by B Anders
"Are you a member?"
Courtney ran to catch up with Harper and roughly pulled the other woman face to face. Harper turned pale and jumped back two feet.
"Hands off. No, touching ever."
Courtney ignored the warning and stepped into Harper's personal space again, "You're the one with the Triple A road map! Don't you have Triple A?"
"No, I'm using my Dad's maps. He was a member, but I don't think he is anymore. We could call and ask, but it would be rude since he is technically on his honeymoon."
“Fuck you.”
“Go fuck yourself. I’m not Patty. And, since you fired me, I'm not even working for you anymore. I don’t have to take your shit. You make such a big deal about looking out for her, but you didn’t honestly do that, did you? She was too much work, and you didn’t have time to waste. You had to be so friggin' perfect. Very time consuming to be so perfect. How could you clean up a train wreck and stay perfect? You couldn't. You dropped the ball too, Courtney. Only my ball was some meaningless multimillion-dollar business deal, and yours was your worthless junkie sister. I'll leave you to figure out who was the epic failure."
Courtney pushed passed Harper muttering, "I take it back. I'm not sorry for saying you're too much trouble. It wasn't rude. It was true. It was a completely accurate assessment of your personality." Courtney shouted over her shoulder for emphasis, "You're a complete jackass!"
When she walked in the door, Courtney headed for the bar. Harper went to the front desk to check in. It took a few minutes to explain why she had no luggage. A very cheerful clerk offered to help her get the car door open, but she declined figuring Courtney could handle it on her own. After all, Courtney was the corporate hot shot.
Harper went to the assigned room. The door lock was one of those modern ones that accepted plastic card passkeys. One swipe and the green light flashed indicated access. The room was beyond her expectations. It was bright, clean, and surprisingly quiet with a large, comfortable King sized bed. But, it was the tang of chlorine in the air that sent Harper searching for something familiar. The smell of home, a pool.
"Lucky me," Harper hummed when she found it unoccupied.
It took only seconds for Harper to shed her clothes even going so far as to discard her bra and panties. Harper felt no need for modesty although she was glad the water was warm despite the chill in the air. She descended the steps slowly into the pool’s welcoming embrace. As the water rose higher, her breathing deepened. She could hear her heart pounding in her ears when she slipped below the surface. Gentle kicks propelled her deeper into the blue embrace. Her eyes searched for something to grab, to hold, to keep her under while her lungs ached for air, but her desire proved elusive in the flat bottom pool. Harper could feel her disappointment rise like bile at the back of her throat as her buoyant body rose to the surface with the will of nature.
Floating always gave her peace. She would lie on her back and drift for hours in her pool at home. Unlike her house, which was falling apart, her pool could not have been in better shape. It was her only source of comfort. The need to take care of it, despite the fact it was only available four months a year when the weather permitted, was an obsession. She seldom ventured into other pools. However, as pools went, Harper thought the one she was in was pretty decent. Water splashing her face made her lift her ears above the water.
"What?"
"Ma'am."
"Hu'h?"
It was the clerk from the front desk. The young man's initial look of fatigue collapsed onto a gaping, jaw drop of horror. He forced himself to swallow the emotion, leaving only a lingering twist of distaste on his lips.
"Of course, you're naked. This just gets better and better." He muttered before raising his voice to ask her a question. "You came with that other woman, right? She’s your friend, right? You know the tall blond with the big mouth and the nice car?" He asked.
"Yep, the one with the keys locked in it," Harper answered and swam to the edge of the pool.
"We need you. Please hurry. Your friend is having some trouble. The police have been called already, I think," the clerk said.
Harper quickly climbed out of the water. The clerk's words instilled a sense of urgency to her movements. For some reason she couldn’t quite understand, Harper didn't want to appear indifferent when it concerned Courtney. The clerk handed Harper a large white bath towel when she stood up at the poolside. He politely averted his eyes and said nothing about her nakedness.
"Nice towel," Harper hummed as she dried off.
The young man flashed a small smile. "Thanks. We try to go the extra mile for our guests. But, we do need to hurry. Your friend is a real handful."
“What do you mean? Is she okay? Is she sick?" Harper asked as she suddenly registered an important detailed he had commented on. "You said something about the police, didn't you?"
"Yes, they've been called by now, I'm sure. As for sick, it's self-inflicted. ‘She's had too much Vodka way too fast and no food’ kind of sick. She's been running her mouth at our regulars and causing nothing but trouble for Ralph, the bartender." The clerk looked annoyed, "He said he called the cops before he called me. Can't be positive. Sometimes he exaggerates. But, I kind of don't think that's the case this time. Wish it had been the other way around, him calling me first. It's better to limit police calls. Looks bad in the local papers. George, the guy who runs the place, hates it when that happens. It’s like we draw riff raff or something."
"Oh. Good to know." Harper stopped toweling off to ask. "She was drinking? That doesn't sound like her. Are you sure?"
"The bartender said she's been slamming them back like there was no tomorrow." His frown deepened, "Of course, he should have stopped serving her and called me, but that didn't happen either. This is what happens when you hire the boss' retired uncle and let him skip training protocols."
Harper laughed, "Been there, regretted that."
"Anyway," the clerk continued, "if she doesn't calm down the police may have to arrest her for drunk and disorderly. You know, for her own protection. It would be great to avoid a bigger scene than we have, so we need to hurry."
"Sounds like big trouble," Harper considered not going with the man. "I guess a good person would go help her out." Harper said out loud, trying to convince herself, but the clerk took her statement to be an affirmative and hurried for the door. "Okay, hang on. Let me pull some clothes on, and you can lead the way. I'll see what I can do to help."
The man looked relieved as he waited for Harper to finish dressing. She stuffed her socks into her back pocket. Then shoved her bare feet into her sneakers.
"Let's do it!"
"Follow me," the clerk grinned.
With each step down the corridor, the voices grew louder. There was one voice that was completely belligerent. The words were slurred, but the tone was one of unmistakable contempt.
"Courtney," Harper called out to the other woman as soon as they reached the bar's doorway. "Courtney stop!"
"Aw shit, her again," Courtney cursed from her spot on the floor, where she was handcuffed, on her knees in front of a police officer. "Screw this! Go ahead, tough guy. Mace me!"
The officer obliged her with a stinging dose of southern hospitality.
***
The lack of conversation was beginning to unnerve Harper. Other than the sound of a plastic trash bag flapping in the wind, there was nothing to break the stillness as the car cruised down the lonely highway. Eager to ease the tension between them, Harper began softly humming to herself as her fingers drummed out an imaginary beat on the soft leather of the steering wheel. Curled up in a ball on the passenger seat, Courtney continued to ignore her, eyes rooted at a distant point in the horizon stretching out into the darkness beyond the windscreen. Harper could not help, but notice the pungent whiff of mace lingering in Courtney’s hair. It was kind of sexy, in a tough, painfully punk sort of way.
A thought escaped before Harper could stop herself. "You know, them macing yo
u was really a mixed blessing. I didn’t think that cop would really do it. Nobody did. But then, bam, he lets you have it right between the eyes. You should have seen the desk clerk when you got it in the face. I thought he was going to crap his pants."
Courtney didn't look at Harper as she deadpanned, "Some inbred redneck almost kills me, and you think it’s a mixed blessing. Oh, do go on. I'm dying to find out how lucky I am."
"Well, I’m sure it hurt and all. You did take a direct hit. It looked so bad the desk clerk was betting you were going to choke to death when you threw up."
"Good plan," Courtney said, "wagering in front of the cops."
Harper didn't notice Courtney was speaking as she continued rambling to make her point. "But you know what? There's a silver lining to you almost dying there on the floor under the bar drunker than a Kennedy at the beach. What with you on your knees, handcuffed and screaming for somebody to shoot you to end the burning, the police chief knew his man was way out of line for spraying you. A room full of witness totally pissed off and crying from the stench of pepper spray was the cherry on the icing on the cake. I bet there’s a dozen vids of you on YouTube by now. That's probably why they decided to release you to my care."
"Right and you paying a hundred bucks to the manager to make up for any trouble wasn't a factor in them not charging me."
"Good point. The hotel manager deciding not to press charges was huge." Harper grinned at the happy memory. "Did you see me work him over? I wheeled and dealed him like a pro. I still got it."
Courtney turned to stare at Harper with red, puffy eyes. "Begging him to let me go is not wheeling and dealing. You looked like a scared kitten. I thought you were going to cry all over his Hawaiian shirt."
"Nope, you're wrong right there. Plan B was the water works," Harper smiled, unwilling to be swayed from her version of the truth. "Plan A was for me to masterfully play the sympathy card. Telling him of how you just got fired by some cold-hearted bitch at work and ending up in the hospital due to a suspected suicide attempt..."
"What the fuck? You told him what! Goddammit, Harper. That's you, not me! You’re the one who got fired! And, I should know. I'm the cold-hearted bitch that fired you! And, let's not forget, you’re the one who tried to off herself with a tire iron.” Courtney shouted.
Harper dismissed Courtney's factual complaint. "For cryin’ out loud, I save your ass and all you do is nick pick on the pesky little details. Who cares whose story it technically was? It worked to get you released, didn’t it? That should be more than enough for you to be grateful."
"Grateful? Are you fuckin’ serious? You and your rules drove me to the point of insanity. No touching, no booze, no sitting at a bar, no smoking, no chewing tobacco, no strawberries, no raspberries, no saying the word...You know the word...I could have downed every bottle in that bar and still not be drunk enough to stand being with you another second..."
"Well, that was just plain mean," Harper injected with a frown, but Courtney was unstoppable.
"Fuck you, Harper. Why did you have to stick your nose in where it didn’t belong?"
Harper was certain she had the right answer to the question, "Because, anybody else traveling with you would have helped. It's a normal reaction to try to help. I'm trying to feign normal at the moment. Just like you asked me to do."
"I could have been hauled off to jail. Locked away from you. If you had stayed out of it, I'd be sleeping safe and secure in a cell right now."
"See I knew you would see my point," Harper did not appreciate how bitter Courtney sounded. "I rescued you. There’s no need to thank me, by the way, I’m sure you would do the same for me."
"Rescued? Are you totally cracked? I wanted to get away from you. Hell, I told that fat ass to spray me in the face. I was that desperate to get away from you, I was willing to take a point blank blast between the eyes. How the Hell could I know they’d do just the opposite and hand me over to you? And, Miss Wheeler Dealer, what about the car window? Couldn't you charm any of the local morons to give you a hand getting into the car? Did you have to smash the back window?"
"I tried everything I could think of. The rock was a last resort," Harper explained. "The rental company put me on hold. George, the manager tried calling his roadside service for us, but they were going to be over an hour just to get there. I figured trying to get you to act nice for an hour with 100 proof vodka swimming in your brain was pushing our luck. There was no telling what you would do next, and the cops didn't have a Slim Jim, so we had to use Plan D. You wouldn't have liked Plan C..."
"Don't bother explaining Plan C, I don’t even want to know what it was. How 'bout we just focus on the brilliance of Plan D, shall we? Shattering the window of a rental car that costs more than you'll make in a year of SSI was Plan D, correct?"
"Right," Harper confirmed. “Anyways it was only a window. I knew you’d listen to reason.”
"Great. That's just great, Harper. Nicely done. You get the fuckin’ gold star. Let's just say, mission accomplished in wrecking my life."
Harper shook her head with a sad smile, her eyes glued on the road. “It wasn't me who ruined your life. It wasn’t Patty either. She had her own demons, and they got the better of her, but it wasn't your fault. It was her issue. Just like whatever it was or is making you so unhappy, well it’s something you need to deal with by yourself. Blaming me or Patty isn’t going to make anything better."
Harper gave a quick glance to Courtney before focusing on the dark road again. Courtney had stiffened and was visibly pale. Tears were starting to roll down her cheeks. The huge body-wrecking sob that followed seemed to shake the entire car.
“Hey Courtney, don’t cry. I didn’t mean it as criticism. You’re not bad. Okay, you can be a real pain in the ass, corporate troll most days but, with some minimal effort you can be pretty tolerable sometimes.”
“Shut up, I hate you," Courtney blurted out between sobs.
"What'd I say?"
"What you said in summary is I might as well grab a tire iron and an anatomy book."
"No," Harper hushed, "don’t be like that. It's just the booze talking. I know you don’t hate me. After all, you got involved in my breakdown because you wanted to fix me. I know you wanted to fix me because you couldn’t fix Patty and that made you feel like you failed at something and you couldn’t fail because that would mean you weren’t perfect. You know I’m right.”
“What a load of total psycho bullshit! You take your stupid armchair analysis and shove it up your big, fat arse, but be careful you don't hit your brains on the way up. Don't want to do any lasting damage, now do we."
"Hey, don't be crude just because you're upset. There’s nothing big and fat about my ass I'll have you know. It isn’t as perfect as yours, but it turns enough heads on the street.” Harper mumbled as an afterthought, "Especially when I wear my vintage faded 501's. I love those jeans."
“Screw you, Harper.”
“Isn't that a nice thank you very much? You're all pissed because you thought you could just walk into someone’s life and fix everything with a snap of your fingers. Well, you can’t. People aren’t machines, and they aren’t numbers on one of your spreadsheets. People are messy, and complex.” Harper kept her voice soft as she continued, "You can’t make people live the way you want them to, like you can’t make them love you when they don’t. You can’t fix them if they don’t want to be fixed. Everybody is on their own with that job." Harper shook her head, "Sorry Pumpkin, you don't have a magic wand."
“Great, now you’re calling me a big, fat orange melon. Can the new age psychobabble, Missie Freud. That went out of style with Dr. Gotcha TV analysis. Shit, you can’t even get yourself together long enough to do your own laundry so don’t fuckin’ tell me what to do.”
“A pumpkin is not a melon. I think it’s a squash.”
“You deliberately missed the point. Go fuck yourself.”
"Okay, you're telling me I'm wrong?" Harper let her own anger flair. "I th
ought we were on this trip to help each other? So, it's okay for you to hit me with all sorts of questions about my grieving process, but when it comes to..."
Courtney scoffed her voice thick with tears. "Pathological lying, kleptomania, and ritualized phobias are not a grieving process. They are symptoms of serious mental illness."
"At least I'm doing something to try to make a sort of grieving process for myself instead of butting in on somebody else's suffering to make me feel important. You got a grieving process yet, Courtney? Or are you too perfect to need to have one?"
“I grieved. I did all the right things. I identified the body, made the funeral arrangements, wore black, greeted people, wrote thank you notes, and paid the bills. The only thing I can’t seem to do is let it go."
Harper asked, "Let what go?"
"We...I...Patty fought. All the time. We never saw eye-to-eye on anything. She was a selfish, manipulative bitch, but I fuckin’ loved her. She was my twin, don’t you understand? How could you? How could anybody? She was the only person I could ever love.”
“Oh Pumpkin, that might be a little too much sharing,” Harper was unprepared for the sudden influx of information. "I thought you were gonna say something like, you resented her or missed her. Didn't expect you could still love her with what she put you through."
"Why did she have to do it?" Courtney let a sob rack her body. "I was in Chicago. I needed to stay a couple more days. Three at the most. I had a deadline. She had the best help money could buy. She was staying at a top-notch facility. I paid for it. She could have told her doctors she needed more help. Instead, she checked herself out of rehab and disappeared. The police found her body a week later. She OD'd in some crack house. Can you tell me why she hated me so much she had to shoot shit into her own veins?"
“I don’t know, Courtney.”
“I stay awake at night thinking what I could have done different, what I should have done to save her. I keep thinking it’s my fault.” The tears overtook Courtney.
"Only Patty could save herself. Just like, I'm the only one who can save me. You have no power to fix me or her or anybody else. Courtney, you can only fix yourself." Harper, in a sudden moment of clarity, uttered a universal truth, "We are singular beings in a vast universe of singular beings. We are born alone, and we die alone. Neither wealth, power nor fame can change that.”
