5

Around eight, just about the time the show was starting over on the big stage, Big Gloria got a call from Clothilde. Clothilde’s voice, real tight, said: “Bee Gee, I think you better get on up here to 1803.”

Oh, Lord. What was it was now? She ought not to be here anyway. She ought to be home having some supper with Junior, pretending they were some kind of nuclear family instead of supervising turndown. But, when they asked her, even two days in a row, it was hard to pass up the extra shift. Especially with the car payment due and Junior spending money like it grew on trees.

So what was it now? Another drunk had punched his hand through a wall? That was nothing, but multiply it times 6,000 rooms in the casino hotels alone, if she had any sense, she’d be in the dry-wall business. Her daddy and her brothers had taught her how to do all that when she was growing up back in Bastrop.

Of course, it wasn’t as if she hadn’t tried. People just didn’t want to give construction work to a woman, especially a black woman, even if she was as big as Gloria. So here she was, messing around with a bunch of white people’s bed sheets.

All the way up in the service elevator Big Gloria was thinking about how much she loved getting her hands on a bunch of brand-new two-by-fours, the clean, piney smell of them reminding her of home, of building kitchens with her daddy. It wasn’t until the elevator stopped at 18 that Gloria remembered who was in 1803.

“What you doing out here, girl?” she said to Clothilde, who was standing in the hall staring at her. “Come show me what you’re talking about. It couldn’t be that bad.”

It was a mess, though.