy.”

  “So only the creepiest Taylor Swift music,” Arthur says slowly.

  “And DJ Snake and Lil Jon!” Tyler says.

  “Who ... are those people?”

  “You haven’t heard ‘Turn Down For What’?”

  “That’s a song?” Arthur says faintly.

  “Yeah! It’s awesome! It’s all like, BEEP BA DEEP BA BEEP BOOP – BA BEEP BA BEEP BA BEEP!!!!” Tyler thrashes his head enthusiastically in time to ... whatever music he is poorly trying to replicate.

  (Or maybe it’s spot on. With pop music, who knows?)

  Arthur has no idea what to do with that information. “Is that really what kids listen to these days? Have you ever heard of Raffi?”

  “What?” says Tyler.

  “Never mind,” Arthur says sadly.

  “So you should have a guy who’s a chainsaw murderer, and he can run around the party and chainsaw people, and then you should also have a werewolf who bites everybody.”

  “Chainsaw murderer,” Arthur says. “Check. Werewolf. Check.”

  On his notepad, he writes down, Possibly a psychopath.

  “And zombies who just ate somebody’s brains and have brains all over their shirts!”

  “Great,” Arthur mutters.

  “And a sexy mummy!”

  Oh dear.

  “What’s a ... sexy mummy?” Arthur asks weakly.

  “What it sounds like. Not a real mummy, though. Just a girl dressed like a mummy. But, like, her bandages should just be like a swimsuit, instead of all over. You do have hot girls who work here, right?”

  “You’re awfully young to be objectifying women,” Arthur says.

  “What’s that?” Tyler frowns curiously.

  Well. Arthur hadn’t anticipated teaching this lesson today. “It’s treating women like they’re things for you to look at, instead of treating them like people just like you. Which they are.”

  “But they have vaginas,” Tyler protests, wrinkling his nose.

  “Not all of them,” Arthur says.

  “Huh?”

  “Well, the idea that there’s a strict gender binary is really a harmful fallacy more than—”

  Tyler looks totally lost. “What’s a phallus?”

  “Fallacy,” Arthur says, enunciating the last syllable with more fervor than enunciation has ever known before in history. “Fallacy. An untrue thing. And, um, never mind. Never mind. You should probably ask your parents about this later. The point is, this store is not in the habit of doing ‘sexy’ Halloween anything. If you’d like a regular mummy, we can do that.”

  Tyler stares at him for a long time.

  “I’ll tell my mom a shelf fell on me here,” he says then.

  “What?”

  “If you don’t get me the sexy mummy. I’ll tell her one of your shelves fell right on me. Like at the other store. She’ll sue you for sure. She’s sued before. Lots of times.”

  Arthur stares into Tyler’s eyes. Tyler stares gamely back.

  Arthur takes a deep breath. “So you’d like ... a mummy entitled to her own autonomy and dressed for summer weather—”

  “No, a sexy mummy.”

  “—a werewolf, and a chainsaw murderer. Lots of blood.”

  “And guts!”

  “And guts.”

  “And barf!”

  “Why barf?”

  “Because it’s cool,” Tyler says. “Can it be bloody barf?”

  Arthur cannot, cannot do this. His Macbethian instincts have died in the face of sheer horror. Desperately, he asks, “Tyler, what do you think of ... of singing snow queens and friendly snowmen? And—oh, I don’t know—an opulent ice palace?”

  Tyler’s face hardens. “No way. That’s for babies.”

  “All right, then,” Arthur says regretfully. “Blood barf it is.”

  “The party has to be scary enough that somebody pees their pants,” the little zealot continues. “Like, at least one person. But it would be better if it was five. And they’re not allowed to change their pants, either.” He starts giggling diabolically.

  “You aren’t afraid to dream big, are you?” Arthur observes.

  Tyler shakes his head, grinning. “I bet you’ll pee your pants.”

  “I may very well,” Arthur agrees bleakly.

  +

  “Has an agreement been reached?” Annie Fabray asks when she comes back for her son.

  “Yep,” Tyler says. He tries to grab all the remaining candy in his hands, fails, and then decides to just take the bowl instead.

  Arthur likes that bowl.