“Because the catacombs close at eight thirty pm and we won’t be able to get to work until well after midnight,” I told her. “If this is going to work, Carapaz needs to be asleep.”
Natalie ran through the rest of the plan and we worked out the details over tiny coconut jellies in the shape of smiley faces. Mary Alice made a long list of supplies we’d have to restock and which stores would have what we needed. But Helen didn’t say much. Most of her coconut jelly was left on the plate, and Mary Alice gave me a look when we got back to our room.
“What?” I was dog-tired and I realized there was a faint, nasty smell in the hotel room.
“I’m worried about Helen. She’s still hardly eating. It’s like the light has gone out.”
“She’s in mourning,” I said. I breathed in again. There was definitely something hanging in the air. I moved to the curtains and sniffed. Nothing.
“It’s more than that,” Mary Alice said, dragging a sleep shirt over her head. She’d lost her Snoopy shirt on the Amphitrite, but she’d replaced it with a soccer jersey that stretched to her knees. “But I don’t know what the problem is.”
“She’s got the yips,” I said absently.
“The yips?”
“It’s a baseball term. Sometimes pitchers will lose a pitch. Maybe they’ve always been able to hum a fastball right over the center of home plate. But one day they wake up and it’s just . . . gone. No matter what they do, they can’t find that pitch. They’ve got the yips. Helen has the yips.”
“You think this is about work?”
I went to the bed and started sniffing sheets. “I know it is.”
I looked up and Mary Alice was giving me a quizzical look over her half-glasses. I sat down on the bed. “Fine. I didn’t say anything at the time, but in Jackson Square, I gave Helen the signal to hit Sweeney.”
Mary Alice blinked. “You did?”
“Yes. And she balked. She froze up. That’s why I took him out.”
She gave a low whistle. “Damn. But we accused you of poaching him. Why didn’t you say anything?”
I shrugged. “Calling Helen out isn’t exactly going to do her any favors. You have to be careful with the yips. The yips are delicate.”
I picked up the pillow and sniffed it. Nothing but detergent.
“So how do pitchers fix the yips?”
“They don’t. You wait them out and hopefully one day you wake up and they’re gone.”
“And if they never leave?”
“Then you get busted down to the minors where you sit on the bench until the end of your contract and you wind up coaching Little League to six-year-old assholes.”
“Six-year-olds can’t be assholes,” Mary Alice says. “The fact that you think they can says a lot.”
“Yeah, it says that you’ve clearly never met a six-year-old.” I reached for the corner of the bedspread to give it a good sniff.
“Billie, I care about you, but this is an intervention. That smell is you. Go take another shower.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The next day we followed the routine Mary Alice had laid out. We ate well and worked our way methodically through the shopping list and preparations. Natalie and I stuffed our pockets as full as we could of all the supplies we needed, and wore double fanny packs, hiding the extra bulk under our windbreakers. The weather had turned cold and damp and we huddled together in line, each of us wearing one of the brightly patterned ponchos. We put our steel-grey wigs back on and a few minutes with a contour kit aged us up about a decade. A group of Italian teenagers cut in line in front of us and I stared down the leader of the little wolfpack as he stepped on my sneaker to get to his friends. I was just reaching for my knitting needles when Mary Alice gripped my arm.
“Play nice,” she murmured.
“I wasn’t going to kill him,” I muttered back. “But a little light stabbing might teach him some manners.”
“Focus on the job. I’ll trip him when we get inside,” she promised.
“That’s real friendship,” I told her.
We passed through the security screening and made our way through the exhibition and into the rooms of bones. Helen was pale, her breath shallow, and I gave Mary Alice a nudge. “Hurry her to the end. The air is shit down here and she doesn’t look good.”
Helen overheard and managed a tight smile. “I’m fine, Billie. It’s just a little smelly.”
“Moldy bones,” Nat said cheerfully. She looked around. “Ready?”