Decorating Day

Decorating Day

We pulled in in front of the house Eric Lover had procured for us to hold our Halloween Fete. The house is a house everyone would know in an instant if they like the sort of movies that begin with a dark and stormy night and end with a body count. Eric Lover fished the keys out of her pocket and opened the double front doors and we stepped over the threshold. I expected Bela Lugosi to greet us on the stairs and say, "Good Evening, welcome to my home," but then again, it was daytime and the prince of darkness would be at his day time rest.

The foyer was beautifully appointed with a wide entry way (Think Bill Compton's entry way only big enough to park a Cessna) with two elegant velvet boot benches on either side and a set of oak panel doors in the middle that Godspeed opened into a grand main room, a huge parlor. It was decorated in Victorian whorehouse, but it had the room we needed for dancing and the room to set up our buffet tables. My eyes were drawn to the huge fire place with carved goddesses holding up the mantle and huge a picture of a stern looking gentleman.

"I see you guys found this place," said an unfamiliar voice. I whipped around. There was a tall older man standing there in jeans and a Warner Brothers tee-shirt. "But you should be careful about the doors, we have Shade living here, our resident mouser." About that time a long, slender black cat came out meowing in that bouncy way all cats sound when they are meowing and trotting all at the same time. He stopped for a second and sniffed me and then walked up to the man and rubbed himself against the man's legs.

"Will he be okay while we have our party?" I asked.
"Oh sure, he may sniff around at first but he has a place in the attic where the caretaker stays. The caretaker is out of town, but he has a cat door to go in and out of," explained the man. "So where is your special effects man? I want to show him the control room."
"He's right here," I said, pointing to God Speed.
"Come on, I'll show you the stuff you will be the most interested in for your party," said the man. God Speed followed the man to the hidden door where the control room was located.

Liz and Mel pulled up and Eric Lover and I went out to meet them.

"We brought the helium tanks and balloons and the black and red table cloths, well, bed sheets," said Mel. "The lady at Walmart looked at me as if I was buying sheets for a bordello."
"Well, look around chere, and tell me if it doesn't look like a bordello in here," I said, grabbing bags of goodies from various walmarts, party stores and craft stores. About that time, GS came out of the control room and stood there, watching us trudging in with our burdens. "Oh, don't strain yourself GS, let us pack all of this stuff in ourselves," I said sarcastically. He grinned at me and showed me his favorite finger and went out and began to gather up the remaining bags. He struggled in, huffing and puffing.
"Jezzus Pleezus Liz, what do you and Mel have in there, it feels like bowling balls," he said, sitting them on the floor.
"Bowling balls, they were having a sale at 'Ballz R Us'," said Liz. "You should go, they are having a two for one sale."
"Funny," he muttered. "GS is not amused."

But, GS was not unamused for long as Dude and Hoyt came up in Dude's truck. I was excited because the Dude was bringing fodder shocks and about twenty pumpkins and four baskets of gourds. Dude parked and climbed out of the truck and shook hands with God Speed. Hoyt waved at us girls and we waved back.

They boys finished emptying Liz's car and then went to work unloading Eric Lover's car and God Speed's car and finally lugging out the contents of Dude's truck, bringing the pumpkins and gourds first, then hauling out the light but unwieldy bundles of cornstalks for our Halloween decor.

In the kitchen, we girls were sorting out the things in the bags and bundles. In addition to decorations, we also bought party staples we might need to replenish the party goodies and to fix easy meals for us as we batched it in the 'haunted mansion'. Shade sat contentedly, watching us move around, putting things in the fridge, opening packages of paper plates and plastic silverware (my favorite oxymoron) and examining the little bits and pieces and debris that would constitute our decorations.

About that time, I heard someone shouting "Hey, who do you think you are carrying that stuff, you have no business lifting and pulling on heavy bags!!!" I jogged to the door and saw Westexan there, her hands full of plastic bags of things. I watched as God Speed went over to her with Dude and Hoyt and they took the bags out of her hands and muttered under their breaths about how Westexan knew better than to pull and lug around on a bunch of heavy bags in her condition. She smiled, pretty and preggers and came up onto the porch.

"This place is great!!!! I can't tell you how many movies I have seen this house in," she said, hugging me.
"Wait til you see the inside chere, it is fantastic," I said, as we came in as the boys came back out. She stopped GS and gave him the keys of her SUV so the boys could unpack her car as well.
"Gee whiz Aslinn, would you get a look at this place?" said Westexan, all eyes and face, looking at the Gothicy decor. "Have you been upstairs yet?"
"No, we haven't. I figure after lunch we could go spy out the rooms and pick our accommodations. I love this, like a little Vacation," I said.
"Where are we having our meeting for the TBA?" she asked.
"Right here in this house. There is a conference room in the area that would be a cellar in an ordinary house. That way no one will see the decorations yet," I said.
"Cool," said Westexan.

We spent the morning unpacking and washing the glasses Westexan found on sale at a Halloween store, setting up the four tables, two on each wall on either side of the grand fire place, for the grand buffet and putting down the sheets we'd bought for table linens and Setting the fodder shocks on each end of the tables. We figured out where we would put the pumpkins but did not put them or the gourds out. Thursday, we would spend the day carving pumpkins. Liz was pulling out the big column candles and putting them on the glass candle plates and putting them around the room. They were black and corn yellow and red and purple, all the colors of the season and we were jamming out to Monster Mash and Werewolves of London and Purple People Eater being played over the house intercom.

We draped the dark velvet curtains in some sort of grey gauzy material and God Speed brought us some animatronic spiders that lit up and made an icky clicking noise. He plugged one in and held it down to Shade, who immediately batted at it hard with his little black paw and hissed. GS was delighted at the cat's reaction and continued to torment him.

"GS, will you leave that poor animal alone!!!" said Liz.
"I hate cats," he said. "Be glad that's all I'm doing to you baby," he said, quoting a dead fangbanger.

We stopped at noon for barbecued ribs and wings and potato salad and rolls for lunch and laid around like the living dead for about a half hour after wards. I smoked one of the lovely Turkish blend cigarettes, one of the precious few that I had from the gift from the lead counselor. As though Eric Lover was reading my mind, she asked me if I heard from the lead counselor.

"No, he's 'disappointed' in me for not promising to stay out of Shreveport. You know how his voice gets calmer and softer when he is upset," I said, puffing the cigarette.
"But he is still coming to the fete?" asked GS.
"Oh yes, my counselor said that there was nothing our lead counselor loved more than a party, especially at Halloween," I said. "He'll just have to get over it."
"Did your counselor say anything to you about Shreveport?" asked Hoyt.
"Not anything I haven't heard before," I said. "If they say they know that the Connection won't tell us anything, why do they worry about it so much?"
"I don't know, unless, they really believe she will tell something," said Dude.
"Who knows," I said. I took a last draw and put out the cigarette and got up and went to get my suit cases from the car and head up to stake a claim on a room.

Eric Lover and I chose the front room and said we would share it. Liz and Mel were sharing the room beside us, with the bathroom suite in the middle. Westexan took a small ensuite room across the hall from us and Hoyt and Dude buddied up to share a room. As Mrs. GS would be joining God Speed, he too had an en-suite room. The rest of the lodgers, if there be any, would have to fight for the rest of the sleeping space.


To be continued.. ..