All the pen chests were piled on a long table that took up an entire wall of
the small room. Laurel stepped up to the table and smirked at Dennison.
“I just can’t believe you were so stupid as to sell all the pen boxes,”
Laurel announced as she opened the first pen chest. It was full of Montblanc pens,
so she closed it again, lifted it, and set it on the floor at her feet.
“Be careful!” Dennison yelped. “Those pens are fragile.”
Laurel sniffed disdainfully. “How do you know? You’ve never even taken
their caps off. If you’d done any research, you’d have realized that
selling the boxes was a dumb idea.”
“Research? Get real, Laurel!” Dennison rolled his eyes.
“Get real, Laurel!” she mimicked him. “Is that what you learned
from that little floozy you’ve taken up with? Get real?”
Dennison shook his head in exasperation. “Floozy? Floozy?” He laughed,
but it sounded forced. “Who uses words like floozy? An eighty year old?”
He flushed and looked over at Anita. “No offense meant.”
Anita looked at him and laughed out loud. “And none taken, Mr. Wayne,”
she assured him. “But I do wish you two would stop bickering. “You’re
not married anymore, you know.”
Dennison glared at her. “No, thank God.”
Anita ignored his glare. “She has a point though, you know. A little research
might have saved you a lot of money.”
He pouted, then said, “I realize that now, of course. But she’s just
baiting me.” He shook his head violently. “She doesn’t know
a thing about collecting fine pens. She thinks pens are something you write with.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. He glared at me but said nothing.
Laurel looked at me and grinned. “Oh, who’d ever think of a pen as
something to write with?” she sang out. “What a bizarre notion!”
She grimaced at her former husband. “What good is a pen you can’t
write with?” she asked rhetorically.
“You moron!” he bit off the words. “Haven’t you ever heard
of collectibles? C-O-L-L-E-C-T-I-B-L-E-S. You can look the word up in the dictionary.”
“Oh go collect beer coasters!” she replied. “Or baseball cards.”
She rolled her eyes and giggled. “Or china figurines. Pens are useful, so
use them!”
Dennison opened his mouth, but Anita cut off the exchange. “That’s
enough!” she boomed in her best school teacher voice. “One can collect
pens and use them,” she intoned. “There is no necessary contradiction.”
“But they’re not worth as much if you use them,” Dennison chimed
in again, “which Ms. Pen Expert would know if she’d done any research.
Unfilled is good, and undipped is even better!” He smirked at Laurel, as
if to say, “Top that!”
“Mint in box!” Laurel proclaimed, “but you have to have the
boxes and not sell them to some guy for peanuts!”
I choked back a laugh because Laurel had had as little notion of mint in box as
I a short while back. I remembered the linguistic confusion that had occurred
during our first visit and my laugh turned into a half-suppressed snort. Only
Anita seemed to notice. Laurel and Dennison were too focused on each other to
be aware of anyone else.
“Oh shut up, Laurel!” Dennison was saying when my attention returned
to the present. “You think you’re so smart, don’t you? I’m
really sick of you.”
Laurel pursed her lips and wrinkled her nose. “I’m really sick of
you too. You’re a paranoid imbecile, and you’re lucky I don’t
sue you for defamation of character.” She shook her head. “If you
had any sense, you wouldn’t be here trying to steal my pens. The property
settlement is clear about which of us owns them.”
“Your pens!” Dennison screamed. “Why I ought to…”
“BE QUIET!” Anita boomed. “I have taught high school freshmen
whose behavior showed more maturity.” She took a breath. “Now, both
of you sit down. You over here, Dennison, and you over there, Laurel. I’ve
had enough of your quarreling!”
Laurel and Dennison glared at each other for a long moment, but then each sat
down exactly where Anita had indicated. She waited for an even longer moment and
then said calmly, “I would very much like to help the two of you find a
compromise you can live with, but you have to stop fighting long enough for me
to do so.”
Laurel sighed and stopped glaring at Dennison who cleared his throat loudly and
stared down at his shoes.
“Now from what I understand,” Anita continued, looking at Laurel,
“you need to sell the pens you acquire in order to pay bills and finance
the continuation of your educational training. Is that correct?”
Laurel wagged her head from side to side. “Sort of. I wouldn’t sell
all the pens, just the ones that aren’t good writers. I’d keep the
good writers.”
Dennison couldn’t contain himself. “You’d ink every pen just
to find a couple of good writers?” he yelled. “You really are a creep!”
He looked at Anita sheepishly. “Sorry,” he said, “but really…”
“Oh can it!” Laurel retorted. “I already inked a bunch of them.”
“You what?” Dennison screamed. “That’s it! I’m out
of here. When my lawyer finishes having his baby, I mean, when his wife finishes,
I’ll see you in court!” He stood up, red in the face and breathing
heavily.
“Sit down, Dennison!” Anita said firmly.
“She can’t get away with that,” he protested. “You can’t
let her.”
“Sit down, please,” Anita repeated. She turned to Laurel. “How
many pens did you ink?”
Laurel smiled at her, “Sixteen. I didn’t ink any of the ugly ones,
just ones I thought looked nice.”
Anita’s mouth twitched. “And how did they write?”
Dennison growled in frustration, but both Laurel and Anita ignored him. “Very
well,” Laurel replied, “especially the Namiki pens. Is that how you
say it? Na-mee-kee?”
Anita nodded. Which other pens did you try?” she asked.
Dennison’s growl turned into a groan.
“Oh, two Deltas, the Segovia and the Republic of the Seas. And the Visconti
Michelangelo. It took me a while to figure out how to fill it, but it wrote well
once I got it filled. And an Omas Europa, an Aurora Verdi that was a bit gaudy
for my taste, a couple of Pelikans, one with a Chinese name that I’ve forgotten…”
“Stop it!” Dennison yelled, and I admit I had some sympathy for him.
Anita, however, looked stern and said, “There are two hundred and sixty-eighty
pens in the pen chests. She has inked sixteen of them.”
“How many isn’t the point,” he insisted. “She shouldn’t
have inked any. They aren’t hers.”
“Yes, they are,” Laurel snapped at him. “All of them are mine
according to that paper your lawyer helped draw up and you signed voluntarily.”
“Enough!” Anita said resoundingly. “I have one question for
you, Mr. Wayne,” she announced, “and then I will be ready to offer
a suggestion that will, I hope, end this disagreement over pens, so you can both
get on with your lives.”
Dennison didn’t look as if he believed her, but he stopped arguing and waited
quietly for her question.
“When we met earlier today, you indicated that you would either put the
pens on display or sell them to someone who’d keep them in pristine condition.
I believe ‘pristine’ was the term you used.”
He nodded.
“Well, which would it be?” she asked calmly.
Dennison seemed taken aback by the question. “Well, I’d like to keep
them all, but I really can’t.” He pointed to the scar on his face.
“I’ll need to sell some to pay for cosmetic surgery. My health insurance
plan only pays part of it.” He grimaced. “They call it elective surgery.”
“Yeah, they don’t think you have to have a pretty face,” Laurel
piped up.
“The surgery is necessary,” Dennison retorted, flushing dark red,
“though it wouldn’t be if you’d been more responsible.”
I expected Anita to intervene, but instead she turned to me. “Marian, have
you recently cleaned out that trash compactor you call your purse?”
I looked at her in disbelief that turned to annoyance. “I’ve told
you I don’t like your calling my purse a trash compactor, Anita. That ridiculous
tote bag you carry around has as much in it as my purse, and it’s ugly to
boot.”
Anita laughed out loud. “You mean, you don’t find it the height of
elegance and the pinnacle of fashion?” she replied. “What a pity!
Shows your lack of appreciation for the finer things.”
Laurel and Dennison looked at me and then each other. They both shrugged their
shoulders at the same moment.
“Oh, stop it, Anita!” I replied. “What do you want with my purse?”
“If you haven’t cleaned it since our first visit here, you have the
list of pens that Paula was waving around before she tried to maim Roadblock,”
she said.
“I do not,” I replied, getting more irritated. One of Anita’s
favorite ways of bothering me is to insist that I can’t go by a piece of
paper without picking it up and stowing it in my purse.
“Yes, you do,” she insisted.
I tossed my purse on the table in front of her. “Take a look!” I said
peevishly.
“You do,” she repeated, adding, “I know you do because I put
it in there after Paula dropped it.” She winked at me. “Now do you
really want me to go through your purse or would you rather hunt down that list
yourself?”
“Anita Carswell! Why in heavens name did you put the list in my purse instead
of in that monster of a tote bag you always carry around?” I demanded, feeling
my temper fray.
She smiled beatifically. “Your purse was closer,” she replied sweetly.
“Now would you please find that list?”
I grunted and rolled my eyes. I know exactly what I have in my purse, but that
still doesn’t mean I enjoy hunting around in it when I have an audience.
However, if finding the list was what was needed, I knew I’d do it. I just
wanted to grumble a bit first. “What in heaven’s name were you thinking
about, Anita? I could have cleaned out my purse and thrown the list out, not realizing
that you’d require it.”
Her smile broadened. “I hardly thought that likely, Marian,” she replied.
“When was the last time you emptied that thing?”
“All the more reason to beware,” I said, “if you thought it
was time for me to clean it out.”
Of course, she knew I was just stalling, so she said nothing, and I began to empty
my purse onto the table. “Wow!” Laurel said, unhelpfully. “You’ve
got a lot of stuff in there. Look at that! A catnip mouse!” She giggled.
“I guess that’s for the kitten.”
I stopped unloading the purse and stared at her. “No, actually I chase it
around myself when I need distraction,” I said. She looked shocked. “Really?”
“Laurel, be quiet!” Dennison ordered.
“Well, she might,” Laurel objected. “You never know.”
I looked at Anita. She raised her eyebrows in an attempt to look innocent. “Why
don’t you just pull out the papers and let the other stuff be?” she
suggested.
“Paper is under the other stuff,” I grumbled, pulling a vegetable
peeler out of my bag and depositing it on the table.
“I won’t even try to figure out why you carry a vegetable peeler with
you, Marian,” Anita said.
“Good!” I replied and pulled out a small can of spray paint.
“Oh heavens!” she teased. “You’re planning on becoming
a graffiti artist!”
I glared at her and finally grabbed a handful of papers. Unfortunately the list
was not among them, so I began rooting in my purse again.
“Why don’t you just dump the contents on the table?” Laurel
suggested. “We can all help you look.”
I wanted to dump the contents on her head, but I restrained myself and continued
to extract small objects, a shoe horn, a pocket knife, a pair of ankle socks,
and a miniature copy of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations. Finally I got to
the bottom of the bag and found three utility bill stubs marked “paid”
and the list of pens.
I handed the pen list to Anita and began to repack my purse. “Don’t
you want to get rid of any of that stuff?” Laurel asked.
Anita snorted. “Don’t be silly, Laurel. She will undoubtedly need
to read Bartlett’s Quotations while waiting in a shoe store with her ankle
socks on her feet.”
“Very funny!” I snapped. “You have your list, Anita Carswell.
Now what are you going to do with it?”
Before she had a chance to reply, there was a knock at the door, and Laurel went
downstairs to answer it. Her footsteps tapped lightly as she descended the staircase.
Soon I heard them again, coming closer. They were accompanied by a much heavier
tread. As she approached the door to the room where we waited I heard her giggle
and say, “I’m glad you’re here. Handsome is being such a beast.”
Then she entered the room, followed by Andrew. His face was very red.
“It seems,” he said, “that I have been mistaken for a very long
time, Mother.” He sat down in the seat vacated by Laurel, who just stood
looking at him in what I thought of as her damsel-in-distress pose. I paid her
scant notice, however, but stared at him hard, wondering what he was talking about.
Not knowing what to say, I simply asked, “Where is Roadblock?”
He smiled a little shamefacedly. “At your house. He and that kitten of yours
made a shambles of the place, I fear. But I really didn’t know what else
to do with him.”