Lola Zola and the Lemonade Crush Page 5
“Can you still afford to pay me?” asked Melanie. “I want to buy Heracles some new hamster toys—maybe a new mini-maze to start.”
“Of course I’ll be able to pay you, Mel,” promised Lola, “as soon as I start rolling in the dough. Here come some customers.”
The hippie mobile, which had driven by the previous day, rounded the corner and slowed down in Lemonade Gulch, the term Lola coined to describe the middle of the street between her house and Hot Dog’s. As the van approached, Lola hopped on her skateboard and skated up to the driver’s window.
“Want another cup of my lemonade?” asked Lola. “It’s fifteen cents less than yesterday.”
Ms. Bangles, sitting in the passenger seat, rifled through her burlap bag. “Cool, a deep discount.”
Buck jumped up from his lounge chair to lure a customer to his limo stand. “Why pay thirty-five cents a cup when you can slurp the best lemonade in town for only thirty cents?” he said to Ms. Bangles.
“Dig it,” she said, about to accept Buck’s offer. The woman had an abbreviated vocabulary and a limited amount of spare change.
Lola felt desperate. “I wouldn’t drink that if I were you,” she warned Ms. Bangles, just as Buck was handing the customer a cup.
“Why not?” asked Ms. Bangles.
“Yeah, why not?” repeated Buck.
“Because…“Lola searched for some reason why Buck’s lemonade might be deadly. Finally, a pause later, she said, “It’s probably contaminated with cooties, if you know what I mean.”
The passengers in the van murmured.
“Cooties?” Lola heard the driver say.
“Cootie-bugs,” came a voice from the backseat.
Buck was so taken aback, he was speechless—but only for a moment. “There’s nothing wrong with my lemonade. In fact, it’s superior. I import my lemons from special farms and use only the first squirts of the ripe lemon.”
Lola and Melanie didn’t buy Buck’s pitch, but the hippie-dippy vanload was getting impatient, not to mention a parched feeling in the back of their throats. Ms. Bangles and Mr. Weird Beard bought enough of Buck’s special “imported” lemonade to fill up three stainless steel thermos bottles.
“Gotcha, Frizzyola,” said a smiling Buck, as the van drove off and up the mountain. Unfortunately, the “gotcha” bit became a familiar refrain that day as Buck outsold Lola cup for cup, hour by hour.
Even Bowzer was curious about Buck’s brew and ventured over to the other side of the street to hop on top of the Cadillac and poke his sandpaper tongue into one of Buck’s cups. Much to Lola’s annoyance, her cat forgot his loyalties and tasted a tiny drop of the enemy’s lemonade.
“Bowzer, come back to me,” pleaded Lola, “that’s enemy territory. I need you here.” Taking pity on Lola, the cat ambled back to Lola’s side of the street.
Melanie, in the habit of keeping statistics, scribbled the sales totals on the back of one of her homemade posters. At day’s end, after carloads of city dwellers passed by on the way to the springs, Melanie’s tally showed Buck had outsold Lola two to one. Ouch! Hiss!
After Buck and his Cadillac crew packed up and went home, Lola looked at her profit and loss statement and realized that all she had were losses and a lot of unsold lemonade. She had barely begun to cover her costs, as the sunblock alone cost seven dollars. How could she continue to keep Melanie as an employee?
“I don’t know how to tell you this, Mel,” said Lola, as the girls cleaned up the kitchen and Bowzer licked his traitorous lemonade chops.
Melanie figured it was personal. “You don’t like my hat.”
“No. I mean no, that’s not it.”
“You don’t think I work fast enough.”
“Cold,” hinted Lola, playing an impromptu game of hot and cold. “That’s not it either.”
“I know,” said Melanie. “You want to cut my salary.”
“Warm,” said Lola.
“You want me to work fewer hours.”
“Hot.”
“You don’t want me to work at all.”
“Boiling.”
There it was, on the kitchen counter, the truth. Corporate downsizing.
“I have to lay you off,” said Lola. “I’m sorry, I just…”
“You just don’t need me,” said a dejected Melanie, looking down at the floor. She didn’t want Lola to see the tears in her eyes.
“I need you, Mel,” said Lola. She gave Melanie a hug. “I just can’t afford to pay you.”
“Then don’t pay me.”
“I’ve got to pay you, Twister Sister. Otherwise I’m a take-advantage-of-you kind of boss.” Lola had heard her father refer to such bosses when talking about car parts companies that paid workers in China almost zip.
The girls stared at each other, trying to figure out how to resolve the problem. If Lola laid off Melanie, her best friend would never forgive her. If Melanie worked for free, Lola would never forgive herself. What was Lola supposed to do?
“Try one of these chili peppers,” said her mother, walking into the kitchen and offering Lola and Melanie some peppers. “They’re the pepperiest peppers I’ve ever popped in a pucker.”
Normally Lola would have passed on the peppers, but not this time. She needed a picker-upper and so did sad Melanie. Chomping down hard, the two girls nearly screamed when the peppers set their throats ablaze.
“Gee whiz,” shouted Lola, “these peppers are burning hot!”
“Lola, my mouth is on fire!” hollered Melanie, her face as red as her hair. “I need something to cool off.”
Lola handed her best friend a pitcher of leftover lemonade. “Drink this.” While Melanie swigged, Lola grabbed another pitcher and also drank in hopes of beating the peppery heat. Swooshing the lemonade in her mouth, Lola could hear her taste buds clamoring in high-pitched voices:
“Not bad!”
“Lemon Dad.”
“Pepper spice…”
“Does entice!”
In the middle of the gulping and swooshing, Lola told Melanie, “My taste buds are rapping.”
“My insides are clapping,” added Melanie. “I like it.”
“How much?”
“A lot more than plain old lemonade.”
“More than peanut butter cookie dough?”
“Yup.”
“More than grape-flavored bubble gum?”
“Yup.”
“More than chocolate-covered pistachio nuts?”
“Double-yup,” confirmed Melanie. “I love the peppers in the lemonade.”
“That’s it,” said Lola, her eyes twinkling.
“What’s it?” asked Melanie, often two beats behind Lola.
“Our strategy.”
“Huh?”
“Our strategy against that Bucket of Slime. We’ll put a touch, just a teeny weeny bit of chili peppers, in our lemonade.”
“We will?”
“Yes, but we won’t tell anyone. It’s our secret.”
“Like my freckle count.”
“Exactly,” said Lola.
Melanie wondered, “Do you think other people, regular people, with typical taste buds will like chili pepper lemonade?”
“Only one way to find out,” said Lola, determined.
“Ask Aunt Liza to drink it?” wondered Melanie.
Someone who managed a junkyard, used to be a stuntwoman, and fostered hamsters named after Greek gods wasn’t Lola’s idea of regular people.
“No, I had someone else in mind.” Lola winked at Bowzer, who was sitting on top of the television cabinet in the living room, licking his imaginary tail and pausing between licks to admire the cactus outside the window. Succulent heaven—from a cat’s point of view.
“Who?” asked Melanie. “Who’s going to test it, Lola?”
“None other than our chief taste tester,” said Lola, adding, “Of course we’ll modify the recipe for the kitty palate.” She dropped barely a speck of a pepper seed into the lemonade in Bowzer’s bowl.
Lola nodded. “His instincts were right before.”
“Yes,” agreed Melanie. “He thought our last batch was unsippable.”
Lola carried the bowl over to the television cabinet, reached up carefully so as not to spill any of the liquid, and set the bowl down in front of the tuxedo taste tester. Sniffing cautiously, Bowzer first bumped his nose against the lemonade, then slowly stuck out his tongue and finally took a teeny taste. He opened and closed his eyes slowly three times, sending cat-kisses to Lola.
“Hooray!” said Lola to Melanie. “He approves of our peppery concoction.”
“Maybe I should serve it to the hamsters. Heracles and the other Greeks might like it too,” said Melanie.
“The whole world might like it,” said Lola, calculating the millions she would make selling chili pepper-spiked lemonade. Not only would she support the family, but she would also take the entire class to Laser Lizards, purchase round-trip plane tickets for the Zola family (Melanie included) to visit every nature preserve on earth, and donate the rest to the Mirage Homeless Cat and Dog Sanctuary on Whiskers Way.
“This is our ticket to the big time,” said Lola gleefully.
“Our ticket?” asked Melanie, not sure she was still employed.
“Yes, our ticket,” confirmed Lola, “if we can raise enough money to launch this new pucker potion properly.”
“How do we do that?”
“We can’t just throw a few peppers into the mix and expect fireworks. We’ve got to create a buzz.”
“A what?”
“A feeling of excitement about our product.”
Melanie wanted to understand. “How do we do that?”
“Through advertising, promotion, and word of mouth,” said Lola, “and that takes a lot of money.”
“You can’t have it, Lola Zola.”
“I don’t want it.” Lola knew that Melanie was protecting her freckle-removal stash. Lola thought Melanie’s freckles added to her character, but Melanie thought they detracted from her potential beauty and dreamed of life without spots. “If only I knew someone with a lot of money,” said Lola, pondering.
Lola picked up Bowzer and scratched him under his fake ruby-studded collar, which Dad had discovered at a garage sale. The red gems popped out at Lola.
“I’ve got it!” shouted Lola.
“Got what?” asked a forever-bewildered Melanie.
“The answer to our money problems,” explained Lola. “Ruby.”
“Ruby who?”
“Ruby Rhubarb, the smartest businesswoman in the West.”
Lola and Melanie had only met Ruby Rhubarb a few times while soliciting door-to-door for charitable donations to save homeless animals from death row at the local pound. Mrs. Rhubarb had told them repeatedly she put people ahead of dogs and if she was going to donate money, it would be to needy humans, not “foul-smelling beasts.”
“She never gave us money before,” said Melanie.
“This is different,” said Lola, searching for the right words. She remembered Hot Dog’s disappearing lemon trick. “This is mmm…”
“Magic?” said Melanie.
*** *** ***
Chapter 7
“Nobody’s home,” said Mrs. Rhubarb, when Lola and Melanie knocked gently on the door of her Spanish-style mansion.
“Mrs. Rhubarb,” said Lola, “we know you’re in there.”
“No, I’m not here,” she insisted.
The girls could hear breathing on the other side of the door. Ever since she won a stash of cash, Ruby Rhubarb believed the world was after her money.
“Please, Mrs. Rhubarb,” said Lola, trying to look through the one-way peephole, searching for signs of life. Lola couldn’t see a thing, though she suspected Mrs. Rhubarb was staring back at her. “We need to talk to you.”
“If you’re here about those pound pups,” said a nasal Mrs. Rhubarb, “I’m not interested in saving slobberin’ canines. My allergies are acting up, so run on home, ladies.”
“Please listen to us,” implored Lola.
“If I recall correctly, Lola Zola, you did not listen to me the other day. You were downright rude in the artichoke aisle.”
Lola bit her lip as she remembered a vague conversation about Mrs. Rhubarb’s dead husband.
Melanie brushed aside Lola, stepped up to the closed door, and said cheerily, “Mrs. Rhubarb, I noticed you have some beautiful yucca plants in your front yard.” Melanie would know. At Lola’s urging, she hid a pitcher of lemonade behind one of the plants.
“Most people don’t appreciate yucca,” added Melanie.
Silence.
“Only plant gourmets, people like you, can see the beauty in a yucca plant.”
With that, the door creaked open an inch. Lola and Melanie spotted a curl.
“I was wondering where you bought the beautiful yucca,” said Melanie, winking at Lola.
“I bought the yucca at the nursery on Sandstorm Road,” said Mrs. Rhubarb. “It was love at first sight. Now, good-day.”
As the door was about to close, Melanie blurted out, “They’re exquisite native desert plants, eco-friendly to the max, Mrs. Rhubarb. You’ve got such a talent for picking plants.”
A little flattery doesn’t hurt. A lot of flattery helps big-time. The door suddenly opened all the way. Perhaps “eco-friendly” was the password.
“What can I do for you, ladies? Surely you didn’t come all the way over here to talk about yucca.” Mrs. Rhubarb wore a hand-beaded robin’s-egg-blue African caftan with swirling designs. There was nothing yucky about her wardrobe.
“We need some…uh…” said Lola.
“Milk and cookies,” finished Melanie. Needing milk and cookies sounded better than needing money. Melanie knew instinctively that you shouldn’t discuss financial matters until you broke bread or dunked cookies with a potential benefactor.
“All right, girls, come on into the kitchen,” said a resigned Mrs. Rhubarb. She had spent too many days alone since her husband’s last golf game—ever.
“Now remember, don’t go filling my ears with pleas to donate to the homeless dogs or cats,” said Mrs. Rhubarb. “Not when there are so many hungry children in America.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Rhubarb,” said Lola. “I understand.”
“Me too,” said Melanie. “I promise I won’t ask for donations for stray hamsters either. There are some of those too, you know.”
Lola shot Melanie a look, as if to say, “Change the subject, Mel.”
In the kitchen, Ruby Rhubarb offered the girls homemade cookies.
“Thank you,” Lola and Melanie said at the same time.
Between cookie bites, Melanie told Mrs. Rhubarb how much she liked the hand-painted Mexican tiles that bordered the kitchen counter, the flying fruits on the wallpaper, the fern-filled bay window, and the Langston Hughes poetry hanging on the bulletin board. While Melanie made small talk, Lola picked out the raisins from the chocolate chip oatmeal cookies and silently rehearsed her sales pitch. She noticed Mrs. Rhubarb downing decongestants.
“Don’t you wish you didn’t have allergies,” said Lola.
“We’ll have a theme park on Saturn before I get rid of these blessed allergies,” said Mrs. Rhubarb.
Lola zoomed in for the pitch. “Ever tried drinking a lemonade cure?”
“Lemonade?” said Mrs. Rhubarb, rolling her eyes. “I don’t think a little sugar water is going to chase away these allergies.”
“I’m not talking about ordinary lemonade,” said Lola. She needed backup in the sales department, so she kicked Melanie under the table.
Melanie piped up, “This lemonade is special. Even Bowzer likes it.”
“Who?” asked Mrs. Rhubarb.
Lola knew Ruby Rhubarb disliked cats, so there was no point in mentioning that Lola’s cat loved their pucker punch. She changed course, appealing instead to Mrs. Rhubarb’s risk-taking gambling nature.
“Never mind Bowzer,” said Lola. “What we’re trying to say is we’re on the verge of a major business success and we’re looking for some…” Lola searched her mind for the ten-dollar word she heard her mother use when talking about bookkeeping. “Capital,” said Lola, hitting the jackpot.
“How much?” asked Mrs. Rhubarb.
“A hundred dollars,” said Lola.
“A hundred bucks!” repeated Melanie, shocked at Lola’s nerve.
“Yes,” said Lola, kicking Melanie again under the table—this time to shut her up. “We’ll need to promote our product successfully. You know, with homemade billboards, flyers all over town, and maybe commercials on the radio.”
“Sounds ambitious,” said Mrs. Rhubarb. “What makes you think this lemonade is worth investing in?”
“Why, it’s…” Lola searched for the right adjective.
“Forest-refreshing,” said Melanie.
“Desert-invigorating,” said Lola.
“Mouth-zinging,” said Melanie.
“Nostril-cleansing,” said Lola.
“Freckle-tickling,” added Melanie.
“Head-clearing,” insisted Lola.
Mrs. Rhubarb sneezed three times in a row, then blew her nose with a pink tissue she took from her pocket.
“Allergy-alleviating,” said Lola. “And magical.”
“If it’s so magical,” said Mrs. Rhubarb, “why are you sitting here trying to sell me on it?” The yucca maven raised her eyebrows and peered over at Lola.
“Please, Mrs. Rhubarb,” said Lola. “Try a cup of our lemonade and see for yourself.”
“All right, child, but don’t disappoint me. I’ve had too many disappointments of late.” Mrs. Rhubarb was short on patience and long on sadness since dear Harry had passed.
Lola and Melanie excused themselves to run back outside and fetch the pitcher of lemonade behind the big yucca plant in Mrs. Rhubarb’s front yard. Mrs. Rhubarb stood there with the door ajar, awaiting their return.
“So that’s why you noticed my yucca plant,” said Mrs. Rhubarb. “It was the perfect hiding place for your lemonade.”
Melanie looked away. Lola squirmed. Mrs. Rhubarb chuckled and led them into the kitchen, where Lola poured her a glass of peppery potion.