Love Game by Elise Sax Page A

me, too. I wassearching the house, and suddenly I was hit from behind. Never saw him.”
    “Why were you searching the house?” I asked.
    “Your grandmother, Pinkie. She said a phony matchmaker was jamming her signals, but I should take a look at the flipper’s house. He must have seen me coming. He took me by surprise.” He wiped his cheek with the back of his hand. “What’s this white stuff on my face?”
    “What do you mean, ‘phony matchmaker’?” Luanda asked.
    “You got knocked out by the bad guy again?” I asked him.
    “What’s your point?” He had crossed his arms in front of him.
    “It’s just that … Never mind,” I said.
    “No, Pinkie, what were you going to say?”
    “It’s just that, well, what good are you? Every time there’s a psycho killer about to kill me, you get your head bashed in.”
    Spencer’s face turned bright red, almost disappearing in the red light. “That’s only happened twice!” he shouted, holding up two fingers to illustrate his point.
    “The two times you were there when a psycho killer was about to kill me!”
    Lucy grabbed my arm and tugged me back toward her. “Darlin’, he’s about to explode,” she said. “You better take cover.”
    “Did you at least keep your gun?” I asked from behind Lucy.
    Spencer patted his body. His eyes grew enormous, like high beams on a country road.
    “All right!” Spencer announced after a minute. “Let’s get out of here.”
    “The door is sealed shut, boss,” Remington told him.
    “I figured as much, Tiny,” Spencer said.
    The two men huddled in talk of escape. Meanwhile, Luanda began to moan and speak in tongues.
    “Just what we were missing,” Ruth complained. “Stop sucking up the oxygen, Barbra Streisand.”
    “I’m communing,” Luanda said.
    “You’re sucking air, you mean,” Ruth said.
    “I think we should remain calm,” Bridget said. “We are all sisters in the cause and should support one another.”
    “I see cancer in your future,” Luanda told Bridget.
    Lucy gasped. “Don’t talk to my friend that way. Take that back, you crazy fraud.”
    “I am not a crazy fraud. I am Luanda Laughing-Eagle.”
    “See, that’s very interesting,” Bridget said, trying to calm the situation. “What tribe are you from?”
    Luanda blinked. “What tribe? I am my own tribe.”
    “First lucid thing you’ve said,” Ruth muttered.
    “I see gum disease in your future, old hag,” Luanda told Ruth.
    “Ha!” Ruth shouted, and wagged her finger in Luanda’s face. “Shows what you know. I already have it! I bet you didn’t see that coming, psycho lady.”
    Things went pretty fast after that. Luanda and Ruth charged each other like rhinos. There was a lot of shuffling and a few lady grunts as they locked in combat, which looked remarkably like an episode of
Dancing with the Stars
.
    “Locked up by a crazy killer in a dark panic room, with no oxygen or means of escape, and an octogenarian and a phony witch lady decide to rumble,” Lucy said. “I never want to leave this town. Cannes is a village on happy juice. LSD. It’s
The Wizard of Oz
on shrooms.”
    “I’m not a proponent of woman-on-woman violence, but I’m secretly hoping Luanda gets owned and Ruth beats her ass,” Bridget said to me.
    I was, too, but I was also worried that they were using up the last of our air. I was also worried that Ruth was going to have a cataclysmic stroke and I was going to get an elbow in the eye from Luanda, who was swinging her arms with wild abandon. She hadn’t made contact with Ruth yet, but, with my luck, she was going to find my skull sooner or later.
    “Are you kidding me?” Spencer pulled them apart and held them at arm’s length from each other. Somehow a feather had come out of Luanda’s hair and landed in Ruth’s mouth. Ruth spit it out as she huffed and puffed from the exertion of her fight. Luanda was breathing easier, but she was sweating so much that her hair was dripping, and her clothes