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; No—don’t think about that. They said he shouldn’t think about that. But they said he should take the pills, and they were wrong about that, weren’t they? The pills made him go away. So maybe he should think about Mother.
He went into the bathroom and checked in the mirror. Yes, he was still there.
He had brought a tube of lipstick from the bitch’s house. He didn’t know why. After she was dead, he had walked around, looking at her things, and when he was in her bathroom checking himself in the mirror, he had noticed the ungodly amount of makeup strewn about the bathroom, covering every flat surface. The bitch had certainly believed in beautifying herself, hadn’t she? Well, she wouldn’t be needing this anymore, he had thought, and slipped the lipstick into his pocket. Since that night it had been sitting on the vanity in his bathroom.
He uncapped the tube and twisted the bottom. The obscenely shaped crimson length poked out, like a dog’s penis. He knew what a dog’s penis looked like because he had—no, don’t think of that.
Leaning forward, he carefully outlined his lips in bright red. He straightened and stared at himself in the mirror. He smiled, his red lips stretching over his teeth, and he said, “Hello, Mother.”
twenty
It was amazing, Jaine thought the next morning when she stepped onto the elevator at work, how her world could be so altered while most of the people who worked at Hammerstead were unaffected by Marci’s death. Of course Luna and T.J. were as grief-stricken as she, and the people in Marci’s department were sad and shocked, but most of the people she met on the way in had either not mentioned it at all or said something along the lines of, “Yeah, I heard about that. Awful, isn’t it?”
The computer nerds, of course, were unaffected by anything that didn’t involve gigabytes. The elevator sign this morning read: NEW PRESS RELEASE BY THE FDA: RED MEAT IS NOT BAD FOR YOU. RESULTS OF TESTS SHOW IT IS FUZZY GREEN MEAT THAT IS BAD FOR YOU.
Since fuzzy green meat sounded like the ordinary contents of the average computer nerd’s refrigerator, that notice probably had deep personal meaning for most of them, Jaine thought. On any other day, she would have laughed. Today she couldn’t summon up even a smile.
Neither T.J. nor Luna had worked the day before, either. They had arrived on her doorstep a little after eight A.M., their eyes in the same condition hers had been. Shelley had whacked off more slices from her cucumber, then set about making more pancakes, which were as comforting to her friends as they had been to Jaine.
Shelley had never met Marci, but she was willing to listen to them talk about her, which they had done all day long. They had cried a lot, laughed some, and wasted a lot of time hazarding theories about what had happened, since Brick was undeniably in the clear. They knew they weren’t going to stumble on The Truth, but talking about it helped. Marci’s death was so unbelievable that only by endlessly rehashing it could they gradually come to terms with losing her.
For once, she wasn’t early. Mr. deWynter was already there, and he immediately asked her to step into his office.
Jaine sighed. She might be head of payroll, but unfortunately the position carried no power, only responsibility. By leaving work early on Monday and not working at all on Tuesday, she had left them short-handed. DeWynter must have been sweating, wondering if they would get everything finished in time; people tended to get unreasonable when their paychecks didn’t arrive on schedule.
She was prepared to accept his criticism, so she was taken aback when he said, “I want to tell you how sorry I am about your friend. That’s an awful thing to happen.”
She had sworn she wouldn’t cry at work today, but deWynter’s unexpected sympathy almost did her in. She blinked to hold back the tears. “Thank you,” she said. “It is awful. And I want to apologize for leaving the department in the lurch on Monday—”
He shook his head. “I understand. We put in some extra hours, but no one complained. When is the funeral service scheduled?”
“It hasn’t been, yet. The autopsy—”
“Oh, of course, of course. Please let me know when it will be; a lot of people here at Hammerstead would like to attend.”
Jaine nodded her promise, and escaped back to her own desk and a pile of work.
She had known the day would be tough, but she hadn’t anticipated quite how tough. Gina and all the others in her department had to extend their sympathies, of course, which almost had her weeping again. Since she didn’t have a cucumber with her, she had to fight the tears all day long.
Without it being planned, both T.J. and Luna showed up at lunch time. “Railroad Pizza?” T.J. asked, and they all got in T.J.’s car for the short drive.
They had just received their vegetarian pizzas when Jaine remembered she hadn’t told them about the crank phone call she had received just before they arrived the day before. “I finally got one of those ‘Which one are you?’ calls,” she said.
“Aren’t they creepy?” Luna took an unenthusiastic bite of pizza. Her lovely face looked as if she had aged ten years in the last two days. “Since the rest of us have had at least two of them, I’m surprised it took him so long to get to you.”
“Well, I have had a lot of hang-ups on my answering machine, but I just assumed they were from reporters.”
“Probably. God knows we’ve all had plenty of those.” T.J. rubbed her forehead. “My head is pounding. I think it finally really hit me last night when I got home, and I cried until I was sick. Galan—”
Jaine looked up. “Yes, how is the Galan situation? Is he still bunking down in a motel?”
“No. He was at work Monday when we heard, of course, but he had called several times and left messages for me, and he came home that night. I guess the situation is still up in the air. What with Marci, I haven’t felt like hashing things out with him. He’s been pretty quiet, but… considerate, too. Maybe he’s hoping I’ll forget.” She took an almost vicious bite of pizza.
“Guess there’s not much chance of that,” Jaine said dryly, and Luna smiled.
“Not in this lifetime,” T.J. said. “But let’s talk about something interesting, like Sam.” She got a mischievous sparkle in her eyes. “I can’t believe you thought that sexy hunk was a drug-dealing drunk.”
Jaine found that she, too, could smile today. “What can I say? He cleans up well. You should see him when he’s wearing old, torn clothes, hasn’t shaved, and is in a really bad mood.”
