Stork Raving Mad(2)

“You’re a trouper,” Michael said, with a smile that could have convinced me to invite the entire freshman class to move in.

I heard the crash of something breaking downstairs in the hall. I winced out of habit, even though I knew nearly everything of ours that the students could possibly have broken had long ago been locked up in the basement or the attic. By the time I got downstairs, the student would have picked up the broken object, whatever it was, and Rose Noire would probably have washed, waxed, and polished the patch of floor on which it had fallen.

“So who’s our newest houseguest?” I asked.

“Remember Ramon Soto?” he asked. “One of my grad students?”

“The one who’s been holding his play rehearsals in our library? Yes. I thought he was already living here.”

“He is. As is most of his cast. Makes it convenient. Anyway, the play’s part of his dissertation project. He’s doing it on Ignacio Mendoza, the Spanish playwright.”

Was Mendoza someone famous? The Spanish equivalent of Shakespeare, or Shaw, or at least Neil Simon? The name didn’t sound familiar, but one side effect of pregnancy, at least for me, was that my hormone-enriched brain temporarily jettisoned every single bit of information it didn’t think was useful in my present situation. At least I hoped it was temporary.

“Ignacio Mendoza?” I said aloud. “Is that a name I should recognize?”

“Not unless you’re a fan of obscure mid-twentieth-century Spanish playwrights,” Michael said. He finished his cookie and moved to sit on the foot of the bed. “For Ramon’s dissertation project, in addition to the critical study on Mendoza, he’s done a new translation of one of Mendoza’s plays and is directing it. And one thing he discovered while doing his research is that, to everyone’s amazement, Mendoza is still alive.”

“Why amazement?”

“Because most people thought Generalissimo Franco had Mendoza shot back in the fifties.” He picked up my right foot and began massaging it.

I closed my eyes, the better to enjoy the foot rub. Carrying around an extra fifty or more pounds does a number on your arches.

“Apparently he just went to ground in Catalonia and kept a low profile for the last sixty years,” Michael added.

“Sixty years?” I echoed. “How old is he, anyway?”

“Nearly ninety. Which is why Ramon thought it was pretty safe to invite him to come to the opening night of the play. He just assumed the old guy would be flattered and send polite regrets. No one ever expected Mendoza to accept—and at the last possible moment. We’ve managed to scrape up some money from the department to pay for his airfare, but even if we had enough to cover a hotel stay—”

“Every single hotel room in town is full of refugee students,” I said. “Plus every spare room in just about every private house. I’d have thought we were pretty full ourselves.”

“The students are going to rearrange themselves to free up a room,” Michael said.

Aha. That probably explained the earlier thumps and thuds, along with the dragging noises I could hear out in the hall. Michael switched to my left foot.

“We’re also going to swap a few of our drama students who aren’t in the play for a few more Spanish-speaking students,” he went on. “That way there will always be someone around to translate for Señor Mendoza. And the students will chauffeur him around and cook for him or take him out to eat—in fact, your grandfather’s promised to help as well. And if he’s in his eighties, how much trouble can Señor Mendoza be?”

I thought of pointing out that even though my grandfather was over ninety, he regularly stirred up quite a lot of trouble. Of course, trouble was a way of life for Dr. Montgomery Blake, world famous zoologist, gadfly environmentalist, and animal-welfare activist. Why was Grandfather offering to help entertain our guest, anyway? Did he consider the elderly playwright a kind of endangered species?

But I had to admit, Michael had done everything possible to make sure our potential houseguest wouldn’t cause me any work or stress.

“So it’s really all right if we host Señor Mendoza?” he asked.

“It’s fine. The more the merrier. Wait a minute—the play opens Friday and it’s already Wednesday. How soon is he arriving?”

Michael glanced at his watch.

“In about half an hour.”





Chapter 2


Actually, the beat-up sedan carrying our latest guest pulled up just twenty minutes later, almost precisely at the stroke of ten. A slender, dark-haired young man of medium height stepped out. Ramon Soto—I recognized him from seeing some of the rehearsals. A pretty, dark-haired young woman sprang out of the front passenger seat and ran around to the driver’s side so that she and Soto almost bumped heads in their haste to open the left rear door and assist a bent, gnarled figure out of the car and up the steps.