“Oh, really?” The woman peered at the photograph.
“How is she?” Anna asked, unconsciously picking at her cuticles.
Nurse Hernandez opened a file. “Here's what she authorized us to tell you: She was hearing a baby's voice in her head.”
“Ruby,” Sam told the nurse matter-of-factly.
“Right,” she confirmed. “That's it. Anyway, we found your friend in the baccarat lounge at the Luxor. Evidently she was harassing the gamblers, telling them to repent and blessing them in Hebrew. In her underwear.”
“Shit,” Cammie muttered. This was way out there, even for Dee.
“The resident on call admitted her for observation. One of our staff psychiatrists will evaluate her today. That's all I can say. You kids might as well go for now. We'll call you again after the doctor has met with Ms. Young.”
Cammie glared at the nurse. “Are you kidding? Dee is like our family. Would you leave your family at the nut house?”
“I assure you this is not—” Nurse Hernandez began.
“Whatever,” Cammie interrupted. “Dee has a perfectly good and perfectly empty suite at the Palms. She'd sleep much better there. We'll watch her like a hawk, we promise.”
Nurse Hernandez shook her head. “I'm sorry. It's against regulations.”
“But she—she can't stay here. Sure, she's a little loony. You're only going to maker her crazier. Dee needs the comforts of home, like twenty-four-hour room service. What do you people serve for breakfast here? Gruel?”
“Cam, calm down,” Adam murmured.
“No, I can't calm down!” Cammie insisted. “We have to get Dee out of here.”
“Tomorrow. At the earliest,” Nurse Hernandez declared. “That's standard procedure here.
Cammie felt like she was going to be sick. This could not be happening to Dee. She couldn't let it happen. She and Sam and Dee were the Three Musketeers in couture. They had power, looks, money.
Sure, they'd drifted apart lately, especially because of that twit Anna Percy—what was she doing here, anyway? She wasn't friends with Dee and would never be. But did anyone ever think that the Three Musketeers never argued? No matter what, they ruled Beverly Hills High School. And the girls who ruled Beverly Hills High ruled the world.
Everyone
knew that.
“Dee asked us to try to reach her parents also, as a courtesy,” the nurse explained. “We've left several voice-mail messages.”
“They're in
Europe
. I
told
you,” Sam reminded her.
“Yes, I heard you, Ms. Sharpe. But until our resident evaluates your friend—”
“There's no reason to wait for the resident. Dee's birthday was last month. She's eighteen. She can sign herself the hell out of here.”
“Not until she's evaluated, she can't,” the nurse retorted. “Now, if you don't mind, I have to get back to this paperwork.”
Cammie was not about to be dismissed so easily. “Excuse me,” she said sweetly. “We're not leaving until we see her.”
The nurse looked from Cammie to Adam to Anna to Sam. She sighed.
“Two of you, that's all. And only because I'm the biggest Jackson Sharpe fan in the world. If she's a little out of it, it's because we gave her a shot of Thorazine a couple of hours ago. Down that hall, last door on the right, room 13-B. Ten minutes.”
“Thank you,” Sam told her, then, wasting not a moment, she yanked Cammie down the hall. There was no conversation about which two of them would go; that was obvious.
The door was open, and Dee was sitting upright in bed inside a small, generic hospital room. White-tiled floor, white walls, a minimum of medical equipment— Dee wasn't even hooked up to an IV. Actually, she looked completely normal. Normal makeup, mussy blond hair, her blue eyes round and alert. The only thing out of the ordinary was her blue hospital gown, which eerily matched her eyes. She was watching TV on a set that was somehow suspended from the ceiling near the far wall—an old return of
Blind Date
with no sound.
When Cammie and Sam walked in, Dee barely acknowledged them. Her eyes flitted immediately back to the television, as if encountering her friends in the psych ward of a hospital far from home was the most normal thing on earth.
“I'm waiting to hear from her,” Dee explained, eyes still on the television. “I have to keep watching. But I'm so sleepy, it's hard.”
“From Ruby?” Cammie asked. She and Sam stood uncomfortably by the door.
“Exactly,” Dee confirmed, eyes still on the TV, where a guy with a goatee was blowing cigarette smoke out of his ears to impress his date. “Right before they gave me a shot, Ruby told me that she'd communicate with me by television.”
Cammie shuddered again but forced herself to stay as conversational as she could. “Dee, the sound isn't on.”
“It doesn't matter. We do it telepathically.” Her eyes went to half-mast, then she yawned. “I'm tired.”
As Dee stretched out and pulled the blanket up to her chin, Cammie and Sam both carried chairs to her bedside. Sam took one hand; Cammie went around the hospital bed to take the other. “Dee? Can you tell us what happened?” Sam asked.
“I was reading the Zohar, and Ruby appeared to me on the page. She told me that the world was coming to an end,” Dee confided, her voice low. “She said I have to save all the sinners. I tried, I really did.”
“At the Luxor?” Sam queried. “In your
underwear
?”
“It wasn't my decision—that's where she told me to go.”
Cammie and Sam shared a look. This was unbelievable, like something out of a movie. So many times, they'd joked to Dee about her needing to get help. Now it wasn't a joke anymore.
“You know, now that I think about it, maybe I'm just another big, fat, ugly sinner. That's why no one wants to be with me. Not Poppy. Not my parents. Not you two, either.”
“That's so not true, Dee,” Cammie insisted quickly. Except that it really was true. Even when Dee's crazi-ness had been milder, Cammie had gone out of her way to avoid her.
Dee closed her eyes. “Remember how happy the three of us used to be?”
“You'll be happy again,” Sam promised. “I swear it. It'll be just the way it used to be. The Three Musketeers, remember?”
“Maybe,” Dee allowed. “They gave me this pill to try to get me to tell them where Ruby is. It made my head fuzzy. Did they give you one?”
Cammie saw Sam surreptitiously wipe a tear away; she hoped Dee was too out of it to notice. She reached over the bed's rail and squeezed her friend's hand, wondering all the while whether there was anything she could have done that would have headed off this moment here in Clark County Hospital. “I suck. I'm so sorry.”
“It's okay,” Dee said softly. “This isn't your fault.”
“No, it isn't,” Sam insisted, her voice cracking. “You needed help. Big time. And you needed me to tell you that. But I was too involved in my own stupid problems to see it.”
“Actually, Sam, she needed me to tell her too.”
“Cammie, the fact is, she's living with me. And my family.”
“Oh, like you were going to make it all better?” Cammie's voice suddenly went cold. “You've been seeing Dr. Fred for how long and you're still a mess.”
“Well, if you ever went to see a shrink, maybe you'd figure out why you keep trying to sabotage the only healthy relationship you've ever had with a guy!” Sam shot back in a low voice, as angrily as she dared. They were way over the ten minutes that the nurse had allotted them; she didn't want them to be kicked out of the room.
Cammie was ready to fire back but managed to focus. “So what's the game plan here? Dee, do you want to go home with us?”
Dee brightened. “Home. That's a good idea.” She started to get out of bed, swinging her legs toward Cammie's side. Her blue hospital gown flapped open, exposing her tiny naked butt, which was four shades lighter than the faux tan on her legs. Cammie grimaced at the sight—it made Dee seem so young. Then she blocked her friend's way.
“But I want to go home,” Dee said, bewildered. “Can't we just walk home?”
“Dee, we're in Las Vegas, remember? Home is Los Angeles. Two hundred and fifty miles away. “You have to stay here now. But not for long,” Sam assured her.
“I can't come with you.” Dee swallowed hard. “That's what you guys always say. That's fucked up.”
Cammie leaned over to hug her friend, then held her tight. “No.
We
fucked up.”
Her eyes met Sam's over Dee's frail, birdlike shoulder, and she waited for Sam to say something. But for once, her oldest friend was rendered speechless.
I
t was early morning when they had returned to the Palms and decided to sleep for a few hours before facing the rest of the day and figuring out what to do with Dee. Anna had set the alarm on the Bose Wave radio on her suite's mahogany nightstand to the single classical music station she could find. It was the second-movement funeral march from Beethoven's Third Symphony, the Eroica, that awakened her. She knew it well and laid in bed until the movement was over, thinking about the crazy happenings of the night before.
Still in the old Trinity sweats she'd worn to bed, Anna padded over to the giant window and drew open the shade. Gray skies and pounding rain greeted her—she could barely see across the road to the Rio Hotel and Casino. As for the Strip, it was out there someplace in the mist. Without the lights, the flash, and the glitz of the Strip in the distance, this little section of Las Vegas felt ordinary indeed.
“Coffee?”
Anna turned: Cyn stood in the doorway, a steaming cup of coffee in her hand.
“Gladly. How'd you get in?” she queried, as she went to her friend and inhaled the heady aroma. “Hey! There's brandy in this.”
Cyn shrugged. “It's Vegas. What happens here, stays here.”
“I wish.” But Anna took a sip, anyway. It was sweet and hot; the brandy took away any bitterness. Really good. “I'm going to take a quick shower.”
“Go for it.”
“Where's Sam?”
“Health club,” Cyn reported. “For a massage and facial.”
Anna smiled as she headed for the shower. “After last night, I can't blame her.”
“After last night, I think I may stay in your suite for the rest of the day,” Cyn confided. “It's a big upgrade on a regular room.”
Anna motioned toward the suite's living room. “Make yourself comfortable; have some more coffee. I'll be out in a bit.”
“Okay if I hit the minibar?”
“Be my guest.”
Twenty minutes later, Anna had dressed and rejoined her friend. She wore no-name jeans, her ratty cashmere sweater, and had stuck her hair up in a ponytail. No makeup. Cyn was braless under a boy's T-shirt, with a man's flowered ascot tossed around her neck. A Chinese brocade miniskirt cascaded over distressed jeans; black velvet Chanel pumps peeked out from underneath. She was the only girl Anna knew who could make that outfit work. In fact, if they were staying for another day, Anna was confident that half of Las Vegas would be buying up Chinese miniskirts and ascots to copy the look.
“What now?' Anna went to the window and looked out. Still pouring rain. If anything, more heavily than before. Cyn got up from the couch to join her. She was nursing a drink that looked like Scotch on the rocks.
“Big news. Sam called while you were in the shower. They're letting your friend out of the hospital. I think you're taking her home.”
“What?” Anna exclaimed. “Since when?”
“Since she signed herself out. They deemed she's not a threat to herself or others so they couldn't keep her. She promised she'd go straight to the psych ward at Cedars-Sinai. You guys are supposed to drop her there. You're meeting downstairs in an hour. Sam wanted to finish her massage first.”
That was just so Sam.
“Crappy day,” Cyn commented, drawing a little circle in the condensation on the window.
“What are you going to do? You and Scott don't have to leave just because we are.”
“Nah, the thrill is gone.”
“I'm sorry if I wrecked this trip for you, Cyn.”
“No, Miss Manners, you didn't. Come on, how could you know your friend was going to short-circuit? It's not that. It's Scott.” She turned away and went to the maroon paisley sofa, where she flopped down and swung her legs up over the back, the same way Anna had seen her do since they were in fifth grade. “I guess I thought coming here would change something between him and me, but it didn't.”
“So are you over?” Anna settled down on the couch next to Cyn and threw a comforting arm around her friend.
“We've been over for a while. It's just that it takes a while to get there and say it. Anyway, the whole relationship thing is highly overrated. Seriously. I mean, what's the point?”
“Love?” Anna ventured.
“I love you more than I'm ever gonna love any guy. And like we used to say in sixth grade—”
“Not in a gay way,” Anna and Cyn mutually recited.
“Exactly,” Cyn nodded. “But the whole you-have-to-be-true-to-me-blah-blah-blah—it never works out. I guess if you're, like, thirty and you want to breed, it makes sense—which, by the way, is a disgusting thought.”
“Being thirty or breeding?”
“Both.”
Anna looped some hair behind her ear. “It seems like the relationship thing for me isn't quite working out, either.”
“The difference is, you want one,” Cyn clarified. She turned to check her reflection in the long mirrored wall that separated the living room from the kitchen of the suite and raked a hand through her messy black hair. Then she pulled her MAC makeup case out of her vintage Chanel purse for a quick repair job.
Do I want a relationship? Anna had certainly failed at her attempts at the friends-with-benefits thing multiple times. Maybe in another lifetime, on another planet, where there had never been a Cyn-and-Scott, she could have had that with Scott. But of course, in this alternate universe, Scott would actually have been attracted to her. One thing he'd said had stayed with her—she'd gotten very used, very quickly, to the idea that any guy she was interested in would be interested in her too. How presumptuous. But his I'm-just-not-that-into-you brush-off still smarted. She couldn't even give herself credit for having taken a risk in telling in the truth; she'd only done it because she'd been hypnotized. Her thoughts went from Scott to Ben, the only boy with whom she'd ever had a real relationship that amounted to anything. How honest had she been with him, really? Did that have anything to do with why he was so clearly rejecting her, not returning her phone calls? It hurt a lot more than what Scott had said, really.