Authors: Gretchen Archer
She took a slurp of something red. “What is that?”
“A cranberry smoothie. It’s very good for your girl parts.”
“Good to know.”
“And great with a shot of vodka.”
“Better to know,” I said. “Did you meet Sears?”
“Your new handyman? Yes. And I met your cat.”
“Not my cat, Paisley.”
“You do know the cat needs to be checked for toxoplasmosis before you get pregnant,
right?”
“You can remind me of that if I ever see my husband again.”
Five minutes of junk TV and popcorn later, she asked, “How’s Baylor?”
Paisley was several years older than Baylor, but looked several years younger. She,
along with the rest of the female population, wasn’t immune to his dimple, and the
two had been friends with benefits since the day Baylor drove to New Orleans to hand
deliver a lock of Bianca’s hair. Bianca wanted Paisley to report back on her iron
level and gum health based on the fair-hair sample. Bianca demanded Baylor wait on
the results, which apparently took three days. Paisley tossed the hair, and her clothes,
charged Bianca ten thousand dollars for the all’s well report on her gums, then examined
Baylor for three days.
“He’s okay,” I said. “He’ll never change.”
“I hope not.” Her whisper eyebrows danced.
“I’m not talking about his looks, Paisley. I give him a simple job, he screws it all
the way up, then I ask him to do the near impossible and he saves the day. I wish
he had some middle ground.”
“Oh, he has fantastic middle ground, Davis.” She opened her mouth to tell me all about
it and I raised my hand in a stop sign. Don’t need to know.
“Where is he?” she asked.
“I sent him on an errand.”
“But he’s around?”
“He’d better be.”
She picked her phone up from her lap and her thumbs flew as she shot out a text message.
Most probably to Baylor. The popcorn bowl was nothing but a layer of brown kernels
when Paisley asked, “So what’s going on with Bianca?”
I let my head rest on the back of the magnolia sofa and stared at the gilded ceiling.
“Hot flashes and weight gain.”
“Oh, shit.”
“You have no idea.”
“Has anyone given her the good news?”
“Her Johns Hopkins team,” I said, “and me.”
“You’re lucky you’re still alive.”
“Tell me about it.”
Paisley shook the popcorn bowl, which sounded like rocks in a tin can when factoring
in Who Dat Hooters acoustics, just as the cat snuck up behind us. The sudden noise
scared it out of its fur. It shot straight up and hooked a paw on one of the fake
balconies, then began singing its cat scream song.
“God, that cat is ugly, Davis.”
Oddly enough, I was a little offended.
I walked to the balcony and stood under the cat. “Come on, Cat.” It weighed its options,
found only me, then dropped into and ran its claws down my sleeves before it shot
off. I rubbed my arms.
“Speaking of ugly,” Paisley said, “have you seen your kitchen?”
Between Magnolia and jail, I’d forgotten all about the kitchen. Which reminded me.
I told Paisley I’d be right back, then stepped into the kitchen and retrieved Bianca’s
Valentino calendar.
I heard a low hum from the refrigerator. I opened one of the four doors, placed my
hand on a shelf, and felt the cold. Another miracle. The kitchen was a war zone, but
still a miracle to have lived without a working refrigerator for nine months and then
have one.
“I don’t guess you tried to see Bianca?”
I fell back into the sofa beside Paisley, passing her the calendar.
“I sent my vampire up there to draw her blood and didn’t even try. What does it matter,
anyway? She puts as much stock in my medical opinion as she would that of a burrito
boy’s at Taco Bell.” She paused. “Does Baylor still love Taco Bell?”
“Every single day.”
“God, it’s all so hot.”
“What’s so hot about Taco Bell?”
“You know I’m not talking about Taco Bell.” She flipped through Valentino. “I’ll run
her labs. I’d say she’s a hormonal mess and needs replacement therapy.”
“She needs therapy, alright.”
“She’s probably perimenopausal, needs to be on something to stave off osteoporosis,
plus a little something to boost her metabolism, and probably something for anxiety.”
“She needs something for meanness.”
“Perimenopause goes on for years, Davis. You’d better brace yourself. Is she exercising?
She needs a good yogi.”
“She needs a good muzzle.”
At the end of the fifth episode of “Socialites Screaming,” Paisley stood and stretched.
She reached out a hand and pulled me up. We slowly made our way to the King Cake room
on our way to the new front doors. Sears, dumping a wheelbarrow stuffed full of sprockets
and springs onto a pallet, making enough of a racket to scare every cat in Harrison
County, tipped his invisible cap at Paisley as we stepped into the foyer. He and his
wheelbarrow disappeared through the hidden door.
“Where’s that guy going?” Paisley asked. “What’s back there?”
“You don’t want to know.”
At the new doors, she put a hand on my arm. “And you don’t want an only child, Davis.
I’m an only child and it’s crazy. My mother calls me fifty times a day,” she said.
“If I had even one sibling, it would be twenty-five. If I had two, it would be twelve
and a half, which would be somewhat manageable. If I had three, it would be once a
day. You and Bradley need to get going. You don’t want to be preggers in your forties.”
“I thought my generation could have babies well into their forties.”
“You can. But why would you want to?”
Good point.
“Get going,” she said. “Have several babies in a row. Boom, boom, boom. Get it over
with.”
“Soon,” I said. “Very soon.”
* * *
When Bradley finally made it in from work at one fifteen in the morning, I was still
wide awake. I’d been in bed for an hour, the cat had been snoring for three, but sleep
wouldn’t come.
We met in the middle.
“It’s done.”
My mouse persona.
“The vault contents are back in the vault. The platinum is in the vault. The bank
transfers are being received. It’s over.”
I would ask why he hadn’t told me, but I didn’t need to. He didn’t tell me because
he thought I couldn’t handle it, knowing. He thought I’d show up and shoot Conner
Hughes and his three thugs.
Bradley waited for me to process the news.
“What’d you do after you recovered four million dollars in platinum this morning?”
He pushed my hair from my face.
“Not much.”
Nineteen
Between me, Fantasy, and Baylor, there might be one day a month when we all show up
to work on time. On time for us might be four in the morning on a Tuesday, because
we’re (half asleep) playing slots while watching the drop crew (people in coveralls
with lots of keys who gather the cash boxes from inside the machines) when the soft
count keeps coming up short. On time for us might be midnight on a Sunday, because
we’re (half asleep) keeping an eye on the shift change after surveillance reported
a week of unusual activity between pit bosses—a ten-minute paperwork handoff taking
more than an hour. It took us way less than an hour to find their activity not all
that unusual. It was your basic shift-change hookup.
When we didn’t have anything pressing, which had been all summer long until this nightmare
week, we staggered in to 3B whenever. Usually before lunch. We didn’t punch a clock
because we worked crazy hours. I’ll tell you someone who did work straight hours and
showed up right on time, and that’s Sears. At eight o’clock on the nose Friday morning,
I thought he was outside my bedroom door with four leaf blowers and a jackhammer.
The problem was the cavernous foyer of the Big Easy Flea Market, from which every
other room of Crazy Creole House stemmed. The slightest noise in the foyer bounced
off the cast iron swimming pool that’s home to the twelve-foot magnolia tree, up to
the domed copper ceiling, down the fleur-de-lis walls, then amplified as it echoed
through the rest of Cajun City. And with more gusto now that the refrigerator didn’t
override all other noises. Sears banging around in the foyer woke up the cat too,
who thinks it needs to eat its toxic-waste food the minute it opens its cat eyes.
When I’d shaken off enough sleep to remember (I was married to Bradley) the bankers
would only be here for twenty-four more hours, I found a little energy. I couldn’t
wait for all these people to check out tomorrow morning. Granted, today was packed,
but there was hope. And too much commotion to sleep another half hour. I threw back
the covers and my feet hit the floor.
On today’s itinerary, in no particular order: The Convicted Criminal Paragon tech
crew, having completed all the vault tunnel repairs on this end, would move to the
Wells Fargo end for a half-day of inspection/maintenance; Dionne Warwick would arrive;
and the bankers would play their semifinal and final rounds in the Mint Condition
tournament.
Not on today’s itinerary, but expected, in no particular order: I’d try to sneak into
Event Hall B to satisfy my curiosity about the rigged Mint Condition game and get
caught; I’d look for, but not locate, Holder Darby and Christopher Hall; and I’d have
some manner of altercation with Bianca Sanders.
Padding across the bedroom floor and turning the corner to the his-and-hers vanity,
I thought about my wedding vows. Bradley and I’d had an impromptu wedding last October
and, try as I might, I only remember snips.
I know we exchanged quick vows, but I only remember that it felt like we were flying.
I don’t remember us saying the actual words, which were the standard “till death do
us part,” but somewhere in there, Bradley promised to make me coffee. And he has.
Every day since “I do.”
Before he left for work hours ago, he went to the war zone kitchen, rescued the coffee
pot, tiptoed through the dark bedroom with it so he wouldn’t wake me, set it between
the his-and-hers speckled trout sinks with the tropical kingbird fixtures, and this
morning, like every morning, all I had to do was push the button. The cat turned in
circles, wailing its cat lungs out, whipping its big tail around, because it couldn’t
find its coffee. We knew it was here, cat and I both could smell it, but it wasn’t
on the countertop where the spoiled-rotten cat wanted to eat. We followed the lethal
fumes and found that Bradley had moved the cat into his closet. Cat’s bowl of noxious
food was on a shelf Bradley had cleared. On the carpeted floor, beside the bed Cat
made yesterday, sat a bowl of water and a food dispenser. The cat could slap a lever
with its paw and be rewarded with fish-shaped treats.
I didn’t stick around and keep the cat company while it ate its smelly breakfast.
I hit the shower. Olivia Abbott needed to make a conference appearance, Collateral
Chicken Cordon Bleu and all, and Davis Way Cole needed to get into Event Hall B and
catch Paragon. Doing something. Anything.
I was all the way to lipstick and earrings when I heard a knock on the bedroom door.
On my way to answer it, I glanced in Bradley’s closet to see that the cat had remodeled.
Somehow it had managed to open and empty Bradley’s sock drawer. It piled the socks,
Marcoliani cashmere, every pair, on its nest of Bradley’s Armani and Brooks Brothers
dress pants. Its eyes were closed and it was purring. I guess so, sleeping on cashmere.
I cracked the door an inch. Sears.
“Hey, Mrs. Cole. There’s a man here who says you have his Cadillac.”
My vision clouded and I heard a loud ringing in my ears. Like I might pass out.
“Holy Jesus, Davis!” He was yelling from the foyer, but he might as well have been
in my ear with a megaphone. “I love this place.”
* * *
My ex-ex-husband Eddie Crawford has the manners of a sewer rat, the morals of a grub
worm, and the personality of a Chihuahua on crack. All that in a sleek, stealthy,
swarthy, black panther package. I avoided him at all costs. And here he was.
“Can you tell him I’m not here? Tell him to leave.”
“I can hear you, Davis!”
The sound system in Étouffée Estates went both ways.
“Get lost, Eddie!”
Sears clapped his hands over his ears.
“Sorry, Sears. I didn’t mean to yell at you.”
I stomped past Sears and down the hall to the foyer. I stopped cold and stared at
my ex-ex-husband. He was Duck Dynasty. I hadn’t seen Eddie Crawford in a long time,
thank goodness, and apparently, since then, he’d given up all forms of grooming. A
bushy beard trailed off his face, his hair was halfway down his back, and he was dressed
in head-to-Army boots camouflage. It was ninety degrees out.
“Eddie. You look ridiculous.”
“It’s my job, Davis.” He put great emphasis on the word job, as if it were breaking
news to me that he was employed. “I have an earthy outdoor job. I’m one with the university.”
I might be in an alternate university.
“This is one hell of a place you got here, Davis. No wonder you married the gay lawyer.”
“Is Mr. Cole gay?”
I turned around.
“No, Sears. He’s not.”
“Don’t listen to her,” Eddie the Dumbass said. “She’ll marry anything.” Eddie head-rolled
as he surveyed the French Quarter Flea Market. Hopefully he’d get dizzy, fall, and
crack his head open. “Holy shit.” Stroking his Brillo Pad beard, he poked his head
in the door of the King Cake room, and got a peek at Who Dat Hooters, then back to
me. “This place has my name written all over it. Any chance you have an extra room?”
“Where’s my car, Eddie?”
“Where’s
your
car?” He spun. “You got some nerve, Davis.”
Sears, holding up a wall, was taking it all in.
“Did you drive my car, Eddie? Did you
touch
my car?”
“What’s it to you?” he asked.
Sears, listening, listening.
“It’s my car, you idiot. I want to know if it needs to be sent to the scrap yard.”
“Yes, I drove your car, you airhead. What was I supposed to do? Hitchhike? You stole
my
car, Davis.”
What was the best way out of this? Should I offer to buy his car from him? Money always
worked with Eddie. Should I tell him where it is? St. Tammary Parrish would lock him
up in a heartbeat. That would get him out of my hair for a few days. Should I march
back down the hall and get my gun? Use him for target practice?
“Stay right there, Eddie.” While I get my gun. “Watch him,” I said to Sears.
* * *
I wasn’t about to tell Eddie he’d never see his car again.
In the process of writing Eddie the rotten rotten rotten snake a check to get him
off the Bellissimo property before my husband got wind of him, or equally disastrous,
before Eddie knew Cooter Platt was here, because Cooter actually
liked
Eddie, I learned No Hair had given him three weeks off. Paid. Personal time, Eddie
called it, to work out some issues, vehicular and health—to wit, the health risks
associated with his demanding golf course grass duties that he believed, and his crazy
mother, my ex-ex-mother-in-law Bea, confirmed, he was allergic to.
“To what, Eddie? What is it you’re allergic to? Work?”
“Golf courses.”
Then he went off on a tirade about how stupid golf was. What Jolie needed was a monster
truck arena. That, he said, would bring in the business. When his paid personal leave
was over, he was going to ask about a job in the casino, or follow his mother’s sage
advice and apply for disability, because he had a golf course rash that the ladies
were afraid of. He started unbuttoning.
At which point, I promised him if he showed me anything at all on his physical person
I’d shoot him right then and there and he’d never have another rash. Tearing off the
check, made out to cash, I told him about a new casino in Philadelphia, where the
blackjack dealers were girls in bikinis.
“Davis. I swear. You get dumb and dumber. You know good and well I don’t have a passport.”
God, help me.
“Philadelphia,
Mississippi
, Eddie. Right up the road.”
“For real?”
Well, yes and no. I said it to get rid of him. He’d spend the next week looking for
it. There is a Philadelphia, Mississippi, and there are casinos there, but I made
up the bikini part.
“How am I supposed to get there if you’re having my car detailed?” He thanked me,
again, for my generosity. He marveled at the fact that I, so out of touch, knew how
to treat a classic car and he asked if I’d started smoking pot, because it was an
uncharacteristically friendly action on my part. He suggested I’d finally figured
out how to get along with him. Or was it my way of flirting with him? But mostly,
he wanted to know how he was supposed to get to bikini blackjack dealers if someone
in a garage was scrubbing the gopher guts out of his upholstery.
My heart broke as I said, “Take my car.” Take it all, Eddie. Just get out. Out of
my haunted house, my marriage, my life.
He examined the check. I watched him count the zeroes on his fingers, making sure
I wasn’t pulling a fast one on him. On his way out, he told Sears, “Be chill, man.”
From the war zone kitchen, to put off my commute to the office until my carsickness
passed, I conducted message, email, and reality checks. Attagirls from Mr. Sanders
and No Hair on finding the platinum. Calinda emailed Bradley’s overloaded schedule
for the day. Hot Deals from Amazon. A notice from the Regent Condominium Owners Association
advising us to keep our clothes on next Wednesday because the exterior window washers
would be there. Spam about my fantasies. J. Crew, bank statements, and my mother.
She’s making pot roast and a strawberry cake for Sunday dinner. We should come. I
closed my laptop, inventoried my spy bag, and turned for 3B.
* * *
Fantasy was nowhere; Baylor was on a sofa. On the coffee table in front of him, a
bakery: two white boxes packed three rows wide and five pastries deep with carrot
cake and orange zest muffins, apple and cheese Danish, chocolate chip and raspberry
croissants, and every variety of donut imaginable. He was halfway through a third
box, washing all the sugar down with a giant Mountain Dew. He looked up and said,
“Hey, Treasure Island.”
It’s hard for me to stay mad at Baylor.
“Hey, Sweet Tooth.” I sat beside him rather than across from him, because I didn’t
want to watch him work his way through all three boxes. I helped myself to a cronut.
“Have you ever read
Treasure Island
, Baylor?” I brushed sugar crystals off my shirt.
“I’ve been there.”
“It’s not a real place.”
“It is too. It’s in Vegas.”
Right. “Well, the book is horrible,” I said. “This poor little boy steals a treasure
map and gets stuck on an island with a pirate named Long John Silver.”
“Like the restaurant?”
Having gotten it all out of my system with my ex-ex-husband, I said, “Sure.”
“I don’t eat there. Maybe if they had fish tacos.”
“My point is, the story doesn’t necessarily have a happy ending.”
“What happens?” He reached for more diabetes.
“The boy only gets a little piece of the treasure and ends up working in a hotel where
everyone plays poker.”
“Like us.”
Exactly.
“But you found all the treasure,” he said. “Your story has a happy ending.”
I didn’t find the platinum. It fell on me. Technical point. And I didn’t believe for
a minute it was all the treasure. That thought kept me awake last night and was still
bothering me today, because something was definitely bothering me, aside from the
fact Bradley withheld important information from me so I wouldn’t shoot anyone. Maybe
it was being arrested twice this week, which would bother anyone, especially if her
husband didn’t know. Yet. Or the loud steady beat of my baby clock ticking, maybe
that’s what it was. Maybe it was the love bugs or the fact that I’d never see my car
again. It could be Bianca, or just the wear and tear of living in the Jazz Capital
of the Bellissimo. The cat! It could be the cat!
It wasn’t the cat.
My discontent was a direct result of being on the wrong track all week, which is to
say my ego was bruised, which led to this: Did I want to be right so much so that
I’d feel better right now if Magnolia Thibodeaux was in jail? Or if Paragon had robbed
the Bellissimo vault? Or if they’d held Bradley at gunpoint last night and made off
with the vault contents?