woman – Seriously? That shit started in the third grade? – we had a wonderful time looking at all the furnishings and artwork.
“I have to start saving my tips,” I told Cookie. “I want this.” I raised my arms and indicated my surroundings with the gusto of inspiration.
“You want this bathroom?” she asked me. We were in the bathroom at the time. “I know a good decorator. He could make your bathroom look like this one.”
“No. I want it all. Someday.”
“Right? This would rock, but I’m not sure it’s really your style.”
“Why not? You think I don’t have enough blue blood?”
She crinkled her nose in thought. “I think you don’t have enough of a competitive spirit. Or enough arrogance. I heard that John D. Rockefeller Jr. built it only because his brother built a 240-room estate nearby.”
“Oh. I might have agreed with you if not for the pedicure.”
She chuckled as she powdered her nose. “The pedicure?”
“Yep. You’ve spoiled me, introduced me to the finer things in life. I need to be pampered. To have my nails done by someone else. To have my feet massaged.”
“I think I know someone who would massage your feet free of charge.”
A tiny thrill laced up my spine at the thought. “I don’t know, Cook. I think he’s pretty hung up on his ex.”
“I get that, but he is so into you, it’s unreal. Surely you can see it.”
“Sure I can, but that doesn’t make him any less hung up on his ex.” I leaned closer to the mirror, wondering where the dark circles came from. Probably a product of my night in a car. With a cat. And Reyes’s jacket. So it wasn’t all bad. “I’m hoping she was an absolute bitch. That way he can get over her faster.”
She shook her head and snapped her compact closed. “Okay, I am as hot as I’m going to get for the moment.”
“Which is smoking.”
“Aw…” We high-fived, ignoring the girl washing her hands who wore enough makeup to go clubbing with us.
“Are you sure these kids are in the third grade?” I asked Cookie.
“That’s what they told me.”
“Okay. Just checking.”
“So, what now? I’m famished.”
We’d finished up the tour and were about to head out. “Food good,” I said, doing my best Neanderthal impersonation. “I just need to make pee-pee. I’ll be out in a sec.”
“You got it. I want to snap a shot of a table I saw in the great room. I’ll meet you outside?”
“I’ll be there with bells on.”
Cookie left, and I entered one of two stalls they’d set up to accommodate the tourists. I couldn’t imagine the Rockefellers had needed stalls.
When I stood to pull up my jeans, something nudged me. I fell back onto the toilet with a squeak and looked up into the mouth of a horse. I gasped as it pushed farther into the stall and nuzzled my neck. It was a gorgeous tan with huge brown eyes and eyelashes as long as my pinkies.
“Oh, my goodness,” I said, petting its nose and hugging it to me. “Aren’t you a pretty” – I looked out the slit on the side of the door – “girl? Yes you are.”
She whinnied and nodded her head. “Yes you are. I’m going to pet you and nuzzle you and take you home. I have a ball of fur just vibrating with energy that would love to meet you.”
I realized at that moment that there was a girl in the next stall.
“Misty,” she said, talking softly as I kissed the horse’s nose, “I think the lady in the stall next to me is talking to her vagina.”
I sucked in a horrified breath. “Did you hear that? She called you a vagina. That’s just wrong. So, so wrong.”
She nodded in agreement again, huffing out a puff of air as though disgusted. She was absolutely adorable. And she was my first departed horse.
“Okay, I have to pull up my pants now.” Standing in a tiny stall in which a horse was taking up the majority of the room was easier said than done. I finally got my jeans fastened and opened the door, where I came face-to-face with, you guessed it, a headless horseman.
My gaze rocketed past black riding boots, black pants, and a billowing black cloak to the rider’s face. Or where his face should have been. The space above the collar where one usually finds a head sat empty.
I screamed and fell back. The horse reared up then retreated a few precious steps. It was