Million Dollar Momma

Excerpt from MILLION DOLLAR MOMMA by Sherry Morris

Reston, Virginia 2005

On a gusty July Thursday, my telephone reverberated to the tune of “We Wish You A Merry Christmas”. I shuddered because I knew who was calling. I had set that distinctive ring tone to my father’s number. I was screening his calls because he always had something vile to say about my mother and I had listened to too many of his outrageous lies. My stomach churned while I waited for him to hang up after the fourth ring like he always did when the automatic answering machine kicked on. I held my breath, hearing with relief the click of the machine.

The robotic voice said, “Hello, no one is able to come to the phone. Please leave your message after the tone.”

When I heard the beep, I swallowed the big wad that clogged my throat.

“Oh-Donna, she’s trying to kill me!”

I ran to the portable handset and punched the talk button. “Dad! Daddy! Who’s trying to kill you?”

In a strained breathless whisper, he said, “Your mother.”

“What? When?”

“Right now!” he whimpered.

I overheard Momma’s voice in the background. “Nobody’s going to care about you. You damned old fool!”

After a dull thud, the line went dead.

Oh my God. I detected my breath echoing out in audible pants. I couldn’t believe this. What was I supposed to do? Call the police on my own mother? Not an option. No way! I shook my head. This was just too bizarre to wrap my mind around. Momma was a good girl through and through. She might get furious with Daddy once in a while but she’d never ever hurt him. But what if she was really trying to kill him? Lord knows, he’d manipulated, stifled and belittled her for decades. Had he finally done something so dastardly to drive her across the line of sanity? Or perhaps he’d just pulled another one of his everyday mind games and Momma just reached her breaking point? What if she really was trying to kill him? Think, Donna, think! The Meddlesteins! Yes! I would call the Meddlesteins.

Pressing the end button on my phone, I automatically plucked the number of Gloria and Roderick Meddlestein from the cobwebs of my childhood. They’d been my parents’ across-the-street neighbors for more than thirty years. When I was little, I could always count on them to help me when I was home alone and needed an adult to relight the furnace or check out a strange noise that had me frightened. They were such good people. I prayed they hadn’t changed their number. I felt a flush of heat rise up and envelop my body as I dialed with trembling fingers, agonizing in the seemingly slow motion.

Gloria Meddlestein answered on the second ring. “Hello?”

“Mrs. Meddlestein?” My voice sounded unnaturally shrill.

“Yes.”

“This is Donna Payne. You know, I used to live across the street from you?”

She cheerfully said, “Yes, of course. Hello, Donna, how are you, dear?”

“Listen, I just received a phone call from my father. He said my mother was trying to kill him.” I faked a laugh. “Will you please go over and check on him?”

Without much of a pause, she said, “I’ll send Roddy over. You want to give me your number so I can call you back?”

“Thank you so much, Mrs. Meddlestein.”

I gave my phone number and ended the call.

My mind was racing. Tammy works close by, she can zip over and talk some sense into those two. She is their favorite kid and has them wrapped around her pretty little finger. What is the name of that gym where she works? I frantically punched in the numbers of the telephone directory. A prerecorded voice told me to state the party’s name and city.

“Rocky’s Gym, Washington, DC.”

I waited and waited.

Finally a live person came on the line. “Ma’am, we only retrieve Virginia numbers. You have to hang up and dial one, two–oh–two, five–five–five, one–two–one–two.”

Shoot! I ended the call and tried again. Tears streamed down my face. Big almond-sized drops. This time a computer-generated voice revealed the phone number for the gym.

The surly employee who had answered the phone at Rocky’s Gym had deserted me in the purgatory of hold. Five minutes passed as I waited on the telephone line for my forty-three-year-old adopted sister Tammy, personal trainer to the Capitol Hill pork barrels, all those congressmen, senators, lawyers and lobbyists who thought they ruled the universe. Come on, come on already. Tammy, you’re three minutes from their house. It might be a matter of life or—

I wouldn’t let myself think the last word. My stomach churned and I tasted a burning sourness in my throat. This was taking too long. I punched the button to end the call and then pushed redial. Wedging the house phone in between my right ear and shoulder, I picked up my cell phone and dialed the Meddlesteins. The tiny blue phone on my left ear just rang and rang.

I couldn’t stand this inactivity. I had to do something. I furiously wiped imaginary crumbs off my pistol gray granite countertops. Stomping into the utility room, I threw the damp rag in the empty laundry basket on top of the dryer. As I grabbed the broom and glanced around, I realized there wasn’t anything to clean. I had sterilized the place last evening in preparation for my trip to the writers’ conference in New York today. I didn’t want to get killed in a plane crash and then be embarrassed at the mess I’d left. What impression would that leave behind? No, I was a good, clean girl. I shoved the broom back up into its holder and shut the door.

My neck and shoulder ached from squeezing the portable handset to my ear. Never realized how heavy my head was. I grabbed the house phone and erectly speed-walked into the hardwood foyer. I stumbled over my yellow backpack. Next to it, my pink overstuffed duffel bag leaned lopsidedly against the etched glass front door. A defiant beep pounded in my right ear. I ended the call to Tammy and slapped the phone down on the teacart, beside my purse and plane ticket to New York.

I closed the never-ending ringing of the Meddlesteins’ call on my cell phone. Thunder cracked outside. The rain commenced its devilish needle pricking on the cedar shake roof of my end-unit townhouse. I folded the cell phone and clipped it onto the canvas belt on my sleeveless khaki shirtdress.

I shuffled into the powder room and yanked tissues out of the box to blow my nose on. Looking in the mirror, I tried touching up the black rings around my powder blue eyes but the mascara kept running through the tears. Blue eyes. How come I was the only one in my family with blue eyes? Momma’s eyes were green. Daddy had brown eyes. Oh God, Daddy! What’s going on between you two? I knelt on the floor, grabbed my curly blond hair back and lost my breakfast. Momma used to hold my hair back when I threw up. I remember when Tammy had her tonsils removed and was so sick afterward. Momma made me hold my sister’s ebony black hair back. I thought it was so gross and mean at the time but now I knew she was teaching me compassion and nurturing. Eventually calming down, I cleaned myself up.

After strapping on the backpack, I slung my crocheted purse strap over my right shoulder, maneuvered the overstuffed duffel away from the front door and opened it. The wind gushed in. I flinched as I watched lightning strike the field behind the townhouses across from me on Spyglass Street. Heaving the bag over the threshold and onto my brown brick stoop, I propped it against my foot, shut the door and locked up.

I pressed the automatic key twice and listened to the doors unlock on my black Chevy Suburban. As soon as I stepped out from under the portico, I was drenched. Running to the vehicle, I opened the rear cargo door and heaved in the duffel. Struggling to free myself from the backpack, I pulled one of those unthought-of muscles in my side. Grimacing and wincing, I stowed the luggage, slammed the cargo door and raced to the driver’s side, climbing in as another bolt split the Bradford pear tree in my front yard. The little hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I really loved that pear tree.

I started the engine, shifted into overdrive and accelerated through the narrow winding, private streets of my planned community. After switching the front and rear wipers on, I fumbled in my purse to make sure that I’d remembered my ticket. A paper cut cinched that mystery. I sucked on the index finger of my right hand as I stopped at the red light. I spun the dial to defrost while trying to see through the fogged-up windshield. Soaked and shivering, I slid the temperature lever to high. I switched on the seat warmer as I floored it through the intersection on Route Seven.

Darn it, Daddy. Why do you always have to pull one of your stunts just when my life is going so well? Am I not constitutionally entitled to “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”? And if Momma is trying to kill you, I can’t say she wasn’t provoked by all your years of manipulation. I don’t have time to run over and referee. I’m going to miss my flight.

As furious as I was at him, I knew there were shuttles leaving for New York every hour. I’d just have to pay a fee and stand by for a later flight. Damn it, Daddy, you’re costing me extra money and I’ll miss early registration. I hated attending conferences without a name badge identifying me as one of the group. If I was late today, I wouldn’t be able to get mine until tomorrow morning.

I tensed up even more as I approached the exit for the Dulles Toll Road. If I turned here, I might be able to make the next shuttle flight to New York. Or a few more miles down the road, I could squeeze onto the conveyer belt they called Route Sixty-Six, the road to the Nation’s Capital, Washington, and the misery of my parents’ house.

Before I had made up my mind, my cell phone rang out. I fumbled, unable to unhook it from my belt. I unlatched my seat belt and wrestled to get the phone loose.

Simultaneously, I heard a thud and then glass shattering. I shielded my face with my hands as a deer hurtled toward me. I felt the air bag inflating against me and the sharp stab of the antler piercing my right shoulder. I slammed on the brakes with both feet. The vehicle skidded to a lurching stop as the air bag deflated. Impaled on the deer, I was ejected out of the Chevy.

The buck and I bowled down a prickly embankment. The searing pain in my shoulder was alternately overwhelmed by the weight of the beast when he reigned on top. I felt the antler breaking loose from my shoulder just before my world somersaulted into darkness.

Hearing a thumping whir, I blinked my eyes open. I struggled, unable to move. Someone was holding me down. I focused on his thickly haired brown arms and then down to his blue latex-gloved hands.

“She’s coming to.”

I screamed. Screams of fright, frustration and burning agony. Screams that I couldn’t hear.

“Calm down, Miss. You’re gonna be all right. We’re flying you to Fairfax Hospital. We should be landing momentarily. What’s your name?” The man removed the oxygen mask from my face.

“Ohhh…”

“I’m so sorry, sweetheart. You’re really beat up. Can you tell me your name?”

“Ohhh…Donna.”

 “Donna? Good. Do you know what today is?”

Teardrops spilled. I didn’t know. The rhythmic whoop of the helicopter distracted me.

“It’s okay, sweetheart. You’ll be just fine. The trauma team will take good care of you.” He replaced the oxygen mask and wiped my tears with gauze.

~*~

Four days later, when my HMO deemed me no longer in need of hospitalization, through their healing by statistical curve, I was discharged on a sunny Monday morning. My bloody muddy clothes had been cut off me and destroyed. So I left the hospital dressed in scrubs and slippers, duly charged to my inpatient bill. I had to sign a form promising to pay for non-covered items such as the television, phone and scrubs.

I never even used the phone. Who could I call? Who would care about me? Not my family. They always had their own urgent crises. Clan emergencies. And I didn’t want to call. I didn’t want to hear any more bloated lies and bizarre accusations from Daddy. As if Momma would have killed Daddy. It would’ve been all over the news. I could hear the sound bites in my head. Retired Secret Service agent Chloe Lambert Payne suspected in the murder of her blind helpless husband, the saintly doctor Nathan Payne.

An octogenarian volunteer helped me into a wheelchair and placed a plastic belongings bag and a fruit basket in my lap. The girls I worked with in the file room of the health insurance company had sent apples, oranges and bananas. That’s right. I worked for my own HMO and they still booted me out too soon. Fruit. They knew I was on the Atkins diet. No fruit allowed during the induction phase.

The wizened portly volunteer groaned and wheezed as he shoved my torture chair down the corridor. Why couldn’t the hospital invest in an ergonomic chair instead of this folding low-end ouch-maker?

We went down the elevator and he propelled me through the lobby to the curb. He waited until a taxi arrived and opened the back door for me. I stood, sore and stitched, on shaky legs. I eased into the backseat.

The driver asked, “Where to, lady?”

Where to? To the writers’ conference at the Hilton Hotel in New York, four days ago. To the red carpet, where I’ll stroll in my strapless champagne silk evening gown, with matching opera gloves, to accept my trophy and cash prize. To the appointment with the acquisitions editor of the romance publisher…

“Lady, the meter’s running. Where to?”

I sighed New York goodbye, “One–two–four–oh–six Nixon Court, Southwest.”

Arriving at the Harrison Heights section of the District of Columbia, in front of a scaled-down imitation of George Washington’s colonial mansion at Mount Vernon, I dug my wallet out of the orange plastic bag of belongings retrieved from the wreckage. I paid the cabby and stumbled up onto the cracked sidewalk. Marijuana and charcoal lighter fluid steeped in the air. A pit bull barked ferociously from the chain-linked fortress next door.

“Hi there.”

I turned around too quickly and gasped. My whole body pulsed in pain. Gloria Meddlestein stood across the street holding open the metal bars on her front door.

“Hello, Mrs. Meddlestein. How are you?”

“Where on earth have you been, Donna? I tried and tried to get you on the phone. Are you having problems with your line because of the storm the other day? Did the roads wash out? What happened to your face? Got another one of those boyfriends? You really should—”

“I need to go in and see my parents now. I’ll chat with you later. Um…we’ll have tea.”

I climbed up the Zoysia grass hill, staggering on the crumbling concrete steps winding the way to my childhood home. A mildewy white gutter had torn loose from the two-story-high porch roof. It dangled over the front door. I winced as I ducked under it. I never knew that every muscle in my body was attached to my shoulder.

I pressed the yellowed doorbell button. And waited. I knocked. And waited. I tried to turn the knob and it did. I shoved the colonial red door open and stepped onto the slate landing.

“Hello? Momma, Daddy?”

I shut the door behind me and agonized up the three cherry red carpeted steps to the living room. It hadn’t been vacuumed since I had done it on Christmas Eve. That was seven months ago. There was white furry dust on every stationary object. I dropped the fruit basket and orange bag on the floor between the white wrought iron railing and the comfortable oxblood leather tub chair in the living room. I searched the house.

My hospital slippers made a suction noise as I trudged through the sticky kitchen. A skillet with potatoes congealed in grease occupied the front burner of the electric range. The table was cluttered with grocery receipts, two aromatic black bananas, a nitroglycerine pill, toast crusts and grape jelly goo.

I moved into the adjacent formal dining room. The carpet was littered with crumbs, spills and dust. The French doors to the balcony were locked. The blinds hung shut. As were all the blinds and drapes in the entire house. Daddy had cataracts cut out of his eyes in 1972, before lens replacements were invented. He had no lenses to filter out the bright light, so he had to wear a wide-brimmed hat outdoors and dark bottle-thick cataract eyeglasses indoors. This had abruptly ended his career as an obstetrician/gynecologist at the age of fifty-eight. Some days his eyes went out completely and he couldn’t see at all.

I veered down the hallway. Daddy’s blue bathroom was empty. His bedroom was empty too, nothing but disheveled bedding and the plastic milk jugs he used for urinals.

Momma’s bedroom was vacant as was her lavender bathroom. Her mattress sported a deep depression on the side closest to the door, where she always curled up. The bed was made and loaded with throw pillows.

The third bedroom was empty. Postage stamps, pictures of their great-nieces and nephews, old bills and linens were strewn about the white and gold French provincial bedroom suite that my adopted sister Tammy left behind when she last departed the nest. She flew back during her divorces. Was it five now? No wait. Six. I forgot Abdul, the drummer in the President’s own Air Force band who seemed to be wealthy without a visible legal source of extra income. Perry and Daddy had always whispered Abdul was involved in a smuggling ring.

Passing back through the living room and down the three steps to the landing where I had arrived through the front door, I pivoted and opened the dark wood door to the basement. I listened to the grandfather clock down there, chiming twelve times. I switched on the light, not that it illuminated much with a twenty-five-watt bulb. I gripped the loose handrails on both sides as I maneuvered down the rust-colored sculptured carpeted stairs to the dark walnut-paneled basement. I looked around. Still no sign of either Momma or Daddy. I squinted at the clock, next to the rectangular stone fireplace. The face only had one hand on it. The small hand.

Everything was neat. Daddy usually vacuumed down here and always kept the place tidy. He refused to clean upstairs or do laundry. Probably due to her clinical depression, Momma wasn’t much of a housekeeper the past few years. I checked the sliding glass door behind the heavy cream-colored leaf motif drapery. It was locked, the stick was wedged in the track and the white steel grate was bolted into the white bricks of the house.

Momma’s red Corvette convertible was parked in the carport. The hatch to the outside attic was open. The exposed light bulb on the ceiling was lit. I switched it off and fixed the drapes open.

I checked the downstairs bathroom. It was empty. As I peered down the hallway, I spotted Daddy, on the floor, pinned under the deep freezer.

I rushed to him. “Daddy! Daddy!”

He turned his head and groaned.

“Oh…Donna…”

I tried to heave the small freezer upright and screamed in agony. It fell back on me. I shoved it in place. Squatting down, I kissed Daddy’s forehead. “I’ll go call an ambulance. Where does it hurt?”

“She…killed…me…”

“You’re not dead.”

“Your momma…killed me. She just didn’t…understand. I tried so hard to keep my promise to her. I gave you a good home.”

“Daddy, you’re not making any sense.” I dashed to the phone in my old underground bedroom. I picked up the receiver on the blue rotary telephone and spun the emergency number, nine-one-one.

“DC Fire and EMS, what is your emergency?”

“I need an ambulance. A ninety-two-year-old male has fallen and was pinned under a freezer.”

The cranky female dispatcher demanded, “Your name?”

“Donna Payne. The address is—”

The dispatcher cut me off. “We know the address. Is the patient conscious? Is there any bleeding?”

“Yes, he’s talking. No blood.”

“Is he breathing?” the dispatcher demanded.

Of course he’s breathing if he’s talking, imbecile. “Yes.”

I hung up and hurried back to Daddy.

“Donna, make sure you find my veterans’ life insurance policy, it’s in the bottom drawer of my dresser. It’s forty thousand dollars and all for you. And up over the carport,” he gasped for breath, “there’s a few boxes. Unmarked. My memorabilia of your momma is in there. Your real momma. It’s worth a lot…to the right buyer. I don’t want the others to have any of it. They’ve gotten too much for too long.”

“I don’t want your money, Daddy. Don’t talk like that.” I squeezed his arthritis-ravaged hand and rubbed his brown-spotted wrist. What was he talking about? My real momma? I knew he had two big boxes of Marilyn Monroe memorabilia in the attic. Did he think she was my mother? She died before I was born. The poor man was losing his mind. “What happened? What made the freezer turn over on you?”

“She did it.”

“Who?”

“Your momma. She hates me.”

Would that be Marilyn or Chloe then? He really made no sense. Perhaps he was hallucinating. He must be. I couldn’t wrap my mind around Momma doing such a horrific thing to Daddy. There had to be a rational explanation. I noticed he wasn’t wearing his cataract eyeglasses. He was legally blind without them.

“No, Momma would never hurt you.”

“Oh yes, she did. And she is as strong as a man too,” his voice cracked high.

My mother was eighty-three years old. Granted, she had been trained by the Secret Service to subdue men but no way was she in that physical shape at her age.

“Daddy, I don’t understand. Why would she attack you?”

“She demanded the money and I will never give it up.”

“What money?”

He had a coughing fit. I knelt down to help him sit up, bracing his shoulders on my knees as I cradled his head against my chest. When he’d cleared his throat, he launched into a stream of tasks for me to attend to and he kept saying that after his death, I would get all the riches that he’d preserved for me.

He kept going on and on about his coffin stowed under the stairs. That always gave me the creeps. And I’d heard this all before. So many times he’d promised me money but the others always needed it and I never received a penny. I never asked for any either. Not since that day when I was sixteen and all excited about college.

I had wanted to attend George Washington University and major in journalism or political science. I’d get a newspaper job at The Washington Post and run all over Capitol Hill. Maybe even get on the White House press staff some day.

Momma had told me then, “Oh no. Just forget about it. I can’t do that again.”

Momma had to train for a second career after retiring from the Secret Service. She worked sixteen-hour days, seven days a week as a private duty-registered nurse putting my father’s son Perry through law school. And then she had to pay tuition for some fancy makeup artist academy in Beverly Hills, California, for Tammy who’d dropped out of high school.

I understood. I really did. I was the one at home eating tasteless leftover homemade vegetable soup, two meals a day. I watched the toll it took on Momma to work so hard and sacrifice so much for the others. It broke my heart to see her so exhausted. She’d come home from work, fix a tall glass of vodka on the rocks with a bent straw to sip while she lay on her side on the couch with her varicose-veined legs and bunioned feet propped up on pillows. I wouldn’t add to her misery. I never asked for anything again. Nor was it offered.

I interrupted Daddy’s rambling. “Daddy. Daddy. Where is Momma?” I heard the ambulance siren. “I’ll let them in.” I gently laid him down then bolted up the basement stairs and threw the front door open. A fire engine had stopped out front. The imbecile had dispatched a fire engine. I angrily waved at them to leave. Four men slowly emerged from the vehicle and made their way up the steps.

I yelled, “There isn’t a fire! I need medical help!”

A guy in a sooty white helmet that had Lieutenant written on it spoke. “Listen, lady, do you want help or not? There are no ambulances available. You District residents abuse the system, using them for taxicabs. We just ran an ingrown toenail. Where’s the patient?”

“Down the stairs and make a left.” I followed the white helmet. Three yellow helmets trailed me. One was carrying a first-aid kit. Another fireman toted an oxygen bottle.

The lieutenant started examining Daddy. “Joe-Joe, get the paddles, he’s in full arrest.”

Joe-Joe ran.

“Get a bag on him!” The lieutenant began chest compressions on Daddy. A fireman placed an oxygen bag over my father’s face and began squeezing rhythmically. The lieutenant said, “Enrique, switch on three… One and two and three.” Firefighter Enrique took over doing the chest compressions. The lieutenant rose to his feet and squeezed the microphone on his lapel.

“Communications, this is thirteen engine. Be advised our patient is in full arrest. Request the nearest medic unit.”

Joe-Joe returned with the defibrillator. They cut Daddy’s blue plaid cotton shirt open and his white V-necked undershirt.

The lieutenant shoved me back into the rec room. “How old is he?”

“Ninety-two.”

“Any history of heart problems? How long ago did he fall?”

“No, but he has high blood pressure and a history of TIA’s…mini strokes, you know? I found him on the floor with the freezer on top of him about ten minutes ago. I couldn’t get a straight story out of him about what happened. He wasn’t making much sense. He told me that—”

Mrs. Meddlestein appeared at the top of the stairs. “What’s going on?”

The lieutenant glowered at her and said to me, “Ma’am, take her and go outside. Flag down the medic unit when it arrives.”

It arrived. Forty-five minutes later. The paramedics found Dr. Nathan Lucifer Payne dead. They called for the coroner.

~*~

I slumped in a chrome and yellow vinyl dinette chair in Mrs. Meddlestein’s perky kitchen, numbly sipping mango ice tea. She talked and yammered about Daddy running out into the street on Thursday and Momma standing at the door waving his cane and screaming obscenities. I had no reason to accuse Mrs. Meddlestein of lying but it was really out of character for Momma to have argued in public with Daddy.

I tuned her out. A booming parade of dusty sunlight filtered in through the pink Swiss-dotted curtains in the bay window. My bleary eyes ached. I didn’t for one minute believe that Momma turned the freezer over on Daddy.

Mrs. Meddlestein fussed around, tidying this and that. With her old-fashioned bottled-platinum hairdo, red lips, drawn-on mole and white halter dress, she was every bit a plump sexagenarian Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn Monroe. Had Daddy really said that she was my real momma? Just before he… Oh my God!

“They’re gone now, dear,” Mrs. Meddlestein finally said, in her own nasal Jewish mother voice. Definitely not Marilyn-ish.

I left her. I shuffled across the street and into the house. I dreaded telling Momma when she got home.

Crying in a curled-up ball on the brown leather couch in the living room, choking on my own mucus, I had to get some toilet paper from the bathroom to blow my nose on. I’d used up many plies when the telephone rang. Oh Momma. What will I say to you? I stumbled into the living room and picked up the princess rotary dial phone. “Payne residence.”

“Who’s this?” my half-brother Perry gruffly demanded.

“Perry, it’s Donna.”

“Where the frick have you been? I’ve been trying to call you since Thursday.”

I had to swallow the wad in my throat. “Perry, Daddy died today.”

“What?”

“He’d fallen, the freezer toppled over on him. I don’t know how long before I got here. He had a heart attack. They tried to revive him but the paramedics arrived too late. He’s dead. Our daddy is dead, Perry.”

“She escaped and killed him.”

“What?”

“Your mother murdered him.”

“How dare you? She’s not even here!” Escaped? What was he talking about? Escaped from where?

“You have no idea what’s been going on these past few months.”

“Momma is not a murderess!”

“I’ll be over in a little while. We need to go over some things. Have you notified Tammy?”

“No. We’re not on speaking terms,” I growled.

“I’ll call her on the way. Stay put.” He hung up on me.

I dropped the heavy ivory receiver onto the gaudy faux-gold filigree phone. I felt wetness oozing through my bandaged shoulder onto the teal scrub shirt. I wandered down the hallway and found some bandages and hydrogen peroxide under the blue bathroom sink. I peeled off the shirt and yanked the tape off the dressing. Raw, hairless skin screamed from the cruel adhesive the hospital had used. It hurt so bad.

I poured hydrogen peroxide on the sutured puncture wound. It bubbled into a cold white and pink fizz. I dabbed it dry with toilet paper and squeezed treatment solution on. I patched it up with a large Band-Aid.

Topless and braless, I left the shirt and bloody dressing on the floor and trudged to Momma’s bedroom. I removed one of her lavender floral blouses from the closet and gingerly slipped it on.

“Oh-Donna? Where are you?” I heard Perry’s voice summoning me.

Oh-Donna. I hated my nickname. My full name was Orpha Donna Payne. Momma named me after her lifelong friend, Secret Service agent and registered nurse Orpha Livingston Blair. My family nicknamed me “Oh-Donna” after the late Ritchie Valens song “Donna” from the fifties. To me, it had always been a faux term of endearment, more like a snide little inside joke to all of them. Even Momma. They all knew it bothered me. So that’s why it stuck. It wouldn’t be fun to tease me if I wouldn’t get my feathers poked sideways.

Of course, the “Donna” song, about searching for the girl that got away, was beautiful. But it embarrassed me when they called me Oh-Donna in front of outsiders. And it also made me feel like the outsider. Like I didn’t really belong to this family but by some ridiculous blunder of nature, my spirit plopped down in their sticky glue.

I plodded back into the living room where my over seven-foot-tall and seemingly seven-foot-wide half-brother Perry stood, dressed in his black judge’s robe. He was holding a briefcase.

“You okay? Jeeze, it must have been horrific finding the body.”

“He wasn’t dead when I got here.”

“Why didn’t you do CPR then?”

“I…I called for an ambulance.”

Perry opened his black briefcase and removed a legal type document. “Well, here’s the old boy’s will. Everything is in order. He named you as executrix. You need to put the house on the market, get the tax assessor in, arrange an estate sale and close out their bank accounts. Insert just a tiny ad in the legal notices section of the Post to notify his creditors. When the year is up, whatever is left gets split evenly. Between me and Tammy.”

Of course it would be. I was nobody. I snatched the will from him.

He grabbed it back before I could read it. “Don’t goof it up, Oh-Donna.”

“Goof it up?”

Hot tears streamed down my face. “Why are you always humiliating me? How could I goof it up by just holding it to read? Why do you treat me like a retard?” He didn’t love me at all. I had only fooled myself all of my life thinking my brother really did love me deep down. I wiped my nose on the hem of the blouse I was wearing. “Daddy didn’t leave everything to you and Tammy. What about Momma?”

“Don’t worry about her. I had her admitted to Saint Christopher’s for a psych evaluation on Thursday. They’ll take her on as a charity case if she doesn’t go to jail.”

“You did what?”

“I received a message from Dad that she was trying to kill him. When I arrived here, she had chased him outside. He was shaking. She was inside with his aluminum cane in her hand and it was bent where she’d beat him upside the head with it.”

I remembered Mrs. Meddlestein claiming she saw Daddy run outside and Momma cussing at him and waving his cane. “Did you actually see her hit him with it?”

“That’s irrelevant.”

“If you really thought she’d hit him, then why did you have Momma locked up and leave Daddy home alone with a head injury?”

“I had to get back to court. I gave him a couple of aspirins and made an ice pack for him to put on the goose egg bump on his head.”

“So in other words, you didn’t think he was seriously injured.” I didn’t buy the ice pack bit for one minute. Perry wouldn’t even know how to make one. Daddy didn’t have a head injury.

“Not at that time. I made sure to lock up Chloe before she had a chance to do him in. A fat lot of good that did. She escaped and finished the job.”

“Escaped? A little old lady escaped from the mental ward? You’re being ridiculous, Perry. Come up with a better fairy tale.”

“Keep living in never-never land, Oh-Donna. Just watch your back before she kills you too.” Perry stashed the papers in his briefcase. “I’ve called the Metropolitan Police. They’ll send technicians over to process the crime scene. Let ’em in, will ya?”

“Crime scene? It was an accident! The freezer toppled over on him and he had a heart attack.”

Perry looked incredulously at me. “Oh-Donna, open your eyes and see the truth. Dad was murdered.”

I panted, trying to catch my breath. I would not accept that Daddy had been murdered. Especially not by his own wife. And there was absolutely no evidence or witnesses to make me believe otherwise. I couldn’t believe Perry had talked the cops into accepting there was a crime. Surely the autopsy would clear everything up. I had never been so angry in my entire life.

Perry grumbled, “Tammy said she’d do the funeral arrangements. You wanna give me one of your credit cards so she can charge it to?”

“What?”

“Where’s your purse?”

“Get out!”

“Don’t you talk to me that way, Oh-Donna.”

“Why do you and Tammy always assume I am rich? You are the ones with the college educations and high-paying jobs. Get out!” I shoved him down the three stairs. He clunked his shaved bald head on the white wrought iron railing.

“What the devil got into you?” He took off.

I locked the door tight and rushed down the basement stairs. I flung open the big wide door to the walk-in closet under the stairs. I reached in the dark for the shoestring and yanked the light on. I shut the door. It wasn’t quiet like I needed. A melody faintly emanated from around the switchback corner underneath the stairs. It sounded like Perry Como’s “Some Enchanted Evening”, a beautiful love song from the forties.

The walk-in closet was immense as far as closets go. Since the house was a split foyer, the stairs were turned in an L-shape. Three down from the living room, a wide landing at the front door and then a turn and nine stairs down to the basement. Daddy extended the width of the closet so it made a U-shape with a switchback under the basement stairs. There was an overhead storage area with a hatch underneath the foyer landing and the stairs that led up to the living room.

Daddy’s eight-sided Dracula coffin was in there. Not that he was a vampire but his family had weird burial rituals. He came from a poor Irish-American family that was among the first settlers in Sacramento, California, during the gold rush. They were known to pack a pistol while standing guard with their loved one to prevent an autopsy, the body was never to be left alone, someone had to stay inside the open grave all night, an Irish wake thrown at the house…things like that.

The back of the closet was stuffed with boxes full of Daddy’s old medical files and research papers. Neatly lining the walnut-paneled closet walls were two dozen plastic grocery bags filled with used novels. Momma read when she couldn’t sleep. She’d told me she liked books with a little mystery, a little danger and a little sex. So here was the New York Times bestseller list for the past few years. She preferred the thick ones. Daddy always whispered it was an obsessive-compulsive disorder, Momma reading so much.

There was one bag stuffed with photo albums. I rooted out the white one. Beautiful sepia prints were displayed in little gold corner mounts on heavy black paper. Momma in a bathing suit, on the beach, with palm trees. Must’ve been in the forties sometime. In one, she was cuddled up to a very handsome bearded man. Definitely not Daddy. In another, she wore a full-length fur. I remembered that fur. She always kept it in the big black steamer trunk that I was leaning on. I eased off it, undid the latches and opened the lid. There it was, along with the aroma of mothballs. I slipped the full-length sable on and drew it tight.

The melody became louder. I crept back and peeked around the corner under the basement stairs. I moved some boxes. Blackness swirled. Wind whipped. The music had laughter. I felt an irresistible forward force propelling me deeper.

~♥~

I blinked. Sparkles. Rainbow-colored sparkles dazzled my eyes. People danced cheek to cheek. Lots of soldiers in old-fashioned uniform. The women were wearing white gloves and fancy hats. I found the exit and escaped outside into the night.

A chilling wind stung my cheeks. Something was very not right. The cars were all jalopies. Really old ones, older than the ones at the classic car nights at the fast food restaurant I always went to. The kind of cars you had to turn a big crank on the front to start. I proceeded along. Passing a newsstand, I picked up a paper. The headline read President Roosevelt’s New Strategy For the Philippines. The date was February 16, 1945. I dropped it and ran. All right, this was spooky. Where the hell was I?

Freezing rain pummeled my face. I stumbled in a grate, breaking a heel off my blue stiletto shoe. Blue stiletto shoe? What happened to my hospital slippers? I must be dreaming. Midway across the Fourteenth Street Bridge, gateway back to Virginia, I stopped. I leaned over the concrete railing and gasped for breath. I stuck my right hand into the deep silk-lined coat pocket and extracted a pearl-handled pistol. I screamed and dropped it over the rail. I watched it slide on the surface of the frozen Potomac River.

Frozen river? This was July! I stuck my hand into the left pocket and pulled out a hundred-dollar bill. An icicle fell from the lamppost above me. I examined the note in my hand. Benjamin Franklin’s portrait adorned both sides. It was bloody. I felt a tap on my right shoulder. It didn’t hurt.

I turned…and saw a man.

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Thousand Dollar Pharaoh

 Excerpt from THOUSAND DOLLAR PHARAOH by Sherry Morris

August 1945 in the Valley of the Kings, Egypt

Moaning as she regained consciousness, Chloe raised her head and twisted it from side to side, struggling to understand. Where was she? A jolt of searing pain in her upper right arm brought her focus back to the job. When she had signed on to become a United States Secret Service Agent in the counterfeiting division, they had neglected to mention all of the occupational hazards. She had quickly learned the missions providing an adrenaline rush always seemed to be accompanied by physical pain.

As she cleared her mind, she realized it was sometime after midnight inside an ancient tomb. On the dusty earthen floor next to her, Grover Cleveland seemed to glare ominously from the bloody thousand dollar bill stuck to a mummy’s severed arm.

Grabbing the three-thousand year old limb for leverage, she struggled to stand as she allowed her eyes to adjust to the flicker from a stubby red candle on the floor of the burial chamber. Oh God, no. Who desecrated this mummy?

Chloe remembered tripping down some wooden stairs and grunting on a landing. As she clambered up, two men appeared at the top of the steps and chased after her. She scurried down, rounded three corners and squeezed into a small breech in an earthen wall. Did I lose them? No, they must’ve knocked me out cold. But my head doesn’t really hurt. Did they make their getaway or are they lurking, waiting to finish me off after they interrogate me?

What’s that smell? I know that smell. From where? She closed her eyes tight. Remembering a winter night. A white fur coat and Bill…Hundred Dollar Bill. The printing room at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Washington. The woman up on the catwalk. The flash. Six shots ringing out, the last one louder. The silhouette blowing smoke from the gun. The lithe shadow sashaying into blackness. Her lavender French perfume which commingled with hair lacquer and cigarette smoke. Bill’s assailant…his wife loomed there. Is here somewhere now.

Chloe you’re delusional. What would his American wife be doing in Egypt? Ha ha ha. Good one, Chloe girl.

She staggered over to the candle and grabbed it. A bead of hot wax dripped onto her ring finger. She drew in a short breath.  Carefully cradling the mummy’s arm, realizing how sacred it was, she approached the three open stone coffins within the chamber. A female corpse had flowing red hair and a bent left arm. A black-haired male had his hands crossed at his groin. The third was a bald, one-armed female. Shivering at the sight, Chloe brooded over her mission and strategy. She gently replaced the arm on the mummy closest to her. Mummy! Yuk. It appeared to fit. Staring at the thousand dollar bill, her mind kicked into analytical gear.

Chloe examined the ancient corpse. Double ear piercings. Tight banding around the forehead where the headdress would have been. No trace of hair whatsoever. Bent right arm. Henna on the long fingernails. Fingers curled in, as if gripping a scepter, which some evil tomb robber had probably helped himself to. This mummy was a royal woman and was in bad shape. Her mouth and chest had been bashed in on the left side. Right arm ripped off. Hacked off. Chloe’s stomach contracted as the bile churned. What kind of people could do such a heinous deed? The bad guys could. But who were the bad guys? Two of them surprised me in the upper burial chamber. One or both no doubt responsible for…

She grabbed the wound in her right arm.  Her fingers slipped in the coagulated blood.  Pain shot up her arm, all the way to her teeth.

I’ve been shot!

Anger seethed through her. Great. I’m going to die. Alone in a creepy crypt. But wait. I’m not dying yet. I’m up and about. The bleeding seems to have stopped.  So it’s either a flesh wound or else the bullet is lodged in my arm. Fine. Take it like a big girl, Chloe. You’re the one who volunteered to jump right on into the boots of one of our boys at war. You are an American and you will see this mission though. The fire of her resolve manifested itself in the nerve endings of her wound.

Chloe flinched and stumbled backward as a cat pounced from a stone ledge onto the mummy’s chest. Larger than most cats she’d ever seen. Tawny yellow-gray fur, a long tapering tail and striped markings. A Sand Cat. It kneaded and dug into the bandages before circling three times, nesting in the chest or what was left of it inside the shreds of black, tan and red burial wrappings.

Now that is just wrong.

“Here kitty. Nice kitty.” She held her fingers to its nose. The cat sniffed and turned away. Not even a lick. Chloe petted and stroked the shaggy soft fur.

“Come on kitty. Come on girl. Come out of the coffin. Out you go.” Gently tugging on the cat near the back of its neck, it wouldn’t budge.

Dates. I have some dates left.  Where is my bag? Chloe spun around until she spied it near the hole in the wall where she’d penetrated the chamber. The cat kept an eye on Chloe as she shoved her arm into the tapestry carpet bag and fished out a date.  “Here you go kitty.” Chloe offered the sticky sweet fruit. Allowing the cat one lick before pulling the date away, “No, no, no girl. I guess you’re a girl. Let’s play fetch.”  Chloe tossed the date on top of her bag. The cat leapt after it, with a piece of currency stuck to its tail.

Chloe petted the feline as it licked the date and even gave her one scratchy lick of thanks on her hand.  Swishing back and forth, the tail betokened gratitude.

Hmm… A U.S. thousand dollar bill. She removed it from the tail. These haven’t been minted since 1936. Well, isn’t that a coincidence. That’s just the date on here.

Trying hard to examine the bill for authenticity in the dim candle light, it appeared real enough. She rubbed her fingers over a tacky patch. What was making the bills sticky? Taking the candle back to the stone coffin, Chloe shoved her left arm inside, cringing, feeling around. The brittle bandages crinkled. Or was that the currency?  

Peering inside, she found a stash of thousand dollar bills. Chloe dashed over and coaxed the cat off of her bag, more or less yanking it out from underneath the animal. She stuffed it with the cash, filling it one third full. Feeling around the bottom of the sarcophagus, her ring bumped something metallic and clanked.  Her wedding ring.  She smiled and remembered the National Cathedral where Momma had walked her down the aisle. It still seemed like a dream. Did it really happen?

Chloe sighed. Her whirlwind action-adventure romance had culminated in marriage to fellow agent, Mike Taurus. In the picture dictionary of life under the listing for man was his photograph. Perfect in every way, except when he opened his mouth and said something completely inappropriate. What a mouth. Firm lips. Slightly crooked two front teeth. Hot probing tongue. The world’s best kisser. Oh Mike. I wish you were here on this mission with me.

The cat meowed three times. Chloe turned to see the fur standing up along its spine. It must sense danger. Chloe spun around, but saw nothing. She returned her attention to the coffin and dug deep, running her fingers over the metal. They had to be plates. Plates to print currency. Shazam.  Holding the dwindling candle between the mummy’s legs, she verified her deduction.  Her stomach settled and she smiled.

Chloe gasped and nearly dropped the candle as the cat pounced on the mummy’s face. Hissing and with fur bristled up on its arched back, the agitated creature leapt across the three sarcophaguses, onto her carpet bag and then circled back to retrace her route. Conspiring voices from elsewhere in the tomb loomed in the distance. Speaking English.

Relieved she didn’t set the mummy on fire, her pulse raced while she scanned the chamber for a weapon. She hurriedly dug through her bag and extracted her revolver.

Now what? Think Chloe, think. “All mighty God, forgive me and be with me.”  She reached into the next gritty stone coffin, grabbed the mummy’s straight right arm, closed her eyes and yanked. Oh did that hurt. Then pain in her arm shot both ways, up to her brain and stinging into her fingertips.  

She focused on her disgusting task. Eww…just like trying to carve the leg off of an over-baked dried out chicken. Like the one she’d ruined for Uncle Edmund’s wake. That incident was why Daddy had insisted she get her degree in Home Economics.

Chloe waved her hands in the air, shaking off the disgusting creepy task she was performing. Her injured arm screamed in pain. Tears of agony ran down her face as she likened it to the pain this mummy might be feeling in the afterlife, having his arm ripped off. Inhaling the stale air, she looked up at the low stone ceiling and prayed, “And all mighty God of the sun and whoever else these poor old people believed in, whom so ever is guarding this tomb, please, please, please, forgive me.”

She tugged and twisted until the limb finally snapped off. Opening her eyes, she blinked and sneezed as dust flew. Dust and dead bugs and mummified flesh. Shoot! She had to unwind the bandages to get the arm loose. Eww! Ancient flesh and bones. Stop looking at me! Why did they have to perform an eye and mouth opening ceremony after they’d prepared the mummies? They’re all watching me do these horrible things to them. Tears trickled down her dusty face. She shuddered. Good grief, she was desecrating a pharaoh.

Somehow, she had to focus on this task and convince herself she wasn’t actually tomb robbing, abusing a corpse and touching a dead person. This was just another day at the office…out in the field. Just doing her routine job in a routine way. Concealing the identity of this royal mummy, in order to protect her. What was left of her. And in the process, desecrating the mummy’s boyfriend here next to her. Great, just great. Now two spirits can’t rest in peace and enjoy the afterlife.

Shaking off the spine-chilling assignment, literally by shaking her head, Chloe positioned the straight arm on the mummy with the bashed in face and the sarcophagus full of dough. If her research and hunches happened to be correct, these were the remains of a very important royal mummy.  A pharaoh.  A lady pharaoh. How divine. Wow. Chloe felt humbled in her presence. And more determined to protect the mummy and see that the counterfeiters were prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

As she placed the bent right arm in her carpet bag, the cat somersaulted into it. Fine. Come along. Together they squeezed through the two foot breech in the earthen wall and into main chamber of the tomb. The air wasn’t as dusty, but it sure was muggy and hot. Who’s great idea was it to traipse off on a counterfeiting caper in the Egyptian dessert in August? Orpha’s. Well, yeah, Orpha had volunteered for this mission, but Chloe had been drafted because the brass knew she had minored in Egyptology.

Breathless, Chloe scurried up the wooden stairs in the tight passage way, pushing the wall with her left hand, painfully hugging the carpet bag handles and candle with her right. Zigzagging through the ancient passages, she suspected the eyes on the hieroglyphics loomed judging her. As she briefly read the simple curses, she realized they were dooming her to be eaten by a crocodile, hippopotamus and then a rhinoceros. Yet some of the characters bespoke to urge her onward, as if history depended on her to complete this chapter. If circumstances had been different, Chloe would have loved to have lingered and examined the hieroglyphics. Maybe even buy an animal symbol necklace thingy at the gift shop. What do they call those? Take photographs with her Brownie camera. Mug and pose and what a fun honeymoon this would be. Mike…

Chloe forged onward and upward as fast as she could. When the main entrance of the tomb spit her into the black Egyptian night, she extinguished the flame. Climbing the steep steps, she gasped for breath before making a sharp right at the top. She huffed her way through the sand hurrying toward the thunder of approaching hooves. Chloe stifled a scream as a camel rounded the next corner in her path.

U.S. Secret Service Agent Orpha Livingston thumped the camel with a stick, forcing him to his knees. Chloe grimaced at the camel’s body odor as she handed the carpet bag to her partner and then hiked her gauze dress up, grabbed onto the saddle blanket and hoisted herself astride the beast. “Boy am I glad to see you, Orpha.”

“You too, clover-girl.”

As soon as Chloe was seated, she grabbed the bag and hugged it to her middle, smashing it between her and the driver. It screamed a meow as they stole away through the desert.

Orpha flinched and looked over her shoulder at the bag. “What have you got in there?”

“Later. Let’s get out of here!” Clasping the carpet bag between herself and the jockey, Chloe balanced by digging her fingers around the belt on Orpha’s dress. The woman’s slim waist didn’t leave much room for margin.

As the camel proceeded into the indigo night, Chloe’s heart pounded, nearly as much as her arm stung. Please let it just be a graze. I can’t get a bullet dug out now. No time. I should have departed yesterday. She tried to pacify and convince herself she could indeed still make it back to Washington in time. Well she’d just have to. There was no alternative.

In an effort to calm down, she breathed in deeply though her nose and held it as long as possible, then blew it out through her mouth.  Inhaling so deeply of Orpha’s wig-top incense cone was nearly drugging. Orpha had gone a little overboard buying this black braided wig with an incense pot on top. Royal women wore these back in the days of real pharaohs. Orpha always had been a sucker for costumes.

Chloe’s nostrils separated out frankincense, eucalyptus and what was that other scent? Marijuana?  That’s just about right. I’ll not only be late for my mission, I’ll be arrested and thrown in jail on drug charges.  Still, perhaps the marijuana could ease my pain. Chloe lifted her nose and inhaled as closely to the cone as possible. Pressing against the jockey, she mashed the carpet bag between them, sending out a mew of protest from the Sand cat. “Sorry kitty.”

What am I going to do with this cat? I’ve always wanted a cat. A companion. Better than a dog. You don’t have to walk it.

Once they rounded a bend in the hot windy night, Chloe reached up with her left hand, mesmerized by the heady incense. In an attempt to crook the cone downward slightly for a greedy whiff, she inadvertently knocked it from her partner’s head. Chloe flailed as Orpha caught her with one hand and slowed the camel down.

“What the heck are you doing, Clover?” she demanded.

“Sorry.”

“That wig cost me my last six chocolate bars.” Orpha sounded hurt.

“I’ll buy you a hot fudge sundae when we get home. I’m so sorry. And I’ll pay for a shampoo and dryer set at Mabel’s.”

Holding firmly to her colleague’s saffron silk belt for the rest of the journey, Chloe’s mind returned to fantasizing about having a cat. Keeping a cat. This cat.  An Egyptian cat. I’ll call her Cleo. For Cleopatra. Maybe Patra? Pat? Patty? Paddycake… She drew in a deep sigh. Good old Paddycake. Paddy Grogan, proprietor of Paddycake’s Bakery in Miami Beach. Her room upstairs. The chocolate frosted yeast raised doughnuts and his infamous cinnamon sugar wiggle worms were to die for…  She shivered. Babies did die for. Hundred Dollar Bill poisoned them. She wept for her twins. They say grief gets easier with time, but she really couldn’t imagine a day would go by when she wouldn’t ache for her unfathomable loss.

Tears stung the kohl makeup into her eyes. She tightened her grip on Orpha’s belt and buried her head in the back of her dress, sobbing.

Orpha abruptly halted the camel. She twisted around to face Chloe. “What’s the matter, honey?” After prying her friend’s fingers out of her belt, Orpha dismounted. She reached for Chloe’s hand. “Come on down and talk to me.”

Chloe let herself fall into Orpha’s arms, depositing both them and the carpet bag onto the hard-trodden, gritty sand path.

Chloe screamed and grabbed her right arm. Orpha rolled over on top of her. “What’s wrong?”

“I’ve been shot. My babies are dead. I botched the mission. I’m no good at anything.”

“You’ve been shot? Where? Who shot you? Why didn’t you tell me?” She kissed her friend’s forehead. “Honey, I know it’s only been a few months since your miscarriage. But please believe me. The ache will get easier as time passes. You’ll always miss them, but you must go on with your life.”

No stars dared twinkle. No moon shone down. Only blackness. Evil foretold.

Orpha crawled toward the sound of the camel breathing and groped around inside her saddle bag. A beam of dim light returned to Chloe, in the form of an Army flashlight.

“Clover, you’re bleeding. Your arm. Where else were you shot? Who did it?” She yanked down the sleeve on Chloe’s dress, exposing her shoulder and upper arm to examine the wound. Orpha slipped her fingers underneath Chloe’s arm and twisted it around to get a good look.

Chloe shoved her away with a shriek of pain. “Don’t touch me!”

“There’s no exit wound. I’ve got to dig the bullet out.”

“No! Are you crazy? Absolutely not! You are no doctor!”

“Well at the very least I have to close the wound.” She returned to her saddle bag and fished out her Army Air Corps Nurse’s kitbag.

“Don’t even think about it. I’m fine.” Chloe snapped at her friend. The tears in her voice betrayed her brave words.

“You’re fine? Then why are you writhing around in the sand, blubbering, shrieking and generally making a mess of yourself?”

The cat emerged from the tattered bag and pounced on Chloe’s stomach. She paced up and down the length of her torso, licking her nose, turning to swish it with her tail and then kneading her paws into Chloe’s belly before curling into a ball. Chloe concentrated on the cat’s purring as Orpha positioned the flashlight beam, propping it on the carpet bag to illuminate the surgical field.

Chloe jerked upright and screamed from the sting of alcohol as Orpha sterilized the area.

“Sorry honey.” Orpha firmly shoved her patient back down.

“You are going to give me a bullet to bite on, right?”

“You don’t need a bullet, Clover. You already have one, remember? Now you’ll feel a little sting…and burn.”

A little sting and burn…more like blinding pain as Orpha injected the area with a local anesthetic.

“Again a little sting and burn.” She moved the syringe to an adjacent area.

“Could you have used a duller needle? Sheesh! What are you giving me? Procaine?” Chloe dipped her head to the left and tried to wipe her eyes and nose on her dress.

“I wish. Ran out of that the first week here.”

“Well what is it? Camel spit?”

“Cocaine.”

Chloe tried to concentrate on the cat’s purring. She still hadn’t named her. Cleopatra and all its nicknames were unsuitable. Sphinx? Nah. Egypt? Phff. Valley? Valley of the Kings. Yeah right. Here kitty kitty. Here Valley of the  Kings. Why did it have to be kings anyhow? Women were just as effective leaders. Queen. Queenie. Nefertiti. The wife of Pharaoh Akhenaten. Rumored to have assumed his role as Pharaoh upon her husband’s death. Husband. What a glorious word. Mike. Chloe smiled.

“Do you feel this, Clover?”

“What?”

“Do you feel anything?” Orpha poked around the edges of the wound with a needle.

“No.  What do you think of Nefertiti for a name?”

“You’re changing your name to Nefertiti?”

“No, naming the cat.”

“Who gave it to you?”

“Nobody. She just jumped right into my carpet bag.”

“Well you can’t keep her.”

“Why not?” Chloe asked defensively.

“She obviously belongs to somebody. Look how big she is, my gawd she’s well fed.”

“She’s mine now and you can’t take her away from me.”

“Easy now, Clover. You know I wouldn’t do that. I just don’t want you to be surprised if she runs home.

Chloe could feel tugging as her friend sutured the wound. “Are you doing layers?”

“I can’t. You won’t let me dig the bullet out.”

“You don’t know how to dig a bullet out.”

“I’ve watched plenty and assisted the Army docs.”

“Yes, but all you have experience in is closing.”

“Not anymore.”

“What do you mean by not anymore?”

She handed Chloe the bullet.

“You promised you wouldn’t dig this out!”

Orpha tied off the last suture and clipped it.  “It was right under the epidermis. Easy as pie with my little tweezers. I couldn’t leave it inside. The risk of anaerobic bacterial infection is too dangerous. No gangrene on my watch, Clover.”

 Relieved, Chloe changed the subject. “Mike’s cute, don’t you think?”

“Sure,” Orpha agreed.

“You really didn’t get a chance to meet properly at our wedding. We’ll have you over for dinner. Lots.”

Orpha tied a bandage over the wound. “I didn’t know you could cook. What kind of food?”

“Country food. Southern cooking. Fried chicken, greens, butter beans, corn pone, mashed potatoes and gravy you’ll be talking about for weeks.”

“Count me in. But where are you living now? Where did you and Mike set up housekeeping?”

Good question. Make Believe Island was their little hideaway. Primitive and isolated. Oh wait. That was just a safe house on an assignment. Owned by Uncle Sam. Shoot. Somebody else is probably there now.

“Mike said he’d find us a real home while I’m gone. I’m sure it will be small and cozy and just big enough for the two of us.”

“You are so lucky to have a husband. Me, I’m destined to be an old maid. That’s why I have a career you know.”

“What?”

“I learned early on what men want and I just don’t have a pretty face and big bazoomas.”

“Hush. Men don’t want that. Well, yes, they do, but not for a wife. Just the shallow men. The high-quality husbands want personality. Good clean girls they can trust and count on. Sweet girls with a capitol S.”

“Even if that is true, it’s obvious I’m glaringly lacking in the personality department. I’m boring as a boulder.”

“Orpha, stop that. You’re one of the funnest girls I know. Well just look at you. Who else would be skulking around in Egypt, in the black of night, galloping on a camel, sewing up a bullet hole in the middle of the sand? Gee, think of all the adventures you’ve had. You are a very sweet, kind woman too. Caring and you placed your country before your own happiness and safety.”

 Orpha poured alcohol over the hypodermic and wiped it with gauze.  “Sorry I don’t have any antibiotics for you. I’d slather some honey on it to try to ward off infection, but with those sutures, I’m afraid they’ll pull right out when you change the dressing. Keep it dry for forty-eight hours and then change the bandages after every bath.”

Honey. Hmm…maybe that was the substance sticking to the counterfeit thousands.

Orpha wiped down the forceps then packed the unused portion of gauze in her saddle bag.  She kicked sand over the bloody swabs.

Chloe rose to her feet and snatched the flashlight. “I don’t know about leaving that stuff here.”

“I don’t see any medical waste receptacles on the date palms, Clover. What do you propose we do? I can’t risk taking them and getting caught.”

“Why not? You’re here as a nurse.”

Orpha snorted. “Yes. And they’d want to know just who I sewed up and why I was carrying the bloody mess with me.”

“Good point.”

Chloe opened her carpet bag and awkwardly placed the cat inside with her left hand. It stepped inside willingly. She hoped she hadn’t been too rough with it.

Orpha said, “Here, give that to me.” She hooked the two leather handles around the rear saddle horn, draping the bag over the sitting camel’s rear end.

Feeling some euphoric properties of the anesthetic, Chloe giggled as she placed the back of her hand near the camel’s big nostrils. It sniffed and spit on her. How rude. She wiped the spit off onto the top of the animal’s bristly skull and then climbed aboard.  

Orpha jockeyed herself into position and coaxed-commanded the camel to stand, by knocking its knees with a wooden stick. Holding tight to Orpha’s belt, feeling the saddle horn digging into her hind parts, Chloe clutched tight as the camel swayed up and down back and forth as it rose, holding on for dear life. The cat mewed. Chloe turned her head. “Ouch!” It’s okay kitty. Nefertiti. We’re safe. You’ll be fine, girl… Orpha what did you do to me? Sew my arm ligaments to my neck? It hurts like Hades to move. But I can’t feel my arm. And I do have a pretty good buzz going.”

“Sorry, Clover. You’ll have to take it easy for the next seven to ten days. Try not to use your right arm. Limit any reaching or yanking movements. Whatever you do, don’t try to pick up anything heavy with that arm.”

“No problem. I’ll be traveling anyhow. I’ll carry my bag with my left hand.”

The camel found its rough and jerky cadence as it lighted through the sand.

“I am so sorry I knocked your incense cone and wig off.”

“Yeah I’m sorry about that too. The marijuana might’ve eased your pain.”

Chloe gingerly shook her head, giggling. She marveled at the cultural differences. Here they were. Two young women out in the middle of the night alone and they had been inhaling an illegal drug. Illegal in their homeland. But it was perfectly acceptable in this context. Actually it was part of their cover.

Undercover agents for the United States Secret Service.  On the trail of counterfeiters. A far cry from the life she’d led in Shrew, North Carolina.

The thunder of hoof beats approached from the north. Orpha fought to keep the camel under control as it stumbled into a crow-hop. Nefertiti meowed and Chloe screamed as she was thrown.  

A chariot arrived.

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