Excerpt:
Falling
in love is like baking.
Results
may vary with experience.
~Aunt
Francesca~
Chapter One
I
opened the box and stepped back, tripping over a pile of Himalayan wind chimes
I’d left lying behind me on the floor of the shop. They clanked in a discordant
melody as I untangled them from my feet.
“What
the heck?” I asked, ignoring the chimes and focusing on the parcel that had
arrived in the mail earlier that morning. Tiny stone phalluses in various
shades of gray filled the container to the brim. Checking the return address, I
noticed the shipping cost and wanted to cry. Most of our inventory budget for
the entire month had been used to mail this one small box halfway around the
world.
“Mom,
what exactly did you order from Inuyama, Japan?”
My
mother popped her head around the corner, a bright smile on her face. “Did they
finally arrive, Fiona? I’ve been waiting for ages.”
“For stone penises?”
Why was I even surprised? This
wasn’t the first time something like this had happened, and it probably
wouldn’t be the last. My mother, Claire de Lune Campbell, had never been the
master of impulse control, and she had a history of making very poor decisions.
She’d been born Claire Campbell and added the “de Lune” in, what I can only
guess, was a moment of pot-induced inspiration. The pot no longer played a part
in her life, but the total inability to make common-sense decisions remained.
Mom
picked up one of the stone penises, a happy twinkle in her eye. “Aren’t they
lovely?”
On the outside, Mom and I looked
alike. The same blonde hair, the same blue eyes, the same stubborn tilt to our
chins, but there the resemblance ended. Mom was as happy and bright as a
butterfly landing on a flower, and she had the same level of fiscal
responsibility. I stressed about everything, especially money, but I had good
cause.
My mom owned and operated the
Enchanted Garden Café, where we served food, coffee, and specially blended teas
and sold unusual items in our small gift shop. Nestled in the middle of the
South Side, the funky hippie district of Pittsburgh, it was the perfect spot
for my mom but a constant source of anxiety for me.
I wiped sweat from my face and
brushed off my clothing. Dust covered my T-shirt and shorts, and some kind of
stone powder had fallen out of the box from Inuyama onto my tennis shoes. Mom,
glowing in a dress made from recycled saris, didn’t have a speck of dust on
her, but she hadn’t handled the phalluses.
Kate, the girl who worked behind
the counter, came over to us, her blue eyes alight with curiosity. “I want to
see them,” she said. Mom handed her one, and she studied it closely, peering at
it through the thick black frames of her retro hipster glasses. Her ebony hair
was pulled off to the side in a low ponytail, and her colorful tattoos peeked
through the crocheted black cardigan covering her pale skin. “At least they are
anatomically correct. Look at those veins.”
My
cheeks grew warm, and Mom smiled, putting a cool hand against my face. “Aww,
Fiona is blushing.”
“No,
I’m not. It’s hot in here.”
“Of
course it is,” she said, making me feel twelve instead of twenty-five, but it
was hot for early June, and the air-conditioning was broken. Again. Even with
all the windows open, it still felt stuffy.
I
ignored her and picked up a penis. “What are these things anyway?”
She
beamed at me with pure, unfiltered happiness. “Fertility charms from a little
shrine in the mountains of Japan. They have a big festival there every year. I
went once.”
She
sighed, most likely remembering happy times at the fertility festival, and went
back to the kitchen. I looked at Kate and rolled my eyes, making her snicker,
before getting back to work. The fertility charms came in all sizes and seemed
handmade. I just wasn’t sure how to sell them or where to display them in our
shop.
A
Victorian eyesore, the café was painted on the outside in what once had been a
mix of bright pink and various shades of green. The pink had faded to a dull
rose, and the green looked like the color of old limes just before they rotted.
It needed work and a fresh coat of paint, but instead of doing so, we spent our
money on phalluses from Japan. That was how things worked with my mother. No
planning. No rhyme or reason. No logic. No rational thought.
The
bell above the door tinkled, and I turned, a penis in each hand, as a stranger
walked into the shop. I couldn’t see his face at first because the sun was at
his back, but he carried a guitar case. A sure sign of trouble.
“Hello,”
he said as he came closer.
He had straight dark hair that
brushed his shoulders, brown eyes, and a goatee. He reminded me of a sexy,
naughty French pirate, and I knew his kind well. Close to my age, he was
definitely one of the artsy, flighty types who always hung out around my mom. I
could spot them a mile away.
“Holy
guacamole, if he were any hotter, I’d need new underwear,” whispered Kate,
taking off to the back of the shop and leaving me alone to greet the stranger.
