by Ni-Ni Simone
She blinked away the water in her eyes.
I swallowed. Wiped more tears. And just as I was prepared to tell Camille that she may have had her experience with Richard Montgomery but that had nothing to do with me, he was my father, and I would be taking my chances and confronting him, the doorbell rang and I heard someone yelling my name.
“Heather!!!!”
Oh. No.
I know freakin’ well . . .
“Here you go again, Heather!” Camille snapped. “Someone else coming over here unannounced. I need to have my drinks in peace and a moment to reflect on my sorrows, thanks to you dredging up old wounds. And I don’t want nobody up in here!”
I rolled my eyes and ignored Camille’s rant. Rose from my chair and walked over to the door and opened it. To my surprise, Rich Montgomery was standing in the doorway.
“Heather!” She pushed her way inside in true rude fashion. “You were right! Once again, they turned on me. And before you tell me to get out of your house, that’s real cute by the way, I need you to know that I’m done with them whores! It’s gonna be me and you on the fame of thrones. Now where are the cameras?!”
20
Spencer
“Cleola Mae, you in here... ?”
I groaned and tossed in my bed, sinking my head deeper into the comforts of my pillow.
I knew I shouldn’t have tossed back those shots of Jack Daniel’s with Midnight, then chased it with his tongue. Jack was nothing but a low-down dirty drink.
Nothing but the devil juice.
And Midnight’s long tongue was his heated pitchfork.
“They comin’ for you . . .”
I hissed between clenched teeth, tossing under the silk sheets.
I knew I wasn’t drunk. And I wasn’t drunk in love.
No, no. This had to be a horrible nightmare.
Wait. Something wasn’t right. Little hairs stood up on my arms. I couldn’t hear anyone moving or breathing.
I knew my eyes were shut tight behind my silk eyeshade. And I knew my door was shut, so there was no diggitydang way someone would be in my room. Wait! But I forgot to lock it. Wait, wait... I’ve never had to lock the door to my suite.
So what was happening here?
I heard the whispering again. “Cleola? Cleola? Them boys from Mississippi got the dogs out on you . . .”
Yes, I was having a bad dream.
But wait . . . you can’t dream and be aware of your surroundings too, can you? No, no, of course not. Oh, Spencer, stop being silly, girl. It’s just the wind hooting and howling outside.
“Cleola, wake up . . . we gotta hide. . .”
Dear God . . .
What da flimflamfluck was going on?
I snapped open my eyes behind the mask, soaked in the darkness of the fabric resting over my sockets, and lay perfectly still. I held my breath. Waited. I didn’t hear anything stirring about. Nothing rustled. But I felt someone . . . something. It was in my room. I could smell the sweet stink of dank, hot muskiness, of tooth decay and mothballs and Bengay.
Oh no, oh no . . . sweetdungeonsanddragons! There was a ghost in my room, again.
I frowned with frustration. All that good money I’d spent on that priestess last year to come through here ringing bells in every corner of my suite, tossing garlic around the room, burning bundles of sage, and sprinkling sea salt on the windowsills for nothing. All a dingdang waste of my hard-earned trust dollars.
And to think I even had Rich smoking cigars packed with sage with me, just to be on the safe side. Now I was right back where I started last year. In need of another dang ghost buster to come up in here and beat the socks off of this rude, disrespectful spirit.
I huffed. How hard was it for a priestess to do her gotdang job right?
“I swear,” I muttered under my breath, “I should report her to the priestess board and have her license revoked. Shiftless dang hussy.”
I heard the whispered voice again. “Cleola, where are you? You in here?”
Had these ghosts no dang shame? Showing up here all times of the night! Disrupting my beauty sleep! Disrupting my life! Jeezus! We were in the last days. Even ghosts had no dang decency!
Who on earth would be selfish enough to swoop into someone’s room at this ungodly hour? I didn’t know for sure what time it was, but I knew it had to be smack in the wee hours of the night; a far cry from my usual wake-up time.
Wait. Waaaaaait!
I was losing my cookies.
Old Mister Jack Daniel’s was playing nasty tricks on me.
Yes, yes. That was it.
I was just imagining things. There wasn’t a ghost in my room. Ghosts only boo-hoo’d or moved things around the room without permission.
Yeah, that’s it.
Heehee.
I sighed, relief washing over me as I finally closed my eyes in hopes of getting lost in sleepy land. I said a silent prayer just in case. “Ole dirty spirits from the wicked underworld world, I rebuke you in the name of the immortals. Get thy invisible self back. I call on the spirit of the ghost slayer to butcher your energy. Call on the fire gods to burn the invisible drawers off your ghostly fanny. Now, poof! Begone, you wretched spirit!”
I started chanting in my head, “What is dark, be filled with light! This is the sanctuary of the loving and kind, not the dead! This is the sanctuary of the loving and kind, not the dead! You are disrupting my vibe, now scram! Boo-hoo! Shoo! Shoo! You ole ugly ghost. I am not seeing you. I am not hearing you . . .”
My breathing stopped. Fear bit into my gut. I heard another sound. A thump. Sounded like something dropped.
Oh no! Oh no! There was a burglar on the loose. A rapist. A cookie monster.
I shot up in bed. “Who’s there? Announce yourself this instant. If you’ve come to rob me, you’ve got the wrong one. I keep all of my money and valuables over at Rich Montgomery’s. That’s where you need to go to rob me. And if you’re here to kill me, you’ve got the wrong one there too. Kitty’s room is over on the other side of the estate. She’s itching for a graveside service. Now get on up out of here. I’m warning you. You have sixty seconds to disappear. You hear me? I’m going to start counting now. Fifty-nine, fifty-eight, fifty-seven, fifty-six . . .”
I stopped counting and listened. It was dead silent. “Thank you, God!” I said, relieved. “Whoever it was is now gone.” I slowly lifted my mask, and screamed. “Aaaaaaah!”
There was Daddy hovered over me with a flashlight shining in my face, practically blinding me.
“Get that out of my face,” I bellowed, slapping his hands away then hopping up with the speed and grace of a gazelle. “What in the heck are you doing in here?”
“Are you okay, pumpkin?”
“Daddy, of course I am. Now why are you prowling around in my room at this time of the night?”
“I gotta find Cleola.”
I rolled my eyes. “Daddy, I don’t know what kind of conversations you have going on in your head, but there is no Cleola here. Now, please. Let it go.”
“Sssh.” He placed a finger to his lips. “Gotta go, pumpkin.”
He turned on his heel and sailed out of the room.
“Daddy, get back here!”
He broke into a mad sprint down the hall. Time to seal up my doors. The Mad Hatter was on the loose. I called for security and had them chase him down and escort him back to his room, where I found his attendant stretched out in the chaise with drool spooling out of the corners of his mouth, snoring.
I couldn’t believe the agency would send me such incompetent help. I went back into my room, rummaged through my trick bag and pulled out what I was looking for, then headed back to Daddy’s room.
I swatted Mr. Sleepy Attendant in the mouth with my flyswatter. “Wake your lazy butt-hole up! Or I will have you fired!”
I stormed back to my room, slamming my door shut and locking it. Then for safe measures I jammed a chair up under the handles.
At eight a.m. I found Kitty sittin
g at the kitchen table sipping from a steaming mug of coffee.
“Gooooooood morning,” I all but sang out, walking over to the center aisle and plucking a strawberry from the fruit platter.
Kitty huffed. “Must you be so vociferous? Turn down the volume, and use your inside voice.”
I shot her a nasty look. “Don’t do me, Mother. It’s too early in the dang morning.” I tossed my hair. “I’ll use whatever voice I see fit. Now be thankful I don’t start yelling and screaming at you for being the miserable witch you are.”
I took a deep breath to calm myself. I wasn’t about to let Kitty drag me into her tunnel of crazy. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not the day after that. No. Crazy could wait. And so would Kitty.
Kitty sniffed. Sniffed again. Then her eyes fluttered up from the pages of her magazine, landing on the piece of jewelry hanging from my neck.
I bit into a strawberry, catching its juice with a swipe of my tongue.
Kitty frowned. “Spencer, dear, what on earth are you doing with that humongous clove of garlic hanging around your neck?”
I huffed, irritation nipping at the back of my last good nerve that she’d ask me such a ridiculous question so early in the morning. Like really? Why else would someone wear garlic? Or eat it, for that matter.
I folded my hands in front of me. Tilted my head. Then stared at her, long and hard. I kept my lips zipped. Thought before I spoke.
If you don’t have anything loving and kind to say, then say nothing at all! That was the mantra I chose to live by for the next forty-eight hours.
“You know what? I’m not even going to dignify that question with an ounce of my energy. Obviously it’s to stave off ghosts and evil spirits.”
She shook her head, going back to the pages of the latest edition of her magazine, Dish the Dirt.
“So, why are you here, Mother?” I pulled a chair out from the table, sitting across from her. “Didn’t you get the notice I tacked on your door yesterday that I wanted you out of my house by sundown?”
“Little Miss Sunshine,” she said, slamming her mug down on the table. A few drops of her kopi luwak sloshed over the mug rim. “I knew I should have had the neuro-pediatricians perform that lobotomy on you like I wanted them to when you were six months old in fear that something like this would come back to haunt me one day.”
I blinked. “Excuse you, lady?”
She shook her head. “Sadly, there is no excuse for you. Dumbness is at an all-time high, thanks to you.”
I sighed and rolled my eyes to the ceiling.
“You are becoming more of an embarrassment by the second, Spencer. And I won’t stand for it. Do you hear me? I won’t.” She took another sip of her chocolate poop drink, coffee beans plucked from the turd of some Asian wildlife. “I kick myself every day for being such a fool, thinking you could handle womanhood. Dear God! The problem is, I’ve given you too much freedom. I’ve spoiled you rotten. And I’ve kept you sheltered from the real world. You don’t know a thing about reality. But that’s about to change.”
I blinked. “Oh no! Oh no! You don’t change me, sweetie. I change designers. I change my panties. I change cars. And now I’m about to change this conversation. And, if my fairy godmother ever acts right and gets her mind right, hopefully I’ll be changing mothers too. Wait. Oops. Scratch that. Wrong person. You’ve never been a mother. All you’ve ever been is some loose-goose floozy, swinging upside down from chandeliers. Stalking schoolyards for your next boy toy and lying naked in the sand, spreading your legs open. Don’t. Do. Me, Kitty.”
She smirked. “Ooh, yes, darling. I love it when you give it to me raunchy. Now stop all this foolery and tell your mother all about this secret man muffin you’ve been sneaking off to San Diego to see.”
I frowned, slamming my fork down onto my plate. “Oh no! Oh no! Don’t you worry about who he is! He’s off-limits to you! You even think about coming anywhere near my man and I will gut out your woman parts and grind them in the meat grinder then stuff them down your throat, Kitty! I mean it! Stay. Out. Of. My. Business. If I think you’re daydreaming about even sniffing my man’s boxers, I’m going to slice your nose off your face.”
Kitty set her mug back down on the table and clapped. “Wonderful performance, darling. I almost believed it. Now stop being so nasty.”
I clenched my fists. “Oh, sweet googly moogly! Someone peel the liner back. Like you’re being Miss Congenial. The first-place prize for nastiness goes to you. So don’t get it crunked. ’Cause I know you don’t want me to sling the funk on you. Now, for once, try to show a little compassion. I didn’t get a lick of sleep. Daddy snuck in my room talking craziness.”
She rolled her eyes up in her head. “Okay, I’ll bite. What has the good doctor done now? Smear his feces on the walls? Put his clothes on backwards? Hide all the silverware? What, Spencer? Tell me all about the wondrous world of the insane.”
My lip trembled a bit. Kitty knew how much Daddy meant to me, but as always she just had to throw darts at my forehead.
“I told you I didn’t want that man here anyway. But you defied me. Went behind my back and moved him up in here anyway. No regard for me. So he’s your headache. Not mine. Remember, I divorced him.”
“Well, he’s my father, like it or not. And this is where he’ll stay. You do anything to disrupt that and it won’t be a crystal vase I’ll be hurling at you the next time. It’ll be something that sticks into your back.”
“Spencer, would you like me to have you committed? Keep up this kind of talk and you’ll find yourself strapped to a gurney in a padded room.” She glanced at her timepiece. “Now, I have five minutes. Tell me what he’s done in a minute and a half.”
“He keeps calling me some dang Cleola,” I blurted out. “And he’s constantly talking about some boys coming to get me—well, not me, this Cleola—from Mississippi. I think maybe I need to call my PI and have him track this hooker down so I can give her a good piece of my mind.”
Kitty blinked. Then snickered, shaking her head. “Oh, dear heavens. Spencer, darling, you’re about as silly as a rabbit in a hat listening to the ramblings of some old senile man. The man’s mind is mush, darling. I swear, one of the nannies had to have dropped you on your head as an infant.”
“Whatever!” I glared at Kitty with icy eyes. “I don’t see anything funny about Daddy’s horrid condition. Something’s eating the inside of his brain and some trashy woman named Cleola has him hallucinating. And you want to sit there and make jokes about it.”
She shrugged, lifting her mug to her puckered lips. “Like I said, I don’t want him here.”
“Well, I do.” My voice bobbled. “And the least you can do is act like you care about my feelings for once!”
She gave me an expressionless stare. “Is this where you turn on the waterworks and fall out sobbing? Because, if so, let me know now so I can get PET out here to cart you up out of here.”
PET? Oh, she wanted to get messy. She wanted to call the Psychiatric Emergency Team and try to have me put away. I gritted my teeth. I blinked once, twice. Stared at her, stunned. There was nothing crazy about me! Sometimes I hated this woman more days than not. And today was one of those days that I felt like slinging her over the railing and watching her drop over the cliff.
I sprang to my feet. “Don’t you dare stand there and play me for some dizzy Lizzy lost in the woods, Mother! I’m not some brain-dead bimbo! Follow the winding dirt road, witch, or I’m going to yank you by the hairs of your chinny-chin-chin, then pluck out your gotdangit eye sockets! Don’t try me! So we can either do this the messy way, or we can do it my way.”
I removed my diamond studs, then my diamond bangles, placing them ever so lightly on the marble table.
“Spencer, what in the world do you think you’re doing?” Kitty asked. Oh, little Miss Porgy managed to keep her voice calm. But her eyeballs were spinning around in her head like slot machines, trying to decide if she should make a mad dash out the door or get ready to t
ackle me.
“Oh, I’m getting ready to tear your face off.”
“Whaaat?” Her voice shrieked like a dog whistle. “You will do no such thing. I will have you arrested and hauled off to jail.”
I snorted. “Here Kitty, Kitty... call the po-po, repo man if you want. And I will have you hauled off in a trash bag.”
She gasped. “Spencer! What has gotten into you?”
“All my life you’ve dissed me, pissed on me, and never once kissed me.” I pulled my hair up into a ponytail, then stretched my neck from left to right, cracking bones.
“Now before I wobble up and down on your face, I’m going to give you a chance to make nice, apologize for being such a miserable, worthless, pathetic mother, and promise to never, ever, talk bad about Daddy . . .”
She sucked her teeth. “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Spencer! Are you really going to let your laced panties get all up in a bunch over a man who doesn’t even know who you are half the time? You owe him nothing, darling. He—”
“Witch!” I pounded my fist onto the table. “That’s beside the gotdangit point! I know who he is!” I felt myself shaking from the inside out. Felt a tidal wave of emotions rushing up against my chest. “And he knows who I am! Even when he doesn’t always remember my name, he remembers everything else about me! He is the one person on this Earth who I know loves me.”
Kitty laughed. “Spencer, you little pea brain. Get it together. The only thing that man can ever love now is someone changing his Depends and helping him find his dentures. The man needs to be put down. Sent up the river somewhere. Let your father live out the rest of his life in peace. You already have all of his fortune. You’re worth billions. What more do you want?”