Norway to Hide by Maddy Hunter Page B

you were so…insatiable.”
    When had I been around any man long enough to be insatiable? “Are you sure you’re not confusing me with Nana?”
    “GET OUT HERE, DICK!” Helen Teig stood on the balcony to my right, pointing at the road. “AND BRING YOUR CAMCORDER!”
    “Does the shouting mean you have to go?” asked Etienne.
    “Oh, my God. You won’t believe this.” I regarded the spectacle in front of the hotel, wishing my phone could take photos. “We’re being visited by Santa’s reindeer.”
    They moved as quietly as a fog bank, their hoofs eerily silent as they poked down the road and into the hotel parking lot in seeming slow motion. Their pelts were gray and mangy, their legs spindle thin, their antlers soaring above their heads like giant wishbones with attached hat racks. They seemed as tame as a herd of house cats, and they continued their unhurried pace across the lawn as the guests in the beer garden flocked down the stairs for a closer view.
    “Don’t get too close!” Helen shouted to the onlookers. “They could attack at any moment.”
    “There’s a couple of dozen of them,” I said to Etienne, “and they’re huddling like Irish sheep on the lawn right below me.”
    Dick Teig stormed outside to join Helen. “I’m standing on my balcony in Finnish Lapland,” he narrated into his camcorder. “Here’s the front lawn of our hotel. Here’s some of the guests on our tour. Here’s the pack of wild reindeer who are gonna attack the stupid shits if they get too close with their cameras.”
    Jimbob Barnum leaped off the railing with the grace of a ballet dancer, then cartwheeled across thelawn, collapsing to the ground when he slammed into August Manning’s back.
    “What is it with you?” August barked. “You can’t walk on your feet like everyone else? You almost knocked my glasses off my face.”
    “Don’t you talk to him like that,” Joleen shouted, running toward Jimbob and wrapping him protectively in her arms. “Who do you think you are? Portia?”
    “Neutral corners,” said Vern, flattening his hand against August’s chest. “You two have better things to do than knock each other’s teeth out.”
    “That’s what you think,” Jimbob shot back. “There’s nothing I’d enjoy more than taking this guy down a peg or two.”
    “You’ve had it in for us ever since we showed up at the security gate,” Joleen lashed out at August. “All of you have.”
    “Don’t look at me,” said Reno. “I never laid eyes on either one of you until we had that group meeting about the trip.”
    “It might have helped if you’d tried to fit in a little better,” April Peabody advised Joleen.
    “You needed to buy a golf cart,” said June. “No one walks anymore. It’s simply too gauche.”
    “Things are heating up down there,” Dick Teig said as he shut down his camcorder. “I’m going down for close-ups. Looks like it could get bloody.”
    “Is someone bleeding? Emily? Are you there?” Etienne asked.
    “Don’t panic,” I soothed him. “That’s just Dick Teig thinking out loud.”
    “Those commercials on television are so phony,” Joleen ranted. “‘Come to the Hamlets to find the gold in your golden years.’ What the ad should say is, ‘Come to the Hamlets if you want to be laughed at for being different.’ Intolerant snobs.”
    “If you find the Hamlets experience so distasteful, why don’t you move?” suggested June.
    Joleen helped Jimbob to his feet. “’Cause we didn’t buy into the Hamlets concept to cut and run at the first sign of trouble. I don’t care who egged our house, or toilet papered our trees, or exploded our barbeque grill. We’re gonna stay the course, no matter what.”
    “Stick to your guns,” encouraged Jackie. “Moses stayed the course, and look how well it turned out for him.”
    “Curtis and me never heard about the exploding grill,” Lauretta Klick objected. “Did it make the paper?”
    All eyes turned to August, who