Coffee, Tea or Me? by Donald Bain, Trudy Baker, Rachel Jones, Bill Wenzel Page A

stepped into the room now, almost falling over the threshold.
    “Where is what?” Rachel yelled.
    Jane flipped on the overhead light.
    “My bottle. My bottle. Where is it? You stole it.”
    Rachel laid back on her pillow. “Will you please go to bed, Jane,” she requested softly.
    Jane let out an ear-piercing scream. Then, she leaped on Rachel’s bed and pulled the blanket off. “Gimme my bottle,” she yelled, trying to punch Rachel as she said it. Rachel rolled out of bed quickly and ran around in back.
    Jane’s scream had awakened the entire apartment. Joan was the first to arrive, closely followed by Helen.
    “What’s going on in here?” Joan snapped.
    Jane was leaping up and down on Rachel’s bed.
    “She stole my bottle,” she said.
    “Who stole your bottle?” was Joan’s reaction.
    “She did,” Jane yelled, pointing to the both of us.
    “We didn’t steal anything,” I protested.
    “Yes, you did,” Jane continued. “Sally said you did.”
    “Sally?” we said in unison.
    Marie now came rushing into the scene.
    “Shhhhhhhhh,” she said with exaggerated facial and hand gestures, “you’ve woken up the animals. The birds are all chirping and Nelson is restless.”
    Once the visions of Marie’s menagerie in flight passed, thoughts came back to the original problem: Who took Jane’s bottle? Did someone take Jane’s bottle? Did Sally say we took her bottle?
    “Where’s Sally?”
    “Sleeping.”
    “How can she sleep when an alligator can’t sleep?”
    “She’s always been a sound sleeper.”
    Jane had tolerated this aimless chitchat for as long as she could. She went to Rachel’s dresser and began digging through lingerie for the elusive bottle.
    Marie left the room and reappeared with a sleepy Sally.
    “What’s the matter?” she mumbled, rubbing her eyes and stretching.
    “They woke up Nelson,” Marie told her.
    “Oh.” (Yawn)
    “Nelson is not the problem,” Joan said sternly.
    “The birds, too?” Sally asked. (Yawn)
    “Everybody, except you, Sally.”
    “Oh.” (Yawn)
    “Did you tell Jane that Rachel and Trudy stole her bottle. Did you, Sally?” Joan could be a hard quizmaster.
    Sally performed two quick yawns and scratched her stomach.
    “No, I didn’t say that.”
    That set Jane off. “You did, you did, you did,” she yelled at Sally.
    “No I didn’t. I just said maybe they did. Jane said her bottle was missing and I said maybe Rachel and Trudy took it.” (Yawn)
    Rachel and I smiled smugly. “See?” we said. “It’s simply a case of mistaken identity.”
    “Do you know anything about this, Sarah?” Joan asked her. Sarah was sitting on the floor in the corner. She jumped up when Joan spoke.
    “Not me. Not me. No, sir. Not me.”
    “Well, somebody took my bottle, that’s for sure,” Jane lamented.
    “Sarah?” I said with a strong upward inflection. Sarah avoided our eyes. She did one of those little toe-in-the-sand movements and cleared her throat.
    “Sarah?”
    “Why would I take someone’s Scotch?”
    I stood there feeling like Sherlock Holmes in the last reel of The Late Show.
    “Ah hah,” I said pouncing. “No one ever said it was Scotch that was stolen.”
    “Oh,” was Sarah’s reply.
    “Is that all you can say, Sarah? Oh? After we’ve caught you with a slip of the tongue that proves you took Jane’s bottle? You’re always borrowing things. You must have borrowed Jane’s bottle.” I was pressing my discovery to the hilt.
    Sarah stifled a yawn and said calmly, “Well, Jane always drinks Scotch. That’s how I knew.”
    Jane tottered unsteadily in the corner while all the cross-examining was going on. “That’s not at all true,” she said with a strange annoyed tone to her voice. “I’m especially fond of bourbon.”
    “What did you do with the bottle?” Joan asked Sarah.
    Sarah stood firm. “I didn’t take any bottle.”
    Everyone seemed to accept Sarah’s finality. They turned to us again.
    I started to giggle. Rachel