“How about “Gerald Jonohhovitz.”
“Oh. Yeah. Room 304. You family?”
I wrapped an arm around Winky’s shoulder and pulled him to my side. “We’re all the family he’s got.”
“Look, I can’t let you in unless you’re related. Hospital regulations.”
“I’m his wife,” I blurted.
“You are?” Winky gasped.
I shut my eyes and wished my freckled friend would disappear. But when I opened them again, I saw my magic genie hadn’t granted me squat. I pulled Winky to the side of the reception desk.
“Winky,” I whispered. “I’m trying to get us in to see Goober.”
“Does Tom know you’re married?”
“No. I mean, no, I’m not...ugh! Forget it. Winky, you stay here in the waiting room. I’m going to find some way to sneak into room 304.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
“Find a vending machine.”
“What for?”
“An RC and a moon pie, okay?”
Winky’s left eyebrow shot up. “Roger that.”
I left Winky reaching for his wallet and slunk down a hallway in search of room 304. When I got to the nurses’ station, I was stopped by an orderly.
“You can’t go in there,” he said. “Not without a visitor’s badge.”
“Where do I get one?” I asked.
He hitched a thumb toward the nurse’s station. “Over there. But nobody’s there right now. They must be busy.”
“Okay, I’ll wait here,” I said, and sat in a chair and smiled at him demurely.
He shrugged and disappeared into an elevator. As soon as the doors closed behind him, I shot up out of the chair, grabbed a lab coat off a nurse’s chair, and hid my face behind a clipboard.
Room 304 was the fourth door on the left. I slipped inside and nearly fainted. The patient with the rainbow Mohawk no longer had a moustache, and his bushy eyebrows were thinned out.
But it was Goober all right.
And he was hooked up to more blinking and buzzing medical contraptions than I’d ever seen. Not even on a season finale of General Hospital.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Oh, Goober,” I whispered sadly as I stood over his hospital bed. “Are you okay, buddy?”
I fought back tears as the respirator covering Goober’s mouth moved mechanically up and down, pumping oxygen into his lungs. My poor friend was unconscious. He was thin and terribly pale, but at least he looked peaceful.
The sound of footsteps coming down the hall pricked my senses. I wasn’t supposed to be in the room with Goober. The footsteps stopped in front of his room. The door started to open....
Crap!
I scrambled into the bathroom, hid behind the door, and eavesdropped on the doctors as they discussed Goober’s case.
“This is 304...must be the brain tumor,” a man’s voice said.
A brain tumor! Oh no!
“Yeah. Says here his blood pressure is failing,” a woman said.
“That means he’s probably in the final stages. Cardiac arrest is imminent.”
“How long has he got?”
“No telling. Minutes. Hours, tops.”
I bit down hard on my bottom lip. No! That can’t be right!
“Should we resuscitate when he goes?” the woman asked.
“No. The chart says he’s signed a ‘no-ro’ order. But he’s an organ donor, so we should leave the respirator on.”
“What parts do we harvest first?”
“I dunno. Let’s go check the cafeteria menu,” the man quipped. “I heard today’s special is liver and onions.”
You horrible, callous dirtbags!
“You’re so bad!” the woman laughed. “Let’s go get some coffee. I feel like a zombie. I’ve been awake since three.”
I heard the door squeak open, then click closed. I peeked out, made sure the dastardly pair were gone, and ran over to Goober’s side.
He looked so weak. So fragile. I touched his arm, lay my head on his shoulder, and started bawling my eyes out.
“Oh, Goober,” I cried. “Why didn’t you tell us you were ill, you silly peanut head?”
I felt his shoulder move. I wondered if maybe he could feel my presence. I hugged him tight, then someone said, “What’s going on here?”
I lifted my head, thinking I’d been caught by a nurse. But to my surprise, the respirator was gone from Goober’s face.
“Goober!”
He stared at me until his faraway eyes came into focus, then said, “Val? What the heck are you doing here?”
“Goober! You’re still alive!”
“Of course I’m still alive. How’d you find me?”
“They said you were terminal!”
“Who?”
“The doctors. They just left....”
“Oh. Don’t believe those quacks. I’m perfectly fine.”
I touched Goober’s arm tenderly. “It’s okay. You don’t have to put on a brave face for me.”
One of Goober’s plucked eyebrows shot up on his billiard-ball pate.
“Does this face look brave to you? Val, this is a gig.”
“A gig?”
“Yeah. I get paid fifteen bucks an hour to be a fake patient for medical students.”
“Wha...?”
“Today I’m patient 304. Inoperable brain tumor.” He turned his head and pointed to some purple lines drawn above his left ear.
“Whuh?” I sniffed, still in shock.
Goober laughed and pulled the tape from his fake IV.
“See? Easiest money I ever made. And as a bonus, I get to ride in an ambulance. I lay around on my butt and get paid, Val. It’s paradise!”
“Paradise?”
“Well, there are a few drawbacks. The free lunch sucks. And these marks where the surgeon’s supposed to cut? The darn ink they use won’t wash off for days.”
As I stared at the surreal vision of Goober in a hospital gown, his bald head marked up like Frankenstein, the icy shock I’d been feeling suddenly melted. It’d been replaced by a conflicting blend of relief and anger.
I could have throttled Goober for scaring me so. But then again, the overwhelming relief that he was actually okay swamped my anger like a tsunami. I was too happy to care about anything other than the fact that Goober wasn’t going to die anytime soon. Not unless it was at my own hands.
“It’s so good to see you,” I said.
“Likewise.” Goober grinned. “Bring any of the other loonies with you?”
As if on cue, the door to Goober’s hospital room burst open. Winky ran in.
“Goober!” he hollered. “Is that you?”
“In the flesh,” Goober said.
“Well, I’ll be.” Winky ambled over to Goober’s side, hugged him, and handed him a teddy bear.
“Thanks, pal.” Goober shot me a knowing smile. “It’s just what I always wanted.”
Goober glanced at the clock on the wall. “I get off in twenty minutes. What say I meet you two down in the cafeteria?”
“I hope they won’t be serving liver and onions,” I said.
“You ain’t gonna wear that gown thangy there with yore butt hangin’ out, are you?” Winky asked.
“No. I won’t be needing it anymore. I just got a clean bill of health.”
“Can I have the dirty one, then?”
Goober sat up and smiled. “Sure. I don’t see why not.”
“THIS IS THE BEST DANG chicken-fried pork chop I ever laid lips to. You want a bite?” Winky asked, and jabbed a fork full of fried meat in my face.
I waved it away. “No thanks.”
“What? You ain’t hungry?”
“Pork is kind of off the menu right now. Besides, what does ‘chicken-fried’ mean anyhow?”
“There you are,” a falsetto voice sounded to my left.
I looked up and saw a tall, gangly woman in a canary-yellow pantsuit. Atop her otherwise bald head was a crooked, rainbow-hued Mohawk.
The woman laughed.
“Winky, that’s Goober,” I said.
Winky’s chin met his neck. He cocked his head, stared at her sideways and said, “Is not.”
“Is too,” the woman said, this time in Goober’s voice.
Winky nearly swallowed his tongue. “What in tarnation are you doin’ in that getup?”
“Teasing old white ladies’ hair, mostly,” Goober deadpanned. He plopped into the cafeteria chair beside me, his eye on Winky’s plate. “I see you chose the chef special.”
“Yep. Mighty tasty. You want a bite.”
“I prefer to limit my diet to things I can identify.”
A wry grin crept across my lips. I’d really missed Goober and his droll sense of humor.
“I’m glad to see you’re still the same,” I said to him.
Goober smiled. “Still up to your old sleuthing tricks, I see. How’d you find me?”
“Your reputation preceded you,” I said. “You’re just too good with a teasing comb.”
“Yes,” Goober sighed. “It’s the true artists who are so often plagued by unwanted fame.”
“Goober,” Winky asked, disbelief still marring his freckled face, “If’n that really is you, what in god’s good golly are you doing here...dressed like that...working at a beauty parlor?”
Goober ran his thumb and index finger absently along his upper lip, smoothing down the ghost of the wooly brown moustache that usually inhabited the space. A warm, comforting feeling enveloped me as I watched him perform his familiar ritual. It was as if no time at all had passed since we’d seen each other last.
“Well, long story short, I parked the RV beside Betty Jean’s Beauty and Feed store nearly a month ago, and it wouldn’t start again,” Goober explained. “After a week or so, I ran out of clean clothes. I started dipping into Cold Cuts’ disguises...then Betty Jean put a ‘Help Wanted’ sign in the window...and, as they say, the rest is history.”
“What about this stupid medical gig of yours?” I asked.
Goober shrugged. “Hey, teasing hair doesn’t pay as much as you might think.”
“But why did you leave...and not tell us where you were going?”
“Because at the time, I didn’t know myself. Then life got busy. You know how it is. And you wouldn’t believe how many women in this county need a wash-n-set every week.”
“But why did you leave in the first place?” I insisted.
“I told you, Val. The AARP found me.”
“So what?”
“Well, once they know where you live, it’s not long before ‘the others’ do, too.”
I studied the half-strange, half-familiar face of the tranny sitting next to me. Dressed in a practically glowing yellow pantsuit and sporting a rainbow Mohawk, Goober wasn’t exactly “blending into the scenery.” But then again, he had plucked his bushy eyebrows. They now looked like a pair of starving caterpillars mating on his forehead.
Is Goober a spy, a master of disguise, or a raving lunatic?
“What ‘others’ are you talking about?” I asked. “The CIA? FBI? KGB?”
“No,” Goober said.
“Little green Martian mens?” Winky asked, wide-eyed.
Goober shook his head. “Negatory.”
“What then?” I asked.
Goober shrugged. “Relatives.”
“Oh,” Winky and I said simultaneously.
I nodded in sympathy and said, “Well, that makes perfect sense.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“Nice ride,” Goober said as he climbed into the backseat of Winky’s flame-covered hearse.
“Thanky,” Winky beamed from behind the steering wheel. He turned to me and asked, “Where we off to next?”
“I guess we can take Goober back to the feed store place. There’s no use in him having to suffer through a visit with my mother.”
“That’s true,” Winky agreed. “Not with his health problems and all.”
Goober and I shared a secret eye roll as Winky shifted into drive and headed back to US 90.
“I don’t mind meeting your mother,” Goober said. “But it would be good to have Winky take a look under the hood of the Minnie Winnie first. I’d like to get her in working order, in case I need to make a quick getaway.”
“I doubt you’d have to worry about that,” I said. “The only way your relatives would find you in Greenville is if they lived there themselves. This place makes the middle of nowhere look like New York City.”
“Why’d you drive that thing instead of your Chevy, anyways?” Winky asked.
“You’ve obviously never owned a Chevette,” Goober said. “Riding a bicycle made of macaroni in the rain would probably be more reliable.”
“I heard that,” Winky said, and let out one of his psychotic, woodpecker laughs.
I watched the sarcastic lines in Goober’s face soften into a smile. My own lips followed suit.
“How’d the Chevette end up in the ally by the post office?” I asked.
“No real mystery to it. It died on me there,” Goober said.
“So you actually did come back to St. Pete after rescuing me from that RV park in Lake Wales.”
“No,” Goober said. “I’d already left the Chevy at the post office before I went to Lake Wales. You see, I got a call from Tom saying you’d locked your keys in Maggie’s trunk and were stranded in some hillbilly campground. He asked if I could drive over with the spare set, and I thought, why not? It might be fun to give camping another try myself. So I got the spare keys for Maggie and called Cold Cuts about borrowing the old Minnie Winnie. She agreed. So, I took a Greyhound bus down to Sarasota and picked it up.”
“That was really nice of you,” I said.
“Yeah,” Goober said. “As they say, no good deed goes unpunished.”
“What you mean by that?” Winky asked.
“Well, by the time I got to the trailer park Val was staying at, she’d settled in and was making the best of it. I didn’t want to spoil her fun, so I put on a disguise I found in the back of the RV and blended into the crowd myself.”
Goober poked me on the shoulder. “Little did I know Val here was gonna go poison some poor old man and turn the whole RV park into a giant redneck revenge rally.”
I swatted him on the arm. “Goober! You know I didn’t have anything to do with Woggles’ death.”
He looked over at Winky and waggled his eyebrows. “Yeah. That’s what they all say.”
I shook my head at the two clowns. Winky let off another round of Woody Woodpecker impressions. He turned right, wiped his tears with his t-shirt, and hit the brakes. “Looks like we made it back in one piece.”
“Miracles never cease,” Goober said.
The cobbled-together feed and beauty store was on our right. Winky pulled the hearse up beside Glad’s old Minnie Winnie, cut the ignition, and hopped out of the car.
“Let’s just have us a look-see.”
Goober popped the hood. Winky lifted it and let out a long whistle.
“Looks like the pistons done blowed,” Winky said. “Gonna cost a fortune to fix it.”
“Will this cover it?” Goober asked.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of bills thick enough to make a Rockerfeller choke on a glass of hundred-year-old bourbon.
Winky glanced at it and said, “Pro’lly.”
“Okay,” Goober said. “Let me go inside and tell Betty Jean I’m taking the rest of the day off. Wednesday’s a slow day anyway. Nobody wants a wash-n-set this far out from the weekend.”
As Goober disappeared into the trailer, I turned to Winky and said, “I think Goober’s like Howard Hughes.”
“Yep. I could see that. He do like his pancakes.”
“Winky, that’s Howard Johnson’s. What I mean is, I think Goober’s rich...and maybe a bit eccentric.”
“You tryin’ to tell me he�
�s a crazy-rich redneck?”
“Uh...yes.”
Winky grinned and nodded. “Well, Val, it takes one to know one.”
I pondered Winky’s statement while he fiddled around under the hood of the RV. He was right. We were all a bit redneck. And we were all rich. Some of us had more money than others. But the friendship, loyalty, and love we shared were luxuries no amount of money could buy.
I WAS HURTLING DOWN a country road in a flaming hearse, on my way to have my self-esteem obliterated by a woman who found me on the side of the road. My chauffeur was a freckle-faced, redneck donut maker. In the backseat, a fugitive tranny with purple Frankenstein marks on his bald head was slipping out of a yellow pantsuit and into a pair of Winky’s orange coveralls.
Yep. Life just doesn’t get any better than this.
“Thanks for changing clothes, Goober,” I said, trying to keep my eyes on the road. “I’m not sure my mother could take the shock of finding out that her hairdresser is also a cross-dresser.”
“No worries,” Goober grunted and he wrestled around in the backseat trying to put on the coveralls.
“I don’t mean to be nosy,” I said to Goober, “but I’m dying to know. How’d you get all that money?”
“What money?”
“What money? That wad of bills you just showed Winky! That check stub for ten grand I saw at the post office?”
“Oh. That money. Royalties.”
“I knew it!” Winky yelled. “Yore a king or somethin’ ain’t you!”
“Hardly,” Goober said. “I invented something NASA wanted big-time, okay?”
“And that was your annual check?” I asked.
“Not exactly.”
“Monthly?”
Goober sniffed. “Weekly.”
“Geeze, Goober!” I practically screeched. “If you get all that money, why do you live like some hapless hobo?”
Goober leaned forward until the chin on his bald head rested on the bench seat between me and Winky. It looked like a bowling ball that’d been attacked by kids wielding purple crayons.
“I dunno,” he said. “Being rich is boring. Sure, the money comes in handy sometimes. But then, well, people start acting funny when they know you’re loaded.”
Cloud Nine- When Pigs Fly Page 14