“Ladies, it’s too early in the morning for this,” a gray-haired man standing over the stove in pressed slacks and a crisp button-down shirt topped with a white apron says. He’s scrambling eggs but looks like someone should be doing it for him.
I’m dizzy with confusion, so I take a seat next to the old woman at the counter. The creases around her lips are stained with decades of lipstick. Her face is familiar.
She was on TV for something. An actress? A news reporter. No.
She was married to a famous televangelist! She would cry on cue and ask for money. Her dogs had collars with real diamonds. She was old even then, but old in the way everyone over forty is when you’re in your teens.
“Juniper Haskell?” I ask.
“Is that who I am?” she asks while taking a sip of coffee. “Lucky-fucking-me.”
“Oh, no,” I whisper. The others have moved onto a conversation about Elle’s glorious-and-gone pop star career.
“Look at those girls. They’re both young and have great bodies, yet here I am. Juniper Haskell—old woman with too much makeup and a terrible dye job.” She looks me up and down and says, “Still want to touch my tits?”
Any remnant of my boner has evaporated.
“No, thank you.” I feel kind of sorry for her. Maybe I should at least look at her tits.
“We have to give these assholes the slip,” she says. “Dylan Pine is a train ride away.”
“I, uh,” I say. I should speak clearly, should agree with her. She is right after all. But my brain can’t make sense of Naomi being in this body.
Back in her career prime, Juniper would appeal to the camera and drain money from old folks trying to buy their way into Heaven. Her face taking up the entire screen with black tears running down her cheeks, she would go on and on about God’s love and how she and her husband needed money to further God’s causes.
“Stop staring at me like that. I know what I look like.” She looks down into her coffee mug. “At least the coffee is good. Let’s get this shit done so I can get out of this body.”
“What are you two all cozy about?” The girl who definitely is not Naomi says.
“Honey,” Naomi says as Juniper in the strong southern accent I remember from my youth. “Andy here has offered to drive me to the train station. My son called this morning, and he needs me right away.”
“Oh, hell no.” The woman with a clipboard walks toward us while waving her hands at the cameramen. “You cannot leave here today. You’ll be breaking your contract and I’ve had enough of your bullshit.”
“You can’t keep me here against my will. I’ll tell everyone that you’re keeping us prisoner.” Juniper smirks at the producer and then says, “Americans would hate to know that you kept a poor old woman away from her ailing son. How would that look for your little program?”
The producer’s moxie dissolves in front of our faces.
Oh, yeah. It’s Naomi.
“Andy can’t take you. He needs to finish the scene with McKenna,” the producer says quietly.
“I’m not filming anything with this asshole today,” the busty girl whose name is apparently McKenna says.
The producer throws down her clipboard and rips off her headset.
“FINE!” she stomps out of the room as the crew members make feeble attempts to stifle their laughter.
“I need to find some shoes,” I say.
“And some car keys, numb nuts,” Naomi says.
“Does anyone have a car we can borrow?” I direct the question to the entire room.
The only answers I get are shrugs and mumbles.
“Come on, please,” Naomi says. Tears erupt from her eyes and roll down her cheeks. “My son,” she says between choking sobs, “needs his mama.”
Two male and one female crew members reach into their pockets and pull out keys.
“Whose car is the fastest?” she asks while wiping her tears.
“I have a Camaro,” the female says. “Be gentle with her, okay? She’s my baby.”
“Thank you, child,” Naomi says as I take the keys. “One day you’ll have a real baby and I hope someone repays you this kindness.”
The woman scrunches her eyes together and nods. “You’re welcome?”
Chapter 29
This Camaro would have been the answer to all my prayers in high school. Instead I had an old Nissan. It was fine, but it wasn’t a Camaro with a low growl and tinted windows.
“What’s this?” Luke asks. He has a small black rectangle in his hand.
“A phone, maybe?” It’s not the kind of I had when I died, but I don’t know what else it could be.
“No way! This is like some sci-fi shit.” He pokes at it until the screen lights up with a photograph of Andy.
“He is his own wallpaper?”
“How do I use this thing? It looks like I need a code.”
“No idea.” I pull the GPS screen from the front window and shove it toward him. “Find us a train station.”
“How?” He turns the GPS around like the directions might be on the back.
“For fuck’s sake.” I snatch it from him and push buttons until I find the “transportation” section. The train station is less than ten miles away. “I looked at a schedule before I left my room this morning. There’s a train leaving in thirty minutes,” I say as I put the car in gear and pull out of the parking lot.
“How much time to we have left? We were asleep for part of it, right?”
I remember the necklace and put my right hand on my neck. I breathe a sigh of relief when my fingers make contact. I look down quickly, so I don’t wreck the car. Even a fender bender could be a disaster.
“Nineteen hours.”
“Okay,” he says.
I step on the gas. The feeling of the powerful car under my control is decadent after not having even a body to control for so long.
Luke fiddles with the radio and it seems like we’re on a leisurely, fun car ride. My shoulder catches for no reason and I remember that this body is nearing its final destination.
“Juniper-fucking-Haskell,” I say.
Luke looks up from the radio and says, “To tell you the truth, I was a little disappointed.”
“You were? Try having arthritis and saggy skin.”
“Yeah. Sorry.” His perfectly manscaped eyebrows jump and he says, “Oh, shit. Do we have any money?”
“I don’t know.” In my rush, I hadn’t thought to look. Apparently, he hadn’t, either. But I did bring my purse. Or, Juniper’s purse. I grab it from where I have it wedged between the seat and the door and thrust to toward Luke. “See if there’s anything in here.”
Luke unzips the designer leather bag and pulls out small lotion bottle. “Estrogen cream?”
“Stay on task, please.” Is estrogen cream in my future if I come back as a female? No wonder Doris chose to be a male.
He pulls out a teal snakeskin wallet and opens it. “Two hundreds and a fifty.” He rifles around a bit and says, “ID, American Express, and Mastercard.”
“Do you have ID?” I ask.
Luke puts the wallet back in the purse and reaches into his pants pockets. “I don’t have anything.”
“Hopefully we can rely on our celebrity. I’m guessing you’re a celebrity because you’re here, but you weren’t famous when I was alive.”
He smiles at me and his eyes drop to my chest.
“Really?”
“I thought it would make you feel better about your body.”
“Gross.”
“If it helps, I jerked off to you once or twice when I was in junior high. But I pretty much jerked off to every woman who wasn’t a relative. And maybe a couple of older cousins.”
“Thanks,” I say. The train station is within my sights.