"Hello?" Eve's normally perky voice sounded a little bit down when she answered the phone.
"It's me. I need to get away for a few days. You game?"
"Of course I'm game," Eve laughed, feeling better already. Spencer always cheered her up. Sometimes she got both of them in trouble... but she was always cheered her up.
"Here's the plan," Spencer explained, not bothering with the niceties of hello - how are you - and what's going on in your life.
"I have 2 tickets to Las Vegas, and one of them has your name on it. All you have to do is pack a bag and get yourself to the airport. We have a room reserved at Circus Circus and it's good for 4 days. You in?"
"Really?" Eve was ecstatic. Four days in Las Vegas! A vacation! No cooking, no cleaning, no Johnnie yelling at her about the credit card bill... which was due any day now.
"Oh wait," she said, thinking about that credit card bill. "I went a little overboard for my birthday. Just a little, mind you and um... I didn't mention anything to Johnnie about what I bought. I can't go to Las Vegas," she wailed. "Johnnie will burn my butt!"
"And when he gets the bill, isn't he going to do that anyway?" Spencer, the ever practical one, asked.
"Er... yesssssss."
"Then what do you have to lose?"
"I'm hanging up and packing," Eve laughed, ignoring the nagging feeling in the back of her mind and the tingling she was already starting to feel in her butt.
Spencer... the instigator... laughed.
"Where's JC and how did you get away?" Eve asked when Spencer met her at McCarran International in Las Vegas that night.
"He had to fly to DC."
"Does he know you're...?"
"No," Spencer laughed. "Did you tell Johnnie you were going away?"
"I... uh... I left him a note."
Spencer stopped in her tracks and turned to face Eve. "What did the note say?"
"It was short... very short... really short... brief, even," Eve stammered.
"Eve... What did it say?"
"It said... um... Spencer."
"Just my name?"
"Uh huh."
"You are sooooooooo bad," Spencer laughed and mentally patted herself on the back. She liked Johnnie but thought he could be a real stick in the mud sometimes. "He should be in a fine temper by now."
"Yep." Eve frowned, picturing Johnnie's face when he read her note; that tingling in her butt was getting tinglier by the second.
"We're going to have the best time," Spencer giggled and stopped to drop nickels into the first slot machine in the airport that wasn't occupied.
Bells rang! And a big pile of nickels fell into the tray.
"See!" she chortled. "It's a good sign. We've already won!"
"Wow!" Eve's eyes grew wide, thinking about that credit card bill. "We could win a bundle."
"Uh huh. And I know the best places to play."
"I don't know much about Las Vegas," Eve admitted.
"Not to worry," Spencer assured her and put an arm around Eve's shoulder. "I know my way around. I'll keep us safe and out of trouble."
~~~
"How did you manage a suite?" Eve asked as she surveyed the accommodations Spencer had reserved. "This is plush. It's got to be expensive."
"Don't worry, toots. Someone owed someone a favor and that person owed somebody else and that person owed me and it's all taken care of. Let's get all dolled up and head downstairs," Spencer added, changing the subject. She hadn't mentioned that the "somebody-three times removed" actually owed JC the favor but that was just a minor detail. What was JC's was hers, wasn't it? Of course, it was. It was right there in the fine print in the marriage contract - she had penned it in herself.
Eve chewed her fingernail, a sure sign she was nervous. "What if Johnnie...?"
"Is he here?" Spencer asked, hands on hips and steely glare aimed in Eve's direction, a steely glare she learned from seeing it *so often* on her husband's face...
"Uh... no, but..."
"No buts!" Spencer announced.
Just mine... Eve sighed.
"Okay, then," Spencer smiled, digging into her pocket for a chocolate bar. "Let's have some fun. Las Vegas is waiting! And you know what they say... What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas."
~~~
"Spencer?" Johnnie yelled when he read Eve's note. "God help her. Those two are probably neck deep in trouble."
"What did she do now?" JC asked when he answered Johnnie's call.
"Eve is with her, that's all I know and I'm damn worried."
"Let me think," JC answered, thinking one knew what to expect in a war zone but when it came to his wife...
"Let me do a trace on the credit cards and I'll get back to you."
"Better make it quick," Johnnie groused. "They could have been arrested by now."
"Don't think so," JC muttered. "There would have been an alert on CNN's Headline News."
As soon as JC traced his credit card charges to Las Vegas, he got really worried. Spencer was a decent card player but she also cheated... There was that time they were in Vegas together... He shuddered and crossed himself, remembering... Spencer challenged the high rollers at the craps table to an old-fashioned game of marbles, double or nothing and winner takes all. She won. They were quietly asked to leave... Thank God I wasn't in uniform.
Then there was the time Eve called Spencer to ask her to charge a couple of items she bought for Johnnie to her credit card. Spencer charged them to JC's credit card... In return, Eve charged a few things Spencer bought for JC to Johnnie's credit card... The credit card company notified JC that certain items on his bill had been shipped to an address not his own... and notified Johnnie that certain items on his bill had been shipped to a military base... Neither JC nor Johnnie ever figured out all those details but both knew their wives were at the bottom of the fiasco.
Eve and Spencer both played the innocent card which hadn't stopped JC or Johnnie from getting to *their* bottoms...
Eve pouted for close to a month until Johnnie begged forgiveness for being "totally lacking in couth," an expression he learned from JC. Spencer stopped cooking and baking and even refused to make JC's favorite peach cobbler until he apologized for being a Neanderthal. After all... both women were just buying things for their husbands. And who cared whose credit card the items were charged to? It was the thought that counted.
Tsk and double tsk.
Johnnie and JC commiserated. "How did we end up being the bad guys?" Johnnie wanted to know. "All I did was spank my wife."
"Just apologize," JC advised at the time. "Take her out to dinner, do the flowers and candy thing and make nice. Trust me. It's the only way."
"Did *you* apologize?" Johnnie asked, trying to picture the Navy SEAL standing down to his wife.
"Oh yeah. I'm brave but I'm not stupid," JC deadpanned.
Now the two women were loose in Las Vegas...
JC groaned. Did Hell freeze over? Again?
"Is this something I want to hear?" Johnnie asked when JC told him he knew where their wives were.
"I have an idea," JC said. "Here's what we gonna do."
"I'm all ears," Johnnie grumbled, banging a wooden spoon on the kitchen counter, thinking he'd pack it to use when his hand wore out.
"Meet me at McCarran International," JC said after he explained his plans. "I'll be an hour behind you but we need to present a fortified front when we catch up with the ladies."
"The hell with a fortified front," Johnnie snarled. "I'm more interested in one particular bare backside. "I plan to present my own fortifications when I get my hands on my wife."
"Belt? Paddle? Spoon?" JC asked.
"Yeah," Johnnie grumbled. "All of the above. You?"
"Anything other than my hand and my life won't be worth crap."
"For shit's sake!" Johnnie exclaimed. "Take the upper hand here!"
Ahhhhh, JC mused. So that's where Eve learned that expression.