Wrapped Up In A Weeping Willow

by Tonya Kappes

  The studio. Harper took off in a dead sprint. She knew she could cut into the prerecorded lubricant broadcast and still have a half hour of live radio. Live radio was the best revenge.

  Chapter Three

  Harper was confused and crazily furious, not even able to recall how she got from the house to back in front of her microphone. All she knew for sure was what had been tattooed on her brain: that Rob Ellington was a lowdown dirty son of a bitch and Melanie Day was a fake, not to mention a two-bit whore.

  Harper had the power of her words and the platform for them. She knew her best revenge would wound them just like they had wounded her.

  “What’s wrong?” Benji’s voice shook with nerves.

  Harper didn’t even look at him. She simply pushed the button and brought her mouth to the microphone. Out of her mouth came a well-measured response to Rob and Melanie’s actions.

  “Who wants to hear about lubricant?” Harper had cut the audio of the prerecorded lube segment. Adrenaline pumped through her body. “Fuck lube! Let’s talk about cheating husbands,” she cried, flashing into a sudden fury.

  Any and all manners she’d learned since moving out of Hudson Hollow had gone up in smoke, just like Melanie’s thong.

  Benji wasn’t quick enough to hit the bleep button. Benji looked like all the blood had drained from his face. He had seen Harper angry a few times back in the college days, but that was when she talked to her parents. He’d never seen her angry at Rob.

  “What is going on?” he mouthed.

  Harper held her finger in the air. The pink diamond glistened.

  “Our number is 555-555-LOVE. I don’t remember the numeric numbers of LOVE right now, so look at your fucking phone and figure it out. Or go on Facebook and let the lying shit roll! Name your cheater! Let’s expose them. Benji, be a dear and make a status on our Facebook called cheaters!” Harper sat on the edge of the chair, her mouth touching the microphone. She stared at her shadowed reflection from the window in front of her as Rob appeared on the back porch of the house, naked, facing the studio. He combed his strong black hair with his fingers. His head was held arrogantly back as though he were sniffing something,

  Her eyes slide back to her own reflection. At her long blond hair and dark roots and how nicely straightened it was, just the way Rob liked it. Flat as a board. Full face of makeup, including eyeliner, which she hated but Rob loved it. And lipstick. She hated the bright red expensive lipstick Rob had given her as another apology gift.

  She swiped the back of her hand across her lips, smearing the red across her cheek. She grimaced as the big pink diamond scraped her face. When she looked back up, Rob was no longer on the covered porch.

  “Bastard,” she gasped. She wanted to make sure she was heard loud and clear. “Do you remember how I said something was off? You know, right before the lube segment? Well, I let my amazing assistant, Benji, put the prerecorded lube segment on because it’s my dear, darling Rob’s birthday. I had gotten him a reading from Melanie Day, a psychic here in Louisville. Be sure you do not go to her or get a reading from her. Melanie Day on Fourth Street,” Harper repeated it again, slowly this time. “Melanie Day, psychic on Fourth Street in Louisville, Kentucky.”

  Benji reached over the control panel with his finger ready to hit the off air switch.

  “A, a, a . . .” Harper snapped her finger at him and, after she got his attention, she wagged it.

  Benji blew out his cheeks and pulled back his arm.

  “Melanie Day will tell you lies just so she can get your husband into bed! That’s right, folks. The sex talk queen Harper Ellington’s husband Rob Ellington was letting my psychic ride him like the jockeys who ride his horses,” Harper screamed into the mic.

  Benji’s jaw dropped and he put his head in his hands. He knew not to stop Harper and he knew he was probably out of a job. They were both out of a job.

  She pointed out the window. Rob had a kitchen towel wrapped around his nether region. There was a stalking, purposeful intent in his walk.

  “Lock the door, Benji!” she screamed, airing over the broadcast. “When I said something was off, I was right! My psychic, Melanie Day of Louisville, Kentucky, was getting off on my husband’s itty-bitty cock! Granted it’s a teeny, tiny penis, but he has a nice-size bank account to make up for it.”

  Her cell phone was buzzing. Without looking, she knew it was Sidney, wondering what the hell was going on. After all, this was a live show.

  “For all you new SiriusXM listeners who are just tuning in to Real Talk with Harper Ellington, you need to be brought up to date on what this show has turned into. Something was off with me today and I couldn’t put my finger on it until I found out that Louisville psychic Melanie Day is a fraud. I asked her to give my husband, Robert Ellington—yes, of the elite Ellington family—a reading on horses. Only.” Harper sucked in a deep breath; she was going to keep saying Melanie’s name and ruin it. “She must’ve misunderstood because she was riding him like a stallion when I walked in on them in my bedroom, in my bed!”

  “Open the door, Harper!” Rob beat on the studio door. “I mean it! Benji, don’t you help her! I need the fire extinguisher! The bitch has set my family’s house on fire!”

  “Um. . .” Benji pointed to the window. “Did you set your house on fire?” His hand drew down to her feet. “Are you bleeding?”

  Smoke was billowing out of the top of the seven-thousand-square-foot mansion. Sirens echoed in the distance.

  Harper looked down. Blood was oozing out of her foot.

  “I threw a vase at her. A few very expensive vases at her.” Harper forgot the broadcast was still live. In the frenzy, Benji had yet to try to cut if off again. “I wanted her to fall on my marble steps and bust her head open and splatter her brains everywhere.” Her voice was flat. Her face held no expression. She felt nothing. She was lifeless. “I set my house on fire by torching her thong with her fucking sage stick.” The words fell out of her mouth.

  “You could’ve set me on fire!” Rob screamed. He had made his way to the window she was staring out of and using both of his palms to bang on it.

  “Too bad, because I wouldn’t piss on your burning body!” Harper screamed back at him. She jerked the pink diamond off her finger and threw it at the window.

  Suddenly a burst of laughter came out of her body. She threw her head back and roared at the thought of Melanie driving her Mercedes naked into downtown Louisville.

  Rob waved her off and darted back toward the house.

  “Oh my God!” Harper put her hand to her mouth. The entire roof was on fire. Rob stood next to the fire trucks. They were pumping water from the lake and spraying it all over her house, her beautiful house. “Melanie is naked and driving her convertible Mercedes,” she murmured, half-laughing, half-crying.

  The phone continued to buzz. Benji couldn’t ignore it anymore.

  “We are?” He held the phone up to his ear and stared at Harper, and then he burst out laughing. “We are still live.”

  Harper gulped and eased back up on the edge of her seat. Online streaming was more lenient than the radio airwaves, but maybe, just maybe, she’d crossed the line.

  “This is Harper Ellington, telling you to have sex and lots of it!” She signed off with her signature good-bye and added, “Just not with someone else’s husband!”

  “Um . . .” Benji stuttered and pointed out the window. “Harper.” His voice faded to a hush stillness.

  Harper looked up, and right before her eyes, the roof of the Ellington plantation home shot straight up in the sky like a bottle rocket on the Fourth of July.

  She saw Rob Ellington drop to his knees and run one hand through his hair while the other cradled his manhood. And the firefighters stood with their mouths gaping open. A police officer walked over to the studio and knocked on the door.

  “Oh, Gawd.” The realization of what Harper had done was beginning to settle in and she knew it was time to face the music.

  She look
ed a Benji. He was as wide-eyed as a cat in a roomful of rocking chairs. Harper sucked in a deep breath, brushed her hair behind her shoulders, and straightened her back.

  In her sweet Southern twang, she asked, “Do I have on enough lipstick?”

  Chapter Four

  “There is literally nothing I can do.” Sid Delaney spoke softly, as if not to upset Harper anymore. Everyone had literally been tiptoeing around Harper like they were going to set her off again or her head was going to pop off like the Ellington roof.

  Harper had been waiting three days for this phone call. Even though there was a phone in her private room, she had to have a calling card in order to dial out. She could receive as many calls as came through, which had ended up being none over the past three days.

  What little money she did have, she’d given to one of the patients on one of their group Walmart outings to get her a package of MoonPies and a six pack of Ale-8. She’d had no idea she was going to be in Pine Crest Residential Rehabilitation Center for more than twenty-four hours.

  “Don’t give me that.” Harper curled the old rotary phone cord around her finger and sat down in the chair next to the window. She rested her head on the back of the chair, closed her eyes, and let the warm sun shine on her face.

  “This time I really think you did it. You admitted you wanted to kill that crazy psychic, Melanie Whatever-the-hell-her-name-is, and she’s filed a lawsuit against you for attempted murder. Then there’s the arson thing from the Ellington estate. You are in a big mess.”

  “Melanie Day is whatever the hell her name is and don’t forget it. She’s not heard the last from me,” Harper threatened. “I didn’t say I wanted to kill her.” Though the thought tickled her to no end. “That was her opinion.”

  “Her opinion?” Sid asked sarcastically.

  “Trust me, if I’d wanted to kill her, I would have, but I never said I wanted her dead.” Harper bit her lip, cocked her foot in the chair, and curled her arms around her leg. She watched the other residents of Pine Crest Residential Rehab Facility walk the track cemented around the fenced-in courtyard.

  Even though it was supposed to be a voluntary place, where people came to “rest,” it didn’t seem so voluntary to Harper. There were group sessions, rules, art sessions to help them get a grip on their emotions, group outings . . . yeah, like Harper wanted to get on one of those little buses and file out one by one to go to the local Walmart, each one of them wearing their own little wristband with their names on it.

  Harper reached over and grabbed a MoonPie from the box and ripped open the package. Taking a bite, she let Sid’s words sink in.

  “Well, I didn’t really mean I wanted to kill her. Much.” Harper slapped her blue, threadbare sweatpants to get rid of the crumbs and adjusted herself to look out the window at the outside courtyard, where the patients were allowed to roam freely. There was even a walking trail.

  Harper watched them all walk in the same direction, no one straying from the herd. No one but the young boy with the long, greasy hair. He couldn’t go outside by himself. He always had to have one of the staff with him and Harper wondered why. She was never one to be shy, but one of the rules was not to ask about other patients’ problems.

  “Shit,” Harper groaned, feeling bad for the boy. His eyes were hollow and sad. His shoulders drooped, his gait slow and unsteady. Harper felt his crown of gloom.

  “Harper,” Sid’s voice rang out. “You threatened her for ten minutes on air.”

  “Was it that short?” Harper giggled, knowing it was going to make Sid even madder.

  Sid had assembled a team and gotten on the red-eye as soon as she heard Harper going off online and found her at her favorite local bar, drinking away her troubles. Little did Harper know that the team, who consisted of Rob, the lawyers, Sid, and Benji, had already come up with a plan in which she “voluntarily” checked herself into Pine Crest due to the stress of keeping her show at the top and her new gig at SiriusXM. All of it stunk and Harper knew it, only she didn’t realize it until after she had sobered up the next day and realized she’d signed the papers with the help of her good buddy Jim Beam.

  Voluntary my ass. She groaned and turned away from the window.

  “I think your words were, and I quote from the papers the FCC sent me, ‘I wanted her to fall on my marble and bust her head open and splatter her brains everywhere.’” Sid paused. “I really think you’ve cut off your nose to spite your face. Plus the words that came out of your mouth would make the devil blush.”

  “You mean the whole cussing thing? It’s a sex show! What do they expect?” Harper tried to wrap her head around the events that had occurred after she caught Rob cheating on her. Blankly, she stared out into the sunny courtyard, trying to enjoy what little time the sun would still be out.

  Over the past few days, the sun had been setting earlier and earlier, letting her know the Kentucky fall was coming. Even her favorite season was betraying her.

  “How dare it come while I’m stuck in here?” she whispered to the window. She ran her hand over her greasy ponytail.

  Since she had been in the Pine Crest Residential Rehab Facility, she hadn’t taken a shower or even stepped out of the building.

  “Harper, who are you talking to?” Sid asked. “Focus on me and our situation with the FCC.”

  “So they’re mad about the fact that I told the world that my soon-to-be ex-husband’s yanky-dank was inside a fake psychic?” Harper still felt nauseated over the whole ordeal.

  “Now you say yanky-dank.” The anger in Sid’s voice told Harper everything she needed to know. “It’s the whole thing, not just the cussing. That is the FCC. You have a whole slew of fines we have to negotiate with them, Harper. Not to mention the charges the Ellingtons are threatening against you.” Sid’s voice softened. “This isn’t looking good.”

  “Sid, I can recall what I said over the air and I’m not going to admit to the FCC lawyer that I was either drunk, high, or gone crazy.” It was exactly what her agent wanted her to do. Sid called it damage control. Harper called it Sid’s bankroll security.

  “If you admit to a momentary lapse of judgment—” Sid was not below begging Harper to do something. In fact, she half-expected it. “—then we can go to the FCC after you do your time there and we can get this all cleared up in the media.”

  Sid had gotten her hands on Harper before she became a national sensation after meeting her at a local broadcaster association. Sid was the keynote speaker, and as soon as Harper walked into the room, she knew she was going to be a success. Sid liked the down-to-earth, take-no-prisoners, blunt sex advice Harper gave. Harper had an animal instinct, an ambition Sid respected, and knew her drive would take her where she wanted to go. Plus Harper had a southern charm that no man in the biz could resist. But it was also Harper’s downfall.

  “Media?” Harper didn’t even think about the consequences during her rampage; she’d only thought about getting revenge on Rob.

  “Yes. The media is going crazy trying to figure out where you are. We’ve done a nice job of keeping your whereabouts a secret. They even have some sort of monetary finder’s fee.” Sid let out a big sigh.

  “How much?” For a second, Harper wondered if she should let it slip where she was and get the money herself. She really didn’t know how she was going to pay for things like a cell phone when she got out.

  “I don’t know.” Sid groaned on the other end.

  “That reminds me, what am I going to do about cash when I get out of here? Rob froze all my money and I don’t even have a cell phone.” Harper was the only one in the residential facility who didn’t have a phone, computer, anything electronic.

  Every night between eight o’clock and ten, the residents in the rehab facility got to use their cell phones and laptops. Harper’s Apple products were her lifelines and Rob had ripped those away from her, too.

  “Bastard; too bad he didn’t go up in flames with the house.” Harper was mad at herself. She was smar
ter than this and she’d let him get the best of her. “What happened to me?” Harper’s voice broke as she realized she’d gone soft.

  “Love, honey,” Sid whispered. “We women do weird things because of it.”

  That was the thing: Harper never let love get in the way. If she had, she’d probably be barefoot and pregnant with Brett Barrett’s baby on a farm back in Hudson Hollow. She had vowed many years ago that she wasn’t going to be like her high school friends. She was going to experience what life had to offer; only Rob Ellington had thrown her for a loop.

  “Five minutes.” A woman in blue scrubs peeked her head in Harper’s private room.

  “Listen, did you get the Bible from the studio?” Harper had to cut to the chase. She wasn’t about to be late for group meeting. Cooperating was her way out of this joint. If she participated in the group activities, she’d get out on good behavior and some of the charges against her would be dropped. She could resume her career and kiss Rob good-bye.

  “I sent Benji to retrieve it. Rob has always liked Benji, so I made sure he turned up his charm to get it,” Sid said. “Benji is on your visitor’s list tonight.”

  “Tonight?” Harper jumped out of the chair and walked into her private bathroom. With the phone still tucked between her shoulder and her ear, she looked at her reflection in the mirror. She definitely wouldn’t let Benji see her like this. She was going to hide her crazy and get her shit together before visiting hours. “I’ve got to go.”

  Harper walked back into the bedroom and hung up the phone.

  “Harper.” The same woman stood at Harper’s door. The patients had to leave their doors open unless it was bedtime. “It’s time for group and you have to attend.”

  “Do I bring the notebook?” Harper asked and pointed to the white three-ring binder sitting on the desk next to her bed.

  “Yes,” the woman said over her shoulder and walked off.