Double Fudge & Danger

by Erin Huss

  Two hours of scrubbing, sterilizing, gagging, and dumping trash that had been there at least a decade, and my office was ready. Sure it was small. Enough room for a desk—as soon as I bought one. No window, which was a bummer since there was also no ventilation. But it was specimen free, and that was all I had the energy to care about.

  Fox dropped off his application and the fee. I scanned the information to be sure everything was filled out. Looked good. Pending his rental and job verifications went well and the apartment was gluten-free, I suspected he'd be in by the weekend.

  Half a day on the job, and I'd rented an apartment.

  I was pleased with my managing skills.

  Lilly was not.

  She was hot, and tired, and hungry, and bored, and three. Tears spilled out of her hazel eyes and down her rosy cheeks as she gasped for air between sobs. I tried to console her, and she pushed me away. I tried to offer an alternative activity. "Why don't you draw a picture for Mrs. Nguyen? She'll love that." Lilly threw the box of crayons at my nose and berated me in Vietnamese. I tried to explain to her that her actions were not OK and that Mommy had to work and if I didn't work, then we wouldn't have a home, or food, or clothes, or toys. She didn't care. She didn't care one bit.

  Frantic, I dug through my purse in search of a bribe. "What about a mint?"

  "No!"

  "A granola bar?"

  "No!"

  "Fish crackers?"

  "No!"

  "How about one…ten…twenty…forty-two cents?"

  "No!"

  "A red marker? A Target receipt? ChapStick? My credit card?" I'd buy her a freaking Mercedes if she would just stop screaming.

  OK, maybe not a Mercedes, more like a used Kia.

  Nothing worked.

  "Let's go!" She threw herself on the ground outside.

  The hypochondriac in me thought about all the different strands of influenza she was currently rolling around in. The mom in me was about to lose it. The apartment manager in me was concerned about the noise level. Her high-pitched screams echoed through the community—maybe even all of Burbank. Hell, the crews of the International Space Station were probably hunched over in agony with their fingers in their ears.

  "Lilly, I understand that you're upset, but I—"

  "Let's go!"

  "We will. Right now we have to—"

  "I hate this place." She kicked the wall. "I want my daddy!"

  Ouch.

  I crouched beside her and tucked a curl behind her ear. "You can see Daddy soon."

  The promise of reuniting with Tom calmed her. She took a shaky breath and wiped the tears from her eyes.

  Double ouch.

  "Let me finish one last thing, and we'll leave."

  She gave a feeble nod of her little head.

  Note to self: find affordable preschool, ASAP.

  Luckily, there was only one item left on my to-do list.

  Unluckily, that was to pass out a Three-Day Notice to Cure to every single resident who lived there. Each apartment had at least one lease violation, whether it be the wet towels slung over the patio, the ashtray in the walkway, dead plant by the door, or old cardboard covering the window. It was obvious these residents had been without an apartment manager for awhile. Or the previous manager didn't care.

  I was incapable of not caring.

  My eye twitched just looking at the bag of trash by Apartment 6A's door, thinking of all the insects and rodents lurking, waiting to dig in.

  Gross.

  There were also the rental increase notices I had to pass out. Each one sealed in an envelope with the Elder Management logo on the flap. My original plan was to go door-to-door, introduce myself, point out the lease violation, kindly ask the resident to rectify the problem, and hand deliver those who were getting increases.

  Except Lilly was moments from another meltdown and we still had to stop by the police station so I could meet with a sketch artist in…I checked my watch. Crap. Thirty minutes.

  There was no time for pleasantries.

  It was for the better, I told myself. I was pleasant and overly accommodating when I started at the LA building, and residents still trampled all over me.

  Example: Last month, Daniella from Apartment 13 placed a cup of live crickets on the counter and told me to feed them to Gary (her tarantula) for the next two weeks while she visited her cousin in Miami. She didn't ask me. She told me. And I said, "Sure," because I have boundary issues.

  In Burbank I was not Pushover Cambria. I was Stern Cambria! And I would run this circus with an iron fist.

  Mostly!

  Also, I was in a rush.

  I stuck the Three-Day Notice to Cure outlining the infractions onto each door, placed the rental increases in the respective mailboxes, grabbed my stuff, and ran away as fast as I could before Lilly screamed. A fifteen-minute trek to my car. Five-minute break to catch my breath. A crying toddler strapped in her car seat. And we were off.

  The guilt of dropping the notifications and bailing began to fester as I drove away. Especially since I had no plans to return until Thursday, giving residents twenty-four hours to fester in their anger. Which didn't seem like a good idea, and I couldn't help but think about the fact that Violet gave out rental increases and twenty-four hours later she was gone.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  —It's impossible to parent full-time and work full-time at the same exact time without losing your mind.

  It took twenty minutes to drive to the police station, which wouldn't have been a problem except Lilly fell asleep five minutes before we arrived.

  A few things I'd learned as a mother.

  One: Never wear white. It doesn't end well.

  Two: Never interrupt toddlers who are playing quietly on their own. It doesn't end well.

  Three: Never, ever, ever, under any circumstance, ever, ever, ever wake a child from an unplanned nap.

  Unless you have an appointment with a forensic sketch artist and you're already late.

  I stood at the counter in the lobby of the police station. The officer behind the Plexiglas had given up competing with Lilly. Who screamed as if her life depended on it. I held her tight as she thrashed and kicked and fought to break free. Every single pore in my body pumped out sweat as if my life depended on it.

  I was not about to put Lilly on the floor of a dirty police station.

  I was, however, about to sell her on eBay. Especially once she began screaming at me in Vietnamese.

  "You need to stop, Lilly," I said through gritted teeth, struggling to keep my composure. The woman standing one window over—who had a leopard print leotard on, no shoes, hair the size of Canada, and a ferret on a leash—cast her judgy eyes in my direction and shook her head. Which did nothing to help the situation.

  "I'm supposed…to meet…with a forensic…sketch artist," I huffed. Lilly somehow managed to turn upside down. I had her by the waist, and her little legs flailed around like they were two inflatable tube men summoning passersby to her used car lot. "My…name…is Cambria Clyne. Detective Hampton…sent me."

  Note to self: find an all-day preschool today.

  We were finally escorted through the secured doors and taken down a long hallway, past offices and officers and grim-looking individuals who looked to have recently sobered up. I followed my escorting officer to a corner desk tucked behind a partition. My eyes were instantly drawn to the sketches pinned to the walls. Men and women, some with mug shots beside them, some with CAUGHT stamped across the top in red ink. Some individuals looked scary, some were smiling, and others had defining features like a mole or a scar. Apprehension thunked into my gut. I tried to summon the picture of the brown-eyed man back to my head, except Lilly was kicking me in the head, and I was having a hard time activating my temporal lobe.

  The sketch artist stood and greeted us with a warm smile and motioned for me to take a seat in the chair beside his desk. "Thank you for coming down, Ms. Clyne. I'm Calvin. And who is this?" Calvin was about my age, wit
h a pompadour haircut.

  "This is Lilly," I answered for her since she was currently upside down and crying.

  Calvin rolled his chair closer. "Lilly, who is your favorite Disney princess?"

  Lilly stared at the man as if he were contagious.

  "She's into The Little Mermaid right now," I said and wrestled Lilly into a sitting-up position. She tucked her head into my chest and rubbed her eyes.

  "The Little Mermaid is one of my favorites." Calvin tapped one of two computer screens on his desk, grabbed a stylus from a penholder, and began to draw. His hand moved with such fluidity that both Lilly and I were memorized. With a click of the mouse, the printer below his desk spit out a picture of Ariel with Lilly's name on the top.

  Her little face lit up. She grabbed the paper and examined it, wiping tears from her cheeks.

  I wanted to give Calvin a hug.

  So I did.

  "Thank you," I said. "I'm so sorry. I had to wake her from a nap."

  "No need to apologize. My daughter gets the same way," he said.

  I took a breath for what felt like the first time since I entered the building.

  "My grandpa's name is Calvin," Lilly said with a sniffle.

  "Is that right? And his last name is Clyne?" He looked to me for confirmation.

  "It is. He's a plumber in Fresno, and his business is called Calvin Clyne Plumbing. Made high school real fun."

  "I bet," Calvin said with a snort and rolled his chair back to his desk. "Let's go ahead and get started. Can you give me a general description of this man's face shape and features?"

  Er…

  I told him what I could remember, which still wasn't much. Calvin asked if the man had a doppelgänger, but I failed to think of one. He asked if the man had any distinguishing features, but I failed to think of one.

  Per the usual, I was a big help.

  Calvin next pulled an album from behind his desk and showed me pictures of lips, noses, eyebrows, and hairlines. I flipped through the book. Nothing looked familiar. Had I known I would have to decipher whether this man had full lips or thin lips, how bushy his brows were, or if he had forehead wrinkles, I would have paid more attention during the five seconds we'd interacted.

  As it was, the entire thing felt like a hopeless waste of Calvin's time. If he felt the same, he didn't show it. He remained patient; his stylus danced around the computer screen as he added a wrinkle, and then took it away when I wasn't sure. It was an hour of adding and erasing features until Calvin turned the screen, and I let out a gasp.

  Holy crap!

  CHAPTER SIX

  —I am not authorized.

  The sketch looked exactly like a young Bob Saget and, yet, also exactly like Stairwell Man. Which made me feel better. Danny Tanner wouldn't kill anyone.

  Of course, his doppelgänger might.

  I snapped a picture of the sketch with my phone, and it was time to go home.

  Well, almost.

  First, we had to stop at County Hospital.

  Out of the way, yes, but I wanted to check on Larry.

  I found a parking spot on the street and made sure each door was locked. Not that anyone would see my dented Civic with the taped side mirror, ripped seats, missing hubcaps, broken driver's-side door, and think, I bet we could strip this for parts! But I had a buck fifty in the cup holder—enough to buy a bean and cheese burrito from Taco Bell.

  County Hospital wasn't exactly located in the good side of town. Hence the metal detectors and bag search performed upon arrival. Lilly and I were given a visitor's sticker and followed the signs to the information desk, where a nurse wearing blue scrubs and a pink hijab was working. Per her name tag, this was Laylaa.

  Laylaa welcomed us with a full-face smile. "Can I help you?"

  "We're here to visit a friend who was brought in last night via ambulance," I said.

  "Go ahead and sign in here." She handed me a clipboard, and I jotted down our names and whom we were visiting and handed it back to her.

  "I'm not sure what room he is in though."

  "Not a problem. Let me check for you." Laylaa consulted the clipboard and rolled her chair over to the computer.

  I propped an elbow on the counter and had a look around. Hospitals made me anxious. The sterile smell. The sound of rubber-soled shoes on the hard floor. The wheelchairs. The paging system. All the germs floating in the air…ugh. I stuck my hand under the automatic antibacterial dispenser and gave Lilly a Purell bath.

  "Please wait. I need to make a call," Laylaa said. She spun around in her chair and picked up the phone. No matter how hard I tried (and I tried really hard), I couldn't overhear the conversation.

  "I'm sorry," she said after she hung up. "Your friend is not allowed visitors at this time."

  I blinked. "Larry loves visitors. What do you mean he's not allowed?"

  Laylaa clasped her hands. "I'm sorry. No visitors allowed at this time."

  I gasped. Oh no. "Is he…is he…" I leaned over the desk and whispered, "D-e-a-d?"

  "I'm not permitted to give away patient information, but I can assure you he's being taken care of."

  What a weird comment. "But he's not allowed to have visitors."

  "Correct," Laylaa said, unmoving.

  "Is he in the ICU? Because I'm not sure he has any family around or anyone to be with him."

  Laylaa's brown eyes moved to the side and back again. I turned to see what had caught her attention. A security guard who looked like he could be the starting center for the Los Angeles Lakers stepped forward and peered down at me like I was lunch. Gulp. "Is there a problem here?" he asked.

  I took a step in front of Lilly. "No problem. We came to visit a friend—that's all." I turned to Laylaa. "Would you allow me to speak to a doctor?"

  "Not at this time."

  "But if he were in critical condition, you'd notify someone, right?"

  "Of course we would," she said. "But your friend is not allowed unauthorized visits at this time."

  "Unauthorized? He's not the president of the United States. He's a…he's a…" A what? It dawned on me that I had no idea what Larry did for a living. He seemed always to be home, and he'd written self-employed on his application when he'd moved in. "How do you become authorized?"

  "I'm sorry. I think it's best you leave now," Laylaa said.

  I was so confused. I'd visited lots of people in the hospital before. Well, not lots. Mainly my Grandma Ruthie toward the end of her life. Even if Grandma wasn't up for visitors, the nurse would simply say, "She's not up for visitors right now." There was no talk of authorization. This was County Hospital! Roughly a bazillion people were wheeled through those doors daily. Did everyone have to be authorized to visit?

  A woman with a baby strapped to her chest pushed past me and leaned over the desk to speak to Laylaa. "I'm here to see Donner Spanster. Can you give me his room number please?"

  Laylaa consulted her computer. "He's in room 1245 on the third floor. Please sign your name here."

  What?

  I should have dropped it and left.

  But I couldn't. I pictured Larry lying in a hospital bed all alone.

  "Could you please let Larry know that I'm here," I said to Laylaa.

  She sighed. The same I'm-just-doing-my-job type of sigh that I'd sighed many times myself.

  "Go home now," the guard said.

  Geez.

  Lilly's head was buried into the back of my leg, and I could tell the exchange made her uncomfortable. So we left. What else was I to do? I wasn't authorized.

  Whatever that meant.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  —Fruit is expensive.

  My Grandma Ruthie used to say, "When you can't make sense of what's happening, call Mom."

  So I did.

  "They escorted you out?" Mom sounded as confused as I felt.

  I checked the rearview mirror. I was still parked by the hospital, and Lilly was asleep in her car seat, finishing the nap she'd started earlier. I dared not wak
e her this time. "We weren't exactly escorted out. The nurse said he wasn't allowed unauthorized visitors, and a security guard told me to go home."

  "Do they have a no-children policy?"

  "A woman came in with a baby right after me, and why wouldn't they just say no children allowed?"

  "I don't know. People are rude these days." Mom paused to bark orders to someone in the background. She worked as a secretary at a busy meat-packing company in Fresno—and had since my parents divorced two decades ago. "I don't think it's uncommon for a patient to ask for no visitors. Especially if they're in a lot of pain or very sick. But the whole unauthorized business sounds weird to me. Is he on police watch?"

  "No. All he did was fall from…" Crap. I thought about what Kevin had said to the dispatch operator, about Larry being armed. Could the police have taken Kevin seriously and put Larry on a twenty-four-hour hold.

  Dang it, Kevin.

  "What's wrong, Cambria?"

  "Nothing. I just…remembered that I have a thing to do. I've gotta go." I wasn't about to tell my mom about what Kevin had said, because then I'd have to explain who Kevin was. Which could lead to a conversation about other areas of my life, like Chase, and my very un-gay baby daddy, and that one time someone tried to kill me, and the other time someone tried to kill me, and there was the incident with the drug dealers. It was best to keep my parents in the dark. For their own sanity.

  And mine.

  "I can tell something else is wrong." Mom's hobbies included studying the fluctuation of my voice. "Is it a boy?"

  Technically yes, but "No."

  I could feel my mother's disappointment radiating through the phone. "You know what? It's fine." She cleared her throat, and I pictured her smoothing back her Einstein-ish blonde hair. "Being a powerful single woman is in nowadays. You should consider a sperm donor."

  I just about choked on my own spit. How had sperm come into the conversation? I looked down at my phone to be sure I was still connected with my mother. She'd about had a heart attack when I'd told her I was pregnant with Lilly. Of course, that had more to do with me being unmarried, financially unstable, and living in an apartment I'd dubbed Crap-o-La. "Are you OK, Mom? Since when did you want me to have more children?"