Tricky Twenty-Two(44)
“I have to concentrate on this cake,” I said. “I don’t want to mess up.”
“Last time you tried to cook something you set your kitchen on fire,” Grandma said.
“Baking is better,” I said. “It doesn’t involve oil that suddenly bursts into flames.”
I measured everything out and precisely followed the directions. I looked at the two cake pans.
“It says I’m supposed to dust them with flour,” I said to Grandma.
“Yeah, but first you got to grease them up,” Grandma said.
When I was done I had chocolate cake batter and flour all over the front of my T-shirt.
“Guess this is why pastry chefs wear those white jackets,” I said.
“I always wanted one of them jackets,” Grandma said. “We should get ourselves a couple. I could get them online.”
“No more Internet,” my mother said to my grandmother. “You’re addicted. You’re on all the time.”
“I’ve got my sites,” Grandma said. “I gotta keep up. I’m famous. I’ve got a blog.”
I slid my cake pans into the oven and set the timer. “What kind of sites do you go on?”
“All the usual. I tweet and I google and I got a Facebook page. And I go on some dating sites, only they’re the kind you don’t date in person. You just date online. Some of those I stopped using because the men got weird.”
Thwack! My mother sliced a carrot.
Grandma rolled her eyes. “She don’t approve of me having fun,” Grandma said.
Thwack! Another chunk off the carrot.
A text message buzzed on my phone. It was Lula wondering where I was hiding. I told her I was at my parents’ house, and she texted back that she’d be there in a couple minutes.
“What kind of frosting are you putting on your cake?” Grandma asked.
“Chocolate.”
“That’s the best kind,” Grandma said. “You wash out your bowl, and I’ll set the butter on the counter to soften.”
I just finished cleaning my work area when Lula showed up.
“Howdy, Mrs. P. and Granny,” Lula said. “Hope you don’t mind me stopping by like this, but I had to bring a package to Stephanie. Connie said it could wait until tomorrow, but I gotta know what’s in it.”
It was a large padded envelope with no return address. It was postmarked Des Moines.
Oh boy.
“I bet it’s something good,” Lula said. “The excellent mechanical device we got came from Des Moines.”
“Maybe we should wait until after dinner,” I said.
“No way,” Grandma said. “I want to see what you got.”
I opened the envelope and pulled out a pair of skimpy black lace panties.
“They look like they got something missing from them,” Grandma said.
“They’re made that way,” Lula said. “They’re crotchless. I bet he got these at Frederick’s of Hollywood.” Lula looked in the bag and found a note. “It says here that he wants to rip these off Stephanie with his teeth.”
My mother took a bottle of whiskey from the cupboard above the sink and poured herself two fingers, straight up.
“Why me?” my mother asked, tossing the whiskey back like a pro.
“There’s a name on this card,” Lula said. “It’s the same as last time. Scooter Stud Muffin.”
“That’s a coincidence,” Grandma said. “I used to friend someone who called himself Scooter Stud Muffin. I haven’t heard from him in a while on account of I blocked him from my account. He was one of the ones that was getting weird.”
“You mean like Facebook friend?” Lula asked.
“Yeah, only it wasn’t Facebook,” Grandma said. “It was a romance site.”
Lula shook her finger at Grandma. “Granny, you’ve been catfishing!”
I looked over at Lula. “What’s catfishing?”
“It’s when you go on a dating website and make up your profile,” Lula said. “Like Granny could be telling men she’s twenty-three years old and a NFL cheerleader. Problem is when it gets serious and they want to meet you in person you gotta keep making excuses.”
“Exactly,” Grandma said. “I’m real hot stuff online.”
“That’s awful,” my mother said.
“Everybody does it,” Grandma said. “It’s not like there’s a lot of good stuff to watch on television these days. You got to do something to make the time go. You heard about fantasy football? This here’s fantasy dating.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Let’s see if I can guess. You told these men you were me?”