The Big God-Help-Me by Judy Colella (red queen ebook txt) 📕

It’s still Monday. That much I know for sure, unless the citizens of Vegas take a perverse pleasure in selling outdated newspapers in those blue boxes on the streets.

I’ve had a meal, and feel better, but not by much. I’m back in Sleazoid Central (the motel room) and have dumped my purse onto the bed. A maid, or maybe a random space alien with opposable thumbs, has made the bed in my absence. I use the words “made the bed” lightly. It looks more like an attempt to cover the gore at the scene of a crime. If I had ever done that to a bed, my mother would have smacked me.

But there it is. And there’s everything that was in my purse. Why did I do this? In the vain hope that I’ll discover a clue, something to fill me in on who I was with, what I did, where I did it, blah, blah, God help me.

Lipstick. My wallet and cell phone. Several coins, a red poker chip, and a safety pin. Small perfume spritz-thingy, a receipt for the coffee I bought in the airport before getting on the plane here. An emery board, the back to an earring but no earring (what?). Keys. Purse lint. That’s it. Only the poker chip holds any promise and I pick it up, hoping to find the name of the casino it’s from somewhere on its surface.

Well, unless the scratch on one of its sides is a pictograph of a casino named “Scratch,” there’s nothing. I toss it back on the bed.

Giggling.

No, not on the bed – how insane! It’s coming from the other side of the door, and I ignore it, figuring there are some chicks wandering around out there in search of a pimp. But then one of the gigglers knocks. What the heck!

When I open the door (no peep-hole, so I thought, why not?), I find myself being giggled at by a girl in spike-heeled sandals, shorts, and a halter top. She has blonde hair that I would bet everything I own has nothing to do with Mother Nature’s coloring (unless there’s a bleaching product for hair called “Mother Nature’s Hair Color”). “Yes?”

“Hee-hee-hee!”

“Okay. Anything else?” This is too weird, even for me.

“Hey, may we come in?”

“We” consisted of Bleach Blanket Bimbo and two others, similarly dressed, one with short, shiny black hair and more makeup than a T.V. evangelist’s wife, and a spike-haired gum-chewing girl whose extreme height is nothing short of scary. And they’re all still giggling.

I find myself wondering if this is some new method of committing a robbery – gain access to the victim’s room, giggle the person into a coma, and then take everything. “Er, why?”

“Oh, come on, Sierra! You know this is part of the whole thing! You have to tell us what you guys did!”

I nearly fall down. “Who the hell are you? And what do you know about – about – about what…” I use a bad word, shake my head, and gape. Not my most intelligent moment, I must say.

They exchange a look – at least that’s what I think they call it when more than one person is sharing a secret, they all know it, and are giving each other silent acknowledgement of the fact.

“Look.” I decide to try one more time, but doubt I’ll get very far. “I don’t recognize any of you. I don’t know who you are. I’m having a bad day, and the last thing I need is you guys being all smug at me. And how do you know my name?”

“Aw, crap!”

The Trashy Trio spin around to see who said this. Simultaneously, I gasp, because I’ve already seen who it is. Gina.

My friend from work.

“Oh, Sierra!”

“Oh, what? Gina, if you don’t come up with a fantastic answer to what’s happening, I’m going to call the hotel manager and tell him I’ve caught four squatters who just told me they’d spent the night without paying!”

All four of them give me a crazy look, then start talking at the same time. I ignore them and return to the bed where I begin sweeping everything back into my purse. When I finish, they’re still yammering, so I go to the closet where, sure enough, the ugly, frilly tuxedo shirt is hanging. I take it out, go to the bed, sit down, and start to cry.

Hey, don’t judge. It’s been a grueling three days, even if I can’t remember the first two.

“Aw, sweetie!” Gina.

I feel her arm go around my shoulders and she gives me a squeeze. “Leave me alone!” I wail.

“But honey, this is all a huge misunderstanding!”

“You’re damn straight it is! I get insulted by your mosquito of a cousin within seconds of landing in Vegas, and then – then – I totally don’t know what then! All I know is that I woke up here this morning, and I’m freaking married to the Jolly Green Giant’s daughter’s prom date,” – I wave lamely at the shirt in my lap – “and I have no idea where to find him, or what my last name is now, or – or – ” Overwhelmed, I sob into Gina’s shoulder.

Her shoulder is shaking, too, but I suddenly realize she isn’t sobbing with me – she’s laughing!

“Oh, no, no! You – you aren’t – HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!”

As if to rub salt into the already agonizing wound, the three witches at the door start laughing now, too. Witches. I could have used a different first letter for that word, so please give me credit for fabulous self-control here.

Their behavior is like a bucket of luke-warm water, and within seconds, I stop crying, determined to get to the bottom of all this nonsense. I pull away from Gina and stand up, sniffling. “Fine. Wanna tell me what’s so hilarious?”

“Maybe I can help.”

Oh, God. It’s Gina’s cousin. Where did he come from? I’m beginning to feel like the hapless heroine in a Marx Brothers movie.

“Tell you what,” the shrimp continues. “Let’s all go get a cocktail or something, and I’ll see if I can shed some light on this. Gina, you’re not capable of being sympathetic here, so please let me do the explaining, okay?”

“Whatever.” She looks at the tableau by the door, then back at me, and starts to guffaw again.

Great. Resisting the urge to insist that the little man wear the big shirt before I allow him to talk to me, I toss the offensive garment on the bed, pick up my purse, and we all leave.

What a day.

“It’s my fault, really.” The cousin – whose name I now know is Percy (named, apparently, after the poet who married the girl who wrote Frankenstein) – is giving me an apologetic shrug as he sits back and grabs his glass. To his credit, the drink doesn’t have a goofy little umbrella in it.

“How so?” My own drink, a diet-something on the rocks, is sweating, untouched, on the table.

“I misunderstood something Gina said, but then the whole name thing got tangled up, too, and that was no one’s fault.”

“Wait, what? What did you just say?”

“Sorry – was I speaking in tongues? I said it was a misunderstanding on my part, and that subsequently, there was a mix-up with your name. Should I have spoken more slowly?”

“Percy, quit being such a jerk.” Gina shook her head, rolling her eyes.

“I heard what you said, but you didn’t make a lot of sense.” A shoe to the side of the head suddenly didn’t seem adequate. “First, what, exactly, did you misunderstand? And what did you mean by the, er, ‘name thing got tangled up’?”

“I was getting to that, O Impatient One.” He took a sip. “When Gina called to tell me I should meet you at the airport, she went on about you needing to have some fun, and then babbled a sisterhood thing. Somehow, the word ‘college’ got thrown into the mix, so I naturally concluded that you were someone who had gone back to college and joined a sorority, that the college was here, in Vegas, and had left before…well, Gina also used the word ‘hazy,’ but I thought she said ‘hazing.’ So I went to the University here, found a sorority that had a new member named Sierra, and told them you’d be here the next day. They said that you – she – whoever this other Sierra is – had somehow managed to get out of her initiation, so they hatched a plan, saying you’d know what the rules were and all that. All I had to do was get you to a certain casino at a certain time and they’d take care of the rest. You see?”

Throughout this rant, I avail myself of my soda, hoping that at some point things will actually begin to make sense. Nothing has, so now I’m glaring. Big time. “Let me ask you something. Are you hearing impaired?”

“Not at all.”

“Really? Then why do you only hear things as if they were being spoken through bad static? It’s pretty clear to me you only listened to about half of what she said and assumed the rest.”

He nods. “That’s fair.”

“No, it isn’t fair. It’s awful! Because you’re such a self-absorbed dweeb, I just experienced the most horrid day of my entire life, well, other than the day I found out my husband had been killed in a stupid biking accident.” I slam my glass onto the table, an action which is apparently connected in some way to the shoes of the waiter, because a mere split second later, he’s standing next to the table pouring more soda into my glass.

“Ooh! Your husband was in a biker gang?”

I stare at the wannabe Living Dead Girl, at her ruby lips parted eagerly, her brown eyes wide and unremarkable under the fringe of black bangs. You’re an idiot, I think at her, then turn away. “It was a bicycle.”

“Gangs use bicycles now?”

Hopeless.

“Anyway,” Percy continues, “that’s what happened. It was a simple misunderstanding.”

I decide to leave that one alone for now – the creepazoid will have to fall asleep sometime, I tell myself. Don’t ask me why I’d tell myself that; it’s not like I plan to hang around and wait. “So then what?”

“Then,” says BBB, “we – hold on. You’re not Sierra MacKenzie?”

“Did you ever meet her?” I ask sweetly.

“Just the once – at orientation when she signed up for Beta Beta Alpha. But there were so many girls that day, I honestly couldn’t remember what she looked like.”

I frown,