Zapped

Chapter 2: By the Pool

CHAPTER 2: BY THE POOLTHE BELLAGIO’S VAST, GORGEOUS SWIMMING pool was the coolest thing about Vegas. (Well, up till two nights ago.) It didn’t kick you from behind, like the ocean, knock you over or sting your nose or fill your suit with sand. You could splash around without getting your hair wet, lounge on a sun-warmed chaise, flirt with Chico the waiter, and sip the tall pastel drinks he brought in frosty glasses, so that you had to dry your fingers on a fluffy hotel towel between texts.

Danny insisted Ashley’s usual poolside table was where they should look at the threats on her phone. Like riding a horse: You fall off, you jump right back in the saddle.

He’d been putting her back in the saddle as long as she could remember. When the kids at school bullied her, called her a mouse and a shrimp and wouldn’t pick her for sports teams, he made her try out for Barnstable High’s Wizard of Oz. Pam helped with her munchkin costume, but it was Danny who coached her. Year after year, chorus after chorus, from “Ding Dong the Witch is Dead” to “I Feel Pretty” to “Wilkommen.”

They hit The King and I while Pam was finishing the Squelcher, her remote control for other people’s cell phones. Why did Pam keep inventing silence? Like her whole career was about shutting people out. If Pam wasn’t so OCD about her frickin’ inventions, if she’d fought for her marriage instead of banishing Danny to a boat dealership in Boca Raton, Ashley’s self-esteem wouldn’t have tanked. She could have crowned her senior year with the starring role of Anna instead of a Siamese slave. She’d never have met a post-punk guitar rat like Steve Makropoulos, much less married him. She’d be in L.A. right now, building her acting career, instead of in Las Vegas getting divorced.

And doing the Dead Man’s Float.

When she’d first checked in here it felt like prison. The minimum-security kind, obviously, with two king-size beds, two giant flat-screen TVs, a posh living room and kitchenette, and 24-hour room service. She and Pam had agreed that sharing a suite with a fellow would-be divorcee was the best way to establish Nevada residency. Not! Two suicidally depressed women stuck with each other for two months? Give me a break.

She’d felt sandbagged when her roommate took off, and also a tiny bit relieved. Still suicidally depressed; but if you had to do time, you could do hella worse than the Bellagio.

______

Swimming pool? To Danny it looked more like Hollywood’s version of a Roman bath, all columns and statues and fountains surrounded by turquoise water.

Which part of this monster had tried to devour his daughter?

She wouldn’t talk about it. Said she didn’t remember anything from when she got the texts and flipped out until she woke up in an ambulance.

He’d learned from the bartender there’d been three or four wedding parties drifting between the bar, the casino, and the pool. Too many margaritas, rum punches, bottles of champagne for him to notice Ashley, aside from that once when she’d stumbled up with some guy’s arm around her. No, he didn’t know the guy. They all get to look alike after a while. When his crew went out to clear up, there she was. Like a floating shadow, said the waiter who dragged her out. Like a dark spot on a turquoise ring.

Danny kept on his sunglasses so Ashley wouldn’t see him watching her, or asking himself stupid questions.

“Lime rickey?” he said instead.

“You read my mind.” Ashley dropped her towel on her chaise. “I’ll get them. I should say hi to Chico anyway.”

“You sure he’s OK, this Chico?”

“Oh yeah. He’s the one who saved me, Dad!”

Danny nodded. “Go for it.”

Part of getting back on the horse, right? Show the hotel staff that whatever gossip they’d heard, she was fine.

And what pretty girl wouldn’t enjoy spreading ripples of admiration through the ring of gamblers and conventioneers basking around the pool?

Like her mom twenty years ago.

If he told Ashley that, she’d laugh. But it was true. You wouldn’t guess it now, but when Pam Linnell used to bounce onto the tennis court in her tiny white dress, she’d knocked him over without lifting a racquet.

It was Pam who’d first shown him Las Vegas, from the air, on their honeymoon flight to Hawaii. The one place you can recognize even in the dark at thirty-five thousand feet. He’d leaned across her lap to see the neon-rainbow snake winding through blackness. Savoring her warmth, her scent, earthy and spicy and female. Sneaking a hand inside her sweater . . .

Just thinking about it, Danny had to throw a towel over his swim trunks.

Ashley had taken her iPhone with her. Why? Who could she need to contact, or hear from?

Was she afraid he’d snoop if she left it here? As impatient as he was to see those texts, she should know him better than that.

U R not alone. That was the first one, right after her roommate moved out. Then I M watching U. Creepy, but being watched was nothing new for Ashley. She deleted them both.

When she got the third text, Go home U dont B long, she forwarded it to Danny.

They had to be from Mack, she insisted. Mack was the new name of Steve, her soon-to-be-ex-husband. New identity, new try at stopping the divorce? What other reason could anyone have to scare her out of Vegas?

“Did you call him?”

“Sure. He swore it wasn’t him. He wanted to come out here and protect me. As if!”

That was how Danny presented the problem to Pam. Worth asking the hotel management to keep an eye out, but not worth calling the cops. Yet.

A few days later the texts ratcheted up.

I C every thing U do b***h.

I will C U die.

“It’s gotta be a sick joke.” Ashley sounded shaky on the phone. “I’ll call Mack again.”

“No. Let me handle it.”

Danny had to agree that Mack/Steve’s denial sounded truthful. He warned him off anyway. Then he bought a plane ticket.

They drove to the police station and showed the texts to Officer Mischke. He told them the sender’s phone was a burner: a cheap pay-as-you-go, untraceable. The messages were disturbing, but he didn’t see what could be done beyond alerting the hotel detective. Danny could keep watch over the weekend; and before you know it, Ashley would be home free.

On Wednesday Ashley got two more texts:

Go now or U B dead.

Run ho I M coming 4 U

The hotel detective gave her a sympathetic pat and offered to buy her a drink after his shift. Officer Mischke had left for vacation.

What were the final messages on Friday that sent her running for antidepressants and the pool? He didn’t know yet.

Overhead, the distant buzz of a speck-sized airplane whose daylight passengers couldn’t see Las Vegas. Danny scanned around for his daughter.

______

At the poolside bar, Ashley told Chico she’d wait and carry the drinks herself.

She sat on the bench by the jacuzzi and Tweeted a quick selfie: OMG its so good to feel good again!

Danny was right: Don’t rain on your own parade.

If anybody texted death threats to Angelina Jolie, she wouldn’t pop half a bottle of Elevane and wake up soaked and choking on a gurney. Well, she probably wouldn’t even know. Didn’t she have secretaries and bodyguards to protect her from s**t like that? A woman who could go from Lara Croft: Tomb Raider to winning an Oscar, directing her own films, building a kick-ass power couple with Brad Pitt, and being the mom of six kids wouldn’t lose it over a bunch of hate spam.

What would Angelina do?

Buy a fabulous new dress!

Show off her fabulous self to an adoring crowd!

Ashley Dillon took her courage in both thumbs and texted her mom.

Changed mind about birthday party. Your right only 21 once. Sat 12th perfect. XOX A

“Two lime rickeys?”

She clicked Send and swiveled. Chico was holding out the tray: two frosty glasses, two miniature umbrellas stabbed into fat slices of lime, two butterfly napkins.

Ashley reached for it, and watched her iPhone leap out of her hand into the jacuzzi.