HOPE FOR CHANGE... But Settle for a Bailout (9 page)

“No problem,” said Lori.

In the crowded corner, a single lounger was
empty. Lori put her backpack on the lounger and stood over a teen
on the other side. “We’ll need that. Move!” Lori ordered another
teen to bring four towels. Applause broke out.

“Me and Blondie need more air,” December
announced, waving at the wrist for the crowd to recede, which,
swiftly they did. “No cameras, sweeties, or the hotel’ll toss
us.”

Lori pushed the lounger with the backpack
close to December’s and pointed to a glass table. She snapped her
fingers sternly and it moved without a word. She loaded everything
onto it, spread out her towel, and lay flat on her belly, showing a
body with no fat, no lost muscle, no imperfection, no surrender, no
suggestion of decline or reason to despair of it.

“You got something to show, Blondie,” said
December, as she straddled Lori’s ass, took out a bottle of
sunscreen and began working it into Lori’s back, leaning deep to
get the arms and shoulders, her 32FFs heavy in her top, swinging,
brushing across Lori, mooshing into Lori, as December breathed
slowly and took her time. “Legs? or flip?”

December became the back-facing cowgirl,
creaming Lori’s incredibly toned legs, as the young men watched in
silence. From the far corner of the massive main pool, Larry van
der Bix’s view from the jacuzzi was both distant and blocked by
more-than-could-be-counted cave boys, packed tightly like guilty
observers at a gang-rape crime scene. Lori’s front was as
incredibly tight, toned and pliant to December’s fingers as the
backside. Deep breathing could be heard as December’s hands slid
across Lori’s body, her fingers briefly disappearing under the
waistband or top.

Lori sat upright, holding the strings to her
top, which December tied. Lori looked to December. “Is it your
turn?” The question was met by a cheer.

.

When Larry returned to the Presidential
suite, he was greeted by a “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door
handle. Sliding his key card, the door would not open due to a
latch thrown from inside. Larry knocked. He heard December’s voice.
“Hunny, could you come back in a little while?”

Larry went to the coffee shop.

.

Lori and December, each smiling and laughing
easily, found Larry at the restaurant, and sat down. Soon, all
three had coffee.

“I feel like some f-o-o-d-!” said December.
A waiter approached with three menus and, seeing one on the table,
set down two. December immediately offered, “Oh, we’re definitely
ready.”

Lori casually picked up a menu and scanned
the pages.

“I’d like the filet mignon,” said December.
“The twelve ounce.” She ordered a chopped salad, with oil and
vinegar. “I like the watermelon lemonade, but it’s so big....” Lori
suggested they each order club soda, and one lemonade between them,
so they can make watermelon spritzers. December added a club soda
with her lemonade.

Lori closed the menu. “I’m going breakfast,”
she said, ordering a Mediterranean veggie omelet, with tomatoes as
the side, a club soda, and a bran muffin.

Larry began reciting his ranch hand
breakfast order of the previous day, but stopped. “No,” he said,
“no, I’ll have… the baseball-cut top sirloin and eggs. And cottage
cheese?”

“Absolutely,” said the waiter.

“Can you check that it is the full cottage
cheese? Not the one-percent or non-fat.”

“I’ll check on that.” The waiter looked up
from writing. “Any starch?”

“Belgian waffles?”

“For this table, anything,” said the waiter,
whose clean-cut good looks and slight sunburn suggested his having
been at the pool earlier.

.

“The reviews are in,” said December, to
Lori. “Fans want more of you and me fighting.”

Lori drank her coffee. “I’ll wrestle. That’s
fine.”

“No, baby,” said December, “they like the
slapping and pushing.”

Lori put her mug down. “After making sure my
friend is alive, yeh, I could slap, but, hey, I don’t fight unless
I’m in a fight… and I don’t go looking for fights.”

“No, you have to,” said December. “The fans
can always tell.”

Lori poured lemonade into her club soda and
set the tall glass back near December. “I don’t do things for
fans,” said Lori, sipping. “I’m not some WWE actress.”

The waiter approached and leaned toward
Larry, while eyeing December and Lori.

“The cottage cheese is non-fat.”

“Skip it then,” said Larry. “Nonfat’s just
texture.” The waiter left.

“Won’t’chu do it for me, baby?” cooed
December.

“Dee, why would I slap you?”

“Oh,” said December, in a huff, “you
couldn’t if you wanted to. No one slaps me.”

“I don’t know,” said Lori.

“Don’t’chu wanna do more shows with me?
Please?”

“Whatever.”

“I’m gonna make u like it,” said December,
“and u know u r.”

PART TWO – CHAPTER SEVEN

The Shining Tower

“Jeeze,” said Larry, turning on his phone
for the first time in a day-and-a-half. December folded several
bikinis, and set them in her open suitcase, atop a mix of cables, a
router, the video camera and other equipment laid carefully atop
neatly folded clothes. As four of the bell staff waited to help the
Presidential suite guests carry bags to their car, December looked
through a mesh-net bag filled with bras, panties and other
lingerie, before placing it in her suitcase. Every few moments, she
would turn, sometimes smiling, towards the young workers. She
closed her suitcase and snapped the TSA-approved padlock.

December stood up abruptly, causing most
eyes in the room to also spring upwards. “Be careful,” said
December. “It’s heavy, but see if you sweeties can get that into
the trunk, won’t you?” One bell staff carried the bag and and
another got keys from Lori. “We’re okay, now,” said December,
waving with her hand. The other two bell staff left.

Lori lay on the bed. Larry sat on the
opposite side. “So, is it hitting you, the being rich thing? How
much is it again? Two hundred million?”

“Two thirty five,” said Larry.

“That’s a lot,” said Lori. “Are you, like,
freaked out or anything?”

“Naw,” said Larry, “cuz I don’t have it,
yet.”

“Good way to think,” said Lori.

“Okay, sweeties,” said December. “I’m
ready.”

“Lori, can you have them add it up for me to
sign. I’ll follow you guys out,” said Larry. “I’ve got to clear
some of these missed calls. I’ve got like 4O-something.”

.

“Oh, jeeze, man, Lawrence, I am so sorry,”
Larry told me over the phone, on Tuesday, the day after we were
supposed to meet in Sacramento.

“Yesterday, I went and looked at trains,” I
told Larry. “Trains.”

“W’ull, hey, that’s good, cuz they got a
train museum in Sac, if you really like trains,” interrupted
Larry.

“Larry, this vacation could cost me my job,”
I said, doubting the point would register on the most selfish,
socially inept guy I’d ever known. “Can you tell me
now
what
this is all about?”

“Over dinner tonight,” said Larry. “See if
you can get a table for four at Morton’s.”

“Why are you doing this to me, Larry? And
why are you calling me by my name?”

“I’m very sorry, Lawrence,” said Larry.
“Honestly, I forgot it was Monday yesterday. It’s been quite a
weekend.”

“Alright,” I said. “Four at Morton’s.
Okay.”

“Nine o’clock,” said Larry.

“See you at nine o’clock, Larry.
Tonight,
Larry. Nine o’clock
tonight
.”

“What? Do you think I’d forget about steaks
at Morton’s?”

.

After clearing the 28 missed calls from
Lawrence and erasing junk voice mail, Larry took two messages from
a man whose voice somehow reminded him of his grandmother.

“Hal-lowww,” echoed the voice, as Larry
carried the phone into the bathroom. “This is Tres Von Sommerberg,
a film director, from Denmark. I am with my colleague touring the
United States on a project that I believe you would find
interesting. We are searching for someone named Emma Mathilde van
der Bix.”

Larry pushed the red button on his phone,
ending the message.

.

“I think we can do this in two hours,” said
Larry, as they approached Sacramento. “The Lottery Building is
supposed to be close to the Capitol and also by a river.”

December leaned her chair back. “Oh, come
on, silly. Gimme the address.” December’s iPhone soon added a third
female voice to the cabin. Siri’s instructions deposited the
convertible and its crew at the base of a gleaming, mirrored
seven-or-eight story building, with a front that was curved in such
a way as to suggest a great cruise liner somehow beached on the
banks of the American river. It was just after four o’clock.

“Oh,” said Larry. “I wasn’t ready to be here
so fast.”

Lori parked. She and December each got out
and Larry exited, sliding out back-first, having to steady himself
with one hand on the pavement until he could pull out a leg, and
then stand.

“Let’s go get your money, hunny,” said
December.

A mirrored building with little signage
becomes a stimulant or frustrating mirage. Upon December finding a
doorway, opened a crack as she approached, Larry’s frustration
melted into a slight smile. Lori led the way in and Larry followed
December.

Looking over their shoulder as they entered,
they could see that the glass that outside had appeared to be a
mirror was perfectly see-through from the inside.

At the far end of the large chamber was a
long marble counter, behind which sat a young women with very pale
skin and flaming red hair that cascaded over her shoulders like
ropes.

“Hello,” the woman said.

“Hi, I’m Larry.”

“Nice to meet you, Larry.”

“I... I....”

The woman with red hair sat quietly, looking
upon Larry with a gentle smile, as he stammered.

“I won the lottery,” said Larry,
quickly.

“Well, isn’t that wonderful,” she said. She
slid a panel of the marble counter aside to reveal the same “Are
You A Winner?” machine found in retailers selling SuperLotto™ and
MegaMillions™ tickets. “Would you like to check your ticket?”

“I don’t put tickets in a machine,” said
Larry. “I compare numbers to numbers.”

“Oh, of course,” said the woman. “What was
the date of the draw?”

After Larry gave the date of the Saturday,
three days earlier, the redhead suggested Larry back up a few
steps, and as he did so, the front of the counter glowed as a
holographic depiction of the drawing of five ping pong balls and a
mega number ball flickered before them. Larry sneered and waved his
hand through the image.

“No,” he said, sharply. “Please, this is the
ticket,” and he placed it on the counter.

“Sir, wouldn’t you like to sign your ticket,
and complete the other information?” She handed Larry a pen.

Lori looked around and saw, outside the
building, a pair of middle-aged women scanning the exterior of the
building, running their hands over the glass, like mimes.

Larry signed his name, gave an address and
phone number and printed his name and date of birth. “Thank you,”
said Larry. “You really helped me out there.”

“We still don’t know if you are a winner,
sir,” she said, routinely.

Larry reached again for his wallet and – a
zip and pop later – had the slip of winning numbers. “These are
right, right?”

The redhead checked the numbers and said,
yes, they had been for the previous Tuesday’s MegaMillions™
draw.

Larry dropped his ticket onto the counter in
an inelegant dribble from his fingers, and, like a professor giving
a closing argument to the jury, he got flustered, but reasoned,
“So, if the numbers are right, and the numbers match, how much is
it? I think two-hundred-and-thirty-five million dollars.”

The woman with pale skin waited for Larry to
conclude. “Perhaps so,” she said, “but let’s make sure.” She handed
Larry his prize ticket from the previous Saturday and the slip of
winning numbers from the Tuesday drawing. He looked confused.

“But this is for my jackpot,” said Larry. “I
won a bunch of money.”

“On what date, sir?”

“Saturday night. My ticket was for
Saturday.”

“I’m very sorry,” the woman said, “but based
on Saturday’s draw, your ticket is not a winner.”

.

Larry’s father, Calvin, lay buried under the
sand, or stood, as the case may have been, entombed by his son, who
had recruited four of the half-siblings that Calvin had fathered
with Candy to help in the digging operation. Once Calvin was buried
to the neck, and the other kids wandered off, Larry had dug a long
moat that snaked to the water and, with the tide coming in, began
bringing in water that first slowly splashed its way up the moat
and finally, as the tide rose, began filling the area around
Calvin’s neck. Larry leaned in close to his father’s head. “Here’s
another wave,” said Larry.

“Yer not winnin’ the lottery today, boy,”
said Calvin, spitting salt water from his lips, as the receding
wave sucked away the flow of water around his neck.

.

“What’ta’u mean, it’s not a winner?” said
Larry.

The woman handed Larry an official printout
on official lottery orange-and-white paper from a machine that made
official-sounding dot-matrix sounds for the few seconds it took to
spit out a line of numbers and a list of how many people won the
past Saturday. The pyramid of winners was topped with a “-0-” for
those who had 5+Mega. Larry picked up the oil-stained slip
containing a line of numbers that matched his ticket’s third line.
Orange flakes fell from the paper.

“W’ull, what’ta’bout these?”

“They are correct numbers from last
Tuesday’s draw, a week ago tonight,” said the woman. She produced
an orange-tinted slip showing the Tuesday line that also matched
his third line of numbers from Saturday’s draw.