I was hired to be Bianca Sanders’s celebrity double.
We looked enough alike to be sisters, me being the younger sister by a few years and the smaller sister by a few pounds, with the single exception of our coloring. So when I had a Bianca chore, I sprayed my caramel-colored hair beach blonde, hid my caramel-colored eyes behind envy-green contacts, then squeezed myself into fresh-off-the-runway couture to mingle with Bellissimo casino high rollers, headlining entertainment acts, and visiting dignitaries. Around town, I cut grand opening ribbons, chaired fundraisers, and threw ceremonial first pitches at Biloxi Shuckers games. Several times a year I graced glossy magazine covers, waved from parade floats, and gave the occasional television interview. As her.
Bianca absolutely loved the program.
She relaxed, as much as she was capable of relaxing, locking herself away in her Penthouse home to wait it out. When the walls threatened to close in on her, she’d whisk away to Paris and shop. Or Telluride, where she’d pretend to ski. Or for parts unknown, for spiritual awakening (plastic surgery), and eventually found her way back to happiness.
Via me.
I grew to love the program too. It was never more than two or three hours a week, for which I was paid a brain surgeon’s salary. As time went on, and without meaning to, I forgave Bianca. (For being Bianca.) (And for many other offenses.) After I forgave her, I began to understand her. The understanding led to an odd form of respect. The respect, to an inkling of fondness. The fondness, to a lopsided friendship. Lopsided because, contrary to her popular opinion, I was not her personal slave. What I knew and what she had a hard time recognizing, because the concept was so new to her, was simply this: we were friends. With me being the friend who watched out for her. It broke my heart that she believed I’d walk away from her without so much as a goodbye.
I’d never do that.
I knew exactly how much that would’ve hurt her, because it was exactly how hurt I’d been for seven long months. I’d blamed her, only to hear she blamed me. I realized, alone in an interrogation room, dressed like a killer bee, who was really to blame: Sara Z. Stone, Esquire.
Bianca’s personal attorney.
Sara Z. Stone.
It was never Bianca’s fault.
It was never my fault.
It was her hurricane-chasing attorney’s fault.
TWELVE
After Hurricane Kevin, Bradley, the girls, and I moved in with my younger sister and only sibling, Meredith, where we lived for the next six years waiting for the private elevator to and from our twenty-ninth floor Bellissimo home to be replaced, because twenty-eight flights of steps with two toddlers and a Goldendoodle was above and beyond. Not to mention the resort was closed for post-hurricane remodel, so no room service. We waited it out at Meredith’s. In Pine Apple, Alabama. For six long years.
Did I say years?
Weeks.
I meant weeks.
Meredith had plenty of room, as opposed to my parents, one block over, who invited us to stay with them from between clenched teeth. It wasn’t that we weren’t welcome, or that they wouldn’t have loved the time with their granddaughters; it was that their house was small, their granddaughters were loud, and our dog made their cat nervous. Meredith, on the other hand, didn’t have a cat. She had a daughter, my fifth grade niece, Riley, who was beside herself that her little cousins would be squealing through her otherwise tomb-quiet house. Meredith and Riley lived alone in the four-story antebellum our father was born in, on Main Street, in Pine Apple, Alabama, where I was born too. (In Pine Apple.) (Not at Meredith’s.) (I was born in a hospital.) (A five-bed hospital behind a hardware store.) (But still, a hospital.)
At Meredith’s, we had the whole third floor to ourselves. We turned the extra bedroom into a playroom for Bex and Quinn, and we turned the fourth room, a dark drafty room with a beamed ceiling steeply pitched to a spooky V, a room that had been collecting Meredith’s junk for a decade, into a satellite Bellissimo office. It was far from what we were used to by way of workspace, which was executive, and for the first few days, I couldn’t concentrate for thinking bats were going to swoop. It didn’t help that while we tried to work, Bex and Quinn kept themselves busy giving Candy blanket rides up and down the hall just outside the open door of our creepy office, the giggles and woofs reaching fever pitch every three minutes. When we could work, real work, roll-up-our-sleeves-and-work work, Bradley and I sat in mismatched chairs at an old dining room table that had seen a million meals, keeping company with a rusty bicycle-built-for-two, lamps that needed rewiring, and no telling how many ghosts. It was there, in our haunted makeshift office, that I first learned of Sara Z. Stone.
“David, I’ve hired a personal attorney to handle my affairs while I’m away.”
Bianca and Richard Sanders left the battered post-hurricane Bellissimo the same day we did, traveling in the opposite direction. They would rough out the reconstruction in the $5,000-a-night Presidential Suite of the Ritz-Carlton on Canal Street in New Orleans, which, as it turned out, overlooked Bianca’s new personal attorney’s office in the French Quarter.
“While you’re away?” I asked. “Where are you going?”
“Sara—”
(Who was Sara?)
“—has waved her magic wand, David, and booked me for six months of spiritual awakening with Dr. Fredrich Von Krügerschmitt in Berlin.”
“Germany?” My fingers were flying across the keyboard of my laptop.
“No, David,” she deadpanned. “California.”
I’d never heard of Berlin, California. And it’s Davis.
“Of course, Germany,” she said.
At which point, I was reading Dr. Fredrich Von Krügerschmitt’s vitals on my laptop. He was head of plastic surgery at Beauty Studio, Berlin, and to Bianca, that made sense. A head-to-toe plastic surgery makeover would spiritually awaken her. Bianca loved surgery. The year before, she’d had an earlobe reduction. Both earlobes. But then didn’t have enough earlobe to hold her massive diamonds, so she turned right back around and had an earlobe enhancement. Both earlobes. And that was right after her knee-tuck. Both knees. Which was right after her ankle rejuvenation. Both ankles.
“Sara who, Bianca?”
“Sara Stone,” she said. “Sara Z. Stone.”
I immediately typed Sara Z. Stone into the search bar. Sara Z. Stone, Esquire, owned a lucrative and limited private law practice in New Orleans. She represented Gulf Coast celebrities, professional athletes, and scandalous politicians, of which there were many in New Orleans to choose from. I hoped there were two Sara Z. Stones, or a million, and Bianca was talking about any of the others and not the shyster attorney with the big teeth and even bigger hair on my laptop.
“Sara is my new personal attorney, David.”
Oh, no.
“I met Sara quite by accident, and it turned out to be a very fortuitous day, as she immediately diagnosed me with severe lilapsophobia, which, David, I’m in the brutal throes of.”
“I thought you said she was an attorney.”
“She is, David. A brilliant attorney.”
I looked up lilapsophobia. It was abnormal fear of violent weather, specifically tornados and hurricanes. So Bianca, whose net worth was somewhere in the billions, accidently and fortuitously met a hurricane-chasing attorney. Fortuitous indeed. For Sara Z. Stone.
“She so very generously offered to represent me as I begin my journey down the treacherous path to emotional and physical well-being.”
“How very kind of her,” I said.
“As it turns out, David, not only is she kind, she’s well-versed in all aspects of law, not just the intrinsically personal.”
“But the Bellissimo has four intrinsically well-versed attorneys on staff,” I said. “All of whom are at your disposal. Why do you need a personal attorney in New Orleans when you have four staff attorneys d
ownstairs?”
“You wouldn’t understand, David.”
Oh, but David did understand. (And it’s Davis.) Bianca wanted her name on Sara’s client list and would much rather charter a Bellissimo jet for a ten-minute flight to see her own attorney than take a thirty-second elevator ride to see one of the Bellissimo’s.
“I must run, David,” she said. “Germany is waiting. Honor Sara’s wishes while I’m away, as she will be acting in my stead until I am whole, starting with replacing my personal staff with trained lilapsophobia supporters.”
Wait a minute. (A) I was already working a ten-hour day helping Bradley put the Bellissimo back together. I didn’t have the time, nor the desire, to honor Sara’s wishes while Bianca was away. (B) What was a lilapsophobia supporter? And why would Bianca agree to Sara hiring ten or twelve of them? “Letting your new attorney replace your staff would be an incredible security risk, Bianca. You don’t need to replace your staff. If you feel like you must, let me do it.” Her staff was my job—hiring, firing, bribing, talking them off the ledge, explaining that smothering Bianca with her own pillow in her sleep would result in the death penalty for them. I had no choice but to be hands-on with Bianca’s personal staff, because part of my job as her celebrity double was to keep the Bianca wolves at bay. Sara Z. Stone was the wolf. “Bianca, I can’t let you do this.”
“David,” she said, “you worry too much. And I have a flight to catch. Kisses! Ta-ta!”
Then hung up.
It wasn’t an hour later I received an all-caps text message demanding I check my inbox for an urgent email from Sara Z. Stone, Esquire. In the email, an order. Not a wish for me to honor, as Bianca put it, but an order. An edict. A decree. I was to report to the Alpaca Treehouse in the Bamboo Forest, which was located, believe it or not, southeast of Atlanta, a three-hour drive from Pine Apple, for a photoshoot. A photoshoot in which I would wear red lights. And that was it. Red lights. I’d be naked beneath the red lights. I was to be photographed buck naked in a treehouse in the forest with alpacas wearing a thin strand of red lights for the Valentine’s Day cover of Vogue. When? The next day. The very next day.
I picked up the phone immediately.
“No.” I didn’t want to leave a message. “I’ll hold.”
I held for an hour. An hour of my life, gone, waiting on Sara Z. Stone to take my call, only to hear that Sara (thin, nasally, high-pitched voice, and a mouth breather, I instantly disliked her) had moved heaven and earth in the aftermath of Hurricane Kevin to secure the cover of Vogue for Bianca, Southern distribution only, as one of the Kardashians had the rest of America, to show the world, the South World anyway, how well Bianca had survived the hurricane and that she was back, better than ever.
“Public relations,” Sara said. “Do you understand public relations, Mrs. Cole?”
I was too busy fuming and pacing as best I could in my sister’s creepy attic to understand anything.
“Timing,” Sara Z. Stone said. “Do you understand timing, Mrs. Cole? The cover coincides with the reopening of the casino. Surely you understand that timing is imperative.”
She went on to explain time to me. How vital it was I not waste hers when all of Condé Nast Incorporated, who apparently owned Vogue, was waiting for the outcome of the photoshoot she’d all but killed herself to secure on behalf of Bianca. Did I understand how far she, Vogue, and Condé Nast Incorporated had gone out of their way to accommodate Bianca? Did I understand that alpaca models stayed booked six months in advance?
Bottom line, I was to find my way to Atlanta for a photoshoot in the woods with alpacas wearing a strand of red lights, and only a strand of red lights, the very next day.
The very next day was Thanksgiving.
I explained Thanksgiving to her.
She told me it was the only day the alpacas were available, and they didn’t know, or care, that it was Thanksgiving.
I explained family to her.
She told me the alpacas were a family.
I told her that under no circumstances would I not be spending Thanksgiving with my own two-legged family. And under no other circumstances would I ever allow myself to be photographed in the woods with a family of alpacas wearing nothing but a strand of red lights. I advised her to take a step back and familiarize herself with our brand before she committed the Bellissimo, Bianca, or especially me again. I said in no way, shape, or form, did her Vogue cover plans work with Bianca’s, much less the Bellissimo’s brand. I offered, as a compromise, to let the production crew come to me. I would do my best to wear red, and by red, I meant red clothes. I said I’d make myself available the day after Thanksgiving and hung up.
My father was carving the Thanksgiving turkey when the notice of my termination from Bianca Sanders’s employ arrived by messenger. As it turned out, Bianca received my letter of immediate resignation on the tarmac at Berlin Schönefeld airport as she was being escorted down the steps of the chartered Airbus 380 delivering her to Dr. Fredrich Von Krügerschmitt.
We hadn’t spoken since.
Not one time.
Until I called her from an interrogation room at Biloxi Police Department and asked for five million dollars.
The longest half hour of my life later, the baby gum-smacking officer cracked the interrogation room door. “Get up,” he said. “You made bail.”
I shot out of my miserable seat. I didn’t ask how, who, or why; I bolted. I knew the way, gum-smacker hot on my trail, to release. I signed for my personal possessions, including my Glock, minus the ammo, then stood at the iron door until it opened and made a mad dash out to Sara Z. Stone, Esquire, my ex-ex-mother-in-law, and the raging heat. Sara’s and Bea’s vehicles were parked at the curb bumper-to-bumper, Bea’s dilapidated 1983 Chevrolet Silverado truck versus Sara’s cool white Lexus LC 500. It would seem that Bianca had shown me enough mercy to call her personal attorney, and Prince Fantasy, minus her hot Prince jacket, reveling in her newfound freedom between the truck and the car, had obviously called Bea Crawford. I shielded my eyes from the glare of the sun.
“You called Bea?” I asked.
“You called this?” She threw a thumb at Sara.
Sara, from inside her cool car, beeped her horn twice, as in, I don’t have all day.
I turned for the truck. “Let’s go, Bea.”
“Davis,” Fantasy said. “You’ve got to be kidding. Bea’s truck doesn’t have air.”
“You big sissy,” Bea said.
We piled into the cab seat of Bea’s truck, me in the middle, and roared off, Bea beeping her horn at Sara as we passed. And Bea’s horn was custom. It was a boom blaster that played “Dixie” at ear-splitting volume. I couldn’t see, because I was stuffed between Bea and Fantasy with a piled-high filthy dash in front of me and a Confederate flag across the window behind me, but there wasn’t a doubt in my mind, Sara Z. Stone jumped. A mile.
“You just can’t stay out of jail, can you, Davis?” Bea laid on the horn again at a crosswalk. She hoisted her top half out the driver window and yelled, “Get your Elvis asses out of my way!”
The Bellissimo was in sight.
Directly above it, a helicopter hovered.
“What in the world?” I craned to see what make and model of school bus the helicopter was lowering onto the roof. “Is this part of the Flying Elvis thing?”
Fantasy said, “I have no idea.”
Just before it left our line of vision, we made out that the object was stainless steel, rectangular, and almost as large as the helicopter. Bea lurched her truck up to the Bellissimo main entrance, scattering Elvii, then slammed to a stop at the front doors, the same front doors we exited so many pre-incarceration hours earlier, and we couldn’t get out fast enough. She yelled, past all the Elvii, “You’re welcome, ingrates!”
We didn’t turn, but both waved—I think Fantasy waved, it might have been something other than a
wave—and kept going.
Fantasy went off in search of Elvis costumes, which was all we really intended to do when we left the first time, and I went straight for the Penthouse.
I took a deep breath as the foyer elevator doors parted.
The Sanders’ latest butler, a surly sulking man who I’d never been introduced to, so I called him Lurch, startled at the sight of me. I startled right back. He was wearing a surgical mask. It only took one whiff to figure out why. The intake for the Penthouse ventilation system must have been circulating air pulled from my porch, veranda, and balcony, then spewing Black Kow air through the Penthouse. The silver school bus we’d seen dropping onto the roof by helicopter must have been a new heat and air system for the Penthouse, which was typical Bianca—if thy air offend thee, demand a new $50,000 unit be dropped on thy roof. The odor was atrocious, more chemical than anything else. Overpowering, eye-watering, throat-burning, try-not-to-inhale chemicals. I pulled my bumblebee blouse over my mouth and nose, then all I could smell was Biloxi PD’s holding tank and a hint of Whataburger grease from Bea’s truck. A marked improvement.
“Where’s Bianca?”
“Mrs. Sanders has evacuated,” Lurch said.
“I’m here to pick up my daughters, my dog, a baby, a sneezing cat, and a little old lady,” I said.
“They are not here.”
His eyes were flinty gray and shifty.
“Where are they?” I asked. “Where are my children? Where’s the baby? Where’s my dog? The sneezing cat? The little old lady?”
“They’ve returned to your home, Mrs. Cole.”
I absolutely dreaded going home.
“Where’s Bianca?”
“At an undisclosed location.”
I gently eased the empty Glock from the waistband of my bee pants. I lined it up with the bridge of his sharp nose just above the tight line of his face mask.
Double Trouble Page 14