Good afternoon. It is I Gigi the parti poodle here to introduce chapter thirty-nine of my story Certified Sadistic Accountant. This week has been rather unpleasant. I am not allowed to have treats for three weeks because sealant was applied to my teeth. I am perpetually starving. One cannot live on poodle chow alone. I need my extra goodies to get me through the day. I have begged, demanded, whined and licked but still my novelist remains firm in this situation. All I am allowed to partake of is soft stuff that comes in a pouch. It is palatable enough, but it is not my usual treats, which are far superior. All I have been dreaming about for the past week are delicious soft chewy delectables. Yet all I have is mush. I try to imagine it is pâté but alas, pâté it is not. I am marking off the days on the calendar when mushy pouch treats are a thing of the past. Until then here is chapter thirty-nine of my story Certified Sadistic Accountant. Je ne mangerai pas cette bouillie mon ami. Je ne le mangerai pas, Sam je le suis!

Certified Sadistic Accountant

by

Gigi the parti poodle

Chapter Thirty-Nine

No, he realized. They were knocking, not opening the door. He froze. He had no idea who was at the door. He paused and thought for a moment. He checked himself in the mirror. He looked bedraggled. He grabbed his aunt’s hairbrush that was sitting on her vanity and fixed his hair. He tucked his rumpled shirt into his pants and tugged down on his shirt cuffs.

He headed downstairs to the door and looked through the peephole. He was surprised to see a delivery guy standing there with a large package. Curtis thought of all the movies where the delivery guy was just a cover for a cop. He remained calm, cleared his throat and opened the door.

“Yes?” he said.

“I have a package you need to sign for,” the delivery guy said and thrust an electronic pad and stylist at Curtis. Curtis looked at the pad and wondered if this was a way they were going to acquire his fingerprints and DNA. He sighed and signed the pad.

“Here you go,” the delivery guy said handing Curtis the large heavy package. Then he skipped down the porch steps and left.

Curtis stood there staring at the large heavy box in his hands. He headed back into the house and set the box down on an end table to investigate. The label showed the package was addressed to his Aunt Odette. He decided it was probably an art piece she’d had shipped to her which was odd with her being out of the country.

He waited, wondering when they were going to break down his door, but no one came. He sat down on the bookshelf chair and tried to decide what to do next. That was the problem with his plan. He hadn’t factored in the possibility of the kidnapped girl escaping. His plan was to get everyone in that office together and then…what did it matter now? What he had to do now was make a quick decision to either turn himself in or run. Time was running out. He’d have to change his name and take the accounting test again under a new identity. Then could go back to practicing as an account and not starve. And prison time sounded unappealing.

Maybe he could go back to his duplex and see if anyone was watching him. If he did that, he could pack a suitcase. He’d wait till it got dark then go. No, that was a terrible idea. Someone was watching the duplex. They had to be. And even if it wasn’t the police what if it was a neighbor looking to spot him and call the authorities. No, it would be better to gather up what he needed here and run. He’d head north…no south and start a new life. He could never see his family again. He didn’t like that idea but what other choice did he have?

He needed to go off the grid. He couldn’t be surfing the internet or making phone calls. He’d have to stay underground long enough to find somewhere to live and descent clothes to wear. He would need money. Cash not credit. If he remembered right, his aunt always kept cash around. She was a little odd about money. If she didn’t keep it in the form of art, she would keep a large stash hidden in the office.

He scurried into the office and unlocked the bottom drawer to her desk. Sure enough, he found the lockbox there and proceeded to open it with the small keys from the jewelry box. The lock popped open and when he lifted the lid Curtis found an out-of-date passport, a small manilla envelope with something sealed inside, and a large stack of bills. He ran over to the closet and pulled out a backpack she had stashed in there and stuck the money in it. He knew he would need to take one of her cars because they would be on the lookout for his Honda.

Then there was the matter of food. He would need to take as many non-perishable items as he could gather from his aunt’s cupboards. Curtis swung the backpack onto his shoulder and ran from the office to the kitchen and began to rummage around the cupboards while he pondered the dilemma of the vehicle. He found a package of whole wheat spaghetti, a can of Mandarin Oranges, a jar of French raspberry preserves, a jar of the good peanut butter you can order online, two boxes of Carr’s crackers and, of course, a couple cans of sardines. Aunt Odette was a big fan of sardines. He grabbed a grocery bag and packed up his bounty.

The only car parked in Aunt Odette’s garage right now was her small hot pink Smart Fortwo Electric Drive, the kind that can bounce off other cars in a wreck. She must have driven the metallic green dune buggy to the airport. It was either get the electric car charged or learn how to ride the Vespa parked on the side. He decided to charge the car. He set down his backpack and grocery bag and headed over to the side, grabbed the charger and proceeded to charge the Smart Fortwo. He adjusted the backpack on his shoulder and grabbed the groceries and headed back into the house. He tried to think of what else he could take with him. Soap, shampoo, and conditioner came to mind. He darted upstairs to the bathroom to procure the items. He looked in the cabinet on the opposite wall from the bathtub and located two large bars of bright red raspberry Pré De Provence French soap, a bottle of L’Occitane Rose Shampoo and conditioner. That would have to do. He gathered them up and took them with him. He hurried down the stairs and was about to head out to the garage when the doorbell rang again. He moved over to the door and looked through the peep hole. He was shocked at who he saw. It wasn’t a delivery person this time.

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STREAM OF THE WEEK: A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE (1974)- HBO MAX

This week I thought I would honor the fantastic actress Gena Rowlands by choosing a film with one of her finest roles. She and Peter Falk turn in landmark performances in this naturalistic film about a complicated woman trapped in both mental illness and the ignorance of her blue-collar world. Cassavetes rightly earned an Oscar nomination for his excellent direction here and his real-life wife Gena earned an Oscar nomination for her extraordinary work. It is a travesty that Peter Falk wasn’t also recognized for his outstanding performance as well.

Being a homemaker in the 1970’s straight out sucked. In fact, being a homemaker in just about any era sucks. Mabel Longhetti (Gena Rowlands) is imprisoned in that role. She is also imprisoned by the men in her life whether it be her father George (Fred Draper), her doctor Dr. Zepp (Eddie Shaw), or her hot-blooded husband Nick (Peter Falk) a construction foreman who loves her but is unaccepting of her mental illness and is sometimes downright violent. She is expected to raise three young children and “be herself” or rather her husband’s idea of what that is. It is clear Nick loves his wife but his expectations of her are absurd. The Longhetti’s have three young grade school children Mabel is trying to manage as well as her husband’s constant gregarious social demands. Nick is a man who always needs to be in control to the point of being threatening and control is the last thing Mabel has. She is suffering from mental illness and is on the verge of a mental breakdown. A fact Nick does not want to accept. He tells his friends his wife is unusual but not crazy. But day by painful day, things get worse and worse and Mabel’s actions get more and more careless until it puts their children in a compromising position.

One of the saddest and possibly the truest moment in the film is when Mabel asks her father to stand up for her as they sit around the dining room table with the rest of the family. He physically stands up claiming he has no idea what she means by stand up. The scene seems to point out that Mabel is not only under the influence of her mental illness but the influence of the patriarchal world in which she is trapped. No one is on her side.

This is not an easy film to watch. But it is a truthful one. Originally, Rowlands told Cassavetes she wanted to act in a play about the difficulties faced by contemporary women. Cassavetes wrote that play but Rowlands knew it would be utterly exhausting to try and keep up the necessary intensity performance after performance. The stage play was made into a screenplay, Peter Falk liked Cassavetes’s script so much he invested $500,000 of his own money to help produce it, and this was the triumphant result.