the house by a shout from Renie.
“Hey! Come in. I’ve got this junk all over my
hands.”
Judith returned to the porch. Renie stood in the
doorway, her hands and lower arms spattered with
what looked like the insides of a pumpkin. Bill came
down the hall from the kitchen. His head was covered
with the same orange clumps and he’d left a trail of
yellow seeds in his wake.
“What on earth . . . ?” Judith began, her jaw dropping. “I thought you had a catastrophe!”
“We did,” Renie replied, moving back to the
kitchen, where she ran her hands and arms under the
tap. “Bill got a pumpkin stuck on his head.”
Judith looked at Bill. Bill shrugged, then took a
towel from the kitchen counter and began to wipe himself off. Judith then looked at what was left of the
pumpkin. It lay on the floor in several pieces. Only the
top with its jaunty green stem remained intact.
Putting a hand to her breast in relief, Judith leaned
against the refrigerator. “Good grief. You scared the
hell out of me.”
“Sorry,” Renie said, rinsing her hands. “I hit your
number on the speed dial instead of 911.”
“Then,” Bill put in, his voice muffled by the towel,
“she punched the button for her hairdresser. By that
time I’d gotten the pumpkin off my head.”
“I don’t suppose,” Judith said slowly, “I ought to
ask why you were wearing a pumpkin on your head,
Bill?”
Removing the towel, he shrugged again. “It was for
your Halloween party tomorrow. I planned to go as
Ichabod Crane.”
Judith shook her head in wonder, then frowned. “It’s
not my party, it’s Bruno Zepf’s. I’m merely catering
the damned thing.”
“I’m helping,” Renie said, looking a trifle hurt.
“That’s why we’re coming, isn’t it? We thought it
would be more fun if we wore costumes like everybody else.”
“What,” Judith asked Renie, “were you going as?
Ichabod’s horse?”
“A tree,” Renie said with a lift of her short chin.
“You know—the scary kind with a twisted trunk and
clawlike branches.”
“Don’t,” Judith advised. “You’ll hurt yourself.”
She glanced at Bill. “One of you already has. I’m
going home now. In fact, I might as well stop at Falstaff’s Grocery on the way to stock up for the party.
