Her Man Friday(8)
Author: Elizabeth Bevarly

Yes, Lily noted with a fond smile, not for the first time, this room at Ashling was pretty much exactly like her own. Well, except for that small slimy… thing… surrounded by a pool of clear, pungent… stuff… in the middle of the other woman’s bed.

She approached it cautiously, striving for a sympathetic smile at the quivering nanny, but there were times when Lily found it difficult to be sympathetic toward the other woman. She looked to be only in her fifties, but she dressed and acted like a centenarian. A boring, stuffy, self-defeating centenarian, at that, and not one of those eccentric, fun-loving centenarians who jumped out of airplanes and drank whiskey and called octogenarians "Sonnyboy" or something like that. Still, Lily supposed no one was perfect. And who knew what kinds of things lurked in Mrs. Puddleduck’s background, after all? She might very well be the way she was today because of episodes like this very one.

Lily turned her attention back to the bed—to the thing surrounded by stuff on the bed—and tried to identify it. Funny, it did seem familiar somehow, but she couldn’t quite place where she had encountered such a thing before. She had tilted her head to one side in an effort to contemplate it from another angle when Leonard Freiberger, having evidently heard the screams, too, came crashing into the room.

She was amazed he’d been able to pinpoint the source of the outburst from Schuyler’s office two floors and a couple of hallways below. That showed real investigative talent. She’d only known to come here herself because, well, this sort of thing had happened at least once a week since Chloe Sandusky had come to live with them. Who else could have been screaming but Mrs. Puddleduck?

The nanny du jour was always Chloe’s favorite target.

"Hello, Mr. Freiberger," Lily said as she turned to greet him, wondering if being exposed to Chloe’s habits on his first day at work would prevent him from returning tomorrow. Goodness, she hoped not. She was reluctant to replace the nanny, even though she and the other woman hadn’t much agreed on anything, especially where Chloe was concerned. (And there had also been that business about Mrs. Puddleduck thinking that Clarence Thomas had told the truth.) But Lily really didn’t want to have to replace Mr. Freiberger. She rather liked him.

"Miss Rigby," he replied, his even timbre of voice at odds with the expression of stark horror etched on his face. "May I ask what all that screaming was about?"

"Oh, by all means," Lily told him.

He hesitated for a moment, waiting for her to explain, and when she didn’t, he added, "Uh, then… what was all that screaming about?"

Lily sighed. "I’m afraid Mrs. Puddleduck has been the victim of a little prank."

"A little prank?" the nanny repeated. "A little prank? You call that… that… that thing on my bed a little prank? And it’s Poddledock," she added. "I wish you would remember that."

Her question directed Mr. Freiberger’s attention to the bed, and his expression of stark horror was immediately replaced by one of vague repugnance.

"What," he said, pointing toward the offending item, "is that?"

With what she hoped was an encouraging smile to both of them, Lily covered the remaining length of the room in a half-dozen strides and extended her hand toward the thing on the bed. But before she could touch it, Leonard Freiberger moved in from behind her and caught her hand deftly in his.

"Maybe you should let me," he said.

She noted then that he looked different from the way he had appeared earlier at the front door. He’d shed his jacket, loosened his tie, and unbuttoned the top button of his shirt. He’d also rolled his sleeves up to his elbows, and she couldn’t help but notice that he had some very good musculature for someone whose primary activity in life was pushing pencils. Even with number two lead, a man must have to push an awful lot of them to get muscles like that.

She also noticed that he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, but that was really neither here nor there.

More than his physical appearance, however, something else was different—his entire demeanor since this morning seemed to have gotten somehow… larger. That was the only way Lily could describe it. Although she’d already thought him tall and broad, suddenly he seemed even taller and broader. He wasn’t slouching anymore, but there was more to his expansion than that. He just seemed… larger. All over. More self-assured. In every way. Just more. More than he had been before. Lily had to force herself not to take a step backward in an act of self-preservation.

"It’s all right," she told him, shaking off the odd realization as she tipped her head toward the mess on the bed. "I have a lot of experience with this kind of thing. I know what I’m doing."

She patted his hand with her free one, trying to ignore the warmth and roughness of his skin, the kiss of the coarse hair growing there. Then—very reluctantly—she removed his hand from her own. Behind his glasses, his eyes narrowed, but he allowed her to go forward alone, shrugging off his concern for her welfare quite literally. So Lily leaned over the bed and, without an ounce of fear or concern, poked the small, slimy thing with her finger.

"Oh, I know what this is," she said as a flashback from tenth grade biology class hit her square in the head. It was the unmistakable aroma of formaldehyde that did it. "This is…" She threw what she hoped was a heartening look over her shoulder. "Well, to be precise, it’s part of a pig."

"Uh, precisely which part?" Mr. Freiberger asked.

She picked up the offending item between thumb and forefinger, turning it first to the left, and then to the right. "I do believe it’s the spleen. In fact, I’m sure of it. I recall dissecting one in high school, myself. It was really quite a fascinating experiment. I had no idea that a pig spleen was actually capable of—"

A sound from behind—actually two sounds: a gasp and a thump—halted Lily’s observation, because it alerted her to the fact that Chloe’s nanny had fainted. So she replaced the pig part on the bed, then sighed as she spun around.

"Oh, dear," she said. Then, trying her best to reassure the other woman, in spite of her lack of consciousness, she added, "It’s only a biological organ. We all have a spleen, after all. There’s absolutely nothing to be afraid of, I assure you." Turning to the bookkeeper, she added, "Mr. Freiberger, if you could look in the bathroom there behind you, I think you’ll find some ammonia capsules in the medicine cabinet. Would you fetch them, please?"

He was gazing at her in much the same way one might look when the porch lights were dim, but he did as she’d requested. When he returned, Lily asked him to see if he could rouse the nanny while she washed her hands. By the time she rejoined them, the other woman had begun to come around. Together, they managed to bring her to a sitting position on the floor.