Mad About Max Read online

  What would he think of the trio sitting in her car? Even though they were people-sized, they certainly weren’t normal-looking, not by any stretch of the imagination.

  “Ma’am?”

  Grace quickly glanced at the other seats. The fairies waved.

  “He can’t see us, remember?” Myrtle smiled encouragingly.

  In addition to their ability to grow or shrink, or hear other’s thoughts, Grace had written that no one but the fairy-godchild could see the trio. That was one gift she might live to appreciate.

  Hoping it was true, Grace looked the officer straight in the eyes. “I just got smacked with a blinding headache. I thought if I put my head down for a few minutes I might feel better.”

  That much was the truth. Grace’s head throbbed.

  The officer didn’t look like he believed her. He scanned the seats as if she might be harboring some fugitive—or something worse. Fairies would definitely be worse than fugitives, but the officer didn’t appear to see anything.

  “Gracey, we told you he can’t see us. Honey, all your worrying is only going to give you an ulcer.” There was a tinge of exasperation in Myrtle’s voice.

  “Watch,” Fern said. She leaned forward and waved a hand at the police officer who didn’t even bat an eyelash.

  “Do you need medical attention?” There was a flash of concern in his steely eyes.

  “No, what I need is less stress. A lot less stress and an aspirin or two.”

  The flash disappeared, and the officer was once again all business. “Could I see your license, please?”

  “Sure,” Grace said, pulling the piece of plastic out of her wallet while trying to ignore the three godmothers. Maybe if she ignored them, they would all go away.

  “Not gonna happen.” Blossom laughed.

  Eying the officer nervously, she handed him the license. “The picture’s not very good, but you can see that it’s me. Actually, if I look as bad as I’m feeling, I ought to look an awful lot like that picture. You see, the guy that took it was drunk. I swear I could smell the alcohol on his breath. Anyway, he said smile and I--”

  “Ma’am,” the officer—Officer Rodanski, his nametag proclaimed—handed her back her license. “That will be all. I don’t think this is the best place to stop, though. If you think you feel up to it, you better keep going until you get to the next exit.”

  “Yes, sir.” She breathed a sigh of relief. She’d just passed her first test. She’d interacted with someone, and they hadn’t noticed she was crazy, hadn’t noticed the three hallucinations that were plaguing her. Oh, she’d babbled, but she hadn’t done anything more terrible than that.

  “See, we can behave,” Blossom said cheerily.

  “Let’s give her some peace and quiet to get used to the idea of us,” Myrtle said.

  “You’d think after all the books she’s written, she’d be used to us already.” Fern sounded disgruntled.

  “Girls.” Myrtle’s voice was sharp. There was a slight pop and then utter, blessed silence. Grace peeked into the back seat. Empty. Maybe she was over her mental breakdown?

  She started the car and turned the radio on low, no longer in the mood for jamming to music. She pulled forward into the line of traffic and drove on autopilot, ignoring the miles upon miles of repaving that invariably popped up on I-79 every summer. With all that work, it should have been one of the smoothest interstate highways around. Instead, it was one of the worst.

  Traveling to Pittsburgh from Erie was nothing new for Grace. A lot of the time she could get her flights cheaper from Pittsburgh’s airport than from Erie’s, and it was generally worth the two hour drive. She frequently found the construction annoying, but today it didn’t even faze her.

  Today she was crazy.

  When looking at the world from left of center, the road work didn’t seem all that annoying.

  Crazy. Grace MacGuire, romance author with a brand new contract, is crazy.

  She half expected one of the fairies to pop back into the car, but they didn’t. With relief Grace finished her trip in quiet, but there was no peace about it. She was crazy, and she was scared. Not a very peaceful combination.

  GRACE ARRIVED home safe but a little less than sound. A glance at her watch told her there was still time to contact someone today. Rather than unpack, she looked in the yellow pages under psychiatrists. She was going to nip this little foray into mental unsoundness in the bud.

  Thoughts of Doris and Leila lurked in the back of her mind. If they found out she was nuts, they’d . . . Well, she wasn’t sure what they would do, but Grace was sure she wouldn’t like it. No. She’d better not make an appointment, at least not a patient sort of appointment. The psychiatrist might practice patient confidentiality, but Doris and Leila could wring a confession out of a priest.

  Her characters had gotten her into this mess; they could get her out. She’d use them as an excuse to talk to a psychiatrist. While she was talking, she’d ask about a character who heard . . . the phone ring.

  “Hello?” She was nervous about speaking to anyone and somehow betraying her newly altered mental state.

  “Is this Miss Grace MacGuire?” came a strong, totally unfamiliar male voice.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, Grace, today is your lucky day. You’re on the air with WWOW, the radio station that wows you with hits from the Eighties, Nineties and today. We have drawn your name for today’s grand prize.”

  “WWOW?” She never listened to anything but the local country station, and WWOW definitely wasn’t it.

  “Yes. We’ve drawn your name, and you’re the lucky winner of a free makeover at Le Chic’s. Le Chic, where all your dreams come true.

  “They will be expecting you there tonight at eight. The salon will be closed, and their entire staff will be on hand to create a whole new you. The whole works. You will walk out the doors a brand new woman. And this prize comes to you through the generosity of Le Chic and WWOW, the station that wows you with all the hits from the Eighties, Nineties and today.

  “We’ll send a photographer over and take a couple pictures of the new you—and all this is compliments of WWOW, your favorite radio station.”

  “Um . . .”

  “We’ll see you there tonight at eight,” the voice said, and then there was a dial tone.

  “A makeover?” Grace asked herself. Because she lived alone, she frequently talked to herself. Maybe it was another sign of her deepening psychosis?

  She hurriedly scanned the list of psychiatrists on the page in front of her.

  “Now, sweetheart, you’re not crazy. The three of us are as real as that table you’re leaning on. And you are as sane as I am.” Myrtle was standing in the center of the room, wearing a hot pink tent dress this time. It clashed with her hair.

  Grace shook her head sadly. “No, you’re not real, and I am definitely not sane. You are just some strange manifestation of my illness.”

  The other two godmothers popped in. Blossom wore a pair of jeans and a bright yellow poncho, and Fern wore a mint green bathing suit and a shower cap.

  “I just popped out of the pool,” she explained, embarrassment tinting her face. The other two godmothers looked disgruntled. Fern shrugged, and a lime green robe appeared over her bathing suit.

  “Now, what’s all this nonsense about Grace being crazy?” Fern asked Myrtle.

  “She still seems to think she needs psychiatric help,” Myrtle said.

  “She thinks we’re figments of her imagination.” Blossom humphed indignantly.

  “Figments?” Fern asked.

  Grace nodded miserably.

  “Could a figment do this?” Fern walked over and thwacked Grace on top of the head.

  “Ow!”

  “There, that should prove to you we’re not figment
s. You might write about us, but people have written about Einstein, Abraham Lincoln and Lazarus Long, and they’re not fictional,” Myrtle said.

  “Lazarus Long is fictional. He’s a character out of Robert Heinlein’s books,” Grace said, massaging her head. Her figment packed a powerful wallop. “I loved reading about him when I was growing up.”

  Blossom laughed. “Good one. Next thing you know, you’ll be telling us that Glinda the Good Witch is fictional, too.”

  “She is.” Grace was crazy, but the fairies were crazier if they actually believed in Lazarus Long and Glinda. Suddenly, she wondered if figments really could be crazy?

  The fairies all suddenly looked serious. “You don’t believe in Glinda?”

  “Nope. And before you ask, I don’t believe in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny, either. And I don’t believe in the three of you.” She tried to sound like she believed in not believing, hoping that saying it would make the three elderly fairies disappear.

  “It didn’t work, did it?” Myrtle chuckled.

  “What?”

  “We’re still here. Now, you better get ready for your makeover. The traffic to the mall is horrendous at this time of night.” Myrtle gently placed a hand on Grace’s shoulder and propelled her out of the chair, away from the phone.

  “You’re not coming with me, are you?” Grace asked the fairies. They all shook their heads, their expressions innocent. “And you won’t be popping in on me in public, will you?”

  “We could if we had to,” Myrtle said.

  “No one can see us, but you. Remember?” Fern asked. “You know, dear. You gave us our powers. We can’t be seen by anyone but our godchildren, no matter what. We can go anywhere with you, everywhere with you, and no one would be the wiser.”

  “Except me,” Grace muttered. Though wiser wasn’t the word she’d use to describe herself at the moment. “Please tell me you won’t be coming with me tonight.”

  “But we won’t,” Blossom said. At Grace’s skeptical look, she hastily added, “We promise.”

  “Unless it’s an emergency,” Myrtle qualified.

  “Will you be here when I get back?” Grace was sure facing fairies before bedtime was unwise.

  “We’re never far away,” Blossom told her in a reassuring tone.

  Grace didn’t find the thought very reassuring, however.

  Fern handed Grace her bag and her jacket. “Now shoo,” she said, propelling her to the door.

  Grace left, feeling as if she was standing in the middle of a mine field. There was no right move. Wherever she stepped she’d be blown to smithereens.

  Or maybe she was Alice, gone tumbling through the looking glass. The way the godmothers talked, she had better be careful with her sarcasm. She might be hurting some fictional character’s feelings.

  “You just might,” Myrtle whispered. “The three of us know we’re real, but some of the characters begin to doubt themselves after a time. You could send one of them off the deep end. Then they’d have to see a psychiatrist. Wouldn’t you feel guilty?”

  Grace tried to ignore the delusional whispering in her ear. The godmothers weren’t real.

  Grace was merely crazy.

  GRACE FACED LE CHIC with all the enthusiasm of a woman going for her annual pap test. She didn’t want to be made over, but being made over was preferable to spending the evening with her fairy delusions.

  She forced herself to take the last couple steps into the building. “I’m the WWOW winner,” she told the receptionist.

  “Pierre’s been waiting for you.” The girl led her back to a private room where a ponytailed man jumped to his feet. “Pierre, she’s here.”

  Pierre, the stylist at Le Chic’s, took one look at her and said, “Oo, la la.” He clucked his tongue in a manner that didn’t bode well for Grace or her appearance. Then he turned his attention to her fingers, which brought about even more clucking.

  Grace tried to ignore his shocked look. After all, she liked to be comfortable. She wore her normal clothes—a sloppy pair of blue jeans, a grey t-shirt topped with a green, grey and orange flannel shirt. She carried a book-bag over her shoulder that served as both purse and brief case—her everything bag. A pair of old tennis shoes finished her look.

  “When was the last time you had your hair done?” asked Pierre in a very fake, very annoying, French accent.

  “Nineteen eighty-six, I think.” If she hadn’t been worried about not looking crazy, she would have laughed out loud at his horrified expression. Grace had discovered somewhere in the mid-Eighties, that if she wore her hair long, she could just throw it in a ponytail and go. It worked well for her, especially when she was up to her hips in a story.

  “Well, we’ll start with a deep conditioning and then a cut.” He picked up a few strands of her dishwater blonde hair. “A few highlights—hmm.” He stepped back and looked her over from top to bottom. “Yes, you’ll do. At least you will after a facial, new makeup, definitely a manicure, and most probably an even much more needed pedicure.”

  “Girls,” he called. He was immediately flanked by a battalion of his feminine cohorts. “It’s party time.”

  Two hours later, dressed in a new outfit compliments of WWOW, Grace endured the cameras’ shutters snapping and flashing.

  “Now, you look,” Pierre commanded her. With a flourish, he moved the newly bobbed, highlighted, made up, manicured and pedicured Grace in front of the mirror.

  Grace gaped at the woman she saw there. She was clad in a micro-mini skirt that would have exposed her unmentionables at the slightest bend, a white silk blouse, and heels that were easily four inches high.

  She, Grace MacGuire, was gorgeous. A knockout. The type of woman men whistled at and pinched. She was stunning, lovely, easy on the eye, flawless, enchanting—she was perfectly beautiful.

  She burst into tears as she hysterically demanded, “What have you done to me?”

  The fairies had to have done this, and that meant they had to be real. No makeover, no matter how good, changed a Plain Jane into a fairy princess. It took a fairy godmother’s, in her case three godmothers’, magic wands to accomplish such a miracle. Either they were real, or Grace was crazier than she’d thought.

  “Miss,” Pierre said, and that only made her cry harder. The godmothers had even managed to change her back from the police officer’s “Ma’am” into a “Miss” again.

  “I have to go,” she told the staff of Le Chic’s and the photographers from WWOW. She fled to her car and made the trip to her house in record time.

  Grace shut and locked the door, ran to her room, removed the ultra-fashionable clothes and fell into bed. She’d wake up tomorrow, and this would all have been a bad dream. A very bad dream. A nightmare, even. She’d be normal again. No fairy godmothers, no beautiful clothes or lovely face. Just plain old Grace MacGuire, the highly underpaid romance author.

  Exhausted from the traumas of the day, she fell asleep. Dreams of golden carriages and handsome princes ornamented her sleep.

  Two

  GRACE WOKE UP and stretched. She loved mornings. They were always so full of potential. Mid-stretch images of the fairies flitted through her mind. She groaned and slammed the pillow on top of her head. Maybe it was all a dream? A nightmare?

  Maybe what she remembered from the day before was simply a by-product of her exhaustion from the New York trip. Having a vivid imagination, Grace had experienced more than her fair share of nightmares, but this one was the worst one ever.

  With trepidation, she walked to the mirror. One look at her image, and she dissolved into tears.

  It was only eight forty-five in the morning, and she had just crawled out of bed after crying for hours last night. Instead of puffy eyes and a sleep-lined face, she stared at a beautiful reflection in her mirror. She didn’t even have bed head!
/>   As she got herself under control, she decided she’d wager a sizable sum of money that she didn’t even have morning breath.

  This just wasn’t right. Normal people didn’t wake up beautiful. Not even beautiful people woke up that way. Nope, only the crazy ones did.

  She felt the hysterical urge to either cry again or giggle over the absurdity of her situation. She needed to see someone about this problem before it got any further out of hand.

  Grace ran to the living room. The phone book was just where she’d left it last night, open to the psychiatrist yellow page. She scanned it furtively, praying her fairies weren’t watching.

  Not wanting to take any chances, and having no previous experience with losing her marbles, she dialed the first name in the book. Artemus Aaronson. Now there was a sane name a girl could trust.

  She could almost see him—an elderly Einsteinish man with a pipe and wire rimmed glasses. He’d help her. Of course he’d help her, that was his job. But she’d have to trick him into it, so Leila and Doris didn’t find out. She’d arrange a consultation for a character, not for herself. Yes, a character who was having problems with fairy godmothers.

  He’d probably say there was some little pill she could give her character that would make her get over these delusions. Then Grace would just have to find a way to get it for herself.

  The receptionist told her there were no openings, but she could get Grace an appointment next Thursday at three-thirty. Grace couldn’t wait that long. Goodness knows what sort of beings she’d be imagining by then.

  “Ma’am, I’m a writer on a deadline. I’m having a terrible time with some characters. I really just need to consult with someone on how they might react. Please, I’ll take any time you can squeeze me in, but I have to see the doctor today.”

  “Well . . .”

  “You know, I always mention all the people who help me with my stories in the dedication, Ms . . . ?”

  “Betty. Betty Borowski.”

  “Betty. And, if you get me in to see the doctor, I would consider it the biggest sort of help.”

  “I guess I could squeeze you in at noon,” the secretary said, excitement in her voice. “Dr. Aaronson is done for the day at noon. Could you talk over lunch?”