by Julie Frayn
The smoke alarm screeched above her head. She covered her ears. “Damn it all to hell.” She turned on the cold water, stepped her good leg on the chair to boost herself up and twisted the smoke alarm off its base. She ripped the battery from its gut and pitched it onto the counter, raced to the window and threw it open. She leaned out into the fresh morning air, her heart hammering and her legs unsteady.
Bruce’s face jumped into her mind, layered overtop the description the news anchor gave of the castrator. Could he be behind this? Was he living up to his namesake. Was he … Batman?
Laughter shook Billie’s breasts. She wiped her brow with trembling fingers and shook her head.
Get a grip. Editing the news for proper justice was one thing. But maybe she’d better stay in the shallow end of the fantasy pool, not dive into the deep end and drown.
Wednesday
THE SUBWAY CAR CAME to a jerking halt. Billie scanned the platform for high school thugs, but not a one darkened the station. Perhaps they chose to walk to avoid running into Bruce. She grinned at the image of him in her head. Her own personal hero. Even if he did only save her once. And he would have done it for anyone. It wasn’t as if he liked her or anything. How could he? Plain, boring, dismembered Billie. She’d probably never even see him again.
She pulled the newspaper into her lap and stared at the headline, read the article about the fate of those damn clowns for the eighth time. Her fingers itched to pull out her pen and fix the sloppy writing, elevate the grade level. But the outcome, the ending, this time, was like Baby Bear’s bed. It was just right. Those clowns would never harm another child.
The plastic seat jolted and creaked with the weight of another passenger’s butt. All those empty seats and the idiot has to sit right beside her?
“Hey, I read that this morning.” A thick finger poked at her newspaper.
She held her breath at the rumble of bass vocals and did something she always tried to avoid. Made eye contact.
“Morning, Billie.” Bruce’s wide grin exposed a mostly-gleaming set of teeth with some evidence of years of smoking — evidence she could smell in his clothes. The crowded ivories on the bottom of his mouth were crooked. Perhaps his parents could never afford dental work. She ran a tongue over her own cramped teeth.
“Good morning.” She looked at her lap, unable to hold his blatant stare, to return his gregarious smile.
He tapped the paper. “A little crazy, hey?”
She shrugged. “How so?”
He leaned his head next to hers, his wiry curls brushing against the smooth surface of the hair at her temple, pulled tight into a bun and sprayed smooth. She sniffed a slow, deep breath. His subtle cologne found its way past the cigarette smoke and filled her head. Was that … British Sterling? No, her mind was playing tricks on her. Did they even make that anymore?
His warm breath kissed her cheek. “Because they were castrated,” he whispered.
Her knees went cold and her stomach hollowed.
“It’s just like you wrote. Like your edits. Wild, right?” He sat up straight and extended an arm across the back of her seat. The warm pocket of air he’d created between them cooled.
“I guess it’s a little wild.” She’d never described anything she’d done as wild before. “But,” she dropped her chin and twisted her head to look back at him. “Just coincidence.” She focused on his face, on any cues to his involvement. Any twitch of his eye or clench of his jaw. “Right? Just coincidence?”
He let out a guffaw. “Well yeah, unless by night you’re some editing vigilante, righting wrongs that the justice system couldn’t. Fixing the cops’ fuck-ups.” He put his other hand over his mouth. “Sorry. That was rude.”
She grinned. Her, a vigilante. That’s a stretch. But at least he didn’t seem to know about it. Just a coincidence. But a damn freaky one.
“So, I was wondering.” Bruce leaned forward and put his forearms on his thighs, rocked on his toes. “Maybe one night, you and me.” He leaned back and looked at her out of the corner of his eye. “Maybe we could go to dinner or something. Maybe a movie?”
Billie stared at him. What kind of mean joke was this? “Why?” She didn’t know what else to say.
He scrunched his brows and snorted. “Well, because I kind of like you. You’re cute behind those old-lady spectacles, and all that librarian-chic clothing.”
She squinted. “Was that supposed to be a compliment?”
He put one of his big paws over his face and shook his head. “Shit. I’m sorry. I’m not very good at this sort of thing.”
“What sort of thing?”
“You know. Dating. Relationships.” He looked around the subway, his lips pursed. “I get it if you don’t want to. Hell, you hardly know me.”
“No.”
“Okay. I won’t bother you again. No hard feelings.” He stood.
“No.” She reached out and touched his hand. She expected his skin to be rough, dry. As weathered as his face. But it was as soft as Peg Leg’s fur. “I mean. Yes.” Her face was on fire and she couldn’t meet his eyes. But the only other place to look was right at the zipper of his pants.
Look at him, Billie. Just damn well look at him.
She raised her chin. “I’d like that. To go out, I mean.” She looked away, a small giggle escaping her lips. A giggle. Of all things. “Clearly, I’m not very good at this either.”
He dropped back into the seat beside her. “How about a movie? Then maybe a coffee or two.” He took a stray strand of her hair that had sprung free from its incarceration in her bun and tucked it behind her ear.
An inkling of warmth twitched down her spine and her breath caught in her chest. Her head bounced in a shallow, if not too vigorous nod. “Yes. That would be lovely.”
“How about Friday? Pick you up at seven?”
She shook her head and tore a strip of newsprint off the front page, fished her red pen from her purse, and scratched out her name and phone number. “I can meet you. Just let me know which theatre.” She handed him the paper.
“You’re a smart one, Billie. And sensible. See, that’s one of your charms.” He beamed. “Your many, many charms.” He tipped his imaginary red fedora and skipped out of the subway car.
She stared at the closed door and smiled on the inside. Her many charms. Just what did he see that she couldn’t?
1998
BILLIE SCRATCHED THE POINTED tip of the red marker across her short story. She shifted in her metal seat, permanently welded to the tiny desk in the middle row, and shook the pen, urging the ink to make it through just four more paragraphs.
Serves her right for pilfering the antique writing implement from her grandmother’s old pencil cup. So many pens, pencils, pencil crayons, heck even a few wax crayons that looked like they’d been gathering dust since Billie was in kindergarten and used to sit at her grandmother’s kitchen table and draw while Billie’s mother bitched about Billie’s father to his very own mother.
Billie’s ears rang with her grandmother’s patented “tsk tsk.” She’d been right to tell her daughter-in-law that she couldn’t do better. That Billie’s father was the best her mother would ever find. But to Billie’s mother, better meant more money. Lots of it.
Grandmother, like Billie, didn't give a damn about money. It corrupted people. Even people who didn’t have any, but always yearned for more.
Her father was never like that. He’d been above reproach. Incorruptible. Incontrovertibly honest and good.
He was perfect.
Her mother would have dropped them both in a beat of her gold-digging heart if a wealthy man had given her a second look. It wasn’t that she wasn’t pretty. Old pictures proved she was. Billie could understand why her father fell for her when they were so young, still in high school. But Billie’s memories of her had faded to the smell of booze and cigarettes, the vertical lines on her lips that blossomed from sucking on her beloved menthols, and the pinch in her forehead every time Billie’s father op
ened his mouth.
How long had it taken her mother’s dreams to come crashing to the ground? Was it when her father decided to become a cop instead of a lawyer? Or when the recession hit a couple of years before Billie was born and they lost their house? Billie recalled many drunken rants where her mother droned on about mortgage rates and the damn government.
Billie finished marking her story with red ink, correcting spelling and fixing grammar. The editing process brought a sense of peace. An understanding that she was making things right. Righting wrongs. Or perhaps righting writes. She glanced at the clock, pulled fresh foolscap from her binder, and began to write out a good copy of her story in blue ink. The Rollerball grated against the page like tinfoil against gold teeth. She shook the pen up and down and tried again. It was as dead as a cop in an alley.
She shut her eyes and took a mental red pen to her thought. She scratched out “cop in an alley” and wrote in “doornail.” She pitched the dead pen into her pencil case and pulled out a brand new one. Grandmother bought blue pens in ten-packs, Billie went through them so fast. Now if only she’d stock up on the red ones. Or better yet, buy her a computer. They’d save a bundle on pens.
The classroom door opened with a hollow click. The room buzzed with whispers and chair legs screeched against linoleum. Billie looked up to see a new kid standing at the teacher’s desk, his back to the class. Great. Another one to add to the fold of bullies and abusers.
She sat straighter and pulled her skirt over her knee, covered what she could of her prosthetic leg. May as well delay the onslaught of taunts and jibes.
“Class, pay attention, please.” The teacher tapped her ruler on her desk. “We have a new student. I expect you to make him feel welcome.” She smiled at the boy. “This is Gregory.”
The boy turned and nodded, gave a royal wave to the room.
Billie stared at his eyes, blue like she imagined the ocean looked at its most shallow points, with perfect white sand under the surface. A smattering of freckles dotted his nose and his blond hair hung to his shoulders in loose waves. He was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.
“There’s an empty desk in the middle row.” The teacher pointed in Billie’s direction.
Gregory followed the teacher’s pointed finger, but hesitated when his eyes met Billie’s. He smiled at her, and meandered to the desk behind her.
When he’d passed, Billie closed her eyes and let out the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. The smell of apples and Juicy Fruit swirled about her head, and the squeak of his sneakers filled her ears. She imagined them standing in a field, a ring of flowers in her hair, their hands entwined. A priest pronounced them married, and Gregory leaned in to kiss her.
“All right, everyone.”
The clap of the teacher’s hands shook Billie from one of the best life-edits she’d imagined yet. She opened her eyes to reality. A reality that would include a cute boyfriend when amputee pigs could fly.
“Ten more minutes, then hand in your stories.”
Billie sighed and kept transcribing her edited story. At the bell, she gathered the pages and tapped them against the desk to tidy them into a proper pile. The other kids streamed past her and dropped their papers on the teacher’s desk, racing out the door as fast as possible. It was last bell on a Friday, after all. They had places to go loiter, people to tease, beer to steal, cancer sticks to smoke.
Gregory passed her desk. Billie wanted to take a bite out of his Golden Delicious cheek. She watched him chat with the teacher. The woman handed him the assignment he’d just missed, asked him to work on it over the weekend and hand it in next week. She touched his arm, let her fingers linger there.
Billie understood. He was perfect. Her mental red pen drew an aura around his head. Not that he needed help to look angelic.
“Come on, Billie, move along now.”
Billie focused her red pen on the teacher and stabbed it into her heart. “Yes, Ms. H.” Billie wanted Gregory to leave first. She wasn’t ready for him to see her awkward escape from the too-short desk. But his eyes were glued on her.
She slipped her good leg into the aisle, put both palms on the desk, and dragged her prosthetic leg out from the confines. Why didn’t they have any left-handed desks in this damn school? Not that she was left-handed. But at least then she could make a graceful exit.
A sweat broke out on her brow and her cheeks warmed. She gathered her books with trembling hands, picked up her assignment, and turned. One step up the aisle under the scrutiny of his piercing gaze and she dropped her story. The pages scattered on the floor.
He rushed toward her and gathered the papers. He plucked the last one from the floor at her feet and stopped dead. “Whoa. You got a wooden leg.” He stood, the mess of her story in his hands, the pages out of order, upside down and wrong side up.
You have, you moron. Why did the beautiful ones always need to be left behind a grade or two?
“Technically,” she cringed at the squeak and crack in her voice. “Titanium. Lighter than wood. Stronger too.”
She couldn’t gauge his reaction. He looked almost impressed. Maybe even … Interested? That would be a first. But she would happily forgive his terrible grammar and syntax if he wanted to ask her out. Or even just not be mean to her.
He shoved her story at her. “That’s freaky.” He turned and left the classroom.
Freaky. Yep, that was about right. Why would she expect him to be any different than any other boy in school just because he could live the rest of his life on his looks and never have to open his pretty, dumb, luscious mouth?
She sighed, stared at the pages of her story, spotted a misspelled word on one of the upside down sheets and took her mental red pen to it. Too late to make a real correction. Dang, that was one lost mark.
It wasn’t enough that God tested her mettle by allowing her parents to die and then strapping her with the titanium albatross where her leg used to be. Nope, Billie had to compound the torture of her peers by being smart. By peppering her schedule with advanced placement classes and maintaining a perfect four-point-oh grade point average. Because nothing screams nerd louder than perfect grades and perfect attendance and sailing through junior high in less than two years. She would graduate high school a full year ahead of kids her own age. Kids that knew her before the amputation. The only group among which she thought she still had a friend or two. Now there were none. But at least she had her books and stories. Her journals and her imagination.
She handed the story to the teacher on the way by and walked out.
Agatha Friesen
AGATHA FRIESEN TWISTED the crimson cone out of its silo. She raised one eyebrow and ran the oily colour across her lips. Every time she touched up her lipstick she imagined Jeremy’s dick in her mouth. Except his dick wasn’t red. And it was huge.
A rush of moisture wet her underpants. If she had time she’d masturbate right here in the courthouse bathroom. A final eff-you to the justice system. But the cameras waited, and she’d rather let Jeremy get her rocks off in the limo. And the pool. And the kitchen.
She squished her lips together then smacked them, ran her tongue across her teeth. She leaned into the mirror and dabbed the tip of her pinkie under each eye. Not bad for a broad in her fifties. Of course, regular Botox injections didn’t hurt.
She squinted and examined her chin. Damn, she was getting that big-pored fatty chin of her mother’s. She pitched the lipstick in her purse, poked at the crepe-like skin of her neck, and smoothed the front of her dress over her augmented breasts. There was only so much of God’s work she could fix before she’d start to look like a caricature of herself. Better to age gracefully, with only the tiniest of help from modern science. And a huge boost of libido from her twenty-something paramour.
She swung the door wide and made a grand entrance into the marble-floored hallway. She was met with silence, only her lawyer and Jeremy there to appreciate her. She eyeballed Jeremy’s frame, imagined the hard m
uscle under the silk suit she had custom-tailored for his tight body. More moisture flushed from her crotch. At this rate she’d need Depends just to prevent her love juice from staining her dress. Either that or trade her young buck in on an older, flabby lover.
Jeremy flashed a grin at her and held out his hooked arm. She entwined her arm in his.
Depends it was. No way was she giving up that gorgeous face. Women half her age envied her, and not just for her money. They could all suck it. She glanced down at the ever-present lump in Jeremy’s pants. No, she’d suck it. The rest of them could just go straight to hell with her husband.
“Just hold your head high and ignore any questions.” Her lawyer puffed out his barrel chest, his hand on the push bar of the exit door. “You’re innocent. The jury said so. That’s all you need to say.”
She smirked. Even if they’d found her guilty, he’d say she was innocent. That’s what she paid him for.
He pushed the door open and walked into the limelight in front of Agatha.
“There she is!” The media swarmed, like wasps on a discarded hunk of sausage. They thrust microphones in her face, dangled them overhead from long handles. “Mrs. Friesen, what do you say to the people who believe you killed your husband?”
She jutted out her old-lady chin and jerked her head to flick a small strand of stray hair from her forehead. Damn wind ruined her ‘do. “I say I am innocent. And the court agreed.”
A shrimp ball of female reporter jostled her taller peers. “With double jeopardy attached, you can’t be retried even if you confessed. So tell us, Agatha. Did you kill your husband?”