Authors: Gretchen Archer
Message one, from the only person who had the number—
Laura, I’m going to be a little late for dinner, but one thing you need to know about me is I’m worth the wait.
Message two—
I’m going to be tied up just a few more minutes, gorgeous. You wouldn’t believe what jackasses these gamblers can be.
Message three, obviously a butt dial from the Bellissimo entrance—
What the--?—
and then the longest streak of cursing and threats I’ve ever heard in my life. If I repeated it, I’d have to wash my mouth out with soap for a month. Not only that, I knew he’d gone home to find his prisoner had escaped, and he couldn’t have reacted to that with anything less than hellfire and brimstone.
Matthew Thatcher had himself a bad, bad night.
Time for my next chore. I turned, walked to the bathroom, opened the linen closet, grabbed the ticking bomb in a First Response Gold Digital Pregnancy Test box that was screaming at me from atop a stack of hand towels, walked back to the French doors, and sent it sailing into the first sheets of rain.
The burner phone surrendered with one last beep, then went black. I dropped it into my purse. A clap of thunder cracked over the ocean. I reached back into my purse, retrieved the phone, then threw it out after the box.
* * *
Love is blind? Peyton Beecher Maffini’s love was delusional.
The next morning, in various stages of sleepwear, we staked out opposite ends of the sofa during a Gulf soaker in full swing. I was tempted to wade out and snorkel around for the burner phone I’d tossed into the night so she could hear the messages Matthew Thatcher had left for Laura Kasden. This girl needed a big dose of reality to go along with the doses of whatever Jakeaway was giving her to keep her from scratching everyone’s eyeballs out. After thirty minutes and several chocolate-frosted donuts each, I realized she believed she was still married to LeeRoy. She believed they were working together to bring down So Help Me God Pentecostal, and she didn’t understand why we’d interfered.
(She’d be dead had we not interfered.)
“But Peyton,” I said, “if that’s true, then why were you tethered to the bed? Why was he keeping you prisoner?”
“We had a disagreement.”
That was some disagreement. “About?”
In the World According to Peyton, when LeeRoy Maffini had taken the microphone job at the Bellissimo and changed his identity to Matthew Thatcher, their legal union had been one of the casualties, but he’d promised her it would be short term. He’d be right back to get her. Except he never went right back and got her.
With too much time on her hands, Peyton realized something was very wrong with the So Help Me God operation. She broke the news to LeeRoy in Biloxi, and he, too, was appalled. (He was most likely appalled that she knew.) He snuck her out of Beehive, hid her in a ratty apartment in Pass Christian, thirty miles from his active libido in Biloxi, and kept her busy and under his thumb by tossing her from one menial Bellissimo job to the next. All in the name of their mutual goal to expose the church operation and run away together. (He had no intention of doing either.) Deep in the dumpster shaft, Peyton decided she was tired of waiting. She was tired of hiding. She was tired of her father getting away with whatever he was doing. She vowed to do something about it if she ever escaped the garbage chute.
He disagreed on every point. Thus the disagreement.
“Peyton.” I pulled a green throw pillow into my lap in case I needed it for cover. “I think you’re wrong. I think LeeRoy’s been stringing you along the entire time and has no intention of exposing your father’s church. He’s still very involved in the church operations.”
“No,” she said, “
you’re
wrong. LeeRoy severed all ties with my father years ago.”
“Who took you from the hospital, Peyton?”
The question surprised her. “He did.”
“He, who?”
“LeeRoy.”
I reached for my laptop and moused around until I found the photograph of her being wheeled out by an older man dressed in hospital garb. “Who is this?”
The color drained from her face.
I thought so.
We listened to the rain until she was ready. “I have a question for you,” she said.
“Ask away.”
“Do you live in this big place alone?”
I dropped what would have been my fifth chocolate-frosted donut. “I don’t know, Peyton.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Men suck.”
My head fell back against the cushion.
“One more question,” she said. “Do you look just like Bianca Sanders on
purpose
? Or by accident?”
“Accident.” The sun broke through the storm and spread across my ceiling. “Bad accident.”
FIFTEEN
“One condition.”
“What is it, Eddie?”
My ex-ex-husband and I were in the Coffee Shop on the corner of Main and Banana in Pine Apple. Word had gotten out that we were together again (woo!), and every living, breathing soul in town developed an urgent desire for a cup of the lukewarm, lethal, black sludge from the Coffee Shop’s two-burner drip coffeemaker that had never, once, I’d-bet-my-life-on-it, been cleaned. The coffee tasted like rust and had a blue glow. The line at the counter for the nasty stuff had been steady and chatty since I’d arrived. “Hey there, Davis!” “Do you hear that? I hear wedding bells!” “Davis, does your daddy know you’re here?” “Well, Davis Way and Eddie Crawford! As I live and breathe!”
Francine Simmerton, Coffee Shop proprietor who came with the coffee maker back in the ‘70s, had been the latest of our negotiation interruptions.
“Listen, Eddie, Davis.” She laid her neatly folded apron beside the cash register. “I’m going to have to run to the Pig and get more Maxwell House. Just give people decaf till I get back, and don’t steal my tips, Eddie.” Francine was probably going to the Piggly Wiggly, Pine Apple’s only grocery store, to get on Pine Apple’s only loudspeaker. Just in case someone hadn’t heard that Eddie and I were together again at her place.
“It might be more than one condition.” Eddie the Ass was laid out on his side of the booth like it was a bathtub. “First of all, she gets to keep the clothes.”
“No one will want clothes your mother has worn, Eddie.”
His face froze in concentration while he tried to decide if he’d won that one or not.
“And second of all, you’ve got to pay whoever has to take over her job at the diner while she’s gone,” he said. “That cash register doesn’t run itself, you know, and I’ve got too much going on to fill in for her.”
“Minimum wage,” I said. “And for one forty-hour week. That’s it.”
“Make the check out to me.”
“No.”
“Then pay me cash.”
“No.”
“Are you mad at me about the other day?”
I didn’t bother.
Eddie picked up the paper-napkin dispenser, turned it sideways, and made sure his hair was messy enough. He peered over it. “I want you to hook me up with Bianca.”
“That’s never going to happen. I couldn’t if I wanted to.”
“Yes, you could.”
“Forget her, Eddie,” I said. “First of all, you’ll be arrested if you get within ten miles of her, and second of all, she’d never agree to it. She’s moved on, Eddie, and you need to move on. Third of all,” I took a deep breath, “I would lose my job.”
“You could get another one.”
Again, I didn’t bother.
He kept his hands going the entire time, playing with toothpicks, Louisiana Hot Sauce, and stir sticks. It occurred to me that Eddie Crawford might have ADHD, to go with his long list of documented flaws, including chronic lethargy, substance abuse, gambling addiction, and rattlesnake DNA.
I glanced at my watch. I’d hit the road thirty minutes after Peyton Beecher swallowed her morning Happy Pill, drove the two hundred miles to Pine Apple well above the posted speed limit, then visited with my parents for ten minutes.
“Davis, you look positively green.” (My mother.) “You need better makeup.”
Now I’d been going over the details of the Bea Crawford Beehive Sting with her rotten, rotten son for an hour, with all of Pine Apple popping in and out.
I was only negotiating with him because if there was one person on Earth whose company I’d rather not be in more than his, it was his mother’s. I was so ready to hit the road again. I will always love Pine Apple, but two hours was about all I could take. Two minutes was all I could take of Eddie.
“Okay.” Eddie lovingly massaged his jaw. “When I bring Ma down there for this slot tournament thing,” he said, “you have to go to dinner with me in that new restaurant Bianca likes.”
“To what end?” I asked.
“What end? It’s in the middle of downstairs!” He looked at me like I was daft. “You’re the one who works there, Davis.”
He was talking about Violettes. But Violettes had opened after Eddie’d been asked to leave the Bellissimo and never ever come back. He shouldn’t even know about it, much less that Bianca guzzled her martinis there. I made a mental note to run facial recognition on him to see if he’d been sneaking in. Then I mentally scribbled through it. I didn’t care.
“No.”
“Look it.” Eddie pushed his sugar-packet building blocks aside and leaned in. “Bianca and me are,” he focused on something just above my head, “soul mates. And we have unfinished business.”
“Unfinished business is the only kind of business you know, Eddie, and how is going to dinner with me going to finish your business with her?”
“Maybe we’ll accidentally run into her.” He winked. “And wear your dark hair.” He winked again.
I knew Eddie’s language, so I started speaking it quickly, lest I kill him at the Coffee Shop and be stuck in Pine Apple for days. “This isn’t about Bianca or dinner, Eddie. This is about money. If I’m right, your mother will win the slot tournament and she’ll get to keep all that money. Think of yourself as her agent,” I said. “She’ll give you a cut.”
“How much?”
“How much of a cut will she give you?” I asked. “That’s between you and her.”
“No,” he said. “How much will she win in the slot tournament?”
“A thousand.”
“Dollars?”
“Yes, Eddie. Dollars.”
“Because she can’t cut me in on a trip to Mexico. She doesn’t want to go to Mexico anyway.”
I watched Eddie’s gears turn as he contemplated the upside of Bea winning a trip to Mexico. An all-expense-paid vacation for him.
“She’s not going to Mexico, Eddie. Just Biloxi for a few days, then Beehive for a few days.”
“And you’ll be with her the whole time?”
“Not the whole time.” Thank goodness. “But most of the time.”
“How are you going to get the old-folks home to take her? She’s only fifty,” Eddie said. “Or sixty.” This was when Eddie Crawford began counting on his fingers.
“Let me handle that.” I knew exactly how old Bea Crawford was, because she and my mother were the same age. Fifty-seven. Bea, however, was at least a hundred pounds overweight, so she waddled like an eighty-year-old duck. And she was the only woman left in America who still gave herself a home permanent wave every six weeks, leaving her with seven or eight haphazardly placed piggy-tail curl clumps on her huge head, easily adding two decades to her look. Possibly the worst in the aging department—while Bea Crawford might use the words “skin” and “care” regularly, she’d never once used them together. Bea had the skin tone, texture, and complexion of a watermelon slushy. She had no lips. My challenge was for Bea to pass the filthy-rich test. We were covered on the old-woman front.
“When is this slot thing?” Eddie asked.
“Thursday.”
His head jerked. “We already missed it.”
“It’s every Thursday, Eddie.”
His head bobbed with a basic understanding of the Gregorian calendar.
“Isn’t today Thursday?”
Strike what I just said.
“Today is Monday, Eddie. Bring your mother on Wednesday so I can take her shopping.” The words tasted like ground sloth soup. “And don’t plan on staying unless you have the money for a hotel room.”
“She’s staying with you at your place, right?”
“Correct.” Incorrect. She was staying at my place, but there wasn’t a chance in hell I’d be there with her. Bea Crawford was going to get a crash course in So Help Me God Pentecostal Churchery from my other house guest, recently enlightened and currently cooperating Peyton Beecher, and I had no intention of attending. I had the resources to get myself a hotel room, and I fully intended to.
Eddie puffed his chest out, stretched his neck, and growled. Clearly, he’d reached his physical and mental limits for the day. I dug for my keys. “Got it, Eddie? Do you know what to do and when to do it?”
“Let’s get something straight, Davis.” His finger was in my face. I slapped it away. “You don’t tell me what to do anymore. We’re not married, you know.”
“Yes, Eddie. I know.” I stood. “Have her there on Wednesday morning.”
I headed for the door.
“Don’t forget about our dinner.”
I kept going.
“Make it Friday.”
He said that to my back too.
“Say, Davis?”
My hand was on the door.
“Did you get things worked out with your sissy lawyer boyfriend?”
* * *
I drove straight to the courthouse and snuck into Judge Grafton Clemmer’s courtroom. In session, standing room only. Bradley Cole, in the blue pinstripe I’d sent to the dry cleaners just two weeks ago, was seated at the defendant’s table, whispering to his co-counsel, Kirk Olsen. I could see he’d had his hair cut sometime over the weekend. (Bradley Cole. I don’t keep up with Kirk’s hair.)
Mary Ha Ha was nowhere in sight.
To the right of the witness box, which was full of pre-cancerous Bonita Jakes, who was studying the floor, stood a projector screen. It was projecting an aerial view of Bonita’s home, diesel tanks around it like circled wagons.
* * *
“Have you been crying?” Fantasy swiveled around in her chair.
“Minimize that screen,” I fell into my chair, “or I’ll start crying.”
“Gladly.” The offensive computer display featuring my ex-ex-mother-in-law slid into swarming fireflies.
Monday was coming to a welcome close and Fantasy had been trapped in the office for most of it turning water into wine. Or Bea Crawford into Leona Powell. Same thing.
“Are we about set?”
Fantasy laced her fingers, flipped them, pushed her arms out, and stretched like a cat. “What the hell is a GOBAHIP?”
I held up a finger. “Go Bama,” I racked my brain and found the rest, “Health Insurance Program.”
After a long minute, Fantasy asked, “What is
wrong
with Alabama?”
I shrugged.
“The state-funded health insurance program is called Go Bama?”
“Go figure.”
“Well, Leona Powell’s a card-carrying member now,” Fantasy said. “I’ve got her all set up. Driver’s license, Social Security card, Medicare, Roll Tide Healthcare,” she said. “You name it, Leona’s on the roster. Now all you have to do is roll her in dough.”
“It’s going to take a lot of dough to cover Bea.”
“Agreed,” Fantasy said. “And she needs several medical conditions, too.”
“Embarrassing medical conditions,” I added. “I’ll embarrass the crap out of her first thing in the morning.”
“Yeah. Let’s call it a day.” She pushed back from the desk. “I have got to get home and spend some time with the boys.”
“Anything going on?”
“Other than we haven’t had a minute off in a month?” she asked. “No.”
But her face said yes.
“You could use the night off too, girl.”
“I wish,” I said. “I’ve got to make a Bianca appearance,” I took a peek at the clock, plenty of time to get blonde, “and I plan on making it a quick one. But then I have to go home to Peyton Beecher and a security thug.”
“Well, I have to go home to a bitchy husband and three hungry kids who barely remember me and probably haven’t brushed their teeth in a week,” Fantasy said. “Trade.”
“Done.”
“Hey,” Fantasy began putting computers to sleep so that she might go home to the unhappy, unfed, and unbrushed, “I’ve taken ten calls for you on the office phone.”
I perked all the way up. “Really?”
“Eight from No Hair chewing me out because you didn’t have your cell phone,” she said, “and one from Bianca about the thing tonight.”
Hopes dashed.
“Bianca sent the outfit she wants you to wear,” Fantasy said, “and you’re not going to like it.”
I waved that off. I sat across from my ex-ex-husband for an hour this morning. Bianca could have me wearing a feed sack and I wouldn’t care.
“I do have my cell phone,” but even as I said it, it occurred to me that today was the first day since ninth grade it hadn’t rung itself stupid. Uh-oh. I reached for my bag and started the dig. I hit pay dirt with the burn phone, which was supposed to have drowned in the rain.
Fantasy caught my eye, then tossed me a brand-spankin’ new phone. “I got a homeless guy three times before I shut it down.” She stood, took two steps in my direction, then leaned down to whisper. “He called.”
“Why would a homeless guy call me?” I whispered back.
Fantasy stood and tapped a foot.
I grabbed both of her wrists and shook her all over. “What’d he say? What’d he say?”
“I didn’t talk to him, Davis. This is between you and Bradley.
You
need to talk to him.” She patted me about the head. “See you in the morning.”
“
Davis
,” then there was a pause, “
I don’t know what to think about us and at the same time I don’t know how to thank you for what you’ve done for the Grand.
” Another long pause. “
I’m willing to hear your side of the story and I can tell you mine right now. Eddie needs to go. Away from us.”
Pause. “
I don’t want you anywhere near him, and I don’t want to be anywhere near him.”
Pause.
“I want to see you, Davis, I miss you.”
Pause.
“I’ll be in court all week, so it’ll have to be Friday night. I’ll meet you at Violettes at eight, and we’ll go from there
.
Can you make it
?”
Can I make it? I’d go through hell, tarantulas, or appendicitis to make it.
When I’d gathered my wits enough to stand, I made my way on wobbly, grateful, hopeful legs to the closet, with a whopping fifteen minutes to get changed and go blonde. The Bellissimo-sponsored fashion show to benefit puppies, or wild boars, or guinea pigs, that Bianca had signed herself (me) up to chair needed to be planned by committee over cocktails. The committee had been appointed in descending order of the area’s largest snobs starting with the Mayor’s wife, number-one snob, the President of the Junior League, number one-and-a-half snob, and the Lieutenant Governor’s wife, who was actually kind of nice after a few drinks. I saw my outfit and wondered how in the world I was going to plan anything wearing the nightmare in front of me. There was more hanger than there was dress. It was made up entirely of electric blue silk crepe ruffles. It was as thin as air. It plunged and twisted and wrapped, and when I touched it, it fell to the floor in a puddle.
* * *
With each passing day, I felt sorrier and sorrier for the oil guy who’d lost the condo we—
we
!—now call home. Other than the parade of uninvited guests and the fact that the man who owned it with me was noticeably absent, I fell more in love with my new living space every time I found a new nicety. I couldn’t wait to show Bradley Cole what all I’d stumbled on.
Dark and early on Tuesday morning, I stumbled into the shower. I loved the shower anyway because it was so large, you could park a motorcycle in it. (But I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t ride a motorcycle through the rest of the condo to get it to the shower.) What I discovered was if you bolted straight up at three in the morning feeling absolutely whack, you could race in there dragging a pillow and blanket and stretch out on the cold tile mumbling, “mind over matter mind over matter mind over matter” to yourself.
Which I did.
I woke up hours later, feeling like I’d slept on ice cold tile. (I had.) I threw the pillow and blanket out, turned the water on, which is when I found the blue button on the control panel. Ice Shower. Pressing the small blue recessed circle instantly turned the shower water from 105°F to 70°F.
Which I did. Several times.
“Buck up, girl.” I could see my teeth chattering in the mirror.
When I could brave the world outside the bathroom, I saw I’d missed eight calls, six with accompanying messages. The calls had come in on top of each other for eleven minutes beginning at seven-ten. No Hair and Fantasy hadn’t left messages. Bianca left five I deleted without listening to. Bradley Cole left one. I pushed the button.
“Davis.”
I heard him inhale sharply.
“You’re on Page Six again.”
I pushed a third button, this one bringing my laptop to life, then went straight to
The Sun Herald
.
I’d worn the blue dress backwards. The X was supposed to be in the front, to cover the girls, and the horizontal ruffles were intended to be in the back, to cover one’s ass. The caption read, “We can’t wait to see
this
fashion show!”
It took me a minute to brave the world past the bedroom door, and when I did, my first instinct was to get back in the bedroom, stack the furniture against the door, and never come out again.
Baylor the Security guy was duct taped to a ladder-back kitchen chair. My spent taser gun was on the floor several feet away. Peyton had chewed through her leash. It was eight o’clock in the morning.