With things in hand—I wouldn’t say stable or good or trustworthy, but in hand nonetheless—I left. I had a long way to go. Maybe I’d fly. I loved to fly . . . the world distant below, heaven just as distant above, and you had a chance to own everything between. I’d been in Vegas less than a year, but the roots were already cramping. I still had things to do, though, and at this moment . . .
Elizabeth was first on my list.
—
When traveling is in your genes, you tend not to carry things with you. It was why I liked all the shinies of the world. I knew eventually I’d have to leave them behind and find new ones wherever I landed next. If I didn’t, I’d get so weighed down that one day I wouldn’t be able to take a single step, much less run or fly. So I treasured my trinkets and gewgaws, as Mama called them, as much as I possibly could. It made them all the more precious for the short time I had them. Sometimes, though, you come across something so perfect and special you can’t just leave it for strangers to find and loot. Those things you squirrel away, hide them from greedy eyes. Safe-deposit boxes would be nice, but as I’d noted, the banks don’t trust you, so why should you trust them?
That’s how I ended up in an old rock cellar with the house a hundred years gone. I’d sealed this particular precious thing very carefully wrapped in a hundred layers of silk and tucked away in a stone box buried in that cellar where no one could find it or touch it or even see it.
I do hear you, you know, judging me? No, I don’t have delusions of pirates, doubloons, and gaudy treasure chests.
I’m not a peculiar strain of hoarder, either.
Why are you making that doubty, pouty face?
I am not a hoarder.
I’m not.
Truly.
Pinkie swear.
Ha! You caught me. I really, really am.
I held the wondrous thing I hadn’t seen in ages in my hands, heard the river in the distance, heard the rustle of trees so green it made Vegas look like a boneyard. I felt the bite of the chilly air and watched a single ray of sun set my iridescent hands alight like a thousand burning rainbows.
Yes . . .
If this didn’t change Elizabeth’s life, nothing would.
—
Finding a bootmaker wasn’t difficult exactly, although these days when ninety-nine percent of footwear is made of the devil spawn of plastic and some sort of biohazard offspring from China, they are few and far between. To find one willing to do the work in two days, and with the material I was providing, would surely make these the most expensive boots Elizabeth had ever worn. Marie Antoinette had diamond-encrusted shoes that were less expensive, but it would be worth it. I’d made a client a promise, and while I broke promises if I had to, I, as I’d told Elizabeth, never broke one related to my work. I had standards . . . just ask my health inspector.
I called home to make sure my boys, all three of them, hadn’t in fact set the bar on fire. Leo snorted, told me Zeke bit a customer but that he had it coming, get off his back already, and hung up on me. He was having a good time. I could tell. Sometimes Leo needed a distraction to keep him from returning to his bad old ways. It was why I poked and prodded him so much. Leo had been my first fixer-upper and he was still a bitch in upkeep, but he was worth it. He’d be good for Zeke and Griffin. There wasn’t anything they could do that would faze him, including burning down the bar.
After that, I killed time on a beach in an only mildly scandalous scarlet bikini and watched as a man—with far less manscaping than needed for the Speedo he was wearing—strutted up and down, flirting (he would say flirting, anyone else would say sexually harassing) with anything female and/or remotely approaching legal age. Later I laughed in the water, tasting salt, as a horny dolphin humped the guy into a near drowning. All right, perhaps CPR was involved and it was a close call, but as concerned as the lifeguard was, I didn’t see any women on the beach crying tears for the pervert. In fact I saw a few waving and taking pictures of the dolphin-love in progress. That and a few banana daiquiris, and my day was finer than frog hair . . . which is something I say only when I have a few banana daiquiris in me. One doesn’t want to be too much like their mama.
The next day I went to the zoo, where I saw a man climb into the lion enclosure shouting that like Daniel in the lion’s den, the Lord would send an angel to save him. I’d always personally been of the belief that those lions Daniel was tossed to simply weren’t hungry that night. But I might’ve been wrong, as the zoo lions looked well fed, almost plump, not hungry in the slightest, and they ate this faithful follower before a single employee could get inside.