Shimmy Bang Sparkle

by Nicola Rendell

  And yet, Stella was still the sprawl herself. She was trying to get out—and trying to get everybody out with her. Crabs in the bucket; the oldest motive that there was.

  The risk, for me, was fucking enormous. If I got caught, it would be my second strike—my second felony. With my past conviction, a robbery charge would land me in jail for dozens of years. My debt would compound with every tally on the cinder block cell wall. And I’d have lost Stella before I even really had her.

  On the flip side, the payoff would be huge. If we got our hands on the North Star, it meant a fresh start. It would mean I’d never have to pick another lock or fence another jewel for as long as I lived. The reward would be freedom. Period.

  Looking after myself was important. But way out in the distance, where there was no debt, where life was a little easier, I could just about see us together. It was possible. Anything was possible. But not if I didn’t help her—and protect her—when she needed it most.

  I was pretty sure I had my answer. Now I just needed her to ask.

  I could tell she was nervous when I walked in. In the microwave spun a plate of leftovers. She gave me a quick kiss on the cheek and rushed around the kitchen like a little tornado, grabbing up utensils and plates. She flung open the fridge and gathered up all the cold leftovers she could carry, then dumped them on the coffee table before rushing back to the kitchen again. I let the tornado spin. I hung my helmet on the peg by the door above her purse and locked the door behind me.

  On the kitchen counter sat my broken pick. When she caught me staring at it, she froze. She said, “Sorry. I tried and it snapped.”

  As I dropped it in the garbage, I told her, “I broke a dozen of them before I got the hang of it for real.”

  “And I think you’re going to have to take the hinges off my door,” she said, making a knot out of the tie of her apron.

  “I had to do that a time or two too.” Actually, I hadn’t. But no point in rubbing her nose in it.

  She clutched the plates to her chest and looked up at me, glancing from left to right like she wasn’t sure which of my eyes to settle on.

  C’mon, I thought. Do it. Ask me. Fucking ask me.

  The microwave dinged, and she spun away. While she bustled around, I calmly filled two glasses of water and opened the bottle of wine from last night. I rinsed out the glasses we’d used, dried them, and brought them over to the table with the bottle. I noticed that on her right middle finger, she wore a Band-Aid.

  “That from earlier?” I asked.

  She nodded and stuck down the slightly frayed edge. Even her breathing sounded nervous—strained and quick. She looked up at me again, and I pulled her closer, one hand on each shoulder. “You OK?”

  This time she settled on my left eye, and her stare never wavered. “OK. I have to just do this. I have to just . . . OK.” She drew back her shoulders and blinked at me once, then again. “Do you think . . .” She stopped herself. “Are you . . . would you . . .”

  It was actually kind of adorable, all her nerves and stutters. But I didn’t want to put her through the wringer. “You want me to ask?”

  She swallowed hard. “Do you know what I’m going to say? Because honestly, I don’t need a knight in shining armor. I just need . . .”

  Jesus Christ, she was killing me with all this. If ever there was a moment for comic relief, this was it. I didn’t want her flustered. I wanted her happy and laughing and not so fucking wound up over a question I’d already asked and answered in my head. I could think of one surefire way to make her laugh, right then and there, and so I grabbed my chance. A knock-knock joke wasn’t going to cut it. It was time for the big guns.

  So I dropped down on one knee, took her hands in mine, looked her in the eye, and I said, “Marry me.”

  She exploded in nervous, wonderful giggles. “Nick!”

  “Oh wait,” I said. “That wasn’t the question?”

  Her eyes shimmered with tears of laughter, relief, and all the things I wanted to give her. I got back up off my knee, groaning a little. Forty wasn’t the new thirty—didn’t matter what anybody said. I took her in my arms and held her close. “So ask me.”

  “I just wanted to know if you’d like to help me. Next week. With . . . the thing. At . . . the place.”

  Boom. There it was. In that moment, she wasn’t a badass. She wasn’t a superhero. She wasn’t the head of a super-secret heist crew. She was just a beautiful woman, stumbling over her words and doing me the huge honor of asking for my help.

  One last time, I asked myself if the risks were worth it. If she was worth it. If the feeling in my gut was worth it.

  But the answer was clear. Looking at her made me feel like I was looking at a pair of sixes, a winning horse, a royal flush. Fuck yeah, she was worth it. I’d have bet on her no matter the odds.

  I thought of all the things I wanted to say, but none of it was enough. It was all just words, and words were just talk. The way she made me feel wasn’t just talk, so instead of saying anything, I took her face in my hands, got lost in that deep blue lagoon . . .

  And kissed her. I kissed her to say yes, I kissed her to say of course, and I kissed her to say yeah, this was fucking nuts, and yeah, I was her man. The kiss started out serious, but by the time I had her flat on her back on the countertop, she was giggling as we kissed.

  When I came up for air, the edges of her lips were red from my stubble scratching her, and her cheeks were flushed too. I knew I’d thought it before, and I knew I’d think it again. But she really was the most beautiful woman I’d ever met, and getting more so every minute. With her in my arms, I felt hope. And I wanted to protect that. No matter what. “If it goes to shit, I take the fall.”

  Her eyes searched my face. She pressed her hand against my chest—more like she was supporting me than pushing me away. “No. If we go down, we go down together.”

  There was no fucking way I would let that happen. But she was too full of heat and fire for me to douse her flames right then. “We’ll see.”

  “So,” she said, “is that a yes?”

  “Yeah. That’s a resounding fucking yes.”

  In reply, she let out a delighted little, “Yaaaaaaay!” and pulled me in to shower me with a battery of fast, sweet kisses. It was so fucking nice, so goddamned sweet, I almost didn’t know how to handle it. I turned my face away, laughing. She just kept on kissing me. “I say we go in as a couple. Newlyweds. I’ll get back down on my knee if you want.”

  Her eyes were shining, and her face was glowing. I wanted her so much, it made my bones ache. “As newlyweds, we could stay there. Like cuckoos in the nest. Fancy.”

  I held her hair back from her face with my palm and let her bangs slip through my fingers. “Yeah. We go in disguised—we do some recon, but otherwise stay away from the cameras.”

  Her eyes flashed. “Room service.”

  “Every meal in bed.”

  “What about this?” She gripped my left forearm and my left biceps. “And this?” Then did the same to the other side. “You’re not exactly part of the wallpaper.”

  “And you are? With that face and that body? They won’t even see me standing next to you.”

  She let out a wonderful laugh, an embarrassed back-of-her-throat giggle. “You know what I mean.”

  I got serious again. She was right, of course. “I do. We’ll figure it out. First, though . . .” I reached into the takeout and pulled out the only fortune cookie they’d given us. Last night, I’d been ticked off that there weren’t two, but now I wasn’t. We only needed one. Because from that moment on, our luck was linked together. And together, we cracked the cookie open, wishbone-style.

  The fortune came out on her side, and she read it first. Her eyes flashed, and she tucked the half cookie into her mouth as she held the fortune out for me to read.

  Fortune cookies are like palm readers. When they’re wrong, it doesn’t matter. But when they’re right . . .

  The one you love is closer tha
n you think.

  . . . they’re on the motherfucking money.

  25

  STELLA

  We were alone together in a log cabin, made of knotty pine. Nick was bare-chested, wearing black-and-red flannel pajama pants, putting wood into a fireplace. Outside, the snow was in big drifts, so pretty that it didn’t look real at all, but like something from a made-for-TV Christmas special. Snowflakes the size of grapefruits fell in perfectly spaced patterns outside the window. In my hands was a mug of mulled wine, with a cinnamon stick. Nick stoked the fireplace, and a handful of sparks shot from one of the logs. As he bent down to put the poker back in its place, I admired the curves of his muscular buns. Flannel. God bless it. He made his way across the cabin, keeping his eyes on me. He took my mug of wine from my hands and put it on the bedside table. I placed my hand on his abs and slid my palm down, down, down. I hooked my finger over his waistband, inched it down his lower abdomen, and said, in my sultriest, most sex-kitteny voice, “I have to pee like a racehorse.”

  I shot straight up from my pillow and looked around my darkened room. We weren’t in a cabin. We were in my apartment, and I could hear the garbage trucks outside. He was asleep next to me, on his back with his hands clasped behind his head, like he was sunbathing.

  At that moment, I was sure of only two things:

  There had never been a sexier man on earth.

  And my bladder was about to explode.

  Rubbing my eyes with my knuckles, I stumbled off toward the bathroom. It was strange, not having Roxie and Ruth in the house. No soothing wave machine noise from Ruth’s room, no snoring from Roxie’s. Then I remembered through my sleep haze all that had happened, and my heart hurt from missing them, which made me especially grateful that Nick was staying the night.

  Sitting on the toilet, I stared at the moonlight rippling through the bathroom window, making a distorted rectangle on the bath towels. As often happened, my midnight thoughts spiraled into worry. About the job, about the girls, about Mr. Bozeman. About whether or not the Big Wide Open would still be for sale when I woke up in the morning. About whether I was really and truly bananas for taking this huge chance hand in hand with Nick.

  With all my might, I forced myself to get off the worry merry-go-round. In my head I heard Ruth’s voice, calm and steady, saying, “Stay here, in the here and now. Here, in the here and now. Here . . . in the here . . . and the now.” Like haunted-house ghosts leaping from closets, unwelcome thoughts sprang in on the mantra. Police. Handcuffs. Never seeing the girls again. Never seeing the Big Wide Open again. Never seeing Mr. Bozeman again. Never kissing Priscilla again.

  Never seeing Nick again.

  I flushed and rinsed my hands, then splashed my face with cool water. The terry cloth was warm and plush as I dried my cheeks. Usually, it calmed me down. But this time the merry-go-round kept on going.

  Returning to bed, I crawled in beside Nick again. Though he was sound asleep, he still reached for me and pulled me toward him. As I became the teaspoon to his tablespoon, I realized I’d never been with any man I wanted to be so close to as I slept. Or who wanted to be so close to me, either. He drew my hips against his and cupped my breast with his hand. It was as if we couldn’t get close enough to one another. As if skin-to-skin wasn’t good enough at all.

  All tangled up with him like that, my worries slowed down. I began to drift off to sleep, imagining us back in the cabin. Mulled wine and his flannel pants on the ground. Right as I was starting to hear the soft taps of the snowflakes on the cabin windows, I was catapulted back to reality by the grr-grr-grr of my phone, buzzing on the bedside table. My heart leaped up into my throat. All manner of worst-case scenarios unspooled in my head. My panicked logic was messy and irrational: Ruth had broken her leg, so she must have a blood clot. Roxie was on pain meds, so she must have had an allergic reaction.

  But when I looked at my phone I saw that it was much worse than all that.

  The caller ID said: MR. BOZEMAN

  At 3:59 a.m.

  No. No, no, no, no, no. Nick’s arm thumped on the mattress as I sat up. I found to my absolute horror that my room was no longer dark. There were thready pulses of flashing lights, red and white, sending watery patterns spinning wildly around the room.

  I’d have known them anywhere. The lights of an ambulance.

  I answered the call, but Mr. Bozeman wasn’t there. Instead I heard all manner of banging and clacking. I sprang up from the bed and looked outside. There I saw them—not one ambulance but two, sitting in his driveway.

  In a panicked rush, I flew out of the bedroom. My usual robe was behind my bedroom door, which was leaning against the wall in the hallway, so I opted for a different robe from my closet. “Mr. Bozeman?” I said into my phone. “Are you there?”

  The ominous sound of two-way radios came over the line. I shoved my feet into my shoes and bolted out the front door, shuffle-running around the corner of our building and across the empty lot toward Mr. Bozeman’s house.

  Still, he hadn’t answered me. I clapped my hand to my mouth and listened to the radio’s kssshhhhh, followed by its bloops and bleeps. The dispatcher said something, and I heard the rattle of what sounded very, very much like a gurney.

  This could not be happening. This could not be happening. I’d seen him only a little while ago, and he’d been absolutely fine. “Mr. Bozeman?” I said again into the phone. “Answer me, please. Mr. Bozeman!”

  Still, nothing.

  I flipped up the latch on the metal gate to his yard. On the back porch, beneath the flickering, moth-filled light, sat Priscilla, panting in the dark. I scooped her up in my arms and slid open the sliding glass door. I stumbled into the kitchen, and a cluster of EMTs turned around. They seemed utterly astonished to see me. Looking down, so was I. Instead of my regular robe, I’d managed to grab an ornamental kimono that Roxie found on sale at TJ Maxx, which had exotically long sleeves and was way, way too short. On my feet, I was wearing one purple high-top and one regular black sneaker. Coming down my shoulder, my braid was messy, fuzzy, and very unkempt. But none of it mattered at all. “Please don’t tell me . . .”

  Just as my heart was about to split in two, Mr. Bozeman raised his head from the gurney, his fine white hair pointing in every direction. “Stella!”

  Oh, the relief. The relief. It made me almost dizzy. “Thank goodness.”

  He craned his neck to try to turn to face me as I hurried to his side. “I tried to call, but you know how I am with this damned phone!” He held it up in frustration. It was an ancient old clamshell model with extra-large buttons, but oh how he hated that thing.

  Slipping his phone in my kimono pocket, I searched for any sign of an injury. He looked a bit frail and tired. His usually baby-smooth face was rough with white whiskers, but there was no oxygen tube in his nose and no IV in his arm. The EMTs were surprisingly calm.

  “It’s a hernia, honey!” he said, hollering without his hearing aids. “I’ll be fine! But they’re gonna have to keep me for a while!”

  Never in my entire life did I think the word hernia could sound so sweet. I had to brace myself on the edge of the gurney; my knees were unsteady with a second wave of relief. “Do you want me to come with you?”

  He shook his head and fastened the very top button of his old-fashioned nightshirt so it was snug against the crepey skin of his throat. He reminded me of some old-timey pioneer. “Don’t worry about me! It’s the little lady I’m worried about!”

  In my arms, I bounced Priscilla, who was nestled against me, her paws to my shoulder, staring at all the people in her house. “Might be a week or more!” Mr. Bozeman hollered. “I’m old! Everything gets real complicated!”

  All that mattered was that he would be all right. I patted Mr. Bozeman’s hand and told him, “One sec!” Still carrying Priscilla, I went to the bathroom, where I found his hearing aids in a small bowl by the sink. I brought them out to him, and he placed them in his ears.

  As his hearing returned,
so did his normal voice. “Do you think you could look after her?” Mr. Bozeman asked, giving Priscilla’s tummy a little tickle.

  She looked at me, almost worried. She didn’t actually have eyebrows, but she kind of did. Or a ridge and whiskers where eyebrows would have been. “We’ll have a wonderful time, won’t we?” I said, rubbing her tiny paw between my thumb and first finger. “And you tell your dad that Stella isn’t gonna let him pay her this time either, OK?” I said to Priscilla.

  Which she answered with a bite of the air to say, OK!

  Mr. Bozeman’s cool hand patted my arm. “You’re a treasure, Stella,” he said as the EMTs wheeled him away. “You really are.”

  I stayed with him until they closed the ambulance doors, and I watched it disappear down the street. Priscilla and I stood alone on the sidewalk under the bright, clear moonlight. I gave her paw a kiss, and only then did it occur to me that everything Nick and I had talked about had just gotten a little more complicated. Because Priscilla was definitely coming along.

  26

  NICK

  I was awake enough to know that it definitely wasn’t Stella kissing me, not unless she’d been eating bacon and had grown a mustache overnight. Two hot paws bounced on my chest, and a tongue wiggled up my nostril. The bright light in the bedroom stung my eyes. When I got my bearings, I was met with a very small brown face, a dangling pink tongue, and a shrill, “Marf!”

  It was the dog I’d met when I was wrestling with that oxygen compressor. Priscilla. What she was doing here, I had no clue. But there were a lot worse ways to wake up than a dog in your face. “Heyyyy there, little one,” I said, and gave her nose a rub.

  And she flopped over happily on my chest.

  “Where did you . . . Priscilla! Cookie!” I heard Stella whisper, followed by the pitter-patter of her feet on the carpet. “Priscilla! Just let him . . . Oh!” she gasped, when she dashed into the room and found Priscilla standing on top of me, on all fours on my chest. “Well, look at you two.”