I stopped with an idea. “The playpen!”
“Who?” Vree asked, her head snapping back and forth.
I made a run for the storage closet, Vree on my heels. I had two Pop N’ Play playpens from when Bex and Quinn were infants. I had two of everything from when Bex and Quinn were infants. I tore open the door, then tossed, while Vree dodged, a double infant stroller, two bouncers, two activity centers, ten baby gates, and a double baby swing before I unearthed a collapsed Pop N’ Play. From the foyer, we heard something that sounded like a cross between a fire drill and fingernails on a chalkboard. It got louder and louder. We left the baby yard sale contents scattered up and down the hall, then lumbered back to the foyer with the compact length of the Pop N’ Play between us, the noise from the foyer growing more urgent. Over it, Vree yelled, “That’s not barking.”
“No Hair!” We dropped the Pop N’ Play on the travertine floor. “What’d you do to it?”
“I didn’t do a thing to it,” he said over the noise. “And I’m not holding it one more minute.”
The animal’s head was tipped back, mouth wide open, and the noise kept coming.
“Hang on.” A whiff of garlic Doritos wafted my way. My eyes watered, and I couldn’t remember who I was, what I was doing, what my sister’s name was, or how to make the Pop N’ Play pop. I turned my head the other way, gulped what clean air I could, then tackled the playpen. The second I wrestled it open, No Hair suspended the towel sling over it, then let the animal slide out. I secured the safety latches, then the three of us watched it turn circles. From a safe distance.
It was missing a huge chunk of fur from the middle of its back.
No Hair pulled reading glasses from inside his jacket and perched them on his nose. From a different pocket, he produced a piece of paper. “This is an email from the front desk, Davis.” He shook it open and cleared his throat. “‘Mr. Covey, I’m not sure what to do with this animal. The couple checking in left it with me, claiming they had a reservation for it. I realize we have the pet show this week, and guests are checking in with pets right and left, but these guests, whose pet isn’t in the show, insisted it had its own reservation. When I tried to explain our no-pet policy, the woman climbed over the front desk, backed me into the corner, took my picture, posted it on Facebook, and threatened me. At which point, obviously, I said we’d take the dog. I think it’s upset, or maybe has issues, or honestly, it could be the owners. They were unusual, to say the very least. They said the dog’s name was Princess and she’s a six-year-old Mexican Hairless Chihuahua. I asked if she was up to date on her shots and they said yes, including a double dose for rabies. They said the dog only eats manicotti with extra sauce and thumbprint cookies. It doesn’t like to be touched and they told me not to laugh, sing, or wear bracelets around it. They said it loves to watch YouTube videos of Madeleine Albright speeches, especially Madeleine’s TED Talk. They said play it over and over. They claim she’s sweet once you get to know her, but then said it was terrified of hangers, as in clothes hangers, and men with beards. They said they’d pick her up Friday morning and walked off. Actually, they ran. It was very disturbing and very confusing. I thought about calling animal control, but decided to check their reservation first. Mr. Covey, they really do have a reservation for their animal. I had the IT department look it up and they confirmed the reservation originated from an IP address on the twenty-ninth floor. Since that could only be Mr. Cole, and he’s out of town, I thought I’d contact you. Can you help me?’”
Of all the bad news in the email from the front desk, the worst was the Friday morning part. Friday morning? It was Sunday. I’d signed up to keep it for the next five days?
“Do you have anything to say for yourself, Davis?” No Hair asked.
I shook my head.
I did not.
He shoved the note at us, then spun on his contaminated Ferragamo heels and left. From the open door, a red satin duffel bag slid in and came to a stop between the Pop N’ Play and the puddle. Princess yelped at it. My front door slammed. Hard.
Vree and I looked at each other.
Princess sat down and began gnawing on herself, the purple leg, furiously.
“Get that end, Vree.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s not staying in my foyer.”
We picked up the playpen. Princess gave her purple leg a break long enough to hiss at us, then went right back to it.
“Davis, this thing is leaking.” All over my hall. “Where are we taking her?”
“This way.” I led the charge to the guest wing, as far away as possible from where my children would be when they returned. We lumbered down the hall to the smallest of the three guest rooms, the one with twin beds, a rocking chair, and a perfect view of the Gulf. I opened the drapes and we pushed the Pop N’ Play against the window. Next, I called housekeeping and told them I’d had a little nuclear waste spill, would they please send a cleanup crew with everything they had, and the cleanup crew should probably wear Hazmat suits. “Bring heavy equipment and plenty of straight bleach.”
“There are twenty boxes of Stouffer’s cheese manicotti and two huge jars of Ragu Thick and Hearty Roasted Garlic sauce in here.” Vree was going through Princess’s luggage, and that explained the garlic smell. “There’s a muzzle, Davis, and pumpkin-scented dog perfume, a million dog toys, and what are these?” She held up long Kevlar gloves.
“Safety gloves, Vree. Those are safety gloves.”
“Why?” Vree’s eyes were wide.
It was ten o’clock in the morning.
I had things to do.
Save-my-sister things.
And I’d have liked to have her saved her by seven tonight, when I would take my seat at the judges table in the conference center for the first round of competition at the dog show. None of which would happen if I choked to death. “Vree! Stop!”
Vree was blasting Princess with the pumpkin juice.
I batted through the haze.
“I was just trying to help, Davis. She doesn’t smell good.”
“And now she smells worse!”
Now the dog, dripping pumpkin perfume all over the Pop N’ Play, was mad. It charged us, teeth bared, bouncing off the mesh sides of the playpen every time, which made it even madder.
“Do something, Vree!”
“What? What? What?” She dove into Princess’s duffel bag and came back with a tattered blanket. The minute she held it up, Princess quieted to a whimper and the room filled with a different noxious gas.
“This must be her blankie.” Vree had it pinched between two fingernails.
Princess saw it, or maybe got a whiff of it, and was trying to vault out of the playpen.
“Throw it in there, Vree.”
Princess, clearly happy to see the blanket, bunched it up, circled it, then fell on it.
“There’s one problem.” Vree pointed. The dog’s fur, soaked in pumpkin perfume, parted in wet clumps to reveal a rhinestone dog collar digging into its neck. “Her collar is too small. It’s choking her.”
Vree was right. The collar was way too tight. “Take it off.”
“I’m not touching it,” Vree said.
I rolled my eyes. I pulled on the Kevlar gloves. I dove into the playpen and freed the dog from the collar. I held it by a silver buckle for Vree to see, and said, “Vree, you’re a big chicken.” I tossed the Kevlar gloves and the ridiculous collar, then sat down on one of the twin beds. “Where’s the email?”
“What email?”
“The email from the front desk. We need the owners. We need their names. I’m going to call and tell them to come get their animal. There’s no way we can put this dog in the dog show, and we can’t keep it here.”
Vree batted around and produced the email. She studied it. “The only name is Lauren Clark.”
That wouldn’t
help. Lauren was the front-desk receptionist who sent the email. “Let me have it.” Vree was right. No guest name, no guest room number. I called the front desk to hear Lauren had gone home sick. I wasn’t surprised, because I was half sick myself. Had I linked the pet page to the guest page? Surely I had. If not, I was perfectly willing to page Princess’s anonymous owners in the casino, on a loop, around the clock, until they showed up. Behind me, a grating noise erupted from the playpen.
“Aw, that’s sweet.” Vree had to raise her voice. “It’s sleeping. And it snores like Gooch.”
I braved a look. Princess was sleeping flat on her back with the yellow eye wide open. The yellow eye was still aimed at me.
“Can you sit with it, Vree?”
Vree’s face immediately registered terror.
“Can you stay here with it long enough for me to go to my office?”
“No.”
“Vree. Do you remember what happened right before it got here?”
“No.”
“Think about it.”
She paled. She remembered. She surveyed the room, locating the nearest exits. “Go,” she said. “Do your computer thing, Davis. Find Meredith. Find Bubbles. And please hurry.”
Hurry, I did. Away from the dog.
Listening for the doorbell with one ear—housekeeping should have been there by then—I used my other ear to check in with my husband, who’d arrived in Nashville without incident (“Davis, it’s beautiful! The mountains!”) then July, for a Bex and Quinn report. All was well. I sat down at my desk and fired up my system. I passed on several emails from Bianca Sanders and two from Fantasy, one with the subject line ANSWER YOUR PHONE. I’d get back with them later. After I saved my sister. I had work to do. And if I didn’t have it done in the next little bit, I would be boarding a Bellissimo jet on my way to scour hospital parking lots in Houston, Texas.
* * *
It took twelve minutes to find Greene Gully in Patient Records at the third hospital I tried, Jackson Hospital in Montgomery, Alabama. It took fifteen more minutes to crack Jackson’s firewalls and get to Greene’s medical files.
You’d think a hospital would have a more secure system.
Greene was listed as a plasmapheresis patient. The documentation went back five years. Every three months, for five years, Greene had checked into Jackson and been hooked up to a big machine that removed his blood. (His blood.) (From his body.) The liquid was separated from the red and white cells, then the red and white cells were returned to him minus the plasma, so he could produce more plasma, plasma his body would reject, plasma that would become so toxic to his circulatory system that within three months’ time, he had to have the plasmapheresis procedure performed again. Greene Gully had Idiopathic Thrombotic Demyelinating Polyneuropathy. A rare blood disorder that could be renamed, simply, Bad Plasma.
The quarterly procedure required a three-day hospital stay and cost upwards of ten thousand dollars. Out of pocket. Due at time of treatment. Not covered even if Jesus Water had insurance. The only cure was to find a one-in-a-million donor. Greene Gully didn’t need my sister’s blood. He needed her plasma. His was no longer working. He needed someone else’s. Meredith’s.
She was his one-in-a-million.
Meredith had to undergo the plasmapheresis procedure.
And give Gully her plasma.
To the tune of a million dollars.
I closed the excess of open blood screens on my computer, hoping to never see them again. I picked up the proof-of-life picture of Meredith and Bubblegum in the Winnebago I’d printed the night before, and it was a good thing it weighed a feather, because I was too weak from all the vampire reading to hold anything heavier. I studied her face again, giving the window she could have escaped from ten times only a glance, because I realized, at some point along the way, Meredith made the decision to go through with it. If she hadn’t, she wouldn’t still be there. And if my sister had enough compassion for a man we barely knew to let the blood be drained from her body, I had to find enough compassion to pay for it. With the one caveat—I didn’t have a million dollars.
“ABIS. OOK AT EEE.”
The noise that made my broken heart stop was coming from the doorway of my office, and barely recognizable as human speech. No part of me wanted to “ook,” because clearly, something was very wrong.
“ABIS! OOK AT EEE!”
I cut my eyes left and started at the floor.
As I feared, it was Fantasy. The feet in the doorway of my office were Fantasy’s. I knew the canvas espadrilles.
“ABIS!”
I made it to her knees. Skinny white jeans. Still Fantasy. And I think she was saying my name. A version of it anyway.
“ES OOH PONE BOKE?”
As my eyes hesitantly traveled up, the hem of her cropped pink lightweight cashmere sweater came into view. The one with the V-neck and three-quarter sleeves. I made it that far. And she might have been asking me if my phone was broken.
I couldn’t help it, I slapped my hand over my eyes. I didn’t want to see above her sweater. Maybe she’d just come from an emergency trip to the dentist and things hadn’t gone…as planned. Maybe she was chewing rocks. Maybe she bit her tongue. Off. But if it was anything else, I just didn’t want to know.
“ABIS. OOK AT EEEE.”
I peeked between my fingers.
All I could see were lips.
NINE
Bexley and Quinn had Crayola Double Doodle boards. Scribbling ruled, but they were getting better at horizontal lines and lop-sided circles. They always wanted me to guess what they’d drawn, and I guessed until I got it right. Mostly, they drew Daddy. When they wanted to mix it up, they’d draw moons, or spiders, or their best girl, July. At their stage of budding artistry, everything looked the same, the lines and loops, but I snapped pictures of each and every masterpiece anyway. I led Fantasy to my kitchen table, sat her down, then from the toy drawer, I pulled out a Double Doodle board and three My First Crayons: red, blue, and black. Everyone loved options.
Do you not have a pen and paper?
She’d chosen the red crayon, a subliminal message: red was for rage. I wasn’t about to add fuel to that fire. I stepped back into my office, emptied the paper tray of my printer, and grabbed a pen. “Fantasy?” I could finally look at her without shrieking. “What happened?”
Talk about scribbling—she went at it. I didn’t think she’d ever stop writing. When she finished, she shoved it at me.
I don’t know what happened. I woke up like this. My fifty-pound lips woke me up. DO NOT ask me if this is collagen.
(It hadn’t occurred to me.) (Not a bad guess, but it hadn’t crossed my mind.) (And if it had, I wouldn’t have asked.)
I want that woman out. She’s still in my bonus room, and I’m not going anywhere near her. I want her GONE. Right now. This minute. Look at my LIPS. I woke up with THESE on my face. Every light in the house is flickering on and off. I poured myself coffee and my favorite cup exploded in my hands, not that a drop of it would have made it past my lips if my cup hadn’t blown up. I just wanted to hold it and smell it. Then my car wouldn’t start. I can’t talk, I barely have electricity, my favorite coffee cup spontaneously detonated, then my car wouldn’t start. Yesterday, the fire, last night, the birds, now look at me. And this all started the minute I left here with that woman. What is WRONG with her? I want her off my property. Now. And your ceiling is leaking in the foyer. Something foul. What is going on? Start talking.
Start talking was underlined three times.
She watched me read. When she knew I’d finished, she spilled out a string of angry unrecognizable gibberish, poking the kitchen table for emphasis, slapping it once, and while I didn’t catch a single word, I got the gist of it. She wanted a full explanation. I pushed away from the table. I filled a Tommee Tippy insulated sippy cup with coffee, secured the lid, a
nd put it down in front of her.
“UT ES TIS?”
“Coffee.”
She made several unsuccessful attempts to get the coffee past her enormous lips before I suggested she tip her head back and shake the coffee into her open mouth.
She said, “I ATE OOH.”
I patted her arm. “No, you don’t.”
I passed her a dishtowel, because coffee was dribbling down her cheeks, and I placed the proof-of-life picture of Meredith and Bubblegum in front of her. Her head came down, coffee dripped on Meredith, then Fantasy swung her lips my way. “Abis?”
“Let me get Vree,” I said. “We’ll try to explain.”
I turned the kitchen corner, and from a mile away, could hear Princess. Her fire-drill bark. I picked up the pace. When I reached the guest-room hall, I yelled, “Vree?” She didn’t answer. Maybe she couldn’t hear me over the dog yapping. Louder, I called her again. “Vree? Are you okay?”
Vree was not okay.
Princess had tunneled out of the Pop N’ Play and had Vree trapped in the closet. She’d scratched the paint off the closet door in long thin streaks in her efforts to get to Vree. And chew her up. I quietly closed the door and ran. I wasn’t abandoning Vree. If I’d distracted Princess to free Vree, the dog would have come after me. And then been loose in the house. Closer to my own bedroom than anything else, I ducked in, ran around the bed, yanked open the drawer of my nightstand and grabbed my laptop, praying it was charged. When I made it back to the guest room—Vree still in the closet, Princess having clawed down to the bare wood—I had YouTube pulled up on Google Chrome. My shaky fingers somehow found Madeleine Albright’s TED Talk. I cranked up the volume, slid the laptop across the rug, and held my breath. Princess’s top ear perked. She stopped screaming. Her paws slid down the closet door for the last time as she turned to find Madeleine. When she located the laptop, in front of the destroyed Pop N’ Play, she stretched out on her belly, crossed her front paws, and sighed.
Double Dog Dare Page 8
