Shane looked up at Elijah in surprise.
“I know what you’re thinking.” Elijah cringed. He’d just admitted his delusion to Shane. Maybe it would pass for a figure of speech. “I have a doctor. I’ve been diagnosed. All I need is my medicine. If you take me to the hospital, they’re liable to lock me up in a mental institution.”
Shane was thinking that might be for the best.
Elijah didn’t answer this time. Repeated verbal protestations of his friend’s imagined thoughts would only land him in the loony bin sooner. He pulled his phone from his pocket, glanced at the screen, and clicked it on. “Hi, Mom. How’s Key West?”
“Don’t you hi Mom me,” she growled. “You were at the casino pharmacy tonight.”
“I was,” he acknowledged.
“And at noon,” she said. “And this morning. And last night. You’ve been in there so many times that they just called me on vacation to ask me if you’re having a flare-up.”
“Of course I’m having a flare-up.” Suddenly self-conscious, he glanced down the hall to make sure Rob’s bedroom door was still shut. He lowered his voice. “The pharmacy’s out of my medicine. They’re expecting a shipment.”
“Then you just pipe down and wait for the shipment,” his mom seethed. “Let them call you when it comes in. Pitching fits all over the casino won’t get it there any faster.”
“I haven’t been pitching fits all over the—” He stopped when Shane’s eyebrows went up. Elijah had raised his voice again.
“You can’t let the whole casino know you have MAD,” his mom insisted. “What are you trying to do, get me fired and get yourself trapped at the Res? I struggled to get out of the Res. You never lived there. You don’t know how good you have it. Blah blah blah Res blah blah blah.”
As always, Elijah tuned out when his mom brought up the reservation. He was so ignorant of the customs of her Native American family that these threats never had the effect he thought his mom intended. But they’d certainly had the effect of driving him out of her house the second he graduated from high school four years ago.
“Res Res Res blah blah blah,” she went on. “And can’t I leave town for a vacation without you stirring up trouble?”
Elijah did feel bad about this. It was unfortunate his medicine had gone missing during his mom’s trip, and worse that the pharmacy had disturbed her. But his MAD was hereditary, and if his mom didn’t want a crazy son, she shouldn’t have hooked up with his crazy dad. Instead of mentioning this, he repeated, “How’s Key West?” in a level tone, hoping she’d hear that she was the one who sounded like a nutcase in comparison.
She giggled. “What happens in the Keys stays in the Keys.”
“Great!” he said. “I look forward to not hearing about it when you get back.”
“Okay, honey.” Her tone softened. “I didn’t mean to be sharp with you. Are you going to make it?”
“Sure,” he lied. “My Mentafixol will probably be at the pharmacy tomorrow. I can survive until then.”
He and his mom exchanged a few more words, but he’d stopped paying attention. Shane was fingering the opening of the Frank Sinatra song “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” on his guitar, gazing at Elijah.
Elijah had the strangest sensation of standing in the kitchen, listening to his mom on the phone, smelling the Tuna Helper begin to scorch, and seeing himself in Shane’s mind at the same time. He watched himself in his UNLV LACROSSE T-shirt, phone to his ear, in the middle of a kitchen that hadn’t been remodeled since the house was built in 1970. Nothing unusual about this scene, except that Elijah was reading Shane’s mind to witness it.
Talking to his mom and watched closely by his best friend, Elijah had never felt so alone.
Holly dove through the open door of the limo and yelled, “Go!” as if Rob were in hot pursuit. She braced herself against the seat, anticipating that the limo would screech into motion. Any second now.
The limo stayed put. Kaylee, on the backward seat facing Holly, typed on a laptop balanced across her knees. Though it was 11 p.m., she still wore the stylish dark suit she’d slipped on early that morning before leaving their apartment for work, just a shadow of cle**age peeking from beneath her gold silk blouse. Even her white-blond hair maintained its stylish fringe. With a calm glance up at Holly, she reached over to tug the heavy door shut, then knocked behind her on the glass pane separating them from the chauffeur. Obediently the limo eased down the street.
“So, did you make another date with Rob?” she asked.
With a sigh, Holly flopped over and stretched out on her seat. “Ha-ha. Do you think I overreacted?”
“What exactly did he do?”
Staring up at the dome light, and bracing herself again as the limo gently swayed around a corner, Holly recounted Rob’s quick descent into creepy.
“He did what?” Kaylee exclaimed when Holly got to the part where Rob shot a hole in the ceiling. “A trained cop made that mistake? Now I’m paranoid.” Kaylee pulled her own pistol from the holster on her hip, popped the clip out, and examined it with one eye shut.
“Put that thing away,” Holly said quickly. “It was an accident. He wasn’t violent, just rude. Jumping out the bathroom window probably wasn’t the best decision. I think I’m paranoid because of my . . . you know.”
Kaylee glanced around at the chauffeur behind glass, then asked softly, “MAD?”
Holly cringed at the acronym. Her mom had done an excellent job impressing upon her the absolute necessity of secrecy when it came to her mental illness. But as head of security at the casino, Kaylee knew anyway. The casino employed Holly and tolerated her, but they considered her a threat. Her parents had said they were letting her move into the apartment with Kaylee because Kaylee would protect her from fans, but Holly suspected it was really so Kaylee could keep tabs on her.
“Yeah,” Kaylee said thoughtfully, “I think you might overreact sometimes because you’re hyperaware of your own problem, and you’re terrified of what you might do if you got in a sticky situation.”
“I meant that maybe my Mentafixol doesn’t take care of all my symptoms.” Speaking of which, it was that time of night. Holly fished in her purse for the bottle of Mentafixol, shook a pill into her hand, and rattled the three pretty gold pills left in the bottle. She would need to get a refill from the casino pharmacy in a few days. Then she reached beneath her, opened the refrigerated compartment built into the base of the seat, and felt around for a bottle of water.