“You’re goin’ to make a great Cowboys cheerleader,” I tell Valentina as I slowly float upward.
“Maybe you’ll get spit out again.”
“Maybe,” I say, but I’m ready to go this time. Heaven’s got to be better than living like this the rest of my life.
I look at the golfer and shout across the room, “Adios, wing nut!” He glances up at me now. I’m tempted to flip him my middle finger, but I’m on my way to heaven and can’t risk it. My feet are level with the top of Valentina’s head when I give her a final wave. “If I don’t get spit out, it was nice knowin’ you.”
Señora Ana Marie Garcia Lopez screeches like a caged monkey, Valentina waves, Tommy gives me a thumbs-up, and Detroit launches forward and grabs my ankles.
“Get back here.”
For a few brief seconds Detroit plays tug-of-war with heaven. “Let go, you psycho.”
“I tried to be nice.” She pulls hard and manages to yank me to the ground. I land on top of her with a satisfying thump.
“Get off me, you fat hillbilly.”
Fat hillbilly! I raise my fist to smack her a good one, but my wrist rises above my head and I float upward again. She stares at me with her loony-tunes eyes, and I think about kicking her in the head. Then I remember that I’m on my way to heaven. What would Jesus do? “I hope you get the help you need,” I tell her. “You’re not wrapped tight.”
“I don’t need help,” she growls, getting to her knees. I’m being pulled up faster now, but she doesn’t give up. She jumps on the couch next to a stunned Valentina and springs at me. One of her feet lands on my shoulder and the other kicks me in the chest as she climbs up my body—or my spirit, or my whatever—like a ladder. “I just need your path.”
“You can’t have it!” I wrap my arms around one of her legs, but she manages to slip through my grasp. She puts one foot on my face, the other on the top of my head, and kicks off as if I’m a springboard. I fall to the floor on my back and look up as her pink toenails disappear through the ceiling. Amid a dazzling spray of sparkles and brilliant light, the tiles slam shut. The last of the glitter rains down on me as the other patients gather around, and we all stare up at the ceiling in stunned silence. “Did that just happen?” I ask everyone and no one, because I’m not quite sure.
The golfer’s face appears above me and he looks even pervier from this angle. “What’s goin’ on here?”
“Detroit pulled me down, then I floated back up, then she jumped on my head and dove through the ceilin’.” I pause and add, “I think.”
He turns his gaze to the others. “How?”
“Marfa was floatin’ up, like she said,” Valentina answers. “Then the evil woman grabbed her legs and pulled her down.”
“I saw ’em both fall to the floor,” Tommy adds.
“I saw that, too.” Clint shakes his head and adds over the sound of Señora Ana Marie Garcia Lopez’s wailing, “I thought for sure Marfa had squashed that lady flatter than a road toad.”
“Flat as a fritter,” Jemma Jennie says, and her cowgirl friend adds, “She ain’t from around here.”
The golfer looks up at the ceiling, then returns his attention to me. “How’d she manage that?”
“How should I know? You’re the concierge.” I get to my feet and pull down my “Don’t Mess with a Texas Girl” T-shirt.
“She was spring-loaded.”
“Maybe it wasn’t Marfa’s time,” Jemma Jennie suggests. “Maybe the lightnin’ made a mistake and struck in the wrong place.”
“That’s one of my big fears,” the other cowgirl confesses. “I don’t want to get sucked up by mistake.”
Señora Ana Marie Garcia Lopez cries louder and Clint puts a comforting arm around her shoulders.
“The portal doesn’t open in the wrong place. If Marfa was bein’ taken up, it was her time,” the golfer says. “No one gets ‘sucked up by mistake.’?”
“Then where’s the skinny blonde?” Clint wants to know.
“She’ll get sent back any moment now,” the golfer answers, and we stare at the ceiling for more than a few moments. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”
“Is she stuck in the ‘in-between’?”
“I don’t know.”