This is a little one-part short story wherein an uncle, playing babysitter for the night, tells his nieces a fairy tale. The concept for the format comes from The Princess Bride , and there's one exchange in particular where some dialogue has been lifted and reformatted to suit my needs. One itty bitty little section. No infringement is intended. I also don't own the Roswell characters, nor the NHL or any of its franchises or the Museum of Natural History. I think that covers everything.
Enjoy.
<center>The Worst Day of Your Life- A Fairy Tale</center>
Three year old Sophie and her six year old sister Bridget were presently running circles around their poor unfortunate babysitter. Though he wasn’t certain about this, he thought their seemingly boundless energy might owe itself to the pizza and soda he may have been foolish enough to give them for dinner.
Taisha, the four year old half yellow lab, half white German shepherd lifted her head up from her spot on the floor and gave him a look as if to say, “Told you not to give them sugar.”
The man looked at the dog and grumbled. “Oh, shut up.” Taisha slowly lowered her head back down onto her front paws and closed her eyes, undisturbed by the two member little girl circus performing in the family room.
The babysitter, recognizing defeat when it was staring him in the face, plopped down on the hardwood floor next to Taisha and sighed, his elbow on his knee and his chin in his hand. With his free hand he lightly stroked the light tan and cream hair of the dog, who lazily opened one eye before promptly shutting it again.
Ten minutes later the blur of Dora pajamas, little girl squeals and brown hair had come to a standstill and both little girls flopped down on the floor next to their babysitter. Sophie laid her head down on his thigh and started to close her eyes. He saw his opportunity and picked both girls up, walking to the bathroom. Taisha stood up and followed suit, sitting in the bathroom doorway when the man sat both girls on the bathroom counter. After they brushed their teeth, he picked the girls up off the counter and walked into their bedroom. He dropped Bridget first on her Little Mermaid comforter before setting Sophie down on her Tinkerbell comforter. “Okay munchkins, time for bed.”
“Not yet Unca Puck. We get a story first!” Taisha plopped down on the pastel rug between the two beds and exhaled loudly.
Their uncle nodded. “That’s right, a story.” He sat down on Sophie’s bed and leaned back against the white beadboard headboard. He extended his legs in front of him and pulled Sophie onto his lap, motioning Bridget to come join them. She hopped over Taisha and sat down on the man’s left side. He drew his arm around her. “Let’s see…what kind of story would you like?”
“We want a fairy tale!”
“A fairy tale, huh? Hmm…how about…Cinderella?”
“Noooo.” The little girls shook their heads vigorously.
“Okay, no Cinderella. How about…Sleeping Beauty?”
“Noooo.” Sophie and Bridget giggled at their uncle’s silliness and shook their heads again.
“Not Sleeping Beauty either. Hmmm.” He playfully tapped his right index finger on his chin and scrunched up his face. “I got it. You want Snow White, right?”
“Noooo! Max and Liz! Max and Liz! Max and Liz!” The two little girls shouted the words like it was their own personal mantra. Maybe it was.
The man laughed as he held his hands up in surrender. “Okay, okay. I get it you little monkeys.” The girls giggled as he pulled them to him tightly.
The man cleared his throat. “How does it start again? Oh, that’s right.” He nodded.
“Once upon a time there was a girl who was about to have worst day of her life.”
-:-:-:-
Now, here’s the thing about the worst days of our lives: we usually don’t realize they’re the worst days of our lives when they’re starting. Can you really blame us? We haven’t even had breakfast yet. How are we supposed to know that in two hours we’re going to be fired? Or that as soon as we set foot out of the office building after work a cab will spray us with dirty water from the flooded street? Or that our Great Aunt Mabel’s longtime cat Fluffy will have died overnight?
So it was that when beautiful Liz Parker’s alarm rang at 5:15 AM on an overcast but not terribly chilly Wednesday morning, she had no idea that she was about to have the worst day of her life.
When she brushed her teeth, making sure to hit her top and bottom teeth an equal number of times, she had no idea she was going to lose her job.
When she pulled her toast out of the toaster and sipped from the first of what would be many cups of coffee for the day at her kitchen table, she had no idea that her sister was going to call with bad news.
When she opened up the front page of the New York Times, she had no idea that-
-:-:-:-
“Unca Pu-uck!” Sophie frowned and crossed her arms over her chest.
“What?” He looked at Bridget, who was mirroring her sister.
“We get it.” He laughed and pulled Sophie and Bridget to him.
“You are definitely my nieces. Okay, let’s see. Liz walked out the front door to her apartment building in The Bronx and walked toward the subway station, checking her watch to make sure she was on schedule.”
-:-:-:-
Satisfied she was, she walked through the turnstiles and waited for the train to appear at the station. Every morning Liz got on the 5 at Pelham Parkway, transferred to the 2 at 3rd Avenue-149th Street and rode the 2 to 79th Street, where she would promptly disembark and make her way to the closest Starbucks. She would order a double tall two pump raspberry light foam latte and would then walk to the Museum of Natural History where she was a junior curator.
Liz loved her job, but her boss was strict. Late once and that was a strike against you. Late twice and that was two strikes. Three strikes and you were out. Liz did not want to be out. Liz already had two strikes against her, so while her schedule may have seemed excessive to some, she didn’t want to chance losing a job she loved. It didn’t matter that her two strikes weren’t her fault; all Mr. Coolidge cared about was the fact that she was late. So she had created a schedule that allowed for late trains, traffic and anything else that might get in the way of making sure she was on time for work.
Liz stepped on the train when it pulled into the station and sandwiched herself in between a man in a suit and tie and another man in a suit and tie. Actually, all she could see around her were men in suits and ties. The train started with a jerk and Liz would have held on to something if she thought she had the slightest chance of moving even an inch in any direction when the train stopped. Sardines in a tin can, she thought.
She awkwardly pulled out the sports page from her bag and flipped a few pages to the NHL scores. Hmm, looks like-
The train jerked to a halt and everything went black.
On one hand Liz now knew there were women in the car because she’d heard a few of them scream just seconds ago. On another she was presently getting smacked in the eye by the rather panicked man to her left. Who before the train stopped was on her left. Or in front of her. Or was it behind her? She wasn’t sure.
“Ow! Watch where you’re swinging that thing!” Liz pushed against the man in an effort to stop him from continuing to hit her in the face. The dim emergency lights came on inside the train and Liz saw the man flailing his arm with his briefcase. The man turned and the briefcase came toward Liz’s head-
-:-:-:-
“She doesn’t get hit by the briefcase.”
“What?” Bridget spoke but both girls looked at him.
“She doesn’t get hit by the briefcase.” He paused. “You looked worried, so I thought I’d tell you she doesn’t get hit by the briefcase.”
Bridget sighed, exasperated. “We know Uncle Puck. You’ve told us this story before.”
“Well, you look worried. I didn’t want you to be worried.”
“We’re not.” Sophie piped up.
“Okay then.” The girls snuggled down in his embrace. “The train went black, the women screamed and the man was panicked. The man turned and the briefcase came toward Liz’s head-”
-:-:-:-
-when an arm reached out to stop it in its path.
Liz turned to thank whoever had helped her, but he wasn’t looking at her. The tall man with black hair in an expensive suit (Were they all wearing suits?) had grabbed the man’s briefcase with his left hand and the wrist of the hand holding the briefcase with his right. “What are you doing? Let me go! I have to get out. We’re all going to die here!”
The black haired man pulled the man closer to him and said, “Be quiet. You’re scaring the women.”
The man looked around the train car with frightened eyes and saw four women, all of whom were looking at him with raised eyebrows or similar expressions of disbelief. He quieted down and lowered his eyes, too embarrassed to look anyone else in the face.
The black haired man turned to Liz and asked, “Are you okay? I could feel it when he hit you.”
“You could feel it?”
He gestured in what little space there was around him. “Sardines in a can.”
“You’re telling me. Thanks, by the way. I’m Liz Parker.” She held out her hand to shake and he took it.
“Alex. Alex Whitman.”
“You wouldn’t happen to know the time, would you?”
Alex pulled his left jacket sleeve up slightly and looked at the watch on his wrist. “Six thirty.”
“How long do you think we’ll be stuck here?”
“Hard to say. Depends on what the trouble is. We could be here for ten minutes or ten hours.”
“Ten hours? No no no! I have to get to work. I cannot stand here for ten hours!”
“Liz, I doubt we’ll be here for ten hours. But even so, I’m sure your boss will understand. It’s not your fault the train stopped.”
“Oh, you don’t know my boss. It doesn’t matter if it was my fault or not. It matters if I’m late. I’ve been late twice. If I’m late one more time, I’m fired. I cannot lose my job. I love my job.”
“Wow, sounds like your boss is a bit of a tight-ass.”
-:-:-:-
“Unca Puck!” Sophie spoke in a hushed voice and her eyes grew as wide as dinner plates.
“What?”
“You used a bad word.” Apparently, Bridget’s eyes were just as wide and her voice just as soft, in case their uncle had been wondering.
He quickly tried to backtrack. “Uh, yeah. It’ll be our little secret, okay? If your parents knew, they wouldn’t be happy. So…let’s not tell your parents. Okay?”
The little girls looked at their uncle for a few tense (well, for him) moments and then they nodded and snuggled back down. He breathed a sigh of relief.
“Where were we?”
“Liz is scared she’ll be late.”
“Right. Thank you.” The little girls nodded comically. “It sounds like your boss is a bit, uh, mean.”
-:-:-:-
Liz sighed.
“No, he’s just strict. He’s the best in his field and he has the highest standards for the people he works with, that’s all.”
“Nope, sorry. Nothing you can say can convince me he isn’t mean.”
Liz laughed softly. “So what is it you do, Alex?”
Liz and Alex enjoyed talking with one another so much neither noticed when the train started to move.
And when Liz got off the train to transfer to the 2, they were enjoying one another’s company so much neither noticed that Alex was transferring to the 2 as well.
So when the train pulled into the 79th Street station and Liz got off but Alex stayed on, she was surprised and a little disappointed.
“I have a little ways to go still,” He said by way of explanation. He reached into his suit coat and pulled out a business card, holding it out to her through the quickly narrowing space between the automatic doors. Liz grabbed it before the doors shut on his hand and stood back from the doors. Alex shrugged and waved at Liz as the train started to pull away, a smile on his face. Liz smiled and waved back before slipping the card into her peacoat pocket and walked to the stairs to exit.
Liz was halfway up the cement stairs when her right foot stuck in sticky pink bubblegum and her left foot slipped on the stair below. The combination of the right foot stuck in one place and the left foot rapidly sliding in the opposite direction forced Liz into a split and she scrambled for the handrail to pull herself back up.
Once she had righted herself, pulled her right shoe out of the bubblegum and adjusted herself hoping to retain some measure of dignity, she went to step up with her left foot and slipped again.
Her heel was broken.
Liz groaned. “Great.” She pulled the left heel off the shoe and hobbled up the staircase to the street level. When her phone rang in her chocolate brown messenger bag she walked quickly over to a nearby trashcan and dropped the heel in it before pulling her cell phone out of a side pocket.
“Liz, where are you?”
“Good morning to you too, Isabel.” Liz rummaged through her messenger bag. She could swear that she had another pair of shoes in there somewhere.
“Good mornings can wait, Liz. I repeat- where are you?”
“Just exiting the 79th Street station. Why?”
“Because Liz, I’m standing here, staring at your empty desk and you have five minutes to walk through these doors or you’re considered late. You can’t be late, Liz.”
“What? There’s no way I only have five minutes! That’s why I have that schedule. So I won’t be late.” Liz ran out to the side of the road and raised her arm, frantically waving it around for a taxi. “Come on! There has to be one empty taxi. Izzy, can you please try and stall for me?”
“Liz…”
“I know I know, it probably won’t work, but can you please try? Izzy, if you love me at all, you’ll try.”
“I’ll try. Hurry, Liz.” Liz snapped her phone shut as a cab pulled to a stop in front of her. “The Museum of Natural History, please. As quickly as you can.”
The cab sped as quickly as possible to the museum, but even Liz knew there was no way she was going to make it on time. And if she were waiting for some miracle to save her job, it was not going to happen on this day, the worst day of her life. Upstairs, standing next to Liz’s vacant desk, was a very impatient man staring at his watch and tapping his foot. Though Isabel would make a valiant effort to save Liz’s job, it was not to be. The impatient man would have none of it. Three strikes after all, meant you were out.
So it was a dejected Liz that walked out the front doors of the Museum of Natural History with a cardboard box of belongings from her desk. She sat down on the stone steps and dropped the box next to her, resting her head against the bottom of the stone pillar. She sighed.
Sitting up straight, she rummaged again through her bag and found the shoes she was looking for. Flip flops weren’t exactly Liz’s first choice for footwear on a late fall day, but it was either flip flops or broken heels. Plus, even though the sky was overcast, it didn’t look like rain and Liz would rather walk comfortably.
Liz put the broken shoes into the cardboard box and slipped her feet into the flip flops. She put her head in her hands and watched a group of school kids listening attentively to their teacher, who Liz imagined was going over the rules of conduct or something similar. A little brunette girl with braids turned her head and smiled at Liz and Liz smiled back.
At six years old Liz fell in love with these steps. Her grandmother Claudia had taken Liz’s small hand in her much larger, worn one and they had walked to Liz’s future. The moment she set foot inside the museum that July morning, Liz knew.
This was what she loved. This is what she wanted to do.
And now she would no longer be allowed this love, this dream. Not here.
But Liz, being of a practical mind, had also never been one to dwell. As much as she loved the Museum of Natural History, getting fired wasn’t the end of the world. So she stood up with her head held high and walked down the museum steps.
Now if Liz had known in advance that this was the worst day of her life, she would have undoubtedly been more prepared. For instance, if she had known that in five minutes it was going to start raining so hard that she would be soaked through in seconds, she surely would have brought an umbrella.
But as we’ve said before, Liz had no idea this was going to be a bad day. So when the rain started to pour, Liz ran like crazy to get into a warm place. By the time she ran in the door at Starbucks, her toes were turning blue, water was running off her clothes and hair in sheets and her makeup had become a sort of multi-colored mess that Jackson Pollock would have been proud-”
-:-:-:-
“Who’s Jackson Polewack?”
“Huh?”
Sophie repeated herself. “Who’s Jackson Polewack?”
“Pollock. Jackson Pollock. He was an abstract expressionist painter.” At Sophie’s and Bridget’s confused faces, he added, “He made paintings with big splatters and splotches of color, like when you take your paintbrush and flick paint onto a piece of paper.”
“Ohhhhhhh.” They nodded. “Why didn’t you just say that?”
“Artistic license. Now, can I keep going?” The girls nodded again. “Thank you. So Liz walks into Starbucks to get out of the rain, and she’s a mess.”
-:-:-:-
Liz cringed at the mess she was making on the tile floor of the 81st Street Starbucks but dropped her now soggy box onto the first available table and pulled her messenger bag off.
Bad days have a way of making everything unfortunate seem more unfortunate. Even the smallest of bad occurrences, when combined, make for a larger frustration. And when unlucky things happen and the unlucky things are big, well, you’re almost bound to have a bad day.
Liz was about to receive a phone call from her younger sister Maria in Seattle.
Maria was going to ramble and get off the subject like usual, and also like usual, Liz would have to redirect the conversation to keep Maria focused. But on this day Maria could be forgiven because while she had called Liz before to discuss bad boyfriends, she had never once called to tell her their Uncle Jim had died.
By the time Liz had waved down a cab to take her back to her apartment, Maria had started in on the explanation.
Their uncle, a Sheriff in New Mexico, had been shot off duty when a man’s gun misfired.
It was an accident.
That’s all they knew.
“Maria did you call-”
“Yeah.” Maria sighed and said softly, “I’m pretty sure I heard him punching the wall.”
Liz sighed. “He and Uncle Jim have always been close.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah.”
“I hope he’s going to be okay.”
“You know him. He’s, well-”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah.”
Liz said goodbye to her sister and paid the cab driver, juggling the soggy cardboard box and her messenger bag at the front entrance to her apartment building. The moment Liz heard the news, she had longed for the comfort of familiar surroundings, but perhaps standing in the rain would have been a more comforting choice.
For when Liz made it up the six flights of stairs to her apartment, she would find an apartment in shambles.
Liz had been robbed.
And to add insult to injury, the fire escape window the robber had left through was wide open and the pouring rain outside had soaked anything and everything in a five foot radius around the window opening.
Liz wanted to cry.
But Liz had never been the crying type. Liz had always been a girl of action. So she flipped open her cell phone and called the police. She waited outside her front door and ten minutes later, two patrolmen showed up. They took fingerprints of the window and sill and asked her if anything valuable was missing. (Her emergency money in the freezer was gone, as was an old guitar and some jewelry that had been her grandmother’s.) They asked her what time she had left for work (6:15 AM) and whether she had locked her window before she left (She thought she had.). They said they would do the best they could, but things like this were usually fairly difficult to solve. Liz thanked them anyway.
As soon as they left, Liz went to work cleaning her apartment. She picked up overturned tables, closed the open window and got towels to soak up as much of the water as she could. An hour later, she had her apartment basically back to normal and she sighed in relief. It wasn’t exactly like before, but it was close enough.
Then Liz’s phone rang.
It won’t surprise you to know, I suppose, that Liz’s very upset brother was on the other line. Or that, like Maria, Liz could hear him throwing things in the background.
Liz sighed. “Maria called.”
“So you know then?”
She sighed again. “How are you?”
He laughed abruptly. “Peachy. Just peachy. Our uncle’s dead and I’m just peachy.”
“Are you going to be able to get to New Mexico for the funeral?”
She heard him sigh. “Probably. They’re good about stuff like this. What about you.”
“I can’t really afford to. I got fired today, Puck.”
“What? Why?”
So Liz explained about her boss. She explained about the train and the rain. She explained about the robbery. And when she was done explaining, her older brother was understandably shell-shocked.
Liz told him she would try to get to New Mexico and he told her that he wouldn’t hold it against her if she couldn’t be there. He understood, he said. He was sorry, he said. She said she loved him. They hung up.
Now every once in a while bad days have a way of fooling us. They give us some small victory, and we’re convinced that our luck must be looking up. Liz was just about to get a phone call from a local sports memorabilia shop. She had been searching for a signed Bobby Orr jersey for her brother for months for a birthday gift. The shop had one.
So Liz raced out her front door and down the stairs and hailed a cab.
“Hey lady, you okay?”
“Yes, why?”
The cab driver motioned to his eye and Liz suddenly understood. She had a black eye.
“He don’t hit you, do he? Cuz you don’t deserve that, lady. Kick him to the curb.”
“No…it was just a misunderstanding on the subway this morning. It was an accident.”
The cabbie shook his head. “Whatever you say lady. You don’t have to make no excuses for a jerk like that.”
And Liz was silent. What did you say in response to a man who refused to listen?
As the cab was pulling up to Sweet Spot, the memorabilia shop, Liz noticed the owner closing the metal security gate. Liz scrambled out of the cab and hastily handed the money in her hand to the driver, who promptly drove away.
“Please tell me you’re not closing. I just got a call from you telling me that Bobby Orr jersey I’ve been waiting for had come in. You can’t be closing now!”
“Look, if you’re only here for the jersey, it doesn’t matter anyway. I just sold it to some guy. Sorry.”
“What? No! You promised me that jersey.”
“No…I said when one came in, I’d call you. And I did. What else do you want me to do?”
-:-:-:-
“That guy’s mean.” Bridget had her arms crossed, her face formed into a very convincing scowl.
“Yeah.” Their uncle looked at Sophie, who was mirroring her sister.
“Well, not everybody’s nice. Some people are mean.”
“But this is a fairy tale, Uncle Puck. A fairy tale.”
“Yeah…a fair-wee tale.”
He laughed. “Well…aren’t there bad guys in fairy tales? Like the evil stepsisters or the wicked witch?”
Bridget thought for a moment then nodded. “Okay…I guess you’re right.”
“Yeah…I guess.”
“Now back to the mean man.”
-:-:-:-
“I need that jersey for my brother’s birthday gift. I’ve been searching for one for months.”
“Sorry lady, not my problem. All I care about is selling the things; it doesn’t matter to me who buys them. Better luck next time.” The man walked away from Liz and she sighed loudly in frustration, shoving her hands onto her hips.
We’ve all misplaced our shoes or our keys or our shopping list at one time or another. We search high and low for them until we go back to the first place we looked and realize they were there the whole time. And even though we’ve spent thirty minutes looking for a pair of shoes we should have found in a matter of seconds, we’re always relieved to find them when we do.
But when Liz checked her pocket and realized she didn’t have her wallet or her keys or her shopping list, she realized right then that the problem was not that she didn’t know where to look for them, the problem was that she had left them in her jacket pockets. And her jacket was currently riding away from her on the backseat of a cab.
As all worst days do, this one was starting to wear down our heroine.
Liz put her hands in her pants pockets and thanked whatever luck she had left that her cell phone was not also in her jacket pocket. She walked, eyes focused mainly on her feet, no clear destination in mind. She had a little cash in her pocket, thankfully, but since she had no idea where she wanted to go, she simply walked, a figurative black cloud starting to form over her head. Her mood, along with the weather, was starting to worsen and Liz wondered whether anything good would happen to her today.
It was a fair question, and in a little while Liz would get her answer. Something good was going to happen to her, but it would be a small thing in the shadow of something dark and our heroine, distracted as she would be, would not see it fully for what it was.
Liz, our heroine, was about to meet Max, our hero. He would be a white knight for her in a moment full of rain and tears, another bad moment in Liz’s string of bad moments. But that was not to happen now.
No…just now, Liz got off the subway downtown and jogged up the cement stairs in her sneakers. Just now, her stomach growled and she picked up her pace a little on the way to her boyfriend’s office. Just now, after Liz rode the elevator 49 flights, after she walked the long hallway, after she opened her boyfriend’s office door, she was in for another bad moment.
Just now, Liz was about to discover her boyfriend with another woman.
Just now, Liz was about to learn that this wasn’t the first time he had cheated on her.
Just now, Liz was going to slam his door, take the 49 flights back down to the ground and find a bench to collapse on. And she was going to cry. She was going to cry for a very long time.
But in the middle of her tears, as she sat on the middle of the bench that stood in the middle of the square, our hero was about to finally meet our heroine.
And as we said before, as full as her eyes were of her tears, Liz was not going to see Max for what he was.
“It’s a crime.”
Liz sniffled and raised her head to look at the person to her left that had spoken to her. Through her tears she said, “I’m sorry?”
The man’s molten amber eyes were full of concern and he said, “Whoever did this to you should be shot on sight.” He held out a white cotton handkerchief and she took it. “You want to tell me what has you crying so hard?”
Liz spoke as she wiped her eyes. “You don’t even know me. Why would you care?”
He held out his hand. “Max.”
She took it. “Liz.”
“Well Liz most beautiful and fair, why are you crying?” His voice was soft and Liz started to cry again.
“I’ve just been having the single worst day of my life. That’s all.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Why? You don’t know me.”
“Sure I do. I’m Max…you’re Liz…we go way back. And because I care.” Max put the side of his right index finger under her chin and lifted her face so that her eyes met his. “I care that the most beautiful girl I’ve ever met in my life is crying. She’s crying…and that doesn’t seem right. Please tell me.”
So Liz told him. She told him about getting fired and breaking her heel. She told him about her uncle dying and leaving her jacket in the cab. She told him about getting robbed and carrying a soggy box into Starbucks. She told him about missing out on the Bobby Orr jersey and her boyfriend cheating on her.
She told him everything. And when she was done, she felt a little better.
And though our heroine would not recognize our hero for what he was, she would recognize this moment for what it was: a good one.
As she smiled a little at Max, she realized that though her day had been mostly bad, it had had its good points. There was Alex, from the subway. There was Isabel, trying her hardest to keep Liz’s job safe. There were the cops who had been so diligent about trying to help. There was the cab driver who, though nosy, had honestly cared about her well-being. And there was Max, who cared that she was crying.
Our hero and heroine were interrupted by three men and if Liz had been paying much attention to the world around her, she would have realized that she recognized the three men, men who knew her older brother rather well. But Liz was still busy in her thoughts, so she said nothing and didn’t so much as look in their direction, leaving our hero to his own devices.
“Max? Hey man, I thought that was you!”
“Hey Joe...Patty…Cheech…what are you guys doing here?”
“SI is doing a piece on us and they wanted to shoot us while we were in town. Although now that we see you here, maybe we can just get a head start on the game tonight, huh?”
Max laughed. “Yeah…go ahead and try, Cheech.”
“So tell me Max…when are you going to leave the Rangers and come join the Sharks? I could really use you on my right wing.”
“Well…I am a free agent after this season. But New York for San Jose? I don’t know…”
“Hey, I got traded from Boston to San Jose and let me tell you…greatest thing that could have happened to me. You won’t regret it, I swear. Look, we got to go. See you tonight, huh?”
“I’ll be looking forward to kicking your butts.”
Joe, Patty and Cheech laughed as they walked to the waiting car, and our hero turned back to Liz, who had been quiet. “I really wish I didn’t have to right now, but I have to go.”
Liz focused back on Max and said, “Oh, that’s okay. Thank you…for listening, for…everything. Here.” Liz went to hand back the handkerchief and Max shook his head, pushing her hand away gently.
“No…keep it. You need it more than I do.” He paused. “Will you do something for me?”
Liz nodded. “It’s the least I can do after you listened to all of my problems and let me cry all over you.”
“Come to Madison Square Garden tonight at five. There’ll be a ticket waiting for you.” When Liz started to say shake her head no, Max grabbed her hand and said, “Please.”
And Liz looked into the pleading amber eyes of his and smiled. How could she say no to eyes like those?
So she nodded. And Max grinned.
He said thank you and started to walk away but thought of something and turned back. “Liz?” She raised her eyebrows in question. “What’s your last name?”
She smiled. “Parker. Liz Parker.”
“Thank you beautiful Liz Parker.”
I’m sorry to say that though it seems this way now, Liz’s bad day was not yet over. And though Liz had had some good moments thrown in with the bad, and though she had met people with kindness in their hearts, her day, though it was looking up now, was going to get just a little worse.
Liz stood from her seat on the bench and walked out of the square, headed for home. Liz was intending on spending the rest of the day in her pajamas…maybe read a book, drink a cup of tea…try to forget what an awful day she’d had.
But though Liz would try to get home, she would not get there. She would not sit down with a book she had been meaning to read or a cup of tea she had been meaning to drink. And the rest of her bad day was set to start in about 5 seconds when, just as she crossed the street, Liz was going to trip and fall straight into the murky water in the gutter.
Liz got up, laughing, though there was no humor in it. She held her hands up and looked down at her water-drenched clothes. She wondered if anything else was going to happen to her today and I’m sorry to say that she was right. Something else would happen to her and it was proven right then when a cab drove by and drenched her again with a wave of water from the street.
Liz’s shoulders dropped and she stepped up onto the sidewalk, shaking her hands roughly to try and get rid of some of the excess water. Just then her phone rang and Liz reached into her right pocket to grab it. She found a clean patch of shirt and wiped her hand off before she flipped the phone open and held it to her ear.
“Hello?”
“Hi honey.”
“Hey mom. Maria called me. I heard.”
Her mom sighed, long and deep. “Your father is just beside himself. Nothing anyone can say will make him feel better. He and his brother were always so close.”
“How are you doing?”
“Better than your father…but that’s not hard.”
“Yeah.” Liz trailed off, unsure what to say.
“I wanted to talk with you about something, sweetheart. We won’t be able to make it out to New York to see you for Christmas this year.”
“Why?”
“I’m so sorry Liz, but what with all of this and the restaurant business dropping off…”
“Business is bad?”
“No, not bad…but it has dropped off from the same time last year and your dad and I just won’t be able to get away. I know you were looking forward to seeing us.”
“Well if you can’t get away, you can’t get away. It would have been nice to see you, but I understand.”
“Are you going to be able to get to Roswell for the funeral?”
“I’m going to try. I can’t promise anything.”
“Okay, well we’d love it if you could make it but we understand if you can’t. Your dad and I love you.”
“Love you too.”
Liz hung up her phone and hung her shoulders. One more bad thing.
Liz had been looking forward to seeing her parents next month. She saw Kyle a few times a year and Maria at least once, but she hadn’t seen her parents in a couple of years, as busy as her job had kept her. Plus, flying back home was expensive and paying rent was more important.
And now she probably wouldn’t see them until next Christmas.
Liz shoved the phone into her pocket and grunted out of frustration, rolling her shoulders. She shivered and suddenly noticed the cold. It was much worse now that she was drenched and she wrapped her arms around herself, trying to fight it. She hunched her body over and started to walk, hoping that her clothes would dry.
Liz was out of luck, because the cold would not allow that. But she should have already figured that out, since this was the worst day of her life. Liz looked at her watch. Three o’ clock. If she was doing the math correctly, that meant she had just enough time to get home and change before she had to be at Madison Square Garden.
So Liz, newly spurred on by a destination, set off toward the subway. She was determined to get one thing right today. She would get to Madison Square Garden on time. Because Max had asked her to. And it was the least she could do for the man.
But Liz, it seemed, was not going to be lucky on this account either. She would not get home to change. Because as soon as she had been on the subway for a few minutes, it stopped, going black again.
-:-:-:-
“How many times is the subway going to stop in this story?”
“You’ve heard this story before Bridge. You know this is the last time.”
“Well, good.”
“Yeah…good.”
“Now…can I get on with it?”
“Yes please.”
“Yeah…yes pwease.”
-:-:-:-
Liz, now an old pro at the bad moments that seemed destined to wreck her day, was completely unfazed. She’d figured that she wouldn’t be lucky enough to make it home without incident and she was right. Somehow that made her feel better and Liz prepared herself for what she figured would be a long wait. Max would just have to understand that it was out of her hands.
But Liz was wrong once again. Only this time it was the good kind of wrong, the wrong that came without lost jobs and phone calls about dead uncles. This was the kind of wrong that meant you could get to Madison Square Garden, even if you were a bit late. She didn’t have time to change, but she figured that given the gift she had just been granted, she could live with that.
It was 5:53 when Liz jogged up to the ticket counter at Madison Square Garden and asked for the ticket kept under her name. The woman in the ticket window produced it and Liz breathed a silent prayer that it was even there. At this point, Liz wasn’t really expecting anything to go her way.
She handed the ticket to an usher who pointed her in the right direction and she took her seat behind the Rangers bench. People were milling around everywhere but soon the bulk of them got back into their seats, the second period set to start soon.
The Sharks players got back on the ice first, skating around to warm themselves up. The Rangers came on the ice about a minute later and Liz looked around for Max. She spotted him and smiled. Without tears in her eyes, she could see that Max was a rather attractive man, something she had admittedly missed earlier that day on the bench.
When the warm up was done Max glided over to line up at center, waiting for the face-off. Joe came up in front of him and the two leaned down, waiting for the puck to drop. “Hey Max…isn’t that woman over there the one from the bench earlier?”
Max followed to where Joe was pointing and smiled widely. “Yeah…yeah, she is.”
The two leaned down and the referee dropped the puck. Max slapped it back to his teammate on the blue line and the second period was underway.
Liz watched the game, following the puck like an expert. Liz had watched her brother play for years and she found that she both missed him and missed watching him play.
When Liz’s stomach growled she realized she hadn’t actually eaten anything since that morning in her apartment, so she got up to get something to eat. And it was here that Liz was to have her final bad moment on the worst day of her life. But it was the kind of bad moment that led to good things.
It was the kind of bad moment that turned a bad day around.
As Liz was halfway up the stairs toward the concession stands, she heard a loud roar from the crowd and turned to see what was going on in the game below her. It was Liz’s bad luck that she turned in just enough time to see a black object hit her square in the forehead and she fell down to the stairs.
Liz had been hit in the head with a puck.
All around her Liz heard fans expressing concern, asking her if she was okay. But she only noticed the face hovering over her, the one slowly coming into focus.
Max.
He had his gloves and helmet off and the beads of sweat were making trails down his face but he couldn’t have been more beautiful and Liz smiled. “You’re so pretty.”
Max laughed. “You know, men usually prefer to be called handsome, but I’ll take whatever I can get. Are you okay? It looked like that puck hit you pretty hard. Sorry about that, by the way.”
Liz sat up. “You hit that?” Max nodded. “Nice slap shot.”
Max laughed again and ran his thumb over the red spot on her forehead. “I want you to let the medic check you out, okay? Make sure everything’s okay.” He sighed. “I wish I could stay and make sure you’re alright, but I have to get back to the game. Earn my keep, you know? But I want you to meet me in front of the player’s entrance after the game. Will you do that? Will you wait for me?” Liz nodded and Max walked back down the stairs and climbed back onto the ice, but not before sparing her one final glance.
If it’s not already obvious to you that Liz’s bad day had turned around for the good, then you probably haven’t been paying attention. Not that it’s really your fault. Liz’s day has been so full of bad things, how could you be expected to spot the good?
Liz stood outside the player’s entrance after the game and waited for Max to appear. As soon as he saw her he pulled her into his arms and kissed her.
But this wasn’t some ordinary kiss. It was a kiss that turned bad days into good and it was this kiss that convinced Liz that even though she had just had the single worst day of her life, that she would be okay. It was a kiss that soothed her weary soul, a kiss that would never have an equal.
This was the kiss to end all kisses.
And in that moment Liz was convinced that if she had to, she’d go through the single worst day of her life again, just to get that kiss.
-:-:-:-
“The end.”
Bridget, her head lolling on her uncle’s shoulder, raised droopy eyes and yawned. “Good story, Uncle Puck.”
“Yeah…good stowy.” Sophie’s eyes were fighting to stay open and her uncle chuckled softly.
“Alright…to bed with you now little monkeys.” The two girls nodded slowly and the man stood from Sophie’s bed. He tucked them in, kissing them on the forehead, and went to walk from their room but stopped in the doorway. He turned and said, “Goodnight girls. I love you.”
“Love you too.”
“Love…”
The girls slipped off into sleep as soon as their uncle flipped the light switch and he left the door open a crack before he retreated to the family room and pulled out his crossword puzzle, waiting for his sister and her husband to come home.
He heard a key in the lock about 30 minutes later and stood to greet them at the door. Taisha the dog followed him, quietly staying at his heels, doing her part in protecting the house and its occupants.
Liz walked into the house, laughing at something her husband had said and smiled as she saw her brother. “Hey. Are the girls asleep?”
“Yep. Told them a story and they were out like a light. Did you have fun tonight?”
“Yes. Thanks again for watching them, Kyle.”
“Hey, they’re my nieces. I’m happy to watch them any time you need me. But now…I hear my bed calling my name. I love the little monsters but they wear me out. See you at work tomorrow Max.”
Liz and Max both hugged Kyle goodbye and he left with a wave. When he was gone, his car backing out of their driveway, Max and Liz walked to their daughters’ bedroom and looked inside, watching their two little ones sleep.
“I can never get them to sleep like that. I wonder what story he tells them.”
“He told me once that it was the most amazing fairy tale he knew. And that after the first time he told it to them, they won’t let him tell them any other story. He won’t tell me what it is, though.”
“Maybe one day the girls will tell us.”
“Maybe. Or maybe their brother will.”
“They don’t have a brother.”
“They don’t?” Liz pointed down at her slightly rounded stomach. “He may have something to say about that.”
Max grinned, a smile as wide as can be. Then he kissed his wife, long and slow and sweet. And it was an amazing kiss. But that wasn’t a shock. All of Max’s kisses were amazing.
Still, no kiss could ever compare to one that had made a bad day good…one that had made a wrong day right…oh so long ago.
----------------
AN: Taisha the dog is, in fact, a real dog. My dog, as it were.
