Beylana Flagg opened her eyes and listened carefully to the sounds of Club Calypso above her. Grabbing the bars of her crib, she pulled herself up and looked around.
"No growed-ups," she thought. At the other end of the crib, her friends Jamie and Amanda were waking up. They were twins, and they were wearing matching sailor suits. Bey just wore a diaper and a t-shirt that said "Sorority Girl."
"Are we alone?" Amanda asked, toddling over to Beylana.
"Yup. And your sister is asleep."
"You want to do something scary again, don't you?" Jamie asked, still rubbing the sleep from his eyes.
"Not scary," Amanda said. "Fun."
Beylana squeezed between the bars of the crib and shimmied down the leg. As she landed with a "thump," Pollythene woke up.
"And just where do you think you're going?" she asked. Polly was six, and she went to school all day. The rest of the time she bossed Amanda and Jamie around, and if Beylana was there, she got bossed too.
"Nowhere. We're just going to... stretch our legs." Beylana had heard growed-ups say this a lot.
"Not without me, you're not." Polly got off of the couch and was going to dump Bey back into the crib when Amanda and Jamie escaped, too. Jamie bonked Polly on the head with a toy hammer, and that distracted her long enough for Amanda and Beylana to tie her up with their hair ribbons. Then, because they couldn't pick her up, they pushed her mostly under the crib and covered the rest with the dust ruffles.
"Okay," Beylana said, panting a little. "I heard my mommy say that tonight is the Candy-Opening. If we can get upstairs, we can get the candy!"
"But we're not s'posed to have candy!" Jamie protested. "We're too little!"
"That just what they tell us," Bey said, nodding sagely. "'Cause they want it all for themselves."
"We can't get up the stairs, though," Jamie said. "I guess we'll just have to go back to sleep."
"Nuh-huh!" cried Amanda. "I know another way up, with no stairs! It's called a dumbwaiter."
"But the waiters don't come down here, no matter how dumb they are," Jamie tried. But it didn't look like he'd be sleeping any time soon.
"Not a real waiter! It's like a elevator... see?" Amanda opened a panel in the wall. "It goes upstairs when we pull on the rope. C'mon, get in!"
Marianna slipped away from Joanna, who was trying to order something at the overcrowded bar, and sat down next to Ellie on the couch. "What are you doing out of the kitchen?"
"Zachariah told me to take a break," she said, then sighed heavily. "He's been acting really weird lately."
"Weird? El, he's a former Amish."
"I know... that worries me. He's, like, afraid of the microwave now. Won't turn on the lights. I think he's going to be Amish again."
Mari lifted an eyebrow. "What about my electric stove back there?"
"Still using that, for now. I tell you, we just cannot find normal men, can we?" Ellie grinned. This had been a common lament since high school.
"I give up. Alan... Oskar, whatever... he was too much for me to handle. I'm not going to try again for a long, long, time. Just going to raise my kids as best I can, and spend a lot of time with my best girlfriends!"
Just then, Doreen rushed into the bar, shoving her way through the throng until she reached Marianna. Breathless, she gasped, "The babies are missing!"
"How can they be missing? Polly too?"
"I don't know, yes, Polly too. Oh, Mari, if we don't find them soon, I could lose Beylana!"
"What do you mean, you could lose her? You've already lost her. I mean, we have. We've lost all of them."
"No, I mean Frogman could say I'm a bad parent and sue for custody!"
"Doreen, think! Remember that bit where Frogman launched a full-scale invasion of the Earth over a personal vendetta? Besides, Bey isn't even his! Only Neil could sue for custody, and he's not going to do that if he doesn't know what's happened!" Marianna rolled her eyes. "Now that I've wasted all that time, can we find the kids now?"
Doreen hiccupped one last time, wiped her cheeks, and quietly followed Marianna down to the basement.
Beylana slid out of the dumbwaiter and onto the floor, Amanda hot on her heels. Jamie hesitated in the tiny elevator. The babies looked around the neon-lit club in awe.
"I wonder where the candy is being opened!" Bey exclaimed. "If all these growed-ups weren't so tall, maybe I could see." She bumped her head into a barstool.
"And if it weren't so dark..." Amanda thought aloud as her eyes struggled to focus in the uneven light. She forged ahead, keeping against the wall until she spotted the stage. "I think that's it!" she cried, pointing, "Where the big light is on that guy."
Beylana rubbed the sore spot on her forehead and looked across the bar at Ricky Martin, crooning to Daniela. "And your aunt Daniela. But why's he singing?"
"I guess it's some sort of a big deal tonight, so maybe they're having him sing and then he's gonna open the candy."
"But where's the candy? Shouldn't it be up there already?" Bey had finally caught up to Amanda, who by now was halfway across the floor. "And how are we going to get up there? That's pretty high up."
Amanda stopped and looked back. "No, I think I've been up there before. When I was really little. There's..."
"Stairs!" Beylana finished as she spotted the access stairs. "We can get up those!"
The girls continued their trek across the dance floor, miraculously avoiding feet and notice. Back at the bar, Jamie still sat in the dumbwaiter, now finally brave enough to dangle his legs out the opening. He wasn't sure about dropping to the floor yet, thought. That jungle man was rushing back and forth behind the bar, and he had feet bigger than all of Jamie.
Just as Jamie had decided to pull himself back down to the basement in the dumbwaiter, the other bartender plucked him out and set him on the bar. "Found one of Mari's kids playing in the old service elevator," he laughed. "Don't worry, kid, we'll take care of you." Nicolas handed Jamie an unsalted hard pretzel, which he contentedly gnawed on. Thank goodness he'd been found before there could be any trouble.
Then he saw his mother and Aunt Doreen come out of the kitchen, a very angry Polly stalking behind them, hair ribbons in her hand. Mom looks really worried, Jamie thought. That makes me worried...
Mari's face relaxed somewhat when she saw Jamie sitting on the bar. "Nic!" she cried. "Where did you find him?"
"Sitting in the dumbwaiter. Those babies must be geniuses if they figured out how that works, and them not even talking yet." He slid another beer down the bar to Dava.
"I'll bet it was Amanda. Did I ever tell you how she used to creep me out? Talking when she was just a few months old. Well, sort of." Marianna paused. "Where are the girls, then?"
A break in the music caused Mari and Doreen to look up at the stage, where Ricky Martin was holding Beylana in one arm and Amanda in the other. "Oh my God!" Doreen cried. "How'd they get all the way up there?"
"Never doubt the powers of a bored baby," Mari said drily before rushing up to the stage, Doreen close behind.
On stage, Ricky had grown bored with his usual Latin-pop repertoire, and was singing a few standards from the fifties and sixties. A voice from the back of the room called out, "Let's play the name game!"
"Joanna," Mari muttered, semi-amused as she shoved past patrons. By the time the crowd had allowed them past, Ricky and the audience had sung their way through Amanda, Beylana, Tchadde, Daniela, and Ricky. Mari leapt on stage and grabbed Amanda, prompting the audience to belt out, "Mari, Mari bo Bari, banana-fana fo Fari, fe fi fo Ari, Mari!" A moment later, the Club resounded with "Dori, Dori bo Bori..." as Doreen gained the stage and snatched Beylana, pausing to thank Ricky for taking care of her.
The Club had almost run out of names when Mari had an inspiration. "Let's do Chuck!" she cried.
Ricky started singing, "Chuck, Chuck bo Buck, banana-fana fo-- hey!"
The rest of the Club kept singing, completing the verse obliviously, as Ricky blushed and tried to keep from laughing. It wouldn't do well for his reputation to allow this to pass by. "Marianna, what are you doing?"
"Just singing a song in honor of our dearly departed Ulysses Chuck," she said, wide-eyed and innocent.
"He's dead and you're singing that about him?!" Ricky sputtered.
"Who said anything about dead? He moved away a few months ago is all."
Ricky Martin shook his head in puzzlement. As nice as that Daniela chick was, he'd be leaving this town. Very soon. Very, very soon.
Coming up on Club Calypso...
"Frogman, get away from me." Daniela turned her nose up in disgust and started to walk away. He put his hand on the wall, blocking her path. "I mean it, fly-breath." She turned to go the other way, then realized she was backed into a corner.
"You knew it had to happen sooner or later, Daniela," Frogman slurred.