“You ever try it?”
“Are you kidding? My aunt would have strangled me.”
Remembering the stem perfectionism in which Lisa and I were raised, I shudder. Aunt Carey wants me to find out what really killed Lisa, what caused her to get in such terrible shape that she died from a heart attack. If I told her what I suspect—that Lisa’s compulsion, like my running away with the first boy who looked at me, was an attempt to escape herself—she’d think I’d lost my mind.
We turn off Grand Avenue and find the address on the mailbox easily. The red barn-type building sits off the road guarded by a large tree on each side. We park on the street side of the trees, before a boulder-lined path. I stare at the house and try to imagine Julie Larimore growing up in it. Impossible. Not that it’s bad, just ordinary: a red bam of a house with white-framed windows and porch supports.
“So,” I say to Hamilton. “I guess I just walk right up to the door and announce who we are and what we want.”
“Won’t be the first time,” he says.
Some strangers are helpful when you knock on their doors in the middle of their weekend. Others are not. The man who lives in the red bam is one of the latter.
Maybe I’m judgmental, especially in these hawkish times, but there’s something about camouflage gear that unnerves me.Thus, I’m not surprised when this guy, clad from cap to toe in it, doesn’t warm up to us.
“Can’t a man cut his grass in peace?” he demands. “I don’t have no money to donate for whatever it is you’re collecting for.”
“We’re newspaper reporters,” Hamilton says. “We’ve heard that Julie Larimore might have grown up in this house.”
“Who?” His voice echoes the same cigarette rasp of Hamilton’s, only multiplied by many more years of nonstop puffing.
“Julie Larimore,” I repeat, “the spokesperson for Killer Body. She’s disappeared.”
“I heard about that.” He pulls off his cap, scratches the gray stubble on his head. “I’m just the tenant. Been here about a year. I hope they find that little girl.”
“She lived here as a child,” I say. “Perhaps your landlord might be able to give us more information.”
His gaze takes me in as if for the first time. “I’ll help anyone who asks, but not no newspaper, and not you, lady.” He moves forward, leading with his hip, as if imagining a rifle balanced there. “Get off my property before I call the cops.”
Hamilton touches my arm, to let me know he’s here. Then he steps in front of me, confronting the creep. “There’s no need for that.”
“Then get out of here.” He looks at me, eyes narrowed to two glittering pricks of light. “I hate reporters.”
I start to give the son of a bitch a short lecture on whatIhate. Before I can decide if he’s worth my rage, the door slams in my face.
Hamilton grabs my arm. I shake free. My impulse is to smash my fist into the door. That’s the horror of being degraded in a time that’s supposed to have outgrown it. Every instance feels like the first one. Instead of wearing you down, each assaultprovokes you, kick-starts your anger, all over again. I’m a woman. I’m a reporter. And this asshole doesn’t trust me.
I force myself to stay put, turn off the Sexist Pig Channel in my own mind, block out Mr. Camouflage and head down the walk, Den Hamilton behind me.
“Rikki.”
“Not now, Den.”
Another day, I may come back to smash down this door and spew my rancor on anything or anyone that answers it. For now, I have to get out of here, to follow this undeservingly lovely path to my car. I just do.
Gabriella
The wordsipwas invented for martinis. You could guzzle beer, even wine, and live to tell about it. Martinis were lethal, the heroin of the drinking world. Thus, one sipped; one did not shoot up.
She calculated the calories, which even if she avoided the olive, which she couldn’t resist, were more than the tin of tuna fish and the tiny bit of toast she’d had for lunch.
She remembered something her grandmother had told her. “Your thoughts are your destiny.” Thoughts lead to action. Action leads to habits. Habits lead to destiny.
Gabriella’s thoughts were somewhere between this fat, glistening olive, the same color as her eyes, Alain once said, and the biggest Frostie and saltiest French fries in Orange County. Not much of a destiny there.
She didn’t see him enter the room, but she felt him. Instinct aside, Alain was never late and abhorred anyone who was. Gabriella lifted her glass, feeling vain, knowing that he watched her, as she watched the smooth olive through the glass, contemplating its contrasting smudge of pimento.
She wore a skirt Alain bought her right before the breakup, a series of bias-cut, floral-print panels that joined to form a handkerchief hemline. The top was new, a sky-blue stretch halter with a keyhole neckline and narrow rows of smocking skimming her midriff. Between the skirt and the smocking, only smooth skin. And darned taut skin, thanks to her workouts with Christopher and the Killer Body nutrition plan.
