by Adam Zorzi
“Why would they do that? Your stuff's great.”
“You're a blues club. I'm anything but blues. You gave me the prime two o'clock spot. How did I let you talk me into this?”
Clive kissed her. “Honey, you should know by now I can talk anybody into anything. Besides, most of them will be lit, and you're only on for twenty minutes.” He walked onto the stage, mic in hand, and introduced “Richmond's own DJL.”
The small crowd of music-lovers, some of whom had just finished their own shows in Fredericksburg and Virginia Beach, at the underground club went wild. LouLou gyrated her way onto the stage and started spinning one of Gregg's pieces. She quickly found her zone and soon had the crowd in her hands, making the audience dance wildly, sway dreamily, and bounce with freestyle abandon. With the lights flashing on her in various colors of reds LouLou was by turns fiery, seductive, and incandescent. She covered the length of the stage in Trey's choreography, which had required her to watch and imitate Michael Jackson's Thriller video too many times to count to do just one of his famous turn-on-a-dime pirouettes. In stilettos, no less.
She could feel the music inside her before it came through the house speakers. She modulated selections to fit her mood as she read what the crowd needed and wanted. She had hours of music to choose from, but she spun twenty-one minutes of pure gold. The house went dark, and LouLou snuck off before the house lights went up. The crowd wanted more and chanted her name—“DJL. DJL. DJL.”
While the audience still remained hopeful, Clive walked back onstage, where he was booed. “Thanks, but if you want to hear more of DJL's newest EPs, you're going to have to go to Reykjavík, where she kicks off her Scandinavian Summer Solstice Tour. She was nice enough to give us a little amuse-bouche. For those of you who remain uncivilized, that means taste.” He gestured off-stage. “Thanks, DJL, for a taste of what's coming out in November in the United States.”
LouLou was surrounded by a few big names in music as well as appreciative audience members in the tiny hallway off-stage. They all talked at once, so she only heard snippets. “Cool. Wall of sound, man, wall of sound. Groundbreaking.” The group spilled out into the humid night air. LouLou, hot from the stage lights, took deep breaths. She could've played for another two hours.
She noticed Robert spread languidly across the top of an upright piano just inside the stage door. LouLou rubbed his head. “Smart guy. You're not going out in that humidity. Enjoy yourself. We promise not to leave without you.”
Skylar pushed through the crowd and hugged her. “She's the best. Didn't I tell you, Clive? I discovered her, you know,” Skylar shouted over the crowd and the next act warming up.
Clive didn't let it go. “Did not. Known her since she was in knee socks. Always knew she'd be a star.”
The two men slung their arms around each other's shoulders and headed to the after-hours bar. Neither had met her until she was eighteen. She hadn't been wearing knee socks.
Trey had a crowd of women gathered around him as he crowed about his choreography. “Choreography is everything. That, and good lighting.” LouLou smiled to herself. Trey had been using that line since they were nineteen-year-old VCU drop-outs, and amazingly, it still worked.
Roy and Sara hugged her. “I'm checking your closets tomorrow. Hot dress. You were smokin'. I thought Roy was going to pass out when he saw you. Have your dresses gotten smaller and tighter over the years?”
LouLou whispered in Sara's ear. “Older. Gotta distract eyes away from the saggy bits.”
Sara laughed. “Your legs go on forever. Why not show them off? Good for you.”
From the corner of her eye, LouLou saw Gregg standing under a tree, smiling. She put on earbuds and went to him. He slipped his arm around her waist. “I've never seen anything like that. You were fantastic. The music combinations, your moves, your hotness. I heard some guy call you sex on a stick and wanted to punch him, but he's right.”
“So you liked it?” she said as she moved in closer. To anyone watching, she'd look like she was talking to someone on her phone and stretching out her back against the enormous tree trunk.
“It was the best night of my life, LouLou.”
Not daring to kiss him, she rubbed a little closer and whispered, “The best is yet to come.”
It did. After staying to listen to a blues set by a new girl band, Gregg, Skylar, and Robert piled into LouLou's car for the ride home. Skylar snored in the back seat, occasionally mumbling blues lyrics. Robert sat on Gregg's lap.
After dropping off Skylar and Robert, LouLou carried her tote and one turntable into the loft with Gregg beside her. She saw that the lights were off at Roy and Sara's. They'd left after her set. Still, LouLou didn't want to take a chance that anyone might see Gregg invisibly carrying her gear.
Once inside, they fell on each other and made love that had a ferocity to it that LouLou didn't know Gregg possessed. Jealousy did that to guys. He'd also said seeing her onstage officially made her the hottest woman he'd seen in any lifetime.
The sun rose, and she knew it was time for Gregg to go and her to hibernate. She needed to stay healthy. She got up, took her meds, and then pulled Gregg down to her for their last lovemaking before her tour. She wouldn't see him for two months. She almost couldn't bear to go.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Bella Davis flung yet another dead-end medical journal on the colorfully inlaid mosaic floor. She wanted to kick something. Not that it would provide any stress relief. Being a ghost, Bella's kick would send her transparent foot through the wooden leg of the mahogany library table rather than making a satisfying smack or even a dent on contact. She could rip some journals. That would make the administration of the venerable New York Academy of Medicine take notice, but it wouldn't help her.
Bella had made a rare miscalculation two years ago. She'd arranged to send her Daniel to Petersburg for a three-month stint as revenge. He'd gotten cold feet and abruptly ended their affair after his father died. She'd killed his wife, framed him for the murder, and struck a deal to have the case against Daniel dropped at his first competency hearing after a short stint in Commonwealth Psychiatric Hospital. Bella underestimated Daniel's ability to endure the conditions at Petersburg. He hadn't been treated and released. He'd become catatonic and stuck there.
At a loss, Bella stood and walked around the windowless room, running her long, beautifully manicured fingers over priceless gold and bronze statues, along the leather spines of rare books, and on the soft velvet reading chairs. She stopped and pressed her forehead against one of the cool marble walls. She concentrated to feel the cold on her face, down the back of her neck, and into her spine. Sometimes, feeling just a little human would give her a creative spark. She closed her eyes and hoped the chill would jolt her brain into generating a new idea.
When she opened her eyes, she noticed she was standing next to one of the few laptop stations in the room. Quickly, she scrolled through medical journals published anywhere in the world within the last seventy-two hours. Within seconds, “Algorithms for Treating Catatonia in Clinical Settings” appeared on the screen. She quickly scanned the article. “Yes,” she shouted to the empty room. Her triumph echoed around her. On the screen before her was a step-by-step treatment plan. The author was a psychiatrist who worked as a neurologist in Mississippi.
She'd done it. She'd found the doctor and the treatment. She'd have Dr. Mississippi personally treat Daniel. She'd see him today, even though she'd have to fly commercially. She had difficulty space traveling to places she'd never been to while alive. She'd formulate a plan during the flight using Daniel's attorney, his brother Rob, who was Dan's legal guardian, and as much money as Dr. Mississippi wanted. Bank-robbing and computer transfers of large sums of money were easy. Being on the opposite side of the law she'd enforced when she was a living securities attorney gave her a cheap thrill but nothing compared to the exhilaration of having Daniel back. He'd be healthy and hers in no time.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
&nb
sp; October
The music in the airport lounge was chaotic. LouLou had learned so much from her Scandinavian tour, but this noise wasn't like anything she'd ever heard. Instead of cohesion or even dissonance, every line had a different wave length. Each thread separated from the whole and curled and snaked and snarled around itself with no indication it was going to resolve. Twelve or thirteen threads at once.
An attendant offered her something to drink. He handed her a glass of club soda, but it slipped from her hand and spilled on the carpet.
“I'm sorry,” he said. “I'll bring you another. Why don't you move to the other end of the sofa so your feet won't be damp.”
She felt very territorial about her seat. “No, I want to stay where I am.” He gave her an odd look, and a second attendant brought her a club soda and placed it on the table next to her. There was a straw in the glass. “Is there anything else you'd like? Do you feel unwell?”
She stared at him. Unwell. Why did he think she was unwell? She had all her clothes on, was holding her tote, and had her ticket.
“I didn't get much sleep last night.” She hadn't. She kept hearing all those guttural, incomprehensible sounds of Nordic languages racing through her head. Everyone spoke English to her, but she'd heard indecipherable conversations swirling about her for two months.
He sneered at her. “I hear that a lot, Ms. Fleming. I'll see that you're allowed to pre-board so you can make yourself comfortable before takeoff. The flight from Copenhagen to New York is just over eight hours, so maybe you can sleep on the plane. You'll have a personal canopy for privacy in International Class. You won't be disturbed.”
She asked him to dim the lights in her area. He gave her a nasty look but turned them down. Everything here was made of glass. Everything. There was no escaping the light. Even when it was harsh and blinding.
The flight was a nightmare. As she walked the aisle to the restroom and back, everyone stared at her and whispered that she wasn't one of them. LouLou looked like them—blue-eyed, blonde—but she couldn't communicate with them. She must be Estonian. Latvian, maybe. English.
She knew the flight attendants had been warned by the lounge staff that she was an outcast. She huddled in her lounge seat and pulled the canopy closed. She didn't want anyone to see her. She refused all service—no beverages, meals, steamed towels. They were all poisonous.
The food and drink would kill her. If she put one of their towels on her face, she'd be burned with acid. She took a sleeping pill of her own but couldn't sleep. Nordic words spun around in her brain like LPs on a turntable. She put on her headphones without sound to shut out the words, but they kept circling faster and faster.
The two-hour layover at JFK felt like two days. She was disoriented. She stumbled down a long concourse and was blinded by neon signs advertising food, Vikings, and trolls. She turned and went halfway down another concourse and into the men's room. A nasty man in a suit called someone, and she was put in a cart on wheels and driven to her gate. She didn't know how the cart moved. There wasn't a horse to pull it.
She assured everyone who asked she was fine. Just eager to get home after a long trip. They all smiled condescendingly when she spoke.
A man in a uniform put her in the commuter plane seat and buckled her seatbelt. He tried to take her tote, but she hugged it to her. There was hardly anyone on the short flight to Richmond and no one bothered her. She heard them whispering, though. Foreigner. Alien. Immigrant. She put on her headphones to ignore them. They just talked louder.
When she got into a cab at the Richmond airport, she didn't know exactly where to tell the driver to take her. It was late. She was too tired to think. She was hungry, though. “Just drive along Broad Street,” she said.
They drove for about thirty minutes before she recognized her destination. “Here. I want to get out here,” she said excitedly when they passed a market with a familiar name.
“Lady, that store's closed.”
“Not for me. They keep it open for me.” She jumped out of the cab while it was still moving and ran to the door. She was banging on the door when the cabbie ran up behind her.
“You're not skipping out on the fare,” he bellowed.
“I'm not going to the fair with you. Get away from me.” LouLou kicked him in the groin. She screamed and screamed. The cabbie bent over, cursing. She had to get away. She picked up chunks of cement where the sidewalk was uneven and threw them at the store windows until one broke. She crawled in through the small opening and pulled her tote behind her into the darkened store.
Noise was everywhere. Elevator music. Sirens. Alarms. It was like a soundtrack of a movie about The German Blitz. She had to hide. She grabbed bags of charcoal and stacked them to cover the hole in the window. She was hungry, so she went in search of something to eat. She passed toilet paper and baby food and flour. She couldn't find food.
She ran down the flour aisle and stopped in front of cake frostings. She pulled a chocolate chip frosting can off the shelf, ripped it open, and started to eat it with her fingers. She needed something to dip in it. She ran up and down the aisles until she found radishes. She finished the frosting and radishes but was still hungry. She ate a jar of gherkins, a package of dry egg noodles, and was munching on dog food treats when she heard loud voices.
She had to hide while she planned her attack on the approaching voices. She grabbed a box of aluminum foil and a broom and ducked behind the seafood counter. She had to get to her ice fort, where they couldn't see her. The voices were coming from different directions, but not near her fort. She lay on the floor to make sure they weren't nearby, but it was fiery. The floor burned her stomach and made a hole through her skin. Her stomach was going to fall out. She had to get inside her ice fort.
She crawled toward the ice display case and climbed in. Good. She could hear the machine churning as it constantly produced fresh ice. Her fort wouldn't leak. She held her stomach inside her body with one hand and the foil in the other. She'd pull the weapon in behind her. Quickly, she papered the counter glass with foil so no one could see her. Pressing the tote against herself to hold her abdominal organs inside, she hauled the weapon inside and pulled the sliding panels shut. She lay on the ice that smelled vaguely of shrimp. She was safe.
CHAPTER TWENTY
November
Damn. She was back in Petersburg. In bed. She rolled over. She seemed to have a lot of extra cushioning. No restraints except for an IV that was attached to a vein in her hand under a lot of gauze. LouLou saw a barred window. She was in a normal room—not seclusion—so they didn't think she would hurt herself or anyone else. She closed her eyes and went back to sleep.
“Good afternoon, LouLou,” said Dr. Izari. He stood next to her bed. “I'm glad you're awake.”
Her name must be LouLou.
“Give me the short version,” she said with a thick tongue. She'd no idea how long she'd been here. It didn't matter. She'd be here a long time.
“According to your pharmacy records, you ran out of meds eight days before you left Copenhagen.” He frowned at her chart. “You finished the tour but had a psychotic episode at the airport in Copenhagen. When you landed in Richmond, you broke into a grocery store, injured yourself by crawling through a glass window, and ultimately assaulted two policemen with a broom. You also ripped off a cab driver and assaulted him.”
Not terribly imaginative, but enough for her to have charges pending.
“You spent a few days at Richmond Memorial Hospital to attend your medical needs. You had glass shards embedded along your body where you crashed through glass. They had to be meticulously removed by hand. You still have bandages on your arms, sides, and legs above your boot tops. You're continuing on pain medication and an antibiotic to prevent infection from those lacerations. You were close to sepsis so you stayed longer than usual at RMH. Once that danger had passed, you were transferred here. You've been here four days. We've added a sedative, Clozopine, and Resperdal for Sick. We'll gradually
up the meds.”
“I know the drill. Two months, right?”
He nodded. “Maybe a little more. You can't let your wounds get infected. A private wound care nurse comes daily. Your parents arranged that.”
“Can I leave my room?” She didn't really want to. She wanted to stay here and sleep with the meds running through her blood to her brain to kill Sick. That's why she was here. Sick had done something bad.
“No. You're taking baby steps. Walking to/from your bathroom, sitting in the chair, and walking around the room. You're not strong enough to leave this room. When you're more alert, you can take walks outside with an aide. After that, you can maybe go to the day room.
She was currently imprisoned in her room, but she would eventually get fifteen minutes outside in fresh air every day. She was at least a month away from the day room, where there were other patients. She was alone.
LouLou turned away from him. Tears ran down her cheeks.
***
On the first day she was allowed to go to the day room, LouLou sat cross-legged on a sofa, chipping at her nails. She knew she'd polished them a pretty apple green. She'd keep chipping until she found it. Big, the tallest and heaviest guy on the ward and someone she recognized from previous stays, gave her the rundown on her fellow patients.
“Most are like you. Here to get meds until you can go to court. A few NGRIs who almost never come in here. One does, but she's an older lady. Some head bangers. Two smack detoxes. And the zombie.” He nodded in the direction of a man seated in a wheelchair by the smallest window in the day room.
“He's okay if nobody bothers him. Aides put him there every morning and return him to his room during the late afternoon. His eyes blink, but I don't think he sees anything. Doesn't respond to anything—touches, sounds, or smells. There was a fire here a while ago, and he never acted like he heard the alarm, which was off the charts, saw a dozen firemen, or smelled smoke that sent a bunch of people to the hospital. A couple of guys tried to escape with the firemen, and there was a brawl. He ignored it. Seems to like that window, though. He becomes agitated if he's taken back to his room early. Agitated is too strong a word. I sense it upsets him.”