Jess Lourey - October Fest

His mouth set in a line that made clear he’d never gallivanted a day in his life and that I best shut my piehole, but anxiety kept me talking well past the point of good sense. “Or a candy striper? Hard to remember. Hey, have you had a chance to talk to Kennie since you got back? You two used to date, didn’t you?”

He took his arm away, and I slumped a little but kept standing. The sparkles I’d seen upon shooting up too quickly slowly receded. And I still hadn’t answered his question. “So why do you want to know where I was last night?”

For a moment, I didn’t think he was going to respond, but he finally said, “Just routine questioning related to an investigation.”

“What’s the investigation about?” I noticed the badge on this uniform was smaller than his police chief badge, but his gun looked just as big.

“A possible murder.”

“I didn’t kill anybody.” I turned off my sassy box quick-like and attempted a relaxed, “How ridiculous would that be?” smile. It felt jack-o-lanternish. That’s when I realized I’d arranged my questions in the wrong order. “Who was killed?”

“Why don’t you tell me where you were last night, and I can continue the investigation.”

The only autonomic function I could rely on, apparently, was my liar. “I spent the night with Mrs. Berns.” Only a half-lie, really.

The corner of his mouth twitched, either a smile being born and killed or frustration seeking an outlet. “Really. Where?”

“Not in the same bed, if that’s what you’re asking.” For the love of Pete, had my brain gone on a cruise, leaving my mouth to fend for herself? She didn’t do so well alone.

“At the Big Chief Motor Lodge?”

It took all my willpower not to blanch. “I’ve heard that place is really nice. Is it open already?”

“Because a source tells me that four people were on the scene before police arrived: a motel employee, an elderly woman wearing Frederick’s of Hollywood gear, her boy candy, and a brunette in her 30s who, I quote, ‘looked like she’d been rode hard and put away wet.’” That twitch again at his lips.

I swelled up, indignant and about to protest before I realized I probably still looked that way. “I’ve got a house right outside of town, Ch-… Deputy Wohnt. Why in the world would I want to stay in a hotel?” Had he always been so muscular? I thought I remembered him as a little rounder in the belly.

I saw an eyebrow appear briefly above the mirrored glass. “I wondered the same thing.”

I pursed my lips and shook my head in agreement so it looked like I was on his wondering team. Finally, prudence had slapped a leash on my tongue.

The radio on his shoulder squawked a code, and he responded tersely. “On my way.” He returned his attention to me. “We have more talking to do. Everyone who was at the motel last night has been asked not to leave town. I’d recommend, if you are one of them, that you also choose not to leave.”

Where was I going to go? Besides to hell. In a hand basket. I gave him the thumbs up. “Is that all? ’Cuz I’ve got work to do.” I didn’t even know what time it was. Maybe I could go home.

“No, I’m afraid that isn’t all.” His demeanor shifted, and for the first time, I saw a hint of human in him. “Mrs. Berns got in a car accident late this morning. She’s in the ICU at the Douglas County Hospital.”

I was four when I entered my first hospital. My mom took me to visit a friend who’d had her appendix removed. It was exciting. People bustled down long hallways, fresh flowers were displayed everywhere, and a good percentage of the population got to lie around in their pajamas and watch TV. The antiseptic smell raised some prehistoric hackles, but that fear instinct was overridden when I spotted the free hot soup-hot tea-hot chocolate-hot coffee dispenser in the waiting room. Chicken noodle soup that came in a box was a treat reserved for when I was very sick, and here, in the middle of this busy room where no one would notice what a little girl did, was all the yellow broth I could walk away with.

Looking back, even in a pre-litigious society, the Hot Drink Caddy was a banana peel next to pit of razor blades. On one side, it meted out your powder of choice-the dehydrated chicken broth was the color of acid sunshine, the hot cocoa powder a purplish brown, the coffee a grainy mahogany shade, and the tea a black powder with murky bits of dried lemon peel. Anyone waiting for news of their loved one and in need of some soothing hot beverage had simply to pull the Lucite handle on the front of the appropriate powder and a chute would open delivering a sandy, slinking mound into the bottom of a paper cup, available in the Dixie cup dispenser attached to the machine.

Getting the powder was the easy part. The hangman’s noose lay on the opposite side in the form of a modified hot water dispenser, the kind that you find on an industrial coffee machine, just a simple silver tap that delivered water roughly the temperature of the center of the earth. In retrospect, the mastermind who had invented the Hot Drink Caddy must have sensed some element of danger, some dearth of common sense vaguely tied to pairing paper cups with rushing volcanic liquid. That was the only explanation for why he had made the tap lower than average, about waist height for an adult male. Unfortunately, this put it at neck height for a four-year old girl unable to resist the unorthodox attraction of sipping rehydrated chicken broth from a paper cup between meals in a hospital.

In an era when seatbelts didn’t retract on their own and child safety seats were for dollies, it wasn’t hard to sneak away from your mom. Twist and skip, and there I was, white paper cup in hand, medicine-yellow powder sifting down the chute. I can still smell the acrid, sweaty chicken broth, all bright and rich, puffing as it hit the bottom of my cup with a soft sound, like a moth falling to earth. Cup in hand, mom busy at the information desk, I walked the Green Mile to the scalding water dispenser. I earned a friendly smile from a man waiting his turn, but that’s the only acknowledgment I received before I stood on tiptoes to lift the red rectangle on the back of the silver spigot and let flow hissing, steaming, boiling water two inches behind my cup and onto my chest. I howled but didn’t let go of the spigot, and the fiery water kept flowing. I don’t know if it was the man behind me who yanked my hand away, or my mother after she flew over the heads of people seated in the waiting room to gather me in her arms without ever touching the ground between.

The next hour was a flurry. I remember tears, some mine, salve that smelled like banana Vaseline, and white bandages that I couldn’t take off for ten days encircling me like a mummy. And that’s forever what hospitals would be for me. Shitty places that looked like paradise until you tried to fill a paper cup with fake chicken broth, and then watch out. Burn, scream, and in you go.

“I’m here for Mrs. Berns. Can I see her?” I didn’t want that desperation in my voice. If I wasn’t scared, then there wouldn’t be a reason to be scared. The hospital felt huge and cold. Nobody here would understand how much was at stake.

The woman smiled vaguely from behind her long, speckled laminate countertop, finishing what she was typing on her computer before glancing at me. She had an innocuous face, the Minnesota-bland countenance of a woman who dreamed of a world where people understood that she didn’t gossip because she liked it, but rather because it was her duty to help others. “Are you family?”