Double Up Page 8

  “Come on, Davis,” Bea said.

  No way. I was stuck in the elevator. I was good with elevators. The girls were good with elevators. We rode the one between our house and the penthouse several times a week. The VIP elevator that connected the top five floors of the Bellissimo was no different, just larger. And it would spill me back out at my own door in a matter of minutes, but this was as far as I was going.

  “You have your keycard, Bea,” I said. “Go find your room.”

  “Come with me.”

  “I already have, Bea. I’m here,” I said. “And now I’m going home.” I tried to push the close-door button when a tree trunk of an arm shot in.

  “You’re coming to my new apartment with me, Davis, whether you like it or not.”

  I did not.

  July, my new nanny of half a morning, said, “It’ll be okay, Davis. The twins will love it.”

  They already loved it—the sights, the sounds, the thin air—and were squirming and craning for more.

  I don’t know if I pushed the stroller or if Bea pulled it. Either way, I was out.

  The twenty-fifth floor was stunning. My babies were thrilled.

  “This’ll work.” Bea’s skunk-striped head jerked around. “Where’s my place?”

  July pointed.

  Bea huffed and puffed down the hall; we fell in line behind her. After what felt like a mile, we reached unit six, the number barely etched into the gold button that was the doorbell, on our way to ten. How big were these condos? Could we have moved here months ago and left House behind on twenty-nine?

  “This is some nice carpet,” Bea threw over her shoulder.

  This was some nice everything, and all in shades of gray: pebble, platinum, and pewter.

  “I’m going to be digging my toenails in this.”

  You know how when you’re following someone in traffic and even though you don’t mean to, you swerve your car when the car ahead of you swerves and you hug the shoulder when they hug the shoulder? It was happening now. Bea didn’t walk straight, never had, it was more of a side-step lob that gained her half of what a right-left linear step would, and we were inadvertently weaving in wide loops behind her, which was entertaining the two passengers in the strollers to no end. Four white satin ballerina slippers with big white bows kicked joyfully.

  “What happened here?” I asked July as we passed the door of unit seven. “Why aren’t these sold?”

  “They were all under contract until someone at Blitz found out.”

  “How?” I asked.

  “Blitz flipped our real estate agent,” July said.

  From Bea, “I need me a scooter. You got a scooter, Davis? A good sturdy scooter?”

  “Why would they do that?” I asked. “And to what end? Sell them hotel rooms?”

  “Condos,” July said. “Blitz was building condos the whole time we were. They knew everything. They had our floor plans, interior designs, and appraisals. They started construction on theirs right after we did and we didn’t know it. They knew what we were doing, but we didn’t know what they were doing.”

  We were halfway between units seven and eight.

  “Say I was to get me a stuffed-crust pizza,” Bea said. “It’d be cold by the time the pizza boy got it to me. This is a long ways. So I’m going to need two scooters, Davis.” She wagged two fingers in the air. “One for me and one to leave at that elevator for the pizza boy.”

  “Were theirs nicer?” I asked July. “Less expensive?”

  “Blitz offered signing bonuses.”

  “What kind of bonuses?”

  “Teslas.”

  “The cars?” My mouth dropped open.

  July nodded. “Everyone who bought a condo got a car.”

  Four tiny fists flew through the air.

  “Look at that!” July clapped. “The girls are signing car!”

  “I’ll tell you something else I’m going to need,” Bea said. “A resting bench. This is like dragging out to the north forty. You’re going to have to get me closer to the elevators, Davis. What if there was to be a fire? This would be a long ways to go to keep from burning up.”

  “The others are full, Bea.”

  “They are?” July asked.

  “They’re about to be,” I said. “Why aren’t we upselling? Why aren’t we putting guests in the empty condos? Or for that matter, the penthouse and the celebrity suite?”

  “Because there’s no one left,” July said. “Marketing is gone. Casino Services is gone. Booking and Reservations is gone. All player services are through the website. And I guess the website hasn’t thought of it.”

  Bea came to a stop and leaned against the wall. “Holt up,” she said. “Let me catch my breaths. Have we crossed over to Georgia yet?”

  How did Blitz learn about the condos in the first place? How did they know before the units were even built? “They have to have spies here, July. On their payroll. Does Baylor realize this building is full of Blitz spies?”

  “This building isn’t full of anything.” Bea was panting and fanning her flushed face. “Look around yourself.”

  “Why don’t we have spies there?” It was like turning on a faucet. The minute I let myself think about work, starting with the layoff list Bradley left with my morning coffee, it was a deluge, and I was drowning in it.

  “They have our surveillance team,” July said.

  “Bellissimo surveillance works for them?”

  “Most of it, yes,” she said. “And one of them took the Bellissimo employee facial-recognition database with them. If anyone from here puts a foot in the door there, they’re escorted out.”

  Without a doubt, that would include me. The surveillance system recognized bone structure. No one could hide bones. Poor Bradley. Poor Baylor. Poor Bellissimo.

  Bea pushed herself off the wall and got going again.

  “We need a spy there,” I said. “That’s all there is to it.”

  “Baylor’s tried,” July said. “Everyone he sends in gets kicked out. They know everyone.”

  We finally reached unit ten, and instead of seeing the back of Bea’s black-and-white spiked head, she spun around and showed us her face.

  Clocks stopped.

  Here was someone Blitz didn’t know.

  Maybe I did need her and didn’t know it.

  July and I went over phone numbers: Bradley’s, Poison Control, and Children’s Emergency. We talked about House, apple juice bottles, fire extinguishers, and choking hazards. I showed her where everything baby was.

  “I’ve got it,” she said. “And if I have a question, even a small one, I’ll call you.”

  “One more thing.” I’d said “one more thing” one hundred times already. But I’d forgotten the most important one. I told her, if in doubt, how to tell the girls apart. “Quinn is left-handed.” I’d said this to countless people, including my own mother, all of whom laughed at me, including my own mother. Not July.

  “So offer two toys?”

  Exactly. (I really had found a nanny.) “Bexy will grab with her right hand and Quinn with her left. Also, they have teeny cowlicks on the crowns of their heads.”

  “Bexley’s is on the right and Quinn’s is on the left.”

  How did she know? “Yes.”

  We stood there for the longest.

  “Davis, really,” she said. “I’ve got this.”

  I took a shaky breath, kissed my babies bye, then, for the first time since they were born, left for the office. A small room behind my kitchen.

  Two hours later, the only thing I felt like I’d really accomplished was a text message.

  Me: I went out today.

  Her: Good for you!

  (See? We’re fine.)

  My phone rang. I flew for it, thinking it might be July.

  “D
avis? Is this you on your phone?”

  Who else would it be? “What is it, Bea?”

  “I’m lost.”

  “What do you mean, you’re lost?”

  “I been up and down this hall ten times looking for my new apartment. I’m sweating bullets.”

  It was a long straight corridor split in the middle by a lobby. How could she possibly be lost?

  “There’s no numbers on the doors,” she said.

  “The numbers are etched in the gold doorbells.”

  “I don’t have my cheaters with me.”

  “Your what?”

  “My cheating glasses.”

  “Well, do you have your keycard, Bea?”

  She huffed. “What kind of dummy do you think I am? Of course I have my cardkeys.”

  “Bea, you’re all the way at the end. Just try your keycard at both ends and the door it opens is yours.”

  She thought about it. “Gotta run.” She hung up.

  After wondering what in the world I was being punished for, I blew the dust off my laptop. My fingers, now deft with baby bows but not so much with keyboards anymore, found their places. I checked my email for the first time since the girls were born. Thirty-seven-hundred-plus unread in my inbox. I searched for mail from fantasygirl@me.com, found nothing, and deleted everything. Then I nosed through the Bellissimo system for the first time in a very long time.

  The hotel was at twenty-eight percent occupancy, Beans, the coffee shop in the lobby, was now only open on weekends, and the business valuation portfolio I hacked into estimated the property and assets at $5.9 billion. Dollars. And that’s how my first day back at work went.

  The two hours felt like two minutes, and at the same time, I felt like I’d been away from my girls for two weeks. I ran to the nursery, then reached for them carefully, afraid the sudden surge of Bellissimo energy coursing through me might find its way to them. That night, by the glow of the nursery video monitors on both sides of our bed, I told Bradley, in a whisper, that I’d gone back to work.

  “I know.”

  “I hired Baylor’s girlfriend, July, to be our nanny.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “I went to the twenty-fifth floor today.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “I took the girls.”

  “I know.”

  “I saw the new condos.”

  “I know.”

  “And my ex-ex-mother-in-law is here.”

  “I know.”

  I pulled up on an elbow. “How do you know all this?”

  “Baylor.”

  My head back on my pillow, we were nose to nose. “Are you mad about my ex-ex-mother-in-law?”

  “Davis, she got you out of the house, something no one else has been able to do. I was thinking about throwing her a parade.”

  Ten

  The first thing I did on my second day back at work was call Baylor. On the carpet. For ratting me out, telling Bradley all my business before I had the chance to. I had to make him stay—he couldn’t leave—but I fully intended to kill him first. Then make him stay.

  “I’m busy, Davis. I can’t drop everything so you can chew me out.”

  “I don’t care if you’re busy. Get up here.”

  “I just told you I can’t.”

  “Why?” I asked. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m in the gallery. The pictures are being packed. I can’t leave.”

  Right. The curator quit.

  “If you want to talk to me, Davis, you’re going to have to come here. I don’t have time to come there.”

  “No way.”

  “Too bad,” he said. “I’m busy with the pictures.”

  “They’re not pictures, Baylor.” The Bellissimo art gallery had been on the cover of Time magazine and featured on 60 Minutes. 60 Minutes didn’t call them “pictures.” 60 Minutes said Mr. Sanders’s art was like finding Mona Lisa’s sister.

  “Okay, Davis. Paintings. Is that better?”

  “Where are they going?”

  “Who?”

  “The art, Baylor.”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “A private collector bought everything.”

  Who? Bruce Wayne? Daddy Warbucks? Santa Claus? Who had enough money to buy Mona Lisa’s sister? “One buyer?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “The buyer’s name should be on the paperwork. Look on the bill of lading.”

  “The what?”

  (Should I really try to make him stay?)

  “Forget it, Baylor.” At this point, it hardly mattered who bought the art. “Let’s change subjects.”

  “To what?”

  “You,” I said. “I hired July.”

  “Are we changing the subject to me or July?”

  “You. And July. She’s Bexley and Quinn’s new nanny.”

  “I know. She’s crazy kid smart,” he said. “And banging hot.”

  (Stop.)

  “I need to go,” he said.

  “Where?” I asked. “Where is it you need to go, Baylor?”

  “To work. Davis, I’m busy. I need to go. What do you want?”

  “I want to talk about July. Since she’ll be here every day with me, surely you’ll stay.”

  “Stay where?”

  “What?”

  “You said surely I’d stay,” he said. “Stay where?”

  “Here, Baylor. At the Bellissimo. Stay until whatever happens happens. Bradley needs you.”

  “I’m not going anywhere. Where would I go?”

  “Your name was on the quit list.”

  “That’s because I’m going off payroll.”

  Wait.

  “What?”

  “I’m not going anywhere. I turned in my paperwork to go off payroll. You know,” he said, “help out. It’s not like I have time to spend money.”

  I slumped in my chair.

  Bradley did this. He wrote Baylor’s name on the bottom of the quit list to kick me into gear, and he chose July to be our nanny. Surely to goodness he didn’t invite Bea Crawford.

  I reached for my cell phone again.

  Me: False alarm. He’s not leaving.

  Her: We raised him right.

  And ten minutes into my second day back at work, just like that, I crossed off the first item on my Bellissimo to-do list: Baylor. On to my second chore. Saving the casino. I might get off early today.

  We were barely surviving on land. We’d struck out at sea. It was time to try air.

  Six months earlier, as part of his turn-back-the-clock program, Mr. Sanders went to Chicago for an appointment with Mr. Guybrow, male eyebrow groomer to the rich and famous.

  For real.

  I’m not kidding.

  Mr. Sanders just wasn’t the same person after Baby David was born. He couldn’t sit still. It was like he was running for the hills and he couldn’t find one high enough. He went on a global-wide mission to find the fountain of youth, and everywhere he went, he shopped. (“Assets,” he said, of the two Lamborghinis he bought on a whim after a full-body microdermabrasion at Fredrique Monitre Barbier in Paris. “I only buy assets.”) (With the way things were going in Biloxi, I thought maybe he should settle down and keep his assets at home.) (Like me.)

  He returned from Chicago with more than perfect manbrows. He returned a gazillion dollars lighter in the wallet. He was gone, wheels up to wheels down, a little more than four hours, and somehow managed to buy a fleet of airplanes and a barn full of art in that short amount of time. One eyebrow appointment netted all that. Plus a flight crew and a curator.

  All of which he would walk off and leave just months later.

  He said he was skimming the Chicago Tribune in Mr. Guybrow’s relaxation room before his appointment when he spotted a story
about Biltmore Trust in Boston and Willoughby National out of Phoenix merging with Equitable National in Chicago, and the parent company, Equitable, wound up with too many airplanes on their hands. Mr. Sanders whipped out his phone. The bank said by all means, they’d meet him at Chicago Executive and show him the Falcons. While they were at it, would Mr. Sanders like to see some art? The bank had recently become trustee of a fifty-acre farm somewhere in the wilds of DuPage County. In preparing the property for auction, they unearthed a never-before-seen treasure trove of Old Masters art in a dilapidated barn. They’d just flown the priceless collection in and he could see it on Falcon Three. They were willing to part with it wholesale rather than have to inventory, insure, and catalog each piece individually for auction. They didn’t have the manpower. Mr. Sanders said, “Sold.” He had his eyebrows done and bought a barn full of art and four Dassault Falcon 5Xs. All on a Thursday morning.

  I wasn’t worried about the art. It was on its way to other walls.

  I was, however, very interested in the airplanes. I found them under Properties Scheduled for Liquidation in the Bellissimo portfolio. How did I get into the portfolio? The same way WikiLeaks got in.

  Kidding.

  I guessed Bradley’s password and got it, first try.

  The Falcon was the Rolls Royce of private airplanes. They were hot off the assembly line, lightning fast, and AAA-list. Only the richest of the rich would ever see a Falcon in their lifetimes, and only a handful of those would ever fly in one. On paper, it didn’t look like a bad investment; in fact, it was the opposite, a very good investment. The deal netted the Bellissimo four jets worth a hundred million for pennies on the dollar. However, it turned out to be bad timing on a good purchase because we didn’t need them, and now we couldn’t afford them. They were taking up space, the insurance and upkeep were financial drains, and the payroll was even worse, because the Falcons came with so many people: six pilots, six co-pilots, eight flight attendants, three mechanics, and a fleet manager. Punching the clock and twiddling their thumbs.

  It was time to put the airplanes and crew to work.

  Then last fall, Bradley sent the marketing Lynns, the man with the goatee and the woman who looked like David Letterman, to the Global Gaming Expo in Las Vegas with a hot blank check and a singular objective: bring back something no other casino had. He didn’t want next year’s new game; he wanted next decade’s new game—a futuristic concept so unique it would generate media coverage, casino traffic, and enough profit to boost the bottom line until the new wore off at Blitz. If such a model existed, Global Gaming Expo, a week-long trade show for industry insiders, was the place to find it. Five hundred exhibitors showcased the latest in products, trends, and cocktail-server fashion, and Bradley sent the Lynns to look over, under, and past the obvious until they found something that would turn gaming on its ear. The Lynns returned from Vegas with exclusive rights to a technology still in developmental stages. When the Lynns made the deal, the boutique slot manufacturer, Sphinx, Inc. from South Bend, Indiana, granted the Bellissimo exclusivity rights to the intellectual properties of video game technology applied to a slot machine. The result would be interactive skill-based games in which players returned again and again to work their way through levels for the chance to win cash, luxury cars, and vacations to exotic locales.