“Raymundo!”
The concierge for the hospital in El Paso appears with his golf club over one shoulder. His hideous mustache moves with his mouth when he says, “Let’s go, Marfa.”
Marfa? “I’m not Marfa.”
“Since Marfa is now you, you’re now Marfa.”
I point to the screen again, but this time I have tacky blue fingernails and pudgy hands. I look down at a “Don’t Mess with a Texas Girl” T-shirt, big boobs, and bigger thighs squeezed into tight jeans. I pat myself down just to make sure what I’m seeing is real. “Am I fat? I haven’t had a potato or a crumb of bread for ten years. I work out five days a week. I can’t be fat.”
Ingrid shakes her head. “Don’t mess this up, Raymundo,” she says, before I’m pulled through a sudden crack in the tulips and land in a plain hall.
“Welcome back,” the golfer says.
I look around and see Noah parting the Red Sea in the fish tank. Heaven Can Wait is on the television and people are chatting it up or playing cards. I know this place. For all the trouble I’ve gone through, I’m back where I started.
The golfer bangs the head of his club on the floor and says, “Can I have all y’all’s attention?”
So, I know where I am—but why am I here?
“This is Marfa, the new apprentice concierge at UMC El Paso.”
“Noooooo!”
15
For my first morning away from the strict schedule that has controlled the past five months of my life, I would have liked to have slept in. Surfaced when I wanted and had coffee in bed, but no one asked me what I wanted. I get up early and barely have enough time to do my hair before I’m driven to Dr. Barb’s with Marv and Claire. Donovan picks us up in a white Cadillac Escalade with four cushy seats in back. Two face front; the other two face the rear. There’s a television and minibar, and guess who gets stuck across from Marv and Claire, wondering if it’s too early to crack a bottle of something?
“We thought it best that people don’t know everything about your absence,” Marv tells me, and I hear the cover story for the first time.
“When asked, we’ve said you were vacationing on the Amalfi Coast. The weather turned nasty, as it does, and you fell and hit your head.”
“That’s how you lost your memory,” Claire adds. “You have been at a memory care rehabilitation hospital, but all efforts failed, and you are back home.”
“Which ‘memory care rehabilitation hospital’?”
“No one will ask, but if they are so ill-mannered, say it’s your personal business and leave it at that,” she answers.
“Or that you don’t remember.”
“Are y’all jokin’?”
They both look at me with twin expressions of confusion.
“No.”
“Why would we joke about this situation?”
Maybe because it’s convoluted. I want to tell them that you have to keep this amnesia stuff simple (or ASS for short) so it won’t trip you up. I learned that in Dr. Lindbloom’s office, but apparently I’ve spent the past five months at a memory care rehabilitation hospital, so what the heck do I know?
I understand the reasoning behind the cover story. I’d rather people not find out Edie tried to kill herself and got shipped off to a mental institution. That’s embarrassing for both of us. I look out the window and grab my squeezy ball out of a black Chanel bag I stole from Edie’s closet. To avoid a second clothing faux pas, I’ve dressed in black pants and a plain black sweater, as if there was a real choice. A majority of Edie’s clothes are either light blue or black, like she had a dress code or a fear of color. Thank God her shoes aren’t as boring. I picked out bright pink pumps with silver spikes lining the toes and four-inch heels. You can take a girl out of Texas, but you can’t take away a Texas girl’s shine.
I’ve never been a woman partial to heels, given that I inherited Daddy’s wide feet, but Edie’s feet are thin and slide right in snug as a bug. I have a newfound appreciation for stilettos, which make my legs look a mile long and my butt look amazing.
Once in Doc Barb’s office, I turn my ankle this way and that so the patent leather picks up the glimmer of the lights. The pointy toes and spikes on these Alexander McQueens make me feel like a lethal weapon.
“What do you think, Edie?”
I look at the doc sitting at her desk, then at Marv and Claire across the room. Since Livingston, I’ve picked up a bad habit of tuning people out. “Come again?” Which makes me realize how much I miss sitting around gabbing like I used to.