Robards, Karen (11 page)

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EARING NOTHING but a pale-blue nylon nightgown, one bare foot tucked beneath

her as she sat on the porch swing, Jessica took a deep drag on her cigarette and Immediately felt better. God, she’d needed that. She’d had a real nicotine Jones going. She’d just started smoking at the beginning of the summer and already she loved nicotine, craved it, lived for it really. With her mom on her case so much these days, plain old cigarette smoking was getting to be as hard to manage as scoring dope. Once she was out of school for the day (smoking at school was easy, in the restrooms or out behind the gym, where everyone went; none of the teachers cared) she had to sneak out of the house like a criminal for a quick puff whenever she could squeeze one in. Her mom had the nose of a bloodhound. If she dared to light up in the house, she’d be caught. And her mom would have a shit fit, Better to come out here on the porch, like she was doing right now. It was just after midnight, her mom was asleep upstairs, and there was nothing in the whole

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wide world but herself and the cigarette and the swing on which she sat and the tinkling wind chinies for mood music and the darkness all around.

The smoke as she drew it in steamed over her tongue, rolled down her throat, curled into her lungs. For a moment she held it there, the red tip of her cigarette glowing bright through the shadows, and then she let it out, practiced blowing it out her nose so that it made cool twin streams of smoke like a dragon exhaling.

Allison had taught her how to do that. Allison could blow smoke rings, fat round circles that floated through the air like ghostly Cheerios. Jessica had tried, but she hadn’t quite gotten the knack yet.

Damnit, she was old enough to smoke. She’d been smoking on the porch when that cop had stopped by. He’d seen her, she knew he had, and he’d been cool with it. He hadn’t said a word, hadn’t told her mom either or she would have heard about it when they had their “little chat” before her mother went to bed. Instead he’d talked to her like one adult to another, said hi, asked her how she was feeling. Then he’d picked up a basketball and started shooting hoops and challenged her to a game-which she’d missed winning by two points. While they’d played, they’d talked like two ordinary people, not about dope or being in trouble but about normal things, like the weather and basketball and her friends.

Not like her mom talked to her: She was grounded. The police were watching her. She had to be careful. Please, please don’t do dope.

Holy hell. Her mom treated her like a baby. She just

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couldn’t let go. And the diabetes thing had made it worse. She hadn’t been able to so much as go to the bathroom without her mom in her face ever since they’d found out she had it.

Did you take your insulin? Did you test your blood? You know you shouldn’t eat that. You need to get more exercise. if you don’t take care qf yourse!f, you’re going to die.

Well, all right, her mom had never actually said that last thing. But she thought it, all the time-Jessica knew that she did.

The thought of dying scared her. She shouldn’t have to think about dying yet. She was young, a kid. Old people worried about dying. Not kids like her.

Once her friends found out about the diabetes, they treated her differently. Should you eat that, Jessica?Jessica can’t do that, she’s sick. Jessica, are you going to die?

It was always there, that dying thing. Once people knew, they all treated her like they thought she was going to die.

She just wanted to be treated like everybody else. She didn’t think Rusty knew about the diabetes. He didn’t act like he did. He treated her like she was perfectly normal, like he kind of liked her, even. Rusty was so hot. AN she had to do was think about him and her insides melted. He was tall, with a big, broadshouldered body and dark brown hair with kind of a reddish tint to it that accounted for his nickname, and real light blue eyes. He was a Junior, he had his driver’s license and his own car, and he was on the basketball team. Becca liked him too, and Allison kind of did. Maddie was friends with a girl he had broken up with

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last vcu, she said you had n) havt, sex WiLh 11MI if yo Li wanted to be his girlfi-iend.

She WOUld have sex with Rusty anytime.

Her mother would die, though. Her mother thought she was a virgin. She wasn’t, not anymore. She’d had sex with Drew Kennedy in the tree house in Christy O’Connell’s backyard last summer, twice. Both times she’d snuck out of the house after her mom was asleep. They did that a lot, she and her friends, because their parents were all hopeless, trying to keep their children babies forever, refusing to allow them to grow up.

Sex hadn’t been all Christy and Katie Morris, her old best friends, had made it out to be. At least, sex with Drew hadn’t. Truth was, it had hurt, and it had been kind of icky and embarrassing and just plain gross. She didn’t like to see Drew now, remembering. But that was probably because he was only fifteen, he didn’t know what he was doing, and anyway she’d never really wanted him like she wanted Rusty.

Rusty was seventeen. He wasn’t a little boy like Drew. Sex with Rusty would be different. Allison and Becca and Maddie and Jerma all said so.

She wasn’t stupid, though. She was prepared. Christy had stolen a pack of her mother’s birth control pills before the thing with Drew and given six to Jessica. If she wanted to have sex more than six times, she was on her own, Christy said. So far she had used only two, for Drew. Jessica figured that she would worry about where to get more when she ran out, because she and Christy weren’t really friends anymore. What

ib worried her more than running out was the possi ility that there might be something in birth control pills that

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would cause a reaction with insulin or diabetes or something. She was supposed to tell her doctor about any prescription medicine she needed to take, and birth control pills were prescription medicine. But if she told him, he would probably tell her mom, and if he did the shit would hit the fan for real.

She’d already decided to just go ahead and take the birth control pills when she needed to and hope for the best.

So far nothing had happened, except she’d bled a little.

People with diabetes had sex. They had to take birth control pills, didn’t they? And nobody died, so worrying was stupid.

Bonnie, the Scottish terrier that lived two doors over, started to bark suddenly, interrupting her thoughts. The dog’s yaps were loud enough and shrill enough to almost completely drown out the windblown melody of the wind chimes. God, couldn’t the Welches ever remember to let that dog in at night? One of these days somebody was going to call the police.

Must be a fox around or a deer or something–they got those from time to time in Bexley-because Bonme was really going to town. Jessica spit on the tip of her cigarette to douse it, and flicked it over the porch rail into the big snowball bush beside the steps. Her mother would never find the butt there, not in a million years. The snowball bush had been growing in Front of the porch forever, longer than they had lived in -he house by far, and no one ever bothered it. There was no reason anyone, especially her mom, ever would.

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Her mom was not a gardener. Whatever the opposite of a green thumb was, she had it. She couldn’t even keep houseplants alive. Every single flower and piece of foliage in their house was silk.

She looked toward the Welch’s to see if she could see what was agitating Bonnie so. The night was dark, so dark she could barely see to the end of her own yard. The canopy formed by the treetops largely blocked stars and moon from her view and created a shifting, forinless mass of shadows that turned her own beloved front yard into a suddenly alien place.

Jessica froze on the swing. There was somethingsomeone-standing in the darkness by the iron park bench beneath the big oak in the center of the yard. The shifting shadows had allowed her just a glimpse, before once again swallowing up whatever or whoever it was.

It looked like a man. Or a dog or a deer standing on its hind legs. Or something very, very weird-and out of place.

She had the terrifying conviction that unseen eyes were watching her. The hairs rose on the back of her neck.

In a flash she leaped from the swing, sprinted for the door, got inside, and locked it behind her. For long moments she stood there, her hand still on the lock, getting her heart rate and her breathing under control.

Stupid, of course. Who-or what-would be in her yard at this tirne of night? If anything, it had been a deer. Maybe a buck with antlers. It had certainly not been what it had most resembled-a man.

Had it?

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Shivering, Jessica checked the lock again, then scurried up the stairs and into her mother’s bedroom. She carefully shut and locked the bedroom door behind her. Her mother slept on the left side of the bed near the alarm clock, lying on her right side in a sernifetal position as she nearly always did. Jessica could just make out the shape of her by the clock’s neon glow. just the sound of her breathing made her feel safer. Trying not to make any noise, Jessica crawled into bed beside her as she had done when she was sick or frightened since she was a tiny girl. Unable to help herself, needing the comfort of her mother’s touch, Jessica snuggled up against her back, so that they lay front to back, like spoons in a drawer.

“Jess?” Her mom’s voice was sleepy. “Mmin-linim.”

“Nightmare?” “Mmm-hmm.” If she told her the truth, she would have to explain what she was doing on the porch in the middle of the night. Bad idea.

“You okay now?” “Yeah. “

“Okay. Go back to steep.” “I will. Night, Mom.” “Night, baby. Love you.”

“Love you, too,” Jessica said, curling close. Her mother’s even breathing told her that she had already fallen asleep again. But it was a long time before Jessica felt safe enough even to close her eyes.

HE SQUAD ROOM WAS, for the most part, a study -./in grays: light gray concrete-block wafls, grayspeckled tile floor, charcoal-gray metal desks with gleaming silver legs. Even the molded plastic chairs pulled up beside the desks looked gray from age and usage, although their original color had been offwhite. Only the police officers’ desk chairs were a different color: they were upholstered in black vinyl. They were comfortable chairs, as that type of chair went, chairs that swiveled and tilted easily and were mounted on casters.

Tony Marino occupied one of those chairs, which was tilted back a little as he sat with hands linked behind his head, staring with some concentration at the glowing screen of the computer on his desk. On it appeared, in the upper right hand corner, the mug shot of a balding, middle-aged man in an orange prison jumpsuit: Lynn Voss. Tony knew him well, had helped bust him in fact.

Not that it had done any good. Voss had gotten a life

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sentence for murder, plus twenty-five years for running a drug ring. He was still running the same damned drug ring from the federal penitentiary where he was incarcerated, unless Tony missed his guess.

“Hey, man, how come you’re not out there with your brother tonight?” Darryl Withers entered from the booking area, shoving a skinny little handcuffed white man in front of him. An undercover cop, Darryl was tall, athletic looking, and black. He’d been working vice for the past two weeks, trolling the men’s rooms of the local parks, which was everybody’s least favorite assignment. Tonight he wore a navy knit watch cap pulled down low over his ears, ripped jeans, and a stained army jacket. It was after midnight, and the sickos were out in force. They’d been bringing them in steadily for the last hour.

“We’re going,” Tony answered, as Darryl shoved his prisoner into a plastic chair, unfastened one side of the handcuffs with a quick turn of the key, and just as quickly secured the open cuff to the metal ring set into the side of his desk. The prisoner was thus handcuffed to the desk.

“Mo’fo’, you makin’ a mistake!” the prisoner protested, looking earnestly at Darryl. “I wasn’t doin’ nothin’ but takin’ a piss! I got this prostate problem, see “

“I sure as hell don’t want to hear about your prostate problem,” Darryl said, sitting down at his desk and turning on his computer.

“But I wasn’t Jackin’ off, I was pissin’; it Just takes me a long time and-“

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“Man, you say one more word like that and I’ll write you up for murder one, so help me God I will.”

“You can’t do that! I tell you, I was Just pissin’-” “Hellfire, I hate thisjob,” Darryl complained, looking over at Tony as his collar continued to explain the particulars of his plumbing in excruciating detail.

“Listen to the man, Darryl, you rnight learn something,” Tony said, grinning. Darryl flashed him the bird and started typing over his prisoner’s bleats.

“Withers, you got anything?” Captain Sandifer stuck his head out of his office to ask. It was located at one side of the squad room, its glassed-in walls shaded by closed, gray miniblinds.

“Another indecent exposure,” Withers called back. “I was Just pissin’!” the collar protested. Exchanging glances with Tony, Sandifer grimaced and withdrew.

“You ready to go?” Dom emerged from the rest room at last.

“Yeah.” Tony saved his file, turned off his monitor, and stood up. “What’d jenny feed you tonight, anyway?”

Dom had visited the rest room three times in the past two hours.

“I don’t want to talk about it.” Dom shook his head as the two of them headed for the door. “I love the woman, but she can’t cook worth a crap.”

Tony laughed. “Didn’t you invite me over for supper tomorrow? Guess I can’t make it.”

“You guys get anything out of that little girl you picked up last night?” Sandifer stuck his head out of his office to ask.

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