Double Trouble

by Gretchen Archer

  She had third-degree burns on her backside.

  “I’d sure love a big cola-cola. Get me a cola-cola, Davis?”

  “You need water, Bea. Drink the water.”

  “I’m not drinking from a hose,” she said. “You can’t do that anymore, dummy. There’s germs in the hose. And I don’t want germs. What I want is a little girls’ room. I think I got aholt of a bad tomato.”

  Great.

  “Bea.” I shielded my eyes from the ball of fire from above. “We’ve got to get you to a hospital. But first, we have to get inside. How did you get to the roof? How long have you been here? Why haven’t you gone back in? What, what, what was going on in the Penthouse when you left? Did you see Bradley? Bianca? No Hair?”

  Bea—I didn’t know how else to say it—burped.

  For an eternity, Bea burped.

  I can’t describe it. I don’t want to describe it. I don’t ever want to think about it again. For the rest of my life.

  She beat her chest. “Whew, that’s better.” She shook it off. “Has anybody got a Rolaids?”

  “Bea!” I leaned in and grabbed her by one of her clammy arms. “How did you get here?”

  The hatch. There was a roof hatch. On the west corner of the roof, there was a metal hatch we didn’t know was there because we’d never needed to know it was there. It led to a mechanical room behind the Penthouse service quarters behind the Penthouse laundry—no man’s land. She didn’t know what time she’d last accessed the roof to water the tomatoes, but when she tried to return, she couldn’t open the hatch.

  Because it was locked.

  Lurch left her on the roof to die.

  “What time was that, Bea?”

  “I don’t know.” Her face, in the shadows of the aluminum shell, looked mottled, sunburned in odd spots. “The sun was—” her head swiveled on her thick neck “—over yon.” She didn’t point so much as she swirled a finger in the hot air.

  Bea had been in the sun too long. And in a million years, she wouldn’t fit down the ductwork. “Bea, can you walk?” I asked.

  “I’m going to need some help.”

  We helped as best we could. We hoisted her up on wobbly legs. The first thing she did was peel off her dancing pineapples tank top and fan herself with it. Her exposed sports bra, the color of lunchmeat, had slipped, or didn’t fit to begin with. She was the very definition of hot mess. “Whew.” She fanned. “I need me a shower.”

  With Baylor on one side of Bea, who, we all agreed, so desperately needed a shower, and me on the other, while Fantasy hopped all the way across the massive roof on the balls of her burned feet (“Yow, yow, yow!”), we made our way to the west side of the roof. We shoved Bea against the ledge, giving her the only shade the roof offered, and it wasn’t much. I told her to be still and be quiet, then we stood over the roof hatch. It was metal, domed, and had a small silver disk in the middle.

  “What’s that?” I asked Baylor.

  “A vent of some sort.”

  “Do we pry it off?” I asked. “Do we shoot our way through?”

  Fantasy weighed in. “Let’s say you’re Lurch and you know Bea is up here. And by now you assume we are too. Aren’t you going to keep an eye on the hatch?”

  She was so right.

  Lurch, ten steps ahead of us the whole time, ten steps ahead of us for eight long months when it got right down to it, was lying in wait. Or watching in wait, because he surely had access to video feed of every square inch of the Penthouse. Or listening in wait and heard us shoot the three clasps off the hatch. We’d only lifted it an inch when a spray of ammo from below almost took off Baylor’s right ear.

  We slammed the hatch back down.

  Plan B.

  And it wasn’t a good one.

  We tossed the tomatoes. Every single one.

  I thought Bea Crawford would lose her mind.

  Choking on Black Kow fumes as I pulled tomato plants from their paint bucket homes and hurled them right and left on the roof, where they immediately melted, I said, “You’re willing to die and take everyone else with you to save your stupid tomatoes, Bea?”

  Her breath coming in short spurts, her chest heaving, she said, “No, but I’m going to kill that big lug who locked me up here.”

  “No one’s killing anyone, Bea. Sit there and be still.”

  My t-shirt over my nose and mouth against the Black Kow fumes, I used the garden hose to fill the buckets to the brim. Baylor, who’d stripped off his shirt and tied it around his nose and mouth, dragged the heavy buckets to Fantasy at the hatch. (“What the hell is this stuff?”) Fantasy, who’d filled two empty paint buckets with several inches of water, was feet-in straddling them, pretending they were water shoes, her head turned away to the point of surely rearranging her spine, bent over the muddy buckets, and using her bare hands all the way to her elbows, mixing Black Kow mud.

  In the middle of all that, Bea, head between her legs, examining, said, “Yep. I got me a farmer tan.”

  We ignored her.

  “Come over here and look at my arms, Davis.”

  I did not stop what I was doing to look at Bea’s arms. I’d seen them all my life. I had nightmares about Bea’s arms.

  “I think they’re getting the suntan too.”

  Working at top speed around the harsh elements, the mud fumes, and Bea, we finished our noxious chore, but not without all but bathing in it. We were covered in Black Kow goo. Baylor popped the vent off the hatch, giving us a circular opening the circumference of a tennis ball. I lined up a bucket and tipped it, the Black Kow serum raining down as we set a Lurch trap.

  “Davis.”

  Ten buckets in, it was Bea again.

  “Be quiet,” Fantasy said. “Do you hear that?”

  A faint persistent beep rose from the vent opening.

  “That’s the carbon monoxide alarm,” Baylor said.

  “Davis.”

  Bea again.

  “Hurry.” I tipped another bucket of sludge down the vent opening. “The fumes from this toxic garbage have set off alarms. Lurch is on the way.”

  “Davis.”

  Bea again.

  I stopped the process of saving my husband for Bea. For Bea Crawford. Who should have never been there. I stopped what I was doing to let her have it. Her face had turned gray, her eyes had rolled back in her head, she’d stopped sweating, and her vast midsection looked like it was about to explode, just as the last bucket of Black Kow was splashing down the vent. “Get the hatch open.”

  “What?” Sweat poured from every inch of Baylor. “Do you not remember opening the hatch before, Davis?”

  My eyes still on Bea, I said it again. “Open the hatch.”

  Fantasy, in her water bucket shoes, turned to look at Bea. “Oh, Lord, help, she’s having a heart attack.”

  Bea did, in fact, kill the big lug who locked her out of the Penthouse. Fantasy tipped as far forward as her bucket shoes would allow and threw open the hatch. Baylor, with a grunt heard far into the Gulf, half lifted and half dragged Bea while I kicked Black Kow buckets out of his way, then we shoved Bea Crawford, who desperately needed a hospital, down the hatch where she landed on Lurch. Her dead weight snapped his neck.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Fantasy and I were released from Biloxi Memorial Hospital early Saturday morning. Tough guy Baylor was never admitted. The triage nurse in the emergency room gave him Gatorade and sent him home. Bea Crawford, who needed to be in the psych ward, heavily sedated, in a straitjacket, and maybe muzzled, was looking at an additional week. Her condition was stable Saturday morning, which was surprising, considering she arrived severely dehydrated with second-degree burns on almost half of her substantial body, salmonella poisoning from the tomatoes, and a shattered tailbone from her fall down the hatch, via Lurch’s head, but nothing heart related. The attending p
hysician said her heart was in surprisingly good shape. What we saw was the salmonella poisoning presenting as a heart attack. He went on to say Bea was as strong as an ox, getting stronger by the day, making an amazing recovery, and boy, didn’t everyone know it. After two days in infectious disease isolation, because it was the only way to protect the staff, the other patients, and the general public at large from the squalls of her “violent illness, excessive protests, and vicious threats,” at her discount insurance company’s insistence, she was moved to a regular hospital room. She went from demanding “Netflax” and a “sleeper’s numbers” bed to demanding sponge baths and feet rubs from male nurses, until, feeling much better, demanding Bellissimo takeout every two hours. According to her, the hospital was trying to poison her all over again with their nasty cafeteria food. She said prisoners ate better than hospital patients, and if they didn’t believe her, they could ask me, because I’d been in jail so many times. After wearing out Harrison County 911 operators at the Emergency Communications Center with her complaints against the Bellissimo for not delivering the food she ordered after she singlehandedly killed “the big lug” for them, with, as she repeatedly told them, “nothing but her butt and her spidey sense,” to the point of Emergency Communications lodging complaints against the hospital and the Bellissimo, Room Service was told not to fight Bea. Just send the food—steaks, lobsters, gallons upon gallons of fudge ripple ice cream—by limo. And the calls to 911 demanding Biloxi Memorial, all of Biloxi Memorial, and the Bellissimo, all of the Bellissimo, be arrested for not feeding her decent food were between her calls to the tip hotlines at CNN, MSNBC, Fox News Channel, and HGTV, who didn’t even have a tip hotline, demanding Home Depot, all of Home Depot, be taken out back and shot for selling Black Kow.

  I honestly couldn’t wait until she was back where she belonged.

  Back at the Bellissimo, where I belonged, and in my heart, always would, Elvis had left the building.

  And not a moment too soon.

  I had a feeling we’d never, ever, in a million years, ever, host another Elvii event.

  Ever.

  All charges were dropped against Casino Credit Manager Gray Donaldson, who promptly turned in her notice, and not a two-week notice. She gave us notice that she’d never, ever, in a million years, ever, set foot on Bellissimo property again.

  Ever.

  No charges were filed against Megan Shaw, who Bradley and No Hair found imprisoned in the staff quarters of the Penthouse. She’d been barricaded in a small windowless storage room for the better part of a week with a sleeping bag, a laptop, a case of Healthy Grains granola clusters, and a K-cup coffee maker. She’d been ordered to funnel a million dollars from wherever she could steal it to an offshore account for Lurch in exchange for her life. A life she very much wanted to live. When Bradley and No Hair found her, she was only $22,280 in—stealing wasn’t as easy as it looked—and was in the process of accepting the fact that she would never find enough money for Lurch to see her baby or her mother again.

  She was offered the position of Casino Credit Manager.

  She declined.

  Baby Oliver’s biological father, Nathan Z. Stone, was picked up at the Atlanta-Hartsfield airport with ten million dollars in his black spinner carry-on suitcase and a one-way ticket on Lufthansa Airline’s Flight 1820 to Cairo in his pocket. He was charged with seventy million dollars in banking fraud, felony wiretapping, felony embezzlement, felony misappropriation of funds, and fleeing with intent to allude, but he wasn’t charged with rape, because Megan Shaw declined to press charges.

  The attendants pushing our side-by-side wheelchairs—hospital regulation upon discharge for me; Fantasy’s feet were still too blistered to walk on for her—were talking in code about the most obnoxious patient either had ever seen, dealt with, or heard of. Fantasy and I easily cracked the code. Between me, Fantasy, and Baylor, there wasn’t a code we couldn’t crack. Especially when we worked together.

  The elevator doors parted on ground level. Across the hospital lobby, Fantasy’s husband, Reggie, and her three sons, whose names all started with the letter “K,” stood. Her youngest son—who I called Special K; I was so bad with names—had a tight grip on a balloon bouquet. Her middle son, who I called Middle K, was holding a mixed bouquet of flowers. Her oldest son, who I called Big K, was holding a pair of plush house slippers. They were tomatoes. The house slippers were fuzzy, googly-eyed, smiling tomatoes.

  “Funny,” she said. “Very, very funny.”

  We lost our wheelchairs and escorts an inch from freedom, and by freedom, I meant the other side of the hospital’s main entrance. Stuffed in the humid anteroom between the lobby and the sidewalk, Fantasy said, “Does anyone have an umbrella?”

  It was pouring rain.

  Healing, cooling, cleansing rain.

  She turned to me. “Where’s Bradley? Where’s Crisp? Do you need a ride?”

  “On the way.” I didn’t say who was on the way, or when they’d arrive, because I hadn’t called for a ride yet.

  “See you Monday?” she asked.

  We hugged a little harder than we had to.

  I waited until they were out of sight, which didn’t take long in the downpour, before I stepped back into the hospital lobby, caught an elevator to the third floor, and slowly made my way down a long sterile hallway to room 324. With a heavy sigh, I turned the last corner and tapped a knuckle on the open door. Clone, who’d been released from ICU and moved to a private room, was lying on her side facing me. A curious look crossed her face. Maybe. It was hard to tell beneath the bandages and headgear. But then I saw recognition register in her eyes. “What do you want?” She asked through mechanically clenched teeth. “You know what?” She turned away from me, not easy for her to do, so I was staring at her back. “I don’t care what you want,” she said. “Get out.”

  I wasn’t even in.

  I stood at the door wondering what to say to her when I noticed her shoulders shaking under the thin hospital blanket. I crossed the room, pulled up a stiff chair, and very hesitantly reached for her hand.

  We stayed there. Just like that.

  She cried.

  After what felt like an eternity, she said, “Do you drink coffee?”

  I passed her another tissue. “All day long.”

  “Have you had the coffee here?”

  “It’s horrible.”

  “Could you help me get a decent cup of coffee? With a straw?”

  From my phone, I caught the next Bea Food Train and ordered a large carafe of coffee from Beans, the coffee shop in the Bellissimo lobby.

  Clone had been offered and accepted the job of Social Media Influencer for Bellissimo Special Events by Sara Z. Stone. Representing Bianca Sanders was never mentioned before she received, cashed, and immediately spent her ten-thousand-dollar sign-on bonus. Clone’s first assignment? Lose twenty-seven pounds and attend four weeks of training in Malaysia. Much to Clone’s horrific surprise, her training turned out to be a breast lift, tummy tuck, chin augmentation, liposculpture, rhinoplasty, blepharoplasty, and Cinderella surgery.

  I asked what Cinderella surgery was.

  Clone’s shoe size was surgically reduced from an eight to a six. It required breaking all her toes, toes, some of which, she no longer had. The multiple surgeries were performed by various Malay-speaking surgical teams in one long thirty-two-hour procedure. When she woke in recovery, Clone thought she’d died and gone to Malaysian hell. She spent the next four weeks recuperating. When she was finally allowed passage back to the States and her smaller foot and thirty-pound-lighter frame stepped off the plane after a twenty-hour flight, she was immediately whisked to the woods for a photoshoot with smelly camels wearing nothing but red lights, and it was cold.

  Wait a minute.

  Those were alpacas.

  And that timeline was off.

  “When did Sara Z.
hire you—?” I almost called her Clone.

  “It was just after the hurricane. Like the day after,” she said. “Maybe two.”

  I didn’t lose my Bianca Sanders Celebrity Double job on Thanksgiving Day. I lost my job weeks before and didn’t know it. Which meant Sara Z. watched the live coverage of Hurricane Kevin from the Bellissimo, heard the post-hurricane news that the casino owners would be waiting out the reconstruction in New Orleans, saw an opportunity, chose Bianca Sanders as her target, set her nefarious wheels in motion, then pounced on her unsuspecting and easy prey without me to get in her way.

  “Do you know how hard it is to work for Bianca Sanders?” Clone asked. “Do you have any idea?” She didn’t give me time to answer; I knew better than anyone. “The only thing harder than working for Bianca Sanders was working for Sara Z. May she not rest in peace.”

  I warmed her coffee.

  Clone tried to quit her job, and when that didn’t work, tried to get fired, and even that didn’t work. Clone didn’t sleep with three high rollers from Bakersfield, California, she paid three high rollers from Bakersfield, California, to say she’d slept with them. She was sorry she’d jeopardized Bianca’s seat on the board at the children’s hospital, but at that point, she’d been desperate. Her last assignment was a midnight pickup of five million dollars, five million dollars that would buy her freedom from Sara Z., but the money wasn’t there. Megan Shaw didn’t drop it off in Special Events office as she’d been instructed. What she’d dropped off were baby things, her Bellissimo uniform, her cell phone, so she wouldn’t be followed, and a note saying she just couldn’t do it. Clone, who could, because she wanted out before her celebrity double job killed her, chased the money. A chase that began with abducting Birdy, went on for days, and didn’t end until I found her in the freezer.

  For which she thanked me.

  Thanks I didn’t deserve.

  “You saved my life.” Her voice, so remorseful. Her guard, so down. “I didn’t know how much I wanted to live until I almost died.”