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Manager Residence was decorated by its first residents at
     the tail end of the three-year resort construction in 1996, and no one had touched
     it since. I call it the Big Easy Flea Market. The interior was designed by the Bellissimo’s
     first casino manager, Ty Thibodeaux, or rather by his wife Magnolia, a Cajun Louisiana
     crawfish-loving beignet-addicted nutcase. Every stick of furniture came over with
     the original French settlers and somehow Magnolia had managed to round it all up and
     drag it here. The walls were laden throughout with slabs of rusty flaking ornamental
     iron, pieced together gates and fences she’d probably swiped in the dark of night
     from crypts and mausoleums. They were welded together and everywhere, creating fake
     indoor Bourbon Street balconies all through the residence, and on every fake balcony,
     somewhere, was Jesus Christ on the cross. Big, little, dangling, mounted, bronze,
     silver, wood, three glow-in-the-dark, all with crowns of thorns and nails in the bloody
     feet. They were all over the place. And they were all looking up, to the ceilings
     we didn’t have.
    The tops of the rooms were gilded crown molding, even in the five bathrooms, so ornate
     and sprawling they bumped into equally overdone carved ceiling medallions, there to
     enhance the many chandeliers. The casino manager’s residence had seventeen tacky chandeliers,
     one jazz themed and made entirely of tarnished brass trombones and saxophones, all
     dripping in brightly colored crystals, mini voodoo skulls, or Mardi Gras memorabilia.
    The color scheme of our new home was purple, pink, blue, green, yellow, black, red,
     gold, and Kraft Macaroni and Cheese orange. There were blooming magnolias everywhere—oils
     of magnolias on the walls, magnolias on each of the six thousand kitchen backsplash
     tiles, several magnolia-themed sofas, magnolia bath towels and beddings, wool rugs
     covered in creeping magnolia designs, and a huge silk magnolia tree in the foyer.
    We could make a fortune charging admission and giving tours.
    The best part? It’s haunted. The whole place. I swear to you, there are ghosts and
     ghouls and goblins in every corner of the casino manager’s residence. Every single
     day is Halloween. Neither I nor Bradley could get a decent night’s sleep. I could
     barely eat in the middle of all this Creole mess. And I wouldn’t even think of conceiving a child in this Spook-Spook Bayou Yard Sale.
    One person who absolutely loved it? My grandmother.
    One thing that wouldn’t stop breaking since the day we moved in? The seventy-two cubic
     foot red refrigerator. In what universe do two people need a refrigerator that large?
     There’s no doubt in my mind Magnolia Thibodeaux kept whole animal carcasses in it
     and used them for jambalaya sacrifice voodoo ceremonies. Most likely in my bedroom.
    Now that I lived at the Bellissimo, there was no “I’m going to run to the store.”
     Because of my Super Secret Spy status, I had to completely disguise myself to walk
     out the front door. More often than not, I went Unabomber, hoodie and dark glasses.
     Every five or six days, I made my escape using service elevators and stairwells. I
     hiked miles to my car, uphill several ways, in the vendor-only lot behind receiving.
     I drove to the Winn Dixie on Pass Road and bought a buggy full of comfort food. I
     retraced my steps, this time schlepping groceries on a luggage cart up to the twenty-ninth
     floor Who Dat Haunted Mansion, then put them away, only to reach for the milk the
     next morning and it be room temperature, the refrigerator broken again.
    There wasn’t a department within the Bellissimo that could help. Not engineering,
     not maintenance, not the heat and air guys. No one at the Bellissimo really knew if
     the new casino manager’s wife lived here or not. They’d never seen her; they’d never
     set foot in the new casino manager’s home. Because the new casino manager’s wife worked