Page 25 of Hotshot Mogul

It was five minutes to eight. I grabbed my keys, wallet, phone and sunglasses and went downstairs. Ashley was still on duty. She smiled. “You look better. Is everything okay with your room?”

“Yes,” I smiled.

“I’m off-duty in five minutes.” She dropped her voice. “There’s a coffee shop close. It’s better than that stuff in there.” She pointed to the hotel dining room. “I’m headed there. You probably have a long day ahead.” She tilted her head, lifting her curtain of dark hair and exposing her neck.

“Thanks, but I’m in a rush. I’ll just grab something here. Also, I have a girlfriend.”

Did I? Ashley puffed her lips in a pretty pout. “Well, I’ll be on-duty again tonight, if you need anything.”

“Thanks.” I strode into the dining room and filled my plate from the breakfast buffet. I ate half of whatever it was without tasting it and gulped the bitter, watery coffee. I used my phone for directions to the hospital, since the rental nav and phone charge system didn’t work. I barely had enough battery for that. I had left my phone charger in my Jeep parked at Detroit Metro, and had forgotten to buy another. I needed to hear Anneliese’s voice, and I needed what was left of the phone charge to get to the hospital. Damn, damn, damn.

But I knew she was safe at Callie’s. Callie and Rufus were good people. Grenmann and Isolde were, well, different. I couldn’t say exactly how. Maybe it was a cultural thing.

Why would people from a tiny country, a self-governing island, care about my development? It didn’t add up. I would have to call Kathy in the Planning Department tomorrow to postpone my presentation to the city commission. That meant I wouldn’t get shovels in the ground until next year. The investors would shit a cow. But Mom came first. I dumped my dishes, gulped down the rest of the shitty coffee, and headed out.

I wouldn’t have found the hospital on my own without the navigation app on my phone. I bought a bouquet of flowers at the gift shop and made my way to Mom’s room. Three doctors in white coats were talking to her. She was frighteningly pale and looked worried. Otherwise, my beautiful Mom looked the same as always.

Mom peered past the docs. “Brucey! Darn, I mean Bruce.” She glanced at the docs. “Our son.” She smiled. My vision blurred with tears. I let them fall. Mom held out her hand, the one Dad wasn’t holding.

I set down the bouquet and went to her. The doc closest to her smiled. “I love pink roses. As we told your parents: surgery, a stent, isn’t indicated yet. We would treat this with a combo of statins and blood thinners. She can also do out-patient rehab.”

She turned back to Mom and Dad. “It’s fortunate that you recognized the signs and came in right away.”

Mom looked at Dad with such love, I felt I was intruding. The story of my life. “My husband didn’t give me a choice.”

“That said, full recovery will take a while—several weeks, or even months,” the doctor said.

“Let’s have a listen,” the doc next to Mom said. Dad raised an eyebrow and looked pointedly at the machines Mom was hooked up to.

The doc shrugged and laughed. “I’m old-school. I like to listen the old-fashioned way.” I had to let go of Mom’s hand and move away so he could get close enough. “Sounds good. If the results come back the way we expect, and you continue to do well, you could go home tomorrow.”

Dad expelled a long breath, shut his eyes, then kissed Mom’s forehead.

“I did have a couple questions I’d like to ask in private,” Mom said.

When Dad made to leave, she shook her head. “No, darling, stay.”

I got out fast. The hospital hummed around me. She was probably going to ask about having sex. Growing up, I was the only kid I knew whose parents were batshit crazy in love with each other. I couldn’t count the number of times I’d come home early to hear them behind closed doors. What they had was the stuff of dreams. Even with Diana, I knew we didn’t have anything close to what Mom and Dad had. It was different with Anneliese, though. I was different.

The docs walked out. I looked around the corner before I went back in. Dad held Mom in his arms with her cheek pressed to his chest. “I love you, so much,” he murmured. Coffee—I needed more and they needed me gone for a while.

***

Anneliese

Callie explained that the TV show I was watching was I Love Lucy. It was almost one hundred years old and one of the first TV shows produced. The captions were at the bottom of the screen. Two women, Lucy and Ethel, were in a place that made candy. They didn’t know how to do it, but they pretended that they did. I laughed and laughed.

Callie wiped her wet hands on a small towel and sat next to me. “This is one of the funniest TV shows in history. The premise that you don’t know how to do a job, but you try anyway, is universal. Some things never change.”

When Lucy shoved candy down her blouse and into her hat, I laughed harder. It ended too soon. “What is their real story, Ricky and Lucy?”

Callie passed me the plate of chocolate chip banana muffins that she had put on the low table earlier. It tasted light and chocolatey. “I’ve seen documentaries and read Lucy’s autobiography,” Callie said as she took a muffin.

“They loved each other. His real name was Desi. But they couldn’t make it work as husband and wife in real life, just on the camera. He went with other women while they were together. It broke her heart. And he didn’t stop when he knew it hurt her. So, they ended it and married other people. But they never stopped loving each other, according to their daughter.”

“They look so happy.”

Callie patted my arm, stood, and turned off the television. “Ah, the magic of television. All problems solved in the final scene, on camera. Too bad real life doesn’t work that way.”

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