Happy Medium

by Sarah Adler

The brittle woman she met today would no doubt snap in half if she tried to do a sun salutation,

Last time, she had on this fox coat that gave me the heebie-jeebies. Had the heads attached and everything. When she handed it to me to hang up for her I nearly dropped it and ran.”

“Yeah, yeah. Save it for the paying customers. Hopefully, soon to include Madame Dead Fox. You’re going to be doing the planet’s soft and fluffy animals a big favor, taking that woman’s money.”

That’s . . . an insane amount of cash for a weekend of you fucking around with some sage in a farmhouse.”

Unfortunately, her knowledge of farmwork is limited to having read Charlotte’s Web as a child, leaving her with very little practical information to help her finish that sentence (unless an unusually gifted spider is going to appear and spin her an answer).

Maybe showing up to a goat farm looking like Alexis Rose gone goth wasn’t the most practical idea.

She says it like she’s an old local in a Yorkshire pub warning a young American tourist to keep off the moors and beware the moon.

And in the middle of a St. Olaf story. Help!”

“Mm, yeah, no. I can’t deal with you using Guy Fieri catchphrases.” “Well, that’s not very Flavortown of you,” he says, frowning.

Then again, the last twenty-four hours have really raised the bar on what she’s willing and able to mentally accommodate.

That pinches Gretchen’s heart in a way she doesn’t appreciate.

It’s very . . . gothic grunge Gorton’s Fisherman.

Gretchen recalls the animal birthing scenes in All Creatures Great and Small. Oh no, she thinks. He wants me to James Herriot it.

Goats aren’t born with names, you nincompoop.

She settles in, letting the goats nibble at her clothes and fingers like little weirdos,

A tattooed and bearded goat farmer? It’s gonna be a virtual panty-dropping spree.” “I hate everything you just said.”

the farm is set to make a nice chunk of change off city folks’ love of doing bougie things in the countryside.

the ghost currently entertaining himself by hover-sitting atop vehicles’ roofs as they bump down the driveway, screaming like he’s on a roller coaster each time they reach the edge of the property and an invisible force knocks him off.

He’s so fucking ridiculous, Gretchen thinks. And he’s the best friend I’ve ever had.

when Everett Kool-Aid Mans into the kitchen from somewhere outside.

If Gretchen knows anything about her spectral friend, it’s that he loves a good gab session and a Hogan’s Heroes marathon.

At one point, she’s scolded for her use of excess plastic wrap and told her job was to package the stuff, not make it look like Kathy Bates in Fried Green Tomatoes.

her heart wants to add a farmer in a bright travesty of a sweater,

Something extremely inconvenient to move, like geodes or antique doorstops.

A Few Books That Influenced This One Welcome to Temptation by Jennifer Crusie Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons Just Like Magic by Sarah Hogle A Notorious Countess Confesses by Julie Anne Long Will They or Won’t They by Ava Wilder The Code of the Woosters by P. G. Wodehouse