Bulletproof Mascara: A Novel (6 page)

“Ask the gun companies,” Ellen answered, earning a dirty look from Jenny.

“It’s because they don’t need them,” said Jenny. “Most revolvers have an extremely hard first pull, and besides, you have to cock the hammer; it can’t cock itself.
You
are the safety.”

Nikki realized that like politics or religion, gun safety was a don’t-bring-up-at-dinner-parties topic. Ellen shrugged, and Jenny let the subject drop. After that Jenny made Nikki unload and load all of the handguns.

“So, why’d you start late?” asked Jenny, loading her own gun. Nikki looked up from the clip of an automatic handgun. Her thumbs were already sore from pressing bullets into the small space.

“I don’t know,” she answered truthfully. “Mrs. Merrivel offered me the job, and I flew down, and then she said she wanted me to start in this session. Connie didn’t seem that happy about it.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Ellen said. “Connie never seems happy about anything,” Jenny nodded her agreement and pressed bright orange earplugs into her ears.

Nikki continued to load her guns while Jenny fired off a clip into a distant target. The hot shells were ejected from her gun in a steady stream, and Nikki looked at the rapidly cooling brass with a groan. She had just spent ten minutes loading that gun, and Jenny had emptied it in less than two.

“Why’d you guys join?” Nikki asked, finishing the last gun.

“Because I look like crap in a cop uniform,” said Jenny. Nikki could see that all of Jenny’s bullets had entered the target in the head or chest.

“How ’bout you, Ellen?” asked Jenny. “It’s the shooting, isn’t it? That’s how they got you.”

“Not really,” answered Ellen. “I think they wanted me for my shooting, but really I joined because I wanted something useful to do with myself. My husband has passed on and my girls don’t need me, and it seems like all I ever do is putter around the house and eat too much.”

“I’m familiar with that,” Nikki agreed. “I’ve been, well, not unemployed, exactly, but underemployed since I graduated. There’s only so much daytime TV you can watch before you go crazy.”

Ellen laughed. “Exactly,” she confirmed, her hazel eyes twinkling behind dark lashes. “I just couldn’t take any more
Matlock
. And since my daughters are either in college or graduated and moved away, I just felt useless. I started selling a bit of makeup and spending a lot of time at the gun range, and then one of the ladies in my sales group invited me out for tea. Next thing you know, she’s pitching what she called a ‘training camp’ that would allow me to help women on a global scale. I liked the idea of helping other women, so here I am.”

“It’s better to have a purpose,” Nikki said, realizing the truth of the words as she spoke them. Ellen nodded; her round face, young-looking under the gray hair, carried such an understanding and sympathetic expression that Nikki felt embarrassed and looked away.

“All right,” Jenny said, finishing her inspection of the guns Nikki had loaded. “Now we can shoot. Pick a gun.”

Nikki picked a revolver because she knew it would be easier for her to reload.

“I like that one,” Jenny said, smiling. “Now, point it out there at the target.” Nikki did so. “Now, see at the tip,” Jenny continued, “there is a little thingie with an orange dot on it?” Nikki looked, and sure enough there was. “OK now, back where the handle meets the barrel is a little notch.” Nikki nodded. “Now, try and line up the orange dot in the notch.”

Nikki adjusted her hands, raising her wrists and lowering the barrel until the orange dot was between the two little thingies. Moments later they were all trooping out to the target to examine the hole Nikki had put in the target’s left hip. After a brief celebration, they returned to their shooting position to try again.

“How’d you learn to shoot?” Nikki asked Jenny, aiming the gun again.

“From my mama. She was a Miss Georgia,” Jenny answered proudly. “I did some pageants, too, but they weren’t really my thing.”

“A former Miss Georgia taught you to shoot?” Ellen seemed slightly skeptical.

“Well, I don’t know what it’s like at y’all’s high schools, but at mine, if you wanted a date on Saturday night, you’d better have your huntin’ license. My brothers got me into the handguns. But really it was Mama who taught me how to put the bullet where I wanted it.”

“I guess I’ll be a little nicer to the next beauty queen I meet,” Ellen said with a laugh.

They continued shooting, and by sunset Nikki could reasonably expect her bullet to be somewhere in the black, but she was still uncertain about her actual skills.

“What if I forget everything tomorrow?” she asked as they walked back.

“Nah,” Jenny said confidently. “You’ll do OK. Wait till they see you—” She stopped talking abruptly. Dina had come out of the house and was walking toward them, her arms pumping angrily.

“If you were going to go shooting, you should have informed me!” Dina said. “I’m the team leader. I’m the one who sets all the practice sessions.”

“I’m sorry, Dina,” Ellen said sweetly. “We thought you’d be bored. You said just this morning how good your target scores were.” Dina looked torn between the two horrible fates of admitting that she needed practice and agreeing with Ellen.

“That isn’t the point,” she said at last. “I should have been there.”

“Maybe next time,” said Ellen, and she walked around her. Dina made a peculiar snorting noise of irritation, and Nikki heard Jenny smother a laugh.

The next morning, after classes, the women walked out to the range, each carrying her weapon in a hard plastic case. Nikki set up between Jenny and Ellen and squished the neon earplugs into her ears. The girls began to let off a steady pop of gunfire. Connie and Mrs. Boyer were stalking along the shooting line, offering tips and disparagement. Nikki nervously loaded her gun. It was the same revolver from the night before. She pointed the gun at the target, lining up the orange dot with the notch. Connie was behind Ellen now—only a few steps away. Nikki exhaled, pulled the trigger, and put a new white belly button in the target.

“You’re overcompensating for the recoil,” said Connie, making Nikki jump. “Aim more truly at the heart.” Nikki nodded and tried again. A second white hole appeared only an inch or so above the first. “Keep trying,” Connie said with a sniff, and stalked on down the line.

“Dina!” snapped Mrs. Boyer. “Stop waving your gun around like an idiot. If you can’t follow basic gun safety, then get the hell off my shooting range.”

After Connie had passed by, Jenny put her head around the partition and gave Nikki a thumbs-up and a grin. Nikki smiled back; she couldn’t pretend the moment wasn’t sweet.

CALIFORNIA V

Phone Call Day

Nikki followed the girls up to the main house. It was phone call day, and they were all excited.

“I can’t wait to tell Mom about . . .” said Heidi, but Nikki lost track of the rest of the sentence as Carmella talked over her, raving about her boyfriend.

“I think you’re making this guy up,” protested Jenny. “He sounds too good to be true.”

“Well, he has his faults,” acknowledged Carmella.

“They’re just harder to see from six hundred miles away,” said Ellen, with a twinkle in her eye, but an understanding smile.

“My dad is going to be so proud that I learned how to pick a lock,” Sarah said.

“It took you twenty minutes,” said Dina sourly.

“You can’t tell him about it,” Carmella protested, ignoring Dina. “You’re not supposed to talk about training.”

“He’s a locksmith,” said Sarah. “He’s been after me to learn the family business for years. How can I not tell him?”

“But you can’t,” reiterated Carmella.

“Just tell him you had to help one of the girls get into her locker or something,” Ellen said helpfully. “Just make it sound informal, and then . . .”

“That’s not . . .”

“My mom said . . .”

“I think my brother might have gotten engaged . . .”

“My sister totally lost it . . .”

“Can’t wait to tell . . .”

“Need to ask . . .”

The sound of multiple
moms
and
dads
echoed across the field as they walked up to the main house. Phone calls were only allowed once a week, and Nikki had initially found the sabbatical from daily phone calls with her mother a little frightening. She kept reaching for a cell phone she knew wasn’t there and listening for the ring she knew wouldn’t come. Then she had become used to it and discovered that silence really was golden. She was starting to remember what it was like to make decisions on her own. She could almost envision a time when she wouldn’t have the looming specter of an unmade call lurking in the back of her mind.

But as they walked up the hill in gathering gloom of evening, the cheerful anticipation of the girls began to rub off on her. And as she took her turn in the phone booth, she found that she was actually looking forward to hearing her mother’s voice. The phone began to ring, and Nikki slid down on the seat, pulling her feet up and bracing them against the opposite panel.

“Hello?” her mother said in the fake, breathy voice that she thought made her sound like an underage babysitter. It was a clever ploy to throw off phone solicitors. Nikki thought that either the ploy was too clever or perhaps the telemarketers didn’t
actually care, but she’d never been able to convince her mother of that.

“Hey, Mom,” she said, consciously keeping her voice from rising to match her mother’s.

“Oh, it’s you,” said her mother, dropping into a normal tone.

“Don’t sound so thrilled,” Nikki said.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” said Nell briskly. “I’ve just been ducking your grandmother’s calls all week.”

“Why won’t you talk to Grandma?”

“I left the womb for a reason,” said Nell tartly. “I wanted to get away.”

Nikki laughed, and Nell joined in.

“No, she’s just been pestering me to go back for a visit, and I just don’t have time. We’re super busy at work. I really can’t afford to take a week off. And you know I love your grandmother, but she drives me nuts. You wouldn’t understand, but I think that woman does stuff just to drive me insane. It’s enough to make me start smoking again.”

“I can’t imagine,” Nikki murmured.

“You have no idea what that’s like,” reiterated Nell, perhaps sensing Nikki’s incredulity.

“Well, maybe this fall we can both go back,” Nikki suggested, trying to redirect the conversation before it went down a path that neither of them wanted to tread.

“Yeah, maybe. So what’s up with you? How is that training school of yours going? I can’t believe that they don’t allow cell phones! It’s the most ridiculous thing!”

“They can be kind of disruptive,” Nikki said defensively.

“What if there’s an emergency?”

“The instructors have phones; they would take care of it.”

“You know,” Nell said, switching topics and throwing Nikki
off-balance, “this school of yours sounds overly intensive. My friend worked for the Gates Foundation, and they didn’t make her go through months and months of training. Just what are they teaching you?”

“We might be expected to travel later, so they need the trainees to be up on all of their projects and know all about international regulations and everything,” extemporized Nikki.

“Really?”

Nikki could hear the discontent and disinterest in Nell’s voice and knew that it was because she had mentioned the
T
word. Travel wasn’t a concept that Nell had ever taken to.

“They do really interesting work, Mom,” said Nikki, trying to reengage her mother in the conversation before it went completely south and they ended up talking about Nell’s crazy colleagues. “There were these nuns in India—”

“I don’t approve of Catholics,” Nell said.

“The schools for girls in Afghanistan—” Nikki tried.

“I don’t want to talk about Arabs,” said Nell. “They make me angry.”

“The political activist in Thailand,” Nikki began, remembering the day they’d watched the video. Nikki hadn’t immediately connected to the women in the film; it had seemed a bit like the instructors had needed the afternoon off and just popped in a video—it was the traditional method, after all. It had all seemed so very far away. And then like a burst of color in a black-and-white film, Nikki had been introduced to Lawan Chinnawat.

“What’s he do?” Nell asked.

“She,” corrected Nikki. “Lawan Chinnawat. She was born into a rural hill tribe, but she was kidnapped at age eight and sold to a brothel. But when she was fifteen she escaped, and ever since then she’s been working to end human trafficking and the
sex trade. She runs her own foundation, which Carrie Mae contributes to.”

“Huh,” said Nell, sounding totally disinterested, but Nikki wasn’t listening, she was remembering the overpowering emotion with which Lawan had talked about ending the suffering of the women forced to live in slavery and prostitution under a haze of drug addiction. Lawan didn’t give dry speeches about laws and policy—she made impassioned arguments against the cruelty of human nature and held out promises for the triumph of peace. She had made Nikki believe. None of the other girls had seemed quite as impressed as Nikki, but she couldn’t help wishing that she were more like Lawan.

“She was amazing, Mom,” Nikki said. “She got an education, and instead of leaving Thailand or going to work at a nice cushy job, she began a grass-roots campaign to get tougher inspections on cargo ships, harsher sentences for slave traders, and a national database for missing persons. And she started a free health clinic in Bangkok. That’s the part that Carrie Mae helps with. They showed us a video of her picketing outside a brothel, and the bouncer came out and shoved her, but she just got up and stared him down. It was really cool.”

“I hope they’re not sending you there!” said Nell, sounding annoyed.

“I’m sure they’re not,” Nikki said. She meant to add that she couldn’t possibly be that lucky, but decided to keep that bit to herself. She would have given an arm to meet someone like Lawan, but she suspected that only the really good agents got to handle the high-profile cases.

“Well, what else are they teaching you?” asked Nell, in a tone that sounded as if she were about as interested in the answer as a dog was interested in going to the vet.