Ollie tapped Claire on the shoulder. “Are you all right?”
“Yes. I’m just enjoying the scenery.”
“We’re inside.”
“The inside scenery.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s referred to as décor,” Ollie said.
“You know what I mean,” Claire said, waving her off.
“You’re going to get lost from the rest of the tour group,” Ollie said. “Even the old people are ahead of you.”
“Just go. I’ll catch up. I want to get my thirty-four dollars worth.”
“Thirty-seven,” Ollie corrected.
“I’d like some alone time if you don’t mind,” Claire said.
“Okay, but I’m only giving you ten minutes to catch up.”
Claire flapped her hand at Ollie like she was shooing away an annoying fly. Ollie left, but reluctantly.
Claire peeked through the doorway of the Jungle Room. Its décor – as Ollie had snootily reminded her – was leather, wood and heavy on the shellac. Green carpet stretched across the floor and was also on the ceiling. That gave the room a weird funhouse effect. Which way was up?
Claire looked both ways and when she didn’t see anybody watching her, she stepped into the room. “I know you’re in here,” she whispered.
There was no answer.
“I can feel you. Come on out.”
No answer, but this time she did get a whiff of peanut butter.
“Quit hiding. Let me see you.”
“Hey there, little lady,” said a voice sugarcoated in a lazy Tennessee drawl.
Claire shivered involuntarily. “Where are you?”
“Right behind you.”
Claire slowly turned. And there he was. Elvis was decked out in black leather pants and a black leather shirt with a bright red handkerchief wrapped loosely around his throat. He had on black boots so shiny she could see her own reflection in them. His hair was so black it was almost purple. It was styled in a tall pompadour with the ever-present curl in the middle of his forehead.
“You’re so beautiful,” she whispered.
His laughter covered her like thick maple syrup. “You’re not bad your own sweet self.”
Claire pointed one finger up and asked, “Why is there carpet on the ceiling?”
Elvis shrugged. “I had some left over after the floors. I was raised poor. I don’t like things to go to waste.”
“How do I know it’s really you?” she asked boldly. “Maybe you’re an impersonator that they hired to pretend to haunt the house.”
He showed her his famous lopsided grin and replied, “How do I know you are who you say you are?”
“You looked different last time I saw you.”
“I appear however you want me to. Last time you wanted fat Elvis. This time you wanted skinny Elvis.”
“Are you real?”
“Are you?”
“I don’t know.” She choked back a sudden urge to cry. “I don’t know who I am anymore,” Claire said. She plopped down on the sofa.
“I know what you mean,” he said, sitting beside her.
“You do?”
“Oh, sure. After Priscilla left me I was like a boat out in the middle of the ocean during a big storm. I was tossed every which way but loose. Priscilla was my port in the storm and I let her get away,” he said sadly. “Everything went to hell in hand basket after that. Pardon my language. I didn’t know what I had ‘til it was gone.”
Claire watched him closely for a moment. “If you don’t mind me saying, Elvis… I thought you… never mind.”
“You can say it,” he prodded.
Claire shook her head. “It’s really none of my business.”
Elvis’s blue eyes pierced hers. “You were going to say I was a playboy. That if I loved her then why didn’t I treat her better? Weren’t you?”
“Something like that,” Claire said.
“I was the King of Rock ‘n Roll,” Elvis said, “but that didn’t make me a good husband or father. I was piss-poor at both of those things.”
“Oh, surely you weren’t that bad,” Claire said. She felt sorry for the man. He looked so forlorn and dejected.
“Take it from me, little lady, if you love somebody, let them know. Tell them. And tell them every day. Or it’ll be too late for you, too,” he said.
Claire looked down at her feet while she pondered that. How long had it been since she told Scarlet she loved her? And to top it all off, she was ignoring Scarlet’s phone calls and texts. She was probably worried stiff. After all, she did just bail her out of jail. “You’re right,” Claire said. “I’ll call Scarlet and tell her I love her right now.”
But when Claire looked up, she was talking to nothing but air.
*
Ollie stood in the doorway to the Jungle Room. When Claire had failed to catch up with the group, she backtracked once again. She’d found her in the Jungle Room talking to herself, which was weird, but when she heard Claire say that she loved Scarlet, her heart shattered. Or maybe re-shattered was the right word. You would think she’d be over the hurt by now, but hearing those words directly from Claire’s lips was like ripping the scab off an old wound.
Ollie figuratively kicked herself. How stupid could she be? Did she really think that she could re-ignite some kind of old flame between them? For Chrissakes, what was she thinking? They were on their way to get divorced, not go on a honeymoon.
“Claire?” Ollie said. Her voice was dry and raspy.
Claire looked up and smiled. “Hi, Ollie.”
“G-Ray’s outside getting EZ loaded. We need to hurry. I don’t really trust him alone with his buttocks.”
“Okay,” Claire said, brushing by Ollie and leaving.
Ollie watched Claire go. She took one last look around the empty Jungle Room. “It smells like peanut butter in here,” she said softly.
Ollie sincerely hoped she wasn’t cracking up. She had read somewhere that olfactory hallucinations weren’t uncommon in people who were on the loco train. “Keep it together,” she told herself. “Keep it together. Claire doesn’t love you anymore. Maybe she never did. So deal with it and move on.”
Ollie had also read somewhere that talking to oneself was a sure-fire symptom of craziness. “I’m going crazy,” she said, shaking her head. She left by the same door Claire had.
Ollie froze in her tracks when she heard a man’s voice say, “It’s crazy, all right. A crazy little thing called love.”
She turned back and looked into the jungle room. “What? Did somebody say something?”
She didn’t see anybody. Great, now she was having auditory hallucinations. She left quickly before she began to see things that weren’t really there.
All Shook Up
G-Ray struggled with EZ’s wheelchair. EZ weighed more than you would think. Especially when she was nothing but dead weight in a wheelchair and the van was parked on an incline, which meant the wheelchair was also on an incline. After several minutes of struggling to lock the brakes on the wheelchair, G-Ray came up with an eureka! of an idea. He took a bungee cord, connected one end to EZ’s wheelchair and the other to the back bumper of the van. Then he climbed on top of the van, hoping to make room for Claire’s luggage so EZ could have her bed back.
*
Ollie climbed into the van and sat in the driver’s seat. She tried not to listen to Claire’s phone conversation with Scarlet. Well, okay, she didn’t try all that hard. And, hey, if Claire didn’t want to be heard then she shouldn’t sit right next to her and talk so loud.
“I called to tell you everything’s all right and I love you,” Claire said.
Ollie couldn’t hear what Scarlet said next, all she heard was a shrieking sound much like the raking of fingernails on a chalkboard.
Claire said into the phone, “Sorry, I can’t hear you. Scarlet? We’re breaking up. I can’t hear you. Can you hear me? I love you! I’ll call from Des Moines! Bye!” She hung up the phone and stared out her window for a long
moment.
Ollie let Claire sit in silence as she unpacked Oscar from her backpack and set him on the floor of the van. Oscar immediately began to lick himself. Ollie thought about how lucky Oscar was that he could lick himself. He could take care of his own needs. If she could do that she would’ve saved a lot of time and money and heartache.
“Let’s go,” Claire said in a sad voice.
Ollie started the engine and pulled the Van out onto the highway, completely unaware that she was towing EZ in the wheelchair and G-Ray was hanging onto the roof for dear life.
*
A car honked at Ollie as it passed. The passenger made some gestures that Ollie translated as the rude sort. “Up yours, too,” Ollie said under her breath. To say she was annoyed was an understatement. First, she had been subjected to Claire’s protestation of love for Scartlet the Fartlet then Claire had the gall to sit in the passenger seat and bury her face in her phone. She was probably looking at Fakebook again. It was as if Claire would rather do anything but talk to her.
It pissed Ollie off big time. And that was why she did what she did.
Ollie reached over and ripped Claire’s smart phone out of her hands.
“Hey!” Claire protested.
Ollie rolled down her window and unceremoniously tossed the offending phone out. She smugly rolled the window back up.
“What the hell?” Claire demanded.
“I’m tired of that damn phone. I’m tired of you treating Scarlet like a piece of crap. I’m tired of you treating me like crap.”
Claire’s face reddened. “That was a three hundred dollar phone!”
“I’ll pay you back for it. But I won’t apologize for doing it. You deserved it.”
“Of course you won’t apologize. You never do,” Claire said.
That pissed Ollie off even more. “You never give me time to apologize. You just jump to the end of the argument. I make a mistake, a teeny tiny mistake, with the pool water…”
“Tiny?”
“…and you immediately throw me out of the house. I don’t even get to say what I want to say.”
“Oh yeah?” Claire said because she didn’t know what else to say and Ollie did have a point. A little point, but still a point.
“Yeah,” Ollie said.
Claire crossed her arms. “Then say it.”
“Huh?”
“I’m giving you a chance now. Say what you want to say.”
“Okay,” Ollie said. She bit her lower lip as she arranged her thoughts. “Here goes. I don’t like the way you’re treating Scarlet.”
“Scarlet?” Claire said like she was hard of hearing. “Why are you, of all people, taking up for Scarlet? I thought you hated her.”
“Let me talk!” Ollie yelled. “You said this was my time to talk.”
Claire did that palm-up thing that queens do when they are allowing a person beneath them to speak.
“I do hate Scarlet. However, I hate the way you treat her even worse. It’s the same way you treated me,” Ollie said. “You wouldn’t return my calls and then you changed your phone number so that your lawyer was the only one who knew where or what you were doing. All of a sudden I was the crazy lunatic stalker. G-Ray was the only one who’d have anything to do with me because you’d convinced all our friends that I was a nut job. One day I was skateboarding in the empty pool and the next day I was homeless and friendless. Now you’re doing the same thing to Scarlet. Let me ask you this: You have two failed relationships - ”
“Scarlet and my relationship isn’t failed,” Claire objected.
“Maybe not yet,” Ollie said. “But it’s heading in that direction. And you think you’re blameless? What’s the common denominator in those two bad relationships? You, that’s what. It’s you. You’re the common denominator.”
“I don’t have to take this,” Claire said. She unbuckled her seat belt.
“What’re you doing?” Ollie said.
“I’m leaving.” Claire opened her door.
“You can’t jump out going down the highway at fifty miles an hour!” Ollie screamed, letting off the gas pedal.
“Watch me!” Claire yelled.
She was just about to hurl herself out of the van when Ollie smashed the brake pedal to the floor and swerved the van onto the right of way. The smashing and swerving did two things simultaneously: 1.) The sudden swerving whip-lashed EZ and her wheelchair around to the left side of the van, undoing the bungee cord – and like a roller derby girl being whipped – she shot down the middle of the highway rolling approximately sixty miles per hour in the wheelchair and, 2.) The sudden braking caused G-Ray to be launched off the roof of the van and he cannon balled through the air like a medieval cow being catapulted over the castle wall.
Ollie and Claire sat wide-eyed and unblinking, their eyes following the trajectory of G-Ray as he rocketed through the air and collided with EZ in her wheelchair. He landed in her lap in a sitting position. Miraculously, G-Ray and EZ stayed upright as the wheelchair continued its journey down the highway.
A horn blasted and, in unison, Ollie and Claire looked behind them. They gasped as they saw an eighteen-wheeler coming toward them.
The semi-truck blasted its horn once more as it drew alongside the van. The semi was going at least ninety miles an hour and it scared the bejezzus out of both Ollie and Claire. Claire panicked. She covered her head with her hands and dive-bombed out her open door. She somersaulted three times and rolled to a stop in a ditch as the van rocked back and forth from the force of the semi’s tailwind.
Ollie stared at the semi as it disappeared over the rise in the road. “Oh shit! G-Ray and EZ are going to be run over!” She pulled back onto the highway, pushing all four cylinders to the max.
*
Claire watched helplessly from the ditch as a Highway Patrol car screamed by with its lights flashing and siren blaring. Her thoughts echoed those of Tootie from The Facts of Life, “There’s gonna be trouble!”
She walked back down the right of way and found her phone blinking in the weeds. There were one hundred and fifty seven texts from Scarlet.
*
The van door flapped open and closed, open and closed, as Ollie chased after the semi, which was close on the tail of the runaway wheelchair. She heard the police siren and turned around in her seat to look out the back window.
“Shit fire and save matches,” she muttered. She downshifted and pulled to the side of the road, already forming an argument about how to get out of this ticket.
But the Highway Patrol zoomed past Ollie. It was chasing the semi. That was the first piece of good luck she’d had since she couldn’t remember when. She pulled back onto the highway, this time trying to not break the speed limit.
*
G-Ray hung onto the wheelchair’s armrests for dear life. The chair’s tires were smoking and the smell of singed rubber permeated his nostrils. The wheelchair slowed down. It wasn’t because of anything G-Ray did; it was because the wheelchair was going up a very large hill.
Halfway up the hill, the wheelchair stopped. G-Ray breathed a giant sigh of relief.
His relief was short-lived. The wheelchair began to move backwards. Down, down, down, the hill, gaining speed and momentum with each passing yard. By the time the wheelchair had reached the bottom of the incline, G-Ray and EZ were flying backwards at more than forty miles per hour, as calculated by G-Ray’s tock-o-meter.
They passed the semi, which was pulled over to the side of the road. The Highway Patrol car was parked behind the truck. The patrolman stared bug-eyed at the wheelchair as it screeched by. He quickly jumped into his car, threw it into reverse and gave chase.
*
Ollie slammed on the brakes. She couldn’t believe her eyes. The wheelchair was barreling straight at her! What kind of crazy shit was this? She pressed in on the clutch and shifted into reverse. She mashed the accelerator all the way to the floor, making the van reverse at its top speed of ten miles per hour.
The wheel
chair gained on the van.
The Highway Patrol gained on the wheelchair.
*
Claire watched the backwards chase from the safety of the right of way. It was like a parade in reverse. Ollie passed her first. Claire stifled a laugh. Ollie looked frantic and confused.
Next was G-Ray. He looked as if he were having the time of his life. He beamed at Claire and waved happily. She waved back.
The Highway Patrol was next to pass. He was turned in his seat and driving by looking over his shoulder and out the rear window. He held his microphone thingamajig next to his mouth. His commands blared over the loudspeaker that was mounted to the top of the car. “Stop! This is the Tennessee State Highway Patrol! I order you to stop going backwards!”
Claire laughed.
She bit off her laughter when she saw the van’s sliding door open and all her luggage fall out. One at a time her suitcases blew out the door, plopped onto the road, burst open and her clothes exploded into the air like feathers during a pillow fight.
“No!” Claire shouted. Her suitcase with all her beloved shoes burst open and shoes spewed up and out like popcorn in an air popper. “No, no, no, no!” She ran down the side of the road, stopping to pick up shoes and panties and scarves and more panties and skirts and more shoes and…
*
Ollie was a staunch believer in Murphy’s Law. That was the law that said if anything could go wrong it would. And even though at the moment plenty was going wrong, she knew that there was room for even more to go wrong.
So Ollie wasn’t the least bit surprised to see a farmer driving a rust bucket of a truck filled with hay headed straight for her. “Hay!” she shouted and slammed on her brakes.
G-Ray saw Ollie stop. “Hey!” he said, finally finding the wheelchair’s side brake and yanking on it with all his might.
“Hey, hay!” the patrolman shouted over the speaker. He slammed on his brakes and skidded.
Crazy Little Thing Page 9
