“Come with me, Zoe. Leave it to the professionals.” He picked up my entire body, kicking and screaming, and forcibly took me out of the penthouse.
“This is not your choice!” I yelled. “The elevators are down! They’ll have to climb a hundred floors of stairs to get her!”
I hit his back with balled-up fists as hard as I could, weeping. Thrashing as roughly as possible, I evaded his grasp and fell to the ground, only to find strong arms holding me back again once I got up.
“You can’t leave her to die, Frank! You can’t!” Tears streaked through the smoky residue on my face, and I wiped them away fiercely, spreading snot and soot across my visage.
He studied me, as serious as I’d ever seen him.
“Zoe, sometimes people . . .” Frank started, but I sternly shook my head, lips pressed together, wishing away years upon years of people telling me just that. I recognized the tone. I knew the “Sometimes things happen, Zoe; sometimes people die” speech.
“Please.” I was begging. It was about my dad. It was about my mom. It was about Lexi. It was about me. Please, Frank.
“We’ll try once, okay? If it doesn’t work, we leave her,” he said, raising his eyebrows for a confirmation.
“Yes! Yes! Once! I promise!”
We ran back inside. The smoke was black this time, and I couldn’t hear Lexi. My eyes watered instantly as we crawled inches above the ground. There was little to no more breathable air, and I hacked with each ragged breath.
“Lexi! I’m here!” She looked up weakly and smiled. What could I use to reach her? A chair? An umbrella? I didn’t see anything in sight.
Frank tapped my head and smiled wryly.
“Zoe, Zoe, let down your hair.” His eyes were squinting from smoke but held mine for a second. One time. One try. Then we leave her. I nodded. Lying down, he held my braid close to my scalp and threw the rest down to her. Please be long enough. Please. I’d never wanted anything more in all my life.
And then I felt the tug. Frank held my hair near my scalp so Lexi’s weight wouldn’t pull it out, and when she got close he pulled her up himself.
We stumbled out of the apartment just as another explosion sounded behind us. Firefighters burst from the stairwell, out of breath. They entered the apartment and dragged the other guy out, the one we’d left. Others gave us oxygen and helped Lexi start down the stairs. I wanted to be relieved, but some tenseness held me back.
“It’s electrical—already spread down to multiple floors,” I heard the closest firefighter radio in. “Make sure the Evac Team gets everybody out.”
Oh no . . . Mom.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Cinderella and Grease
FRANK, MY MOM. She won’t leave the building,” I said with mounting dread. We had collapsed, sitting on the floor to recover, oxygen masks in hand. Expansive glass surrounded us, showcasing the top-floor view.
What had they said? Electrical? Does that mean it could reach my mom?
“I know.” He coughed deeply, wiping away pale pink blood flecks from the corners of his mouth.
It would almost have been romantic, sitting by the window at the top of the building. My last trip out was when I was almost ten. And after that . . . all I had were the windows looking down at the garden and the glittering lights of the city holding the promise of the future. I’d always imagined that one day I’d leave the tower. That one day Mom would “get better”—whatever that meant; people always said it. But one day I’d just walk outside, and it would be like a musical. Like Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella, in the preparation for the ball. I’d walk along and twirl, and a child would hand me a flower. Then I’d pass under a balloon archway being raised for some special event, followed by a handsome stranger smiling and kissing my hand. Women with long silks would arrive in a miniature parade, and I’d lose the man and be searching, but in cadence with the music, in a happy way. And I’d find him in a candy shop, where we’d eat chocolates and drink milk shakes and then somehow it would turn to Grease and we’d live happily ever after.
“Uh, excuse me, sir?” I went to the nearest fireman. “My mom is on level forty-five; do you know if she’s okay?” He radioed in something garbled and then listened to an equally garbled reply. “Yes, miss. They’ve cleared every floor up to fifty. She’ll be outside with the rest.” The firefighter went back to help, and I dejectedly trudged back to Frank.
“What’s the matter? The guy said she was fine.” He held my hand.
“No, she wouldn’t have let them take her out. And we would have seen her down there.”
Frank looked at me with a knowing expression. I must have seemed panicked, because he just squeezed my hand and said, “Here we go again . . .”
And we took off down the stairs.
AFTER MORE THAN FIFTY flights of stairs, we were jittery and sweaty. My legs shook like they were made of rubber, and we couldn’t stop coughing. Finally, I banged on my apartment door. It looked so unassuming, so unchanged by the night’s monumental events.
“Mom?” There was no sight or smell of fire yet, thank goodness. Our little apartment looked as cozy as ever—sunny yellow paint in the quaint kitchen, family pictures in wooden frames down the hall.
Remnants of my mom’s veggie burgers sat uncared for on the counter. She would have put those away. “Mom?”
“Mrs.— Zoe’s mom?” Frank joined in.
Hearing weeping, I ran into my mom’s room.
“You’re okay! Thank heavens!” Mom rushed out of her closet and embraced me with viselike hands, reaching around me to wipe at her tears. Who knew the woman could be this strong? It must be all the Pilates DVDs.
“Mrs.— Ah, we should go . . .” Frank tried to sound official but succeeded only in shocking my mom, who hadn’t noticed him yet.
“A boy? You brought a boy? Is this the boy?” She made eyes at me suggestively, and I groaned.
“Mom,” I spoke through gritted teeth, “this is Frank. I work with him.”
She clapped her hands together and squealed like a schoolgirl. “Frank! I know Frank!”
He smiled and tipped an imaginary cap in acknowledgment.
“Mom. There’s a fire. We have to get you out, like now.” I hissed at her but she waved me away, enthralled with meeting someone new.
“So, Zoe . . . do you like like him?” she whispered, obnoxiously ignoring me.
Seriously, when did my mom turn into a teenager?
Then she glanced at me, doing a double take. “And what in the world are you wearing?!”
“Don’t change the subject. We have to get out of here!” I coughed with my own escalating volume.
“I’m just trying to meet—” she started, but I cut her off.
“No. Don’t. You’re stalling. But we saw where it started. And there’s a real fire. A huge one. It’s in the walls, coming here.” Starting to tear up, I took her hand, feeling her stiffen. She won’t leave. She won’t. Not even for this. I pulled her arm but she smiled quietly, sitting back on the bed.
“You—you know I can’t go, Zoe.” Her voice rose barely above a whisper, and she glanced to Frank, embarrassed.
“Mom, please!” I was crying. Taking her hands, I rubbed her palms in frustration, in helplessness. She continued to mutter things, her eyes moving wildly.
I pressed my forehead to hers.
“Please, look at me.” Her eyes finally fixed, desperate, onto mine, clutching and not letting go.
“We’re going to walk out now. We’re going to do this together.” I took a breath and noticed Frank closing the bedroom door in a puff of smoke, sealing in the already-expanding fumes.
“How are you this strong, Zoe?” she whimpered.
“You made me this way, Mom. We’re gonna be strong together.”
“STEP. ONE. Step. Two. Step. Three. Step. Four . . .”
With each step, with each floor, we counted. She prayed. Frank followed behind us. In this way, we made it to the front door and—as she squeezed her
eyes shut—out the door and down the many flights of stairs.
The lobby had been cleared, and we stopped by the main doors.
“I can’t—I can’t—I can’t—I can’t—” Her tears were streaming now, unhindered by thoughts of embarrassment. Frank held the door open and people outside yelled for us to walk out.
“Why not, Mom?” I asked, pressing my forehead back against hers. She looked at me.
“Because . . .” Her voice caught with tears, stopping and then continuing from watery emotion. “He’s dead . . . out there.” She stopped to cry and then finished, wailing, “If I don’t go, he won’t be dead. It won’t be as real.”
I’d never seen her cry like this before. It made me so uneasy that someone so strong—my own mother, who’d done so much for me—was so helpless. I didn’t know what I should do.
So I cried. We cried together, shaking. The two women loved so much by the man who had left us.
“I miss him too, Mom. Every day.”
Frank embraced both of us and gently moved our two frozen bodies out through the doorway. We let him.
Maybe that’s all it was. The Letting. Maybe, when you’re not strong enough to take the step, when nothing in you can do it, and when there’s nothing left to muster up, there can be only the Letting left. And, if you’re lucky, really lucky, then a prince will come along at the right time, not because he’s stronger or better, but simply because he’s there. And he’s taken that step before. He’s not patronizing or higher, but he’s forged on. And to rest in someone’s forging step is a great thing.
We were outside.
The cool air rushed. Sounds of cars and sirens. People milled around in pajamas, looking at us strangely. But our crying, our despair, faded. Suddenly, Mom laughed. I hiccuped. Until we both were lurching out huge guffaws, causing quite a scene. Relief flooded in with the laughter.
Frank joined in, hacking as he coughed, still sheltering us both with his arms. Part of him probably thought we’d run back inside at the first opportunity. Finally, he let us go.
“Thank you, Frank,” I said, with tears still drying and an exuberant smile perched crazily on my face. We were free. Somehow. And I hadn’t even known I was trapped.
“Please. You’ve really got to wear something, Zoe.” He wiggled his eyebrows, wrapped his jacket around my bikini-clad body, and then pulled me in, kissing me to wild applause.
Epilogue
ARE YOU SURE?”
“Are you ready?”
“You don’t have to do this, love.”
“I know. But I want to.” I nodded at the man behind me and then at Frank and my mom, who each held one of my hands. Even Tyler and Lexi had shown up for the event—my first friends.
The professional worked the scissors hard against my thick rope until I felt the whoosh of freedom and a bare neck.
I was supposed to let my hair grow until my daddy came home. Until he came back to us. And, well, he had. He was home. And we were too. The “going on” part of living—that’s where we’d found him.
Hair always grows, Princess. Hair always grows.
My Love God Went to Hawaii and All I Got Was This Lousy Papaya
debra goelz
IT IS A TRUTH universally acknowledged that parents in possession of a kingdom must have a capable heir if they’re ever going to retire. Sadly, Weston, the only child of mattress magnates Gerald and Victoria Fitzgerald, had a great many skills, mostly related to hosting lavish luaus with well-toned grass-skirted dancers wearing colorful leis, but none having to do with running a business.
Every weekday morning promptly at eight, Gerald and Victoria drove to the office in their Lamborghini, drifted into the designated spot labeled “Park Here at Your Own Risk,” and took the elevator to their second-floor office, overlooking the showroom of Bull’s-Eye Mattress Kingdom’s flagship store in Waikiki, which had been in the family for three generations.
The Fitzgeralds’ office held three identical desks side by side that faced a one-way window overlooking their glittering showroom, where rows of chandeliers hung from the forty-foot ceiling—each mattress elevated on its own pedestal.
Strewn across two of the three desks were dozens of glossy travel brochures offering the promise of adventure in a vast landscape. An assortment of mermaid collectibles adorned the unoccupied desk.
“I like the river rafting in Zambia,” said Victoria. After an hour, they’d whittled it down to ten options.
“We could do that on our way to Antarctica for the Ice Marathon,” agreed Gerald.
“Still not sure about that one,” said Victoria. “Sounds cold.”
“After thirty years of warm, I’m ready for some cold. But this coffee. Ugh.” He grimaced and set the Bull’s-Eye cup on the desk.
“It does that when you forget to drink.”
Victoria traced the photo of the young couple trekking across the frozen landscape, holding hands, the sun low behind them. Each click of the second hand on the Bull’s-Eye clock was a reminder that Weston had not yet arrived to work.
She sighed. “Where is he?”
Almost in answer to her question, something stirred from within the playhouse in the children’s department at the far end of the showroom. The Fitzgeralds provided the house, along with boxes of toys and books and pretend stores with pretend cash registers, to entertain young shoppers while their parents were encouraged to spend actual money. A form, vaguely Weston-shaped, emerged—rumpled, wearing several smashed leis wrapped around its neck.
“Not again,” said Victoria, sighing in exasperation.
“Weston,” Gerald yelled over the loudspeaker.
Weston smiled and waved at the office window. “Be right there,” he mouthed, limping toward the men’s restroom.
“This ends now,” said Victoria.
“You’re going to kill your own son?” said Gerald. They hardly ever talked about their old life as hit people (“hit men” being a sexist term).
“Of course not,” said Victoria, her trigger hand clenching. “We’d still be minus an heir. There’s only one solution. He must marry a highly competent woman with a business degree.”
“Brilliant plan, my queen.”
“The problem is, Weston is twenty-seven and still can’t be bothered dating a woman more than once. God forbid he’d have to remember her name. We’ll have to find someone for him.”
“How do you propose we find this business genius? Should we hire a headhunter? I mean the kind that finds employees, not the kind that—”
“I know what you mean, Fitzy. Hmm. We’ll need someone young and impressionable but smart. Someone we can mold into the perfect wife/business manager. We’ll place an ad for a management trainee.”
“Brilliant, my dear.”
“There’ll be a test. Any potential bride must be proficient at all aspects of business—accounting, marketing, and quality control.”
“You are wise, my darling.”
The door opened, revealing a slightly less disheveled Weston. His hair was slicked back with water and combed. His shirt was tucked in. The leis must’ve been abandoned in the bathroom trash. He looked nearly presentable, though his suit was damp and he smelled like smoked pork and rum.
“Hey, Mom. Dad. Sorry I’m late. Ran into this hot mermaid at the luau.”
Victoria and Gerald shared an incredulous frown and nodded their heads at each other in solidarity.
“Hey, wait.” Weston wrinkled his brow. “What’s up with you two? The last time you looked at me like that, you wanted to send me to military school.”
“Would’ve done you good,” Gerald grumbled.
“I was in third grade.”
“My darling boy, we have a wonderful idea. If you’ll have a seat, we’ll go over our plan for the rest of your life.”
CUPID DESPISED THE UNDERWORLD. It smelled like brimstone and three-headed-dog breath, and there were lost souls everywhere. He hated when they flew inside his toga. They tickled, and not in a good way
. He tousled a few off his golden locks, folded his hands across his lap, and admired his stunning new booties. Hades’s inner sanctum was so cold, Cupid’s bones froze. Hades chose to live in a dark, wintry cave with the most unflattering lighting ever. Worse than that was the poor design. Cupid imagined feng shui–ing the place. How did that nice Persephone live here? He’d have to ask her the next time they met for billiards on Mount Olympus.
The images in the lava lamp went dark. Cupid’s eyes ached from the effort it took not to roll them after watching that stupid scene with humans planning the most unromantic coupling for their son—so last-millennium.
Cupid slow-clapped. “Thanks for that, Hades. Well, I’ll be off. Great punishment, though. Watching that nearly killed me. Honestly, so original.”
“Eros, you have displeased me for the last time,” Hades boomed.
He was always cranky when Persephone wasn’t around. Gods. It’s been how many millennia, and the guy still can’t get over it?
“Call me Cupid,” said Cupid. He despised his Greek name. “Cupid” had nice, hard consonants. Much more manly. Eros was a name for a chubby, winged, baby god, not a muscular, handsome, grown-up god like himself.
Hades stared at Cupid from his elevated throne by way of reply.
“It was one little boat,” Cupid said.
“It was Charon’s ferry, you idiot. You sank Charon’s ferry!”
“Epic party, though.” Cupid recalled the finer attributes of the water nymphs who’d attended.
Hades’s face flushed, and the cave vibrated.
“Come on, dude, you must have a backup boat. Besides, the old one was pretty heinous. Big important god like you must be able to magic up a new ride. Something with indoor seating? Maybe a wet bar? A motor might be nice. Charon’s got to get tired . . .”
“Silence,” Hades bellowed.
Cupid sat as silently as possible, because Hades’s hair was flaring. The temperature in the cave rose at least several degrees.
“If you’ll recall,” Hades began, teeth clenched, “I told you that if you provoked me again, I would spear you to a rock with your own arrow for all eternity.”
Once Upon Now Page 6
