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Page 9


  It was time to put the technology to work.

  It took me ten minutes to find a pen.

  An hour later, I sat back from my desk and looked at the ridiculous Post-it notes mess I’d made. Blue squares with everything airplane, yellow squares for everything slot machine, and green squares for everything player. My office was a rainbow. I picked up the phone and called Baylor again. “I need a big whiteboard.”

  “I need a vacation.”

  “Baylor.”

  “What?”

  “Bring me a big whiteboard.”

  “Why do I have to bring you a whiteboard? Is something wrong with your legs? Davis, it’s shift change. I’m in the cage for the cash count. I can’t leave the cage just so you don’t have to leave your house.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Do this, Davis,” he said. “Walk out your front door. Get in the elevator. Push B. Go to Office Services and get yourself a whiteboard.”

  Office Services. They’d bring me a whiteboard.

  “And don’t bother calling and asking Office Services to bring you one,” he said. “No one works there. It’s self-serve. Fill out a requisition slip and get yourself a whiteboard. Why do you even need a whiteboard?”

  “Because I’m going to save this place.”

  “With a whiteboard?”

  It was a little more complicated than that.

  “Davis, I’m all for you going back to work. I am. I could use the help. But if you want a whiteboard, you’re going to have to get it yourself. You have to actually get out of your house prison and join the human race again. You went to twenty-five yesterday and you can go to Office Services today.”

  He hung up on me.

  Allergies, or something, stung my eyes. I was blinking it away when the phone I’d just dropped on my desk rang. I couldn’t see the caller ID because my eyes were pouring, but I was sure it was Baylor calling back to apologize—as he should—and to tell me he was on his way with a whiteboard. I answered.

  “Davis? Is this you?”

  It wasn’t Baylor.

  I said, “Yes, Bea, it’s me.” I didn’t say, “Every time you dial my cell phone, you’re going to get me.”

  “I need some sneakers.”

  “What?” I sniffed.

  “Sneakers. For my feet.”

  “Why?” Bea wore plastic Crocs and flip-flops—weddings, funerals, standing over the grill at Mel’s Diner, I’d never seen her in shoes-shoes even in the dead of winter. Much less anything bordering on athletic.

  “I’ve taken up exercising.”

  “What?” (What?)

  “I kept going up and down the hall last night. Then I drank water.”

  She said it like she’d discovered it.

  “This morning I got up and walked up and down the hall again. About twenty times. I figure that’s about twenty miles. My feets hurt from my flip-flops and I need some sneakers.”

  “Try Pro,” I said. “It’s the golf shop on the mezzanine level that carries a few other sporting goods items. Like running shoes.”

  “I didn’t say I wanted to run.”

  We argued shoe terminology.

  “Come with me,” she said.

  “Bea.” I hadn’t set foot on the mezzanine, or the restaurants, or the lobby, and certainly not in the casino in eight months. She’d dragged me out of my home yesterday, and I wasn’t about to let her do it again today. I was a stay-at-home mom. That meant stay at home. And she needed to get it through her thick skull.

  “You can do it, Bea. Just go to the elevator, push M, and anyone you see can tell you how to get to Pro. It’s past Scoops, the ice cream shop.”

  “I’m giving up ice cream, Davis.”

  Good to know.

  “I’m giving up ice cream, tater tots, and fried pork chops. I’m going to knock off some of this weight, and I need sneakers and you’re coming with me.”

  I tried to rub away the headache Bea was giving me.

  She said, “All we have to do is go to the elevator, push M, and look for the ice cream.”

  It was stabbing me behind my left ear.

  She said, “Come on. You can do it. We’ll take Blondie with us.”

  Like a mind reader, Blondie appeared in the doorway with an angel on each hip. Perfect timing. I couldn’t go shoe shopping with Bea; I had daughters to take care of. “Bea, hold on.” I covered the mouthpiece of the phone. “July, can you do me a favor?”

  “Sure sure.”

  Two seconds later, back to Bea, I said, “July will go with you.” I ended the call before she could sing the chicken song. At the front door, I opened my mouth to thank July again, but I was interrupted by baby hands. Opening and closing rapidly. All four baby hands were going a mile a minute, their little fingers slapping their baby palms. I looked from Bex to Quinn and Quinn to Bex.

  July said, “They’re signing bye-bye.”

  So sweet. “Say bye-bye to July.” Fussing. Immediate fussing in both my ears, the one with the headache and the one without. “She’ll be right back.” I told my daughters. Their little baby hands kept going.

  I got it. They wanted to go bye-bye.

  July’s eyes met mine. “I won’t leave your side, Davis. I promise I won’t.”

  House prison. Pffft.

  Me: I’m going downstairs. All the way downstairs.

  Her: I’m calling Channel 13.

  Bexley and Quinn wore Baby Gucci red capes with ladybug patches over Baby Gucci jeans with Mini Mellissa red flats and red bow headbands. July and I loaded them into the double stroller. We stopped on the twenty-fifth floor to pick up Bea, then for the first time since the babies were born, I ventured down to the Bellissimo. When the elevator doors opened on the Mezzanine level, I expected to see tumbleweeds, boarded storefronts, and signs of decay and defeat, but it was just like I’d left it eight months ago. Not much traffic, but busy enough, bright, and welcoming. It was the Bellissimo. Our Bellissimo. The same Bellissimo I remembered.

  Whatever I was allergic to hit me again.

  “What the fudge is wrong with you, Davis?”

  July reached into the purse on my arm, then passed me sunglasses. I put them on.

  “I’m fine.”

  What should have been a fifteen-minute chore lasted two hours. I went in and out of every single shop, touching everything, seeing and smelling everything, speaking to every employee and half the guests. I slowed to let people, many people, total stranger people, people who probably had whooping cough, goo at my daughters. I thanked them for their kind words and answered their questions. “No, we didn’t use fertility drugs.” And, “Yes, I was huge.” And, “I only mix them up when it’s the dead of night and I’m running on two hours of sleep.” And, “Actually, we named them after our grandfathers.” And, “Yes. We’re so very lucky.”

  Because we were.

  Word got out.

  I could barely hang my whiteboards for being interrupted by the messages stacking up on my phone.

  From my father. I heard the good news.

  What good news? I had whiteboards?

  From my mother. Sweet Tarts, I want you to knead your fabricator and I are very proficient of you.

  From No Hair. I heard you were spotted in Office Services. Good for you, Kiddo.

  From Bianca. David. (It’s Davis.) I’ve become acquainted with my neighbor. She reminds me a little of you, because like you, she obsessively talks about herself, which I’m willing to overlook because she has such immaculate fashion sense. Very west coast. Her name is Cosimia Reynolds (yes, THOSE Reynoldses) and Richard and I will be hosting Cosi and her husband Phillipe for dinner tonight. I want it catered by Antoine’s in New Orleans. The works with extra Pommes de terre soufflés. Please make the arrangements. I will remind you to allow for the time differe
nce; serve at seven. Air kisses, Bianca.

  I sent one text: It looks the same.

  Her: What did you think it would look like?

  Like someone had let it die.

  That afternoon at the front door again, the portal to the outside world I’d passed through twice, July and I talked about a tentative schedule for the next week. She was one foot in and one foot out when she hesitated. Was she having second thoughts? After all this time of insisting I didn’t want or need a nanny, I didn’t want to lose July. Because while I still didn’t want or need a nanny so much, I wanted and needed her. I loved her being here and so did the girls. Maybe I should pay her more? Not yell at Baylor all the time?

  “What is it, July?”

  She said, “Why don’t you go out with Mr. Cole tonight?”

  Out? Out where? I was barely in. I’d been out more in two days than I’d been out in eight months.

  “Go out to dinner,” July said. “Baylor and I will stay with the girls. Go out. Take a little time for yourself.”

  I contemplated the new and exciting possibility of being with Bradley in a capacity other than parenting.

  “An hour,” she said. “Nothing’s going to happen in an hour.”

  “Half an hour,” I said. If they were with July, I would agree to leave my girls for thirty minutes. They’d be fine for thirty minutes. They might not even realize I wasn’t there for just a half hour.

  I dressed in clothes, real clothes, a dress and heels, as opposed to my breastfeeding uniform of quick-escape sweatshirts and yoga pants. I put on makeup. We met downstairs at Stir, the martini bar adjacent to the casino, and sat at a round table overlooking the Bellissimo fountains.

  He said, “Tell me what you’re up to.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I knew what he meant.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I was thinking of writing a game.”

  “A game.”

  “Yes.”

  I’d opened this door yesterday. Now I was stepping through. It was the new me, stepping through doors.

  “Have you ever written a game?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. “But how hard could it be?”

  “This has something to do with the Falcons, right?”

  “Blitz has live gaming on their junket buses, Bradley.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “I was thinking we could do the same on the Falcons. A live game. Using the video game technology.”

  “We?”

  “Yes,” I said. “We.”

  Three hours later, July texted that the girls were hungry, sleepy, and crying for Mama. On the way home, which was to say in the elevator, Bradley and I made out like teenagers in the backseat.

  Eleven

  Bradley left for work before daybreak Monday morning, which was normal. July knocked on the front door at ten with two Laugh and Learn Puppy’s Pianos, which was incredible. I went to my office behind the kitchen to develop a game, which was crazy. And Bea Crawford, as far as I knew, was in a condo on the twenty-fifth floor, which was downright insane.

  I sat down at my desk on Monday morning and the next thing I knew, it was Thursday afternoon. Time slipped away when you were scripting aviation events for the first time ever. Diving in, or logging on as it were, after almost a year of maternity leave, I realized I’d missed compilers, converters, and codes. And writing a game was hardly an easy reentry. I’d written application, system, and simple web programs galore; I’d never come close to writing a game.

  My routine was this: I built the client-side server before lunch, flowcharting everything on the whiteboards covering three walls of my office, then after lunch with July and my baby girls, which now included baby oatmeal mixed with baby bananas—it looked a lot like tile grout and they loved it, the half they ate and the half they wore—I facilitated the system’s response to my morning input. Once I had the program written and the bugs out, I added graphics and dropped in audio. The day I worked on audio, Wednesday, my office sounded like Atlanta Hartsfield.

  Thursday morning I got busy shuffling altitude option features between two PCs and a laptop. I’d squeezed in a fourth whiteboard, and if I didn’t finish the game soon, I’d need a bigger office. Maybe the dining room. On my new whiteboard, I designed a cabinet for the slot machine. For when my game generated enough income in the air to save the day and we could install it downstairs on terra casino firma.

  The slot machine cabinet was a cockpit.

  I drew a jet-shaped kiosk above the cockpits.

  We’d feature it in the middle of the casino floor.

  So cool.

  By Thursday afternoon, I had a game. The players were pilots; the game was a flight simulator. The better the player’s piloting skills were, the bigger the wins. And the only way for the players to get better was to play the game, again and again. The pilots picked up points performing aerobatic maneuvers, like loops, rolls, stalls, flybys, and spins. They lost points when they flew into bad weather, had equipment failure, or ran out of jet fuel. I wrote in a scavenger hunt feature, where the pilots could go rouge, veering off their scheduled flight plans for touch-and-go landing bonuses. I wrote in air-traffic controllers to help the pilots if they got into trouble and I built an autopilot option, where the player bet with the house, banking on the competition making pilot errors.

  I thought my brain might explode.

  The last time I saw my phone, it was somewhere between the PCs. I dug it out.

  Me: I wrote a game.

  Her: Why?

  Me: To save the Bellissimo.

  My heart leapt when my phone rang in my hand. I didn’t even look, I just answered.

  “Davis? Davis Way? Is this you on the telephone?”

  It wasn’t Fantasy.

  I’d completely and totally forgotten.

  “Where are you, Bea?” I wasn’t sure if I wanted her to say here or there.

  “I’m at the Winn Dixer.”

  “The grocery store?”

  “I walked.”

  Pine Apple didn’t have a Winn Dixie, so she was still here, which batted down my sudden fear for my father’s safety.

  “Why?” The Winn Dixie was at least two miles from the Bellissimo, and she’d walked? At home, Bea lived in a trailer park not a block from the Piggly Wiggly, and her big green tank of a car was forever sideways in the only handicap parking space.

  “I’m going organical.”

  I meant why had she walked.

  “This grocery store is something else,” she said. “The Pig could take some lessons.”

  I wandered past the algorithms on my office walls, stopped off in the kitchen for a fresh cup of coffee, very fresh thank you, and wandered into the living room where I found small clouds dotting the afternoon sky and something ridiculously large going on at Blitz. At two in the afternoon on a Thursday.

  “What is up with all this glue free? Who in the whole wide world eats glue?”

  “I think you mean gluten, Bea.”

  “I don’t want to eat that either.”

  “Well, buy groceries that are gluten-free.”

  She’d been in the food service industry her entire adult life. And didn’t know what gluten was. Not that I did.

  I traded my hot coffee for my binoculars, cold from lack of use this week. Bea babbled about low-fat versus fat-free as I wondered why Blitz’s VIP parking lot was all television vans. Every station in the Gulf was represented.

  What was going on?

  “Now this farm raised business,” Bea said. “Where do you think all this other stuff was raised? In the projects?”

  One of the satellite vans was WLOX Biloxi, and they streamed live. I abandoned my coffee and binoculars and went back to my desk where I pulled up Channel Thirteen’s feed.

  �
�Some of this stuff says heart healthy,” Bea said. “Does that mean all this other stuff is heart unhealthy?”

  I fell into my desk chair, still warm. Channel Thirteen’s Sunnie Chapman was interviewing our gallery curator, Robin Sandoval, live at the Blitz. Behind Sunnie and Robin, above massive gold doors, the sculpted iron cursive letters read The Galleries at Blitz. Opening at noon tomorrow.

  “And what is up with all these yogurts? Who eats all these yogurts?”

  Blitz was the private collector who bought Mr. Sanders’s art and Robin Sandoval quit her job at the Bellissimo to take a job at Blitz.

  “Bea? What do you have planned for tomorrow?”

  It was time to make the best of a bad Bea situation.

  “Not much,” she said. “Why?”

  “Come see me at ten.”

  “Are you kicking me out of my new apartment?”

  “No,” I said. “I need a favor.”

  “Ten o’clock,” she said. “I’ll be the one with the yogurts.”