Sammy Keyes and the Hollywood Mummy (25 page)

And I'm starting to get mad at my mother, because what does she think she's doing, toasting and drinking wine with those jewels on, anyway?

And then her glass drops. Just
clink!
it falls right out of her hand and disappears onto the floor. Max reaches across the table and grabs her hand, and he's looking into her eyes, talking to her. Her head's still moving, but it's not nodding in conversation, it's kind of rolling around slowly. Like she's having trouble holding it up.

Now, I know society has rules about things. You don't climb over walls and jump into restaurants. Especially not in a pouffy dress so you flash the world your underwear. But in emergencies, well, sometimes you have to break the rules.

This was one of those times. Definitely one of those
times. My mother wasn't drunk. She was drugged. And when I figured out what was going on, I cried,
“Nooooo!”
and went flying over the banister into the restaurant.

The couple I landed, well,
on
, must've thought I was a teenage terrorist, because they fell away shrieking while I got my balance and charged for my mother. And the second I get to my mother's table, I grab Max by his coat front and say, “What did you give her?”

He looks at me and smiles, his head wobbling like it's held up by jelly. Then he rasps, “Don't try to stop us. It is our destiny!”

“What did you give her?”

“It's too late! This time I have made no mistakes. This time I showed the gods proper ceremony!” He looks to the ceiling and rasps, “Osiris! Horus! Hathor! Sobek, Anubis, Thoth! Surely you are now pleased!”

I yell, “
Call nine-one-one! Somebody, please!
CALL AN AMBULANCE!” Then I grab my mother by her shoulders and shake. “Mom! Hang on! Please hang on!”

Her eyelids are halfway down as she slurs, “He thinks … I'm… Claire … he thinks …”

“Mom! Wake up! Mom, he's poisoned you…. Mom!”

By now I'm surrounded by people trying to figure out what's going on. And as I see Max's face contort into a grotesque smile and his head start to wobble all around, all I can think is that it's too late— no ambulance could possibly get there in time.

So I yank my mother's head back and try to get her to throw up by putting the end of her spoon down her throat. She gags and coughs, but nothing comes up.

The maître d' shoves through the crowd, saying, “What is going on here?”

Then I remember. Coffee. Coffee and salt.

So I charge through the people gathered around and find a cup of coffee on somebody else's table. I whip back to my mother's table, screw off the saltshaker top, and dump the contents in. I stir and test the temperature. Too hot. Way too hot.

So I scoop out a few chunks of ice from my mother's water glass, put them in the coffee, and stir.

The maître d' is trying to talk to Max, but he's just sitting there with that stupid, grotesque grin on his face, slurring, “You cannot change … our destiny….”

I put my arm around my mother, hold her head steady, and say, “Drink. Mom, you've got to drink this. Max poisoned you!”

She looks at me, her eyes dull and closing.

Marissa pushes through to me and says, “I called nine-one-one. An ambulance is on the way!”

“It'll never get here in time!” I put the cup up to my mother's mouth and start pouring. “Drink!” I shake her and cry, “DRINK!”

She does. And you can tell it tastes terrible, but I pour it in anyway and clamp her mouth closed until she swallows. Then I do it again. And again. And in the middle of her choking down salty coffee, Max crashes to the floor.

A few people scream. One shouts, “We need a doctor! Anyone here a doctor?” but no one volunteers. And everyone around seems to move in closer so they can gawk at Max, sprawled out on the floor.

Me, I'm busy holding my mother together, drowning her with coffee, when all of a sudden she pushes me away. Her eyes open wide, she licks her lips a few times while she pants like crazy, and then
presto!
Up it all comes—coffee, salt, dinner, wine. It is one ugly, chunky mixture, and it shoots everywhere.

And while the maître d' is grossing out at the state of his barfed-on suit and celebrities of the world are retreating to their own unpolluted corners for safety, my mother— who thinks it's impolite to burp or bleed or pass a little public gas—is on her knees on the floor of the fanciest restaurant known to man, puking her guts out.

It was Marissa who got my mother to the hospital in time. Well, her talking did, anyway. While I was concentrating on Beauty and the Barf, she was out convincing Hali's police force that we couldn't wait for an ambulance— that one of
them
had to take my mother to the hospital or they'd be held liable for “apathetic indifference to an imperiled citizen.”

Apparently they all looked at her like
What?
but it must've made them nervous, because when Hali offered to blaze a trail to the hospital, one of them decided the Imperiled Citizen could ride with him.

Trouvet's let us borrow one of their silver-plated ice buckets as a receptacle, no problem—they wanted us
out
of there. So we hauled my mother out of the restaurant, and Marissa and I held her together in the back of a police car while we squealed through the streets of Venice. It was a lot like riding with Hali, only this time the wailing sirens were above us instead of behind us.

Marissa and I spent the night at the hospital, waiting. And at first when they were rushing around, poking my mother with needles and hooking up tubes and IVs and stuff, they shooed us out and made us wait in a little
room down the hall. Then some police came in and cross-examined us about
everything
, and then another set of police investigators showed up and made us tell them everything again. But finally, after what seemed like forever, they let us see her.

She was asleep. Sound asleep. And even though they told me that her heart was stabilized and that she was holding her own, I was worried. What if she went into a coma? What if she stopped breathing or her heart gave out in the middle of the night? I wanted to wake her up and keep her awake all night. All week. Just to make sure.

But they showed me the heart monitor and told me it would sound an alarm if something happened and for me not to worry.

Obviously
their
moms are sturdy, sensible, non-swooning creatures. What could they possibly know about mine?

So I stayed right next to her, watching her sleep while Marissa curled up in a chair, and after a while the nurse came in and told us it was way past visiting hours and that we'd have to go.

Go? Like there was anywhere for us
to
go. We didn't have a place to stay, we hadn't seen Hali since the restaurant, and besides, I didn't want to go anywhere. I wanted to stay right there and watch her breathe.

The nurse said, “You'd at least be more comfortable in the waiting room. There's usually a free couch or two….”

Marissa got up, but I whispered, “Can't I stay?
Please?
”

“I'm sorry, dear, it's against the rules.”

I could feel the tears burn their way into my eyes. I
tried to tell myself that I was just exhausted—that a snooze on the waiting-room couch would probably be a good idea.

But those tears wouldn't blink back into their ducts. And I wasn't just tired—I was afraid. Bit by bit I'd been losing her. To acting, to Hollywood, to her alter ego, Dominique, to Max … And now here she was, lying in a hospital bed with tubes dripping and monitors bleeping, and in my heart there was a panic that I'd lose the rest of her.

Maybe forever.

“
Please?
She's … she's … you know… my mother.”

Marissa whispered to the nurse, “She's been through a lot. I'll go down to the waiting room, but let her stay. Just a little while?”

The nurse pinched her lips together, then whispered, “When I get off duty, you've got to leave.”

I wiped off my cheeks with the back of my hand. “Thanks.”

So I sat there with my chair scooted right up to the bed, watching her by the glow of instrument lights. Her chest went up and down, up and down, and she looked so very peaceful.

At some point I must've put my head down to rest, because the next thing I know I feel a hand on it, stroking my hair. And when I remember where I am and realize it's daylight out, I lift my head and there's my mother, smiling at me.

“Good morning, Sunshine,” she whispers.

“Mom! You're … you're okay?”

“Dr. Burnes says I'm going to be fine.”

“But… When was he here? Where are your tubes and stuff ?”

“You slept through it. Frankly, I've never known you to sleep through anything, so you must've been completely exhausted. How's your neck? You looked so uncomfortable.”

I just blinked at her.

“Samantha?”

“The neck's fine. But I thought you were … you know… I thought you might not … And here you are like nothing happened!”

She laughed. A sweet little quiet laugh. And after a minute of just smiling at me, she holds my hand and says, “I'm glad you're not the kind of girl who likes pink angora.”

I thought about the sweater she'd given me for Christmas and shook my head. “You are?”

She takes a deep breath and whispers, “Very.”

Just then a man in a long coat and stethoscope comes in. “Hello again, Lana,” he says, then picks the clipboard off the bed frame and grins at me. “Good morning, Samantha, I'm Dr. Burnes. How's the neck?”

“The neck is fine. How is
she
?”

“Oh, she'll be up and out of here in no time.” He flips the clipboard cover back and eyes me. “There are some pretty wild stories flying up and down the corridors about you, though.”

I look at him like, Uh-oh.

He laughs. “Good things, don't worry. But tell me, where'd you pick up that salt-and-coffee purge?”

“The salt and coffee?” I looked back and forth between him and my mom. “Doesn't everybody know about that?”

My mother shakes her head. “Like everyone knows how to pick a lock?”

“It was only a privacy lock!”

Dr. Burnes laughs again and says, “Regardless. You did the right thing, and we're all very glad about that. And now you might want to go out there and say hello to your friend. She seems pretty anxious to see you.”

Marissa! I could just see her, talking a gazillion miles an hour about mummies and reincarnation and the Great Pitchfork Escape. I look at my mom and say, “I better go find out how Marissa's doing, okay? She slept in the waiting room.”

“You go,” she says with a smile. “Go have breakfast down in the cafeteria while I get my clean bill of health.”

All of a sudden I realize I'm starving. So I get up and say, “I'll be back in a little while,” then zip out to find Marissa.

Good ol' Marissa. Jabbering away to some stranger about me showing off my underwear at Trouvet's. I drag her to the elevator and downstairs to the cafeteria, and that's where we spend the next hour, scarfing down hash browns and eggs, fruit cups and cranberry muffins, talking and wondering about everything that had happened.

And when there's nothing but microscopic crumbs left on our trays, we bus them and head back upstairs. And in the elevator, I say, “I wonder what happened to Hali. Do you think they arrested her? Do you think that's why we haven't seen her?”

Marissa shakes her head. “I don't know. I sure hope not.”

When we get back to my mother's room, Marissa
whispers, “Can I come with you?” So we both go inside, only my mother's already got company.

Hali.

And not only does Hali look like
she's
got a kink in the neck, her eyes are bagged and puffy, and her braids look like they need, well, tightening. But she gives me a halfhearted grin and says, “Hey, Burdock. Congratulations.”

My mother's looking very somber, too. She hasn't been crying or anything, but her eyebrows are all scrunched and her mouth is looking very, I don't know,
small
.

Now, maybe this was selfish of me, but I hadn't even thought about Max. Oh, sure, I'd thought about the things he'd done, but not about
him
. In my mind, he was still on the floor at Trouvet's.

And maybe I should've pumped him with salty coffee, too. But the truth is, it never even crossed my mind. “Is Max … ?” I couldn't bring myself to ask it.

Hali nods and lets out a heavy breath. “He didn't make it.” She shrugs. “Like I should care.”

My mother whispers, “She told me about Max.”

I look back and forth between them. “Uh… everything?”

Hali waves her hand through the air. “Everything. Mama doesn't care anymore that people know, and…”

“You found her?”

“Yeah. Right where I should've looked in the first place—church. Anyway, we both went back to the house last night just to see … you know, the tomb. Mama had to see it to really believe it.” She shudders and whispers, “I think he made himself crazy keeping her in there. It was … god, it was
creepy
. Then the cops came and cordoned the
whole office off.” She shakes her head. “I don't know
what
they're going to do with all of that.”

My mother puts her hand on Hali's and says, “I know you don't want to hear this now, but before they bury him you've got to establish his paternity.”

Hali snorts. “Like I want proof that the Mummy Man was my father?”

“Hali, have them do some blood tests.”

Hali frowns and says, “What's it matter?”

“Trust me. This is something you need to do. Can I tell Dr. Burnes about it? He'll help you set things up, I'm sure of it.”

Hali shrugs, but the shrug means
okay
.

Just then another visitor comes in. She's not real big to begin with, but she's wearing a gray wool suit that sort of hangs on her, making it look like
she's
the thing that had been washed too hot and dried too long. And I noticed right off that her face was an odd kind of mother-of-pearl color, but I didn't really realize who she was until her eyes landed on me. And let me tell you, she may not have been carrying the pitchfork, but I jumped anyway.

Inga gave us a closed smile, then said to me, “I've come here to say I'm sorry.
Very
sorry. I did not know that my brother was so…so troubled.” Before I could say anything, she turns to my mother and says, “And
you
, Dominique— or Lana, or whatever your name is—you are even more pathetic than my brother. To think that you would forsake this girl to further a
career
. Had I a child like this at home, I would never have left.”