Cookie Cutter

Sliding into the passenger’s seat I almost closed the door on my foot.

“Hurry Up!” Calamity said as she tried to put the shift into first gear. I slammed the door and checked my makeup.

“The clutch,” I whispered, “Don’t forget about the clutch.”

“Shut up, Stacie!” she stammered as she pressed down on the clutch. I could still smell the bakery smell in her hair, well her wig. The one I loaned her two years ago. She promises to return it as soon as she finds one just like it. Anyway, she took the job at Butt’s Bakery starting in February earlier this year. “Give me a cigarette!”

”You know I don’t smoke!” I grabbed the dashboard as we almost collided with a blind skateboarder.

“That’s irreverent, or irrelevant or whatever the word is.” She cast me a pensive side-glance, “They’re in my purse.” I rummaged in her denim purse with fringes. The open windows spread torrents of wind splashing my thighs with turquoise beads. “Hurry up!”

“Look out!” I screamed straightening my legs to apply an invisible break pedal.

The first thing I asked when I awoke in a hospital was met with sets of sympathetic eyes and medical masks. “Calamity didn’t make it.” I sat up and tore the IV from my arms and tried to get out of my bed. A young man dressed as a doctor stopped me by pressing down on my shoulders.

“We’re joking!” he said with an Irish accent. All the others removed their masks and started laughing and resumed drinking the wine they had in their gloved hands.

“What’s going on here?” Just as I said that, one of the nurses yanked the phone from the wall.

Calamity entered in a wheelchair smoking a cigarette. The medical staff stepped out of her way and curtsied with a creepy grace.

“So you woke up, huh? My dear friend.” She steered her chair to the head of my bed and blew smoke into my face. I coughed. “Tell me everything you know about the Bakker family!”

“Calamity, what are you talking about? I was their nanny that’s it.” I looked at each of the staff standing there. They had stopped drinking and watched me fumble for words like I was a child lying about starting a fire. “What do you want to know?”

She dropped then ran over her cigarette. Her left arm was in a cast and gauze hid most of her face. She lit another cigarette with the brass lighter I had given her when she moved to Portugal. After a couple of deep inhalations and enough exhale to cloud the room she began:

“So you think you got that job at the Bakker’s coincidentally? I know you think we met at the tanning salon by accident. Think again.”

I could feel my heart racing and an audible throb filled my ears, “What are you talking about?”

The medical staff departed one by one, the last one grabbing the bottle of red table wine and scurrying to catch-up with the others. Calamity explained that the Bakkers were international pastry spies sent by some Czar somewhere to steal the recipe for Little Debbie’s cinnamon rolls. It is an ongoing investigation by Interpol and Kraft foods. I looked up from watching my arm bleed and listened.

“I meant you no harm Stacie, I didn’t see that warehouse. I couldn’t break in time. That doesn’t matter now. We have work to do.”

The gala was being held at the Portugal embassy to introduce the new ambassador from Lisbon.

A traditional ‘Cookie Exchange’ theme provided the cover Calamity and I needed to kidnap the new ambassador believed to be the wanted pastry spy.

Calamity had attached string lights to her wheelchair. After our driver removed her wheelchair from the bus, I straightened my dress as we approached the embassy entrance.

“Let me do the talking!” Calamity shout-whispered. I stopped mid-step and stared at the back of her head as she zoomed ahead of me.

“You need to stop!” I insisted, “Since you got in that wheelchair you’ve done nothing but try to run me over or tell me what to do!”

The embassy entrance door opened revealing a handsome concierge dwarf.

“Ladies! Welcome! Wonderful to see you! Te amo!!”

Once inside the auditorium Calamity tried to light a cigarette. An officer politely asked her not to smoke in the building. She retaliated with a deep audible sigh, “Are you kidding?! This is America NOT Portugal!”

I interrupted. “Please forgive her officer, she has shingles.” Calamity gasped and threw her lighter at me.

The body of the ambassador was found the following morning in the parking lot. Little Debbie cinnamon rolls were strewn near his body and in his right hand was found a chocolate chip cookie with one bite taken out of it. Dental forensics revealed it was Calamity’s tooth mark and she was arrested.

The last time I saw her I watched as she tried to eat the hard-boiled egg I pressed through the mesh screen between us at the California Correctional Facility for Women. She was handcuffed and coughed a lot.

She died three years into her sentence of a yeast infection.

epilogue

Advisors from the Portugal Embassy refused comment. Interpol closed the case immediately after Calamity's death. Kraft foods was unavailable for comment. Yesterday I received an invoice from the impound where Calamity's 1979 Pinto was held. She had apparently forged my name to the contract and they were demanding payment in the amount of 23 thousand dollars and 86 cents.

After taking out a loan I retrieved the smashed vehicle. I had it towed to my boyfriend's house and we assessed the damage. In the backseat I found a receipt from Walmart for eight cases of Little Debbie Cinnamon rolls and a pack of Benson Hedges Deluxe Ultra Light Menthol 100s in the box. I knew she didn't smoke these. I tucked the receipt in my pocket and headed toward the Portgual embassy...