The Toilet Paper Caper: Chapter 7

A Stark Mystery

1973

Time seemed to stand still as we careened toward the oak tree, allowing Clarabelle to crawl over the back seat to jump out the passenger window while I pulled the steering wheel hard to right — by about 47 years and two thousand miles.

The Pinto was powered by biodiesel fuel and when the back of the car hit the tree, the only explosion created was a loud farting sound that shot us through time and space to the one place I wanted to be.

Don’t ask me how we got there.

I wasn’t wearing ruby red slippers.

But I had been thinking “there’s no place like the place I’d like to call home.”

And that might make more sense than anything that’s happened so far in this investigation.

2020

Call it another Deus ex Machina in a story featuring a time-traveling Machina, but time really stood still as our eyes and lips locked at the threshold of the door leading into Helen of Chicago’s hotel room.

For a moment, everything was perfection, like the April cherry blossoms floating high above Kyoto, or popping April’s cherry in my dreams back at Keota High School.

The spell was broken when Helen’s eyes strayed over my shoulder and widened as she saw the shapely hotpants behind me.

“Who the hell is that?” demanded Helen.

“She’s a client, doll, just a client.”

“A likely story. Didja bring her here hoping to have a threesome?”

Darling gagged a little, but it sounded a little too much like a moan.

“No, baby, you’re my only girl forever,” I reassured her. “Unless you wanna do it...”

“…You look like crap,” said Darling, looking over at me from the driver’s side, as I regained consciousness in the time-traveling Pinto.

“My condition seems to vary chapter by chapter,” I mumbled, as I put on my sunglasses. “Of course, getting cold-cocked doesn’t do wonders for a guy’s complexion.”

“What’s with the sunglasses? It’s raining.”

“Concussion protocol, Darling. You learn things when you date Helen.”

She pondered my response, shrugged her shoulders, and asked, “What were you even thinking, going off to see your girlfriend?”

“After Kansas, I lost the power to traverse the time-space continuum,” I said. “I promised myself I would find her if it was the last thing I ever did.”

“Well, it could have been the last thing you ever did, given the punch she packs. You were lucky that the jewelry box fell out of your jacket as you went flying.”

Panicking, I reached into my jacket pocket and found the box.

It was empty.

The ring was gone, but there was a tiny note with an “H” drawn inside a heart.

“She said ‘yes’ and then helped me stuff you into the Pinto after I told her about your mission,” said Darling. “Where to, now, Stark?”

“Set the Wayback to 1965, Sherman¹,” I said. “We’re headed for New York.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind. When it comes to cultural references, I’ve got to thread a needle thinner than the life line on Kurt Cobain’s hand.”

“Who?”

“I’ve got to squeeze cultural references into a space tighter than the waistband of a fat Elvis jumpsuit.”

“What?”

I gave up and sighed, “with you, my cultural references crash faster than Buddy Holly’s plane.”

“What does a tragic 1959 accident in Iowa have to do with New York in 1965?”

“Forget it. Let’s just say I’ve got a hunch,” I lied.

I believed the case was as clear as black and white.

As I searched through the materials I had downloaded on my phone, I found hard evidence going back to the 60s that Whipple was already mesmerizing women into hoarding toilet paper.

And to add a symbolic touch, the evidence was actually in black and white.

Something stunk, and I had no pun or cultural reference for the situation. I simply didn’t trust Whipple’s daughter.

There were too many unanswered questions…

How could a man who officially died in 2007 be involved in the biggest run on paper since the stock market crash of 1929?

Why did Darling choose the exact moment in time where she could pick up Clarabelle and get the cops on our tail?

And why is my memory more fragmented than a Seagate hard drive that hasn’t been reformatted since 2003?

After the semi-collision with that oak tree and the real collision with Helen’s right fist, my memory was jarred and I begin to remember all of 1973.

In October, OPEC proclaimed an oil embargo and the entire country went bananas, with impossibly long lines, anger, and panic.

There were shortages of everything: gas, bananas, even red herrings. But the toilet paper crisis ended not with a bang, but with a Whipple.

Supermarket shelves were stuffed to overflowing with Charmin only three weeks after Senator Froelich’s issued his press release about a future toilet paper shortage and possible rationing.

As my mind cleared, I remembered that Froelich was one of only six Republicans in the House Judiciary Committee who voted to the impeach President Nixon for obstruction of justice and abuse of power.

Someone with that kind of integrity wouldn’t be part of this caper.

Even a politician.

I crossed him off my list of possible suspects, then looked for other clues on the Reefer Rollers left in the back seat by Clarabelle.

Written on one of the papers, I found a strange code:

FUX?

SVFX.

FUM?

SVFM.

OKLFMNX.

The message meant nothing to me, but I suddenly felt hungry.

I held on to the paper, but crossed Clarabelle off my list of suspects as another red herring and got even hungrier.

Something was fishy, and I knew I had to stop using food metaphors and similes or I would consume the entire city (hyperbole not being off-limits).

The only real evidence I had poked holes in my client’s story like Swiss… but I stopped myself in time and focused on the two big questions sitting on my plate.

Why had Whipple Twin #2 instructed me to go back to the 70s if he knew his brother started filming those commercials years before?

What really happened when Whipple Twin #1 first signed on to mansplain housewives about squeezing the Charmin?

1965

I decided to go back to the beginning, to 1965, and observe the first Charmin commercial ever... filmed in a New York City neighborhood known as FLUSHING.

Coincidence? I think not.

My gut was tingling — my own personal Spidey Sense — except for those times when I’d eaten two chili cheese Coneys with extra onions and jalapeños, in which case, the sensation meant something completely different.

I needed to continue the investigation without the Whipple skirt observing or interfering.

And the best way to accomplish that objective was to create a diversion.

Right before we arrived at the location of the shoot — a nondescript neighborhood supermarket — I turned to Darling and said “Stop right here,” in front of a nondescript, neighborhood diner.

“Are you kidding? You’re going to eat now?”

“Concussion protocol, Darling. I’ve had enough of them to know.”

“Okay, whatever,” she sighed in surrender.

Once inside, I ordered pecan-crusted salmon with broccoli, cranberry sauce, some Italian bread with olive oil, and green tea, topped off with a slice of blueberry pie.

She drank lemon water with an expression that would make you believe the waitress had held the water.

Another question emerged from those puckered lips.

“Are you seriously going to eat all that?”

“Concussion protocol, Darling. These are all brain foods, rich in flavonoids, antioxidants, and omega-3 fatty acids. It’s important to stimulate the production of BDNF”

“What?”

“Brain-derived Neurotrophic Factor,” I mumbled as I tucked into my lunch. “Just Google it.”

She stared at me blankly.

“You’ll understand when you’re older.”

Through the course of the meal, I “spilled” olive oil, “mishandled” a bowl of mustard, and “didn’t realize” when the sleeve of my trench coat tipped over her glass of lemon water as I made various exaggerated gestures in recounting the story of Dorothy, Mr. and Mrs. Jack Rabbit, the Wizard, and the Emerald City Estates scam.

I’ve gotta say, that Whipple skirt was like a freakin’ ninja.

And the dame had pretty quick reflexes, too.

No matter what I did, that blue miniskirt remained spotless when all I wanted was to stain that dress (but not in the way you’re thinking, you perverts) so she’d have to go to a nearby nondescript neighborhood cleaner.

I grew despondent, thinking my attempt to create a diversion had failed.

As I turned and stuck out my arm to signal for the check, I bumped another waitress who was walking by with a tray full of food.

She stumbled a bit, then expertly regained her balance only to hit the puddle of olive oil.

Her foot slid forward, causing her to fall backward, and her now airborne tray showered me with chocolate milkshakes, chili cheese fries, greasy burgers, and pie a la mode.

Darling started laughing at me so hard she didn’t notice the single french fry that ricocheted off my trench coat, bounced on the table, and softly fell in her lap.

“Nooooooooooooooooooooo!” she screamed.

Babies cried. Glasses shattered. A crack developed in the tectonic plate running under the borough of Queens.

It was a sound that would have made tough guys in interrogation rooms start singing like canaries.

It was a sound that would have caused a stampede as if the jungle was engulfed in flames.

It was a sound that would have made Daenerys (she of titles, titles, titles) smile, cooing “ah, come closer, my children.”

I paid the check and turned back to the grieving woman.

“Listen, Darling, there’s a dry cleaner, just across the street…”

She shook her head. “I’ve got a change of clothes in the car.”

After running out to the car to retrieve a small suitcase, she reemerged from the lady’s room dressed in denim hotpants.

I smiled and said “sorry, Darling, but you’re going to have to stay in the car.

Those Daisy Dukes won’t be invented for another 14 years and I can’t have you standing out like a sore thumb at the film shoot. You’ll blow our cover.”

Darling grumbled, but agreed and walked over to the dry cleaners.

At the same time, I walked across the street, badged the muscle guarding the entrance to the market, found the makeshift sound stage, and stopped in shock when I saw them…

To be continued in Chapter 8… (or should we call it Chapter 9?)

Previous chapters:

Chapter 1 • Chapter 2 • Chapter 3 • Chapter 4 • Chapter 5 • Chapter 6

FOOTNOTES:

¹The original Rocky & Bullwinkle Show (not that monstrous remake on Amazon Prime) with its manic action and subversive humor, was our Simpsons back in 1960. One of the cartoons within that show was “Peabody’s Improbable History,” featuring Mr. Peabody, a genius dog, and his trusty boy Sherman (not to be confused with the monstrous remake created by DreamWorks Animation). Here’s the first episode ever, where Peabody became, among other things “The Woof of Wall Street.”