She’d quit gossip completely to take a job as a staff writer for The Weekly News of the Universe, one of those black-and-white tabloids that claimed Elvis was alive and well and living on Mars. No more rumor or scandal. Now she made up fictional stories. Under the pen name Madilyn Wright, she was the most popular writer at the paper, and she loved it.
That is, until two months ago, when it seemed she’d hit an invisible wall. She couldn’t ignore it, couldn’t go through it, and couldn’t see to go around it. She was stuck. She couldn’t seem to hide from it or get lost in the bizarre stories she made up in her head. She hadn’t been able to write a decent sentence for a while now. Hope figured a psychiatrist could tell her what was wrong with her, but she also figured she already knew.
Her editor had become extremely anxious and had suggested Hope take a break. Not because he was a hell of a guy, but because she made him look good. She also made the paper a lot of money, and they wanted their most popular reporter back, churning out the strange and unusual.
Walter had even gone so far as to choose her vacation destiny, and the paper had paid the six months’ lease on the house. Walter told her he’d picked Gospel, Idaho, because of the fresh air. That was what he’d said, but he hadn’t been fooling anyone. He’d picked Gospel because it looked like the sort of place where Bigfoot hung out. Where people were routinely abducted by aliens, and where weird cults danced naked beneath a full moon.
Hope sat up on the edge of the bed and sighed. She’d agreed to Walter’s plan because she recognized that her life had become stagnant, a rut she no longer enjoyed living in. She needed a new routine. She’d needed to get out of L.A. for a while. Take a break and, of course, put the entire Micky the Magical Leprechaun fiasco behind her. She needed to clear her head of that whole trial.
Without much enthusiasm, she rose, changed into a pair of flannel shorts and a Planet Hollywood T-shirt, then returned to her seat in front of the laptop. With her fingers poised above the keyboard, she stared at the blinking cursor. Silence surrounded her, heavy and complete, and before she knew it, she’d lowered her gaze to the ugly sculpted carpet beneath her feet. It was without a doubt the grossest carpet she’d ever seen, and she spent fifteen minutes trying to determine if the colors were supposed to run like that, or if a previous guest had dropped some pizza.
Just when she concluded that the carpeting was supposed to look splotched with deep red, she caught herself procrastinating and forced her attention back to the screen.
She stared like a hypnotized cobra, counting each blink of the cursor. She counted two hundred and forty-seven flashes when a shriek split the still night and propelled Hope to her feet.
“For the love of God,” she gasped, her heart lodging in her throat. Then she realized it was her Viper alarm and dug into the bottom of her purse for the transmitter hooked to her key ring. She shoved her feet into her sandals, then ran outside and wove her way through the small parking lot filled with pickups, minivans, and dusty SUVs with kayaks strapped to the tops.
The manager of the Sandman stood by the hood of Hope’s Porsche. The sponge rollers were still in her hair, and a deep scowl narrowed her eyes as she watched Hope approach. Fellow guests looked out their windows or stood in the doorways of their rooms. Dusk had settled over Gospel, painting deep shadows across the rugged landscape. The town appeared laid-back and relaxed, except for the six tones of the Viper piercing the calm. Hope pointed the transmitter at her car and disengaged the alarm.
“Did you see anyone trying to break into my car?” she asked as she came to stand in front of Ada Dover.
“I didn’t see anything.” Ada placed her hands on her hips and tipped her head back to look up at Hope. “But I about choked on a chicken bone when that thing went off.”
“Someone probably touched the door handle or the windows.”
“I thought it was the alarm going off down at the M and S Market, so I called Stanley and told him someone was breakin‘ into his store and to get down there huckuty buck.”
“Oh, great,” Hope groaned.
“But he says he doesn’t have an alarm. Just the signs and such so people think he does.”
Hope didn’t know Stanley, but she doubted his lack of security was something he wanted spread around town.
“I was just about to call the sheriff’s Dispatch,” Ada continued, “but decided to find out where all the racket was coming from first.”
The last thing Hope needed was to have the sheriff dragged to the Sandman, not after she’d assured him he wouldn’t even know she was in town. “But you didn’t call, right?” In L.A., no one called the police for a car alarm. On any given day, chances were good one was going off in a parking lot somewhere. Chances were just as good the police were driving by and not even bothering to stop. Didn’t these people know anything?
“No, and I’m glad I didn’t. I’d have felt real stupid. As it is, I just about died on that chicken bone.”
Hope stared at the shorter woman in front of her; night was rapidly falling and she couldn’t see much more than the outline of rollers on her head. The cool air raised the hairs on Hope’s arms, and she knew she should feel a little bit bad that her Viper had caused Ada Dover to choke, but honestly, what kind of idiot chewed on a chicken bone? “I’m sorry you almost died,” she said, even though she sincerely doubted the woman had been close to death. She glanced over her shoulder and was relieved to find that the motel guests had gone back inside and had shut their curtains.
“That thing isn’t going to go off again, is it?”
“No,” Hope answered and returned her attention to the motel manager.
“Good, ‘cause I can’t have that thing screeching and waking up the other guests all night. These people pay good money for a quiet night’s rest, and we just can’t have that sort of ruckus.”
“I promise it won’t go off,” Hope said, her thumb itching to engage the Viper. She turned to leave, with Ada Dover’s parting shot trailing after her:
“If it does, you’ll have to leave, huckuty buck.”
The woman had Hope over a barrel and she knew it. She would have loved to tell her to kiss her huckuty buck, whatever the hell that meant, but there was only one other hotel in town and Hope was sure it was as full as the Sandman. So she kept her mouth shut as she walked to her room and shut the door behind her. She tossed her keys into her purse and returned to her seat in front of her laptop.
Entwining her fingers on top of her head, she scooted down in her chair. The night before, she’d stayed at the Doubletree in Salt Lake City. She clearly remembered waking that morning in the nice, normal hotel, but at some point she must have driven into the twilight zone where women ate chicken bones.
A slow smile curved her mouth, her hands dropped to the keyboard, and she wrote:
INSANE WOMAN CHOKES TO DEATH
ON CHICKEN BONE
During a ritualistic ceremony, bizarre chicken worshiper Dodie Adams…
The next morning, Hope rose early, took a quick shower, and dressed in jeans and a black tank top.
While her hair dried, she pulled on her boots, then plugged the telephone line into the side of her laptop and fired off her chicken bone story. It wasn’t Bigfoot, but it was good enough to print in next week’s edition. Most important, she was writing again. That she had Ada Dover to thank didn’t escape her, and the irony made her smile.