The baking aisle with the oils was crowded with shoppers, so Frances moved on. She ruled out lotion as the bottles were too small and it would take quite a lot to make a convincing mess. She needed liquid and lots of it. She headed for the drink aisle, turning and wheeling her empty cart to the stock of two- and three-liter bottles of soda.
There was a woman with two small children in the aisle, so Frances dawdled by examining the brands.Glasses.She needed glasses to see what she was doing. She looked in her bag and couldn’t find them. She took several things out and still couldn’t find them. She patted down her pockets. No glasses. What the hell had she done with them? She glanced at the woman with the kids. She was heaving boxes of soda into her cart, but happenedto look up at her, and Frances snapped her gaze away so quickly that the glasses she’d been looking for tumbled off the top of her head. “Of course,” she muttered, and bent down to pick them up.
With her glasses on, she picked up a three-liter bottle. Or rather, hoisted it, because it was heavy. It had a twist-off top. With a couple of good shakes, this puppy would spew like Mt. Vesuvius. She glanced over her shoulder; the woman with the kids was turning the corner of the aisle. Frances was alone.Go time.
She shook the bottle, then tried to twist off the cap. It didn’t budge. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she muttered. She held the bottle under her arm and twisted again. Nothing doing. She’d noticed a bit of arthritis in her fingers, but this was ridiculous. Why was packaging so hard to get into these days? She clamped the bottle between her knees for leverage and twisted with all her might. The damn cap was not coming off, and if she’d been at home, she would have thrown it violently into the pantry to join the pickles, the salsa, and the honey, all in jars with immovable lids.
She ditched that bottle and grabbed another one. She shook it up, put the thing under her arm, grabbed hold of the cap, and twisted hard. This cap came off so easily that the soda exploded. She quickly lay it on its side on the floor and watched as the dark amber liquid spread across the linoleum. She considered how much of her body she needed to haveinthe spill to make it look authentic—she hated the thought of getting her nice athleisure wear wet and dirty—but the job called for it.
“Help!” she called faintly to no one. She began to position herself for a descent to the floor. “Help!” she said, a little louder.
“Ma’am, are you okay?”
Frances was so startled by the arrival of another person that she jerked around, and when she did, her foot slipped in the spill. She felt herself going down and grabbed on to her empty cart forpurchase, but the cart came with her, crashing on top of her as she fell.
Her head whacked against the shelving before all of her hit the floor, shooting blazing rockets of pain through her back and hips, her head and neck. “For fuck’s sake,” she managed to croak before the world turned blurry and faded away.
Two
It was the smell that got to Frances. That sickly, antiseptic scent like someone had spilled a bottle of Lysol. Between that and the torturous headache, she thought she was going to vomit. She opened her eyes and tried to focus so she wouldn’t.
She was in a hospital, goddammit. If there was one thing Frances could not abide, it was hospitals. Not for an appointment, not for a consult, not to visit anyone—and yet, here she was. She’d had to get stitches where her head hit the shelving, and she’d just been brought up from getting a CT scan. She’d tried to convince the emergency room doctor that wasn’t necessary, but no one listened to her. They’d advised her to remain calm and then shouted,“Is there anyone we can call for you?” like they thought she was dumbanddeaf.
She was so stupid to have tried that con. She wanted to kick herself, slap her own face. Rule number one of girl gang: Do not go into a con unprepared or alone. If this had been the old days, Irene would have bought big bottles of soda and made them practice opening them and would have timed their efforts. And if this had been the old days, Edie would have clocked her for being so careless, and she would have deserved it.
This was exactly the sort of thing that happened when a person got bored and drank martinis at two in the afternoon.
“Hello, hon, how are you feeling?”
Frances turned her head to the right and winced with the pain that electrocuted her right behind the eyes. A slender young man in purple scrubs, with sparkly blue nail polish that matched his blue hair, was adjusting something on her IV. “Not as shiny as you, that’s for sure. And my head is killing me. And I think I might be sick.”
“I’ll bet. You took a nasty fall. I’m Jorge, your nurse. If you need to vomit, do it in here.” He handed her a blue paper balloon-looking thing.
Her whole body ached. She was almost afraid to move. “Did they find anything broken? A hip? A shoulder?”
“Nope. Your bones are apparently made of concrete. And they didn’t shave as much of your hair as I would have guessed.”
What?Her hand immediately went to the back of her head and the bald patch there, covered by a bandage that seemed to take up most of the real estate on her head. This day was getting worse and worse.
He picked up her wrist and put two fingers to her pulse, his eyes on his watch. “Is there anyone I can call for you besides Marjorie?”
Frances yanked her gaze to him and immediately regretted it, as white-hot spasms of pain shot through her. “You called Marjorie Cohen?”
“No, but Marjorie Cohen called you. I answered.” He let go of her wrist and smiled. “I can’t have you in here all alone.”
“Yes, you can. It was just a dumb fall. Now that I’m awake or alert or whatever, I’ll just get dressed and go. Where are my clothes?”
“Are you going to go before or after you vomit?” he asked. “Your clothes are in the wardrobe, hon. But you can’t go until the doctor discharges you. She’s going to be up to talk to you about your noggin.”
“Franny!” Marjorie suddenly appeared, sailing into Frances’s hospital room and around Jorge as if he wasn’t there. An elderly gentleman in a fedora and relying heavily on a cane tried to keep up with her. “What in heaven? How on earth did you fall? You’re so light on your feet, you’re the last person I would expect to fall.”
“I don’t know,” Frances lied.
“Did you slip on something? Did someone push you?”
“Push me! Why would someone push me?”
“You hear about crimes against seniors all the time.”
