Jee opened Beth’s left hand, tucked the card into it, and patted it, exactly the way Blake had done when he gave it to her. “My department.” She got her phone out. “What’s your old home number in Glenfiddich?”
“Glencoe.” Beth told her the number.
Jee nodded and tossed her hair back over her shoulder with a businesslike flick. “Mrs. Saunders? Oh, is your mother there? I need to speak to the owner of the house. This is Officer Canning from the Chicago Police Department. Ah, I see. Well, is Mr. Saunders there? Where else might he be right now, Miss?” Jee smiled maliciously at Beth. “No, we’ve tried his office. Does he have any other numbers? Thank you, let me write that down.” Jee sketched a number in the air.
“That’s his cell,” Beth whispered.
Jee turned back to the phone. “We have that number, too, Miss. We’re trying to find that out right now, Miss. Do you have a number for his next-of-kin? Just a moment, please.” Jee put her hand over the phone and laughed a silent hyena laugh. Then she said into the phone, “No other residences or places where he might be? I see. No, but I’ll get back to you a little later.” She hung up and doubled over, howling out loud. “She is gonna rip him such a fresh hot butt hole!”
Beth realized she was grinning, too. “Although if I had taken that call I’d be frantic with worry about him,” she said, sobering. “Won’t you get in trouble for impersonating a police officer?”
“Oh for Pete’s sake,” Amanda said, rolling her eyes.
Jee said briskly, “My phone blocks hers, so she can’t get the number. So the next question, I take it, is this. Does he borrow, rent, own, or just lie about the apartment at the Doral?”
“Want to go there, Beth?” Pog said, as she turned the van onto the Eisenhower Expressway headed into the city. “Or do you want to go home to bed?”
“Bed, I think,” Beth admitted. “My body feels fresh as a daisy, but my brain is tired.”
“Suits me,” Amanda said.
“We can chase this down easier in the morning anyway,” Jee said.
They brought her back to the Lair and settled into the row of La-Z-Boys in the kitchen. Beth roused herself to try to tidy up.
Pog said, “Hey! What are you doing? This is my kitchen.”
Beth stopped cold, her hand on an empty beer bottle. “I’m sorry.” Horror at her faux pas made icky prickly ripples up and down her back. “Oh, I’m so sorry.” She felt grovelingly apologetic. She couldn’t afford to mess up with these women.
“Don’t fuck with the new girl’s head,” Jee said.
“Bring me a beer, someone?” Amanda said.
“Sheesh,” Pog said. She got up and pulled a couple of bottles out of the nearest refrigerator and tossed one to Amanda. “I’m just saying, Beth, leave that row of empties there. We’re saving one for each kind we like, so I can order more when these run out. What, did you get a badge in Brownie Scouts for manners?”
Beth put the bottle back down. “Yes.”
Pog chuckled. She took another beer out, popped the cap, and put it in Beth’s hand. “You feel up to discussing tonight?”
The beer went down cold and tart. Beth’s eyes closed by themselves. “I don’t know. I’m pretty wiped out.” She heaved a tired sigh. “Okay. What do we discuss?”
Pog patted the La-Z-Boy next to her and Beth flopped into it. “What did you hope to acomplish?” Pog said.
Beth thought. “I was stupid. I guess I thought I could ask him why he left me. I knew Farrah wasn’t the first,” she admitted, speaking aloud something she hadn’t ever said. She wished she could take it back. Maybe it wouldn’t be true. Her voice rose. “So why leave me now?” Four bumpy heartbeats later, she shook her head. “Never mind. Stupid.”
“What else might have happened?”
“I don’t know. I thought maybe if I met him like this—” She looked down at herself.
“Like what? Young, hot, and rich?” Pog said.
“Yes. I thought he would tell me things he wouldn’t tell his wife.”
“You already knew most of it,” Pog pointed out. “And he did tell you something new. He told you about his apartment downtown.”
“Yes, he did that.” Beth wasn’t the least bit consoled. She still felt stupid. “I’m sick to my stomach with fear. What else is going to happen? What else will he do to me? I have something again, kind of. Maybe.”
“What do you have?” Pog said.
“This body. A job. Some friends.” Beth glanced timidly at Pog, who only nodded. “Can he take those? He took everything else,” she said desolately.
“He has only the power you give him,” Pog said.
“He took my children from me,” Beth flashed. “Somehow he turned them against me. They just don’t care what happens to me.”
Pog didn’t say anything.
Beth remembered what Delilah had said. “That’s over. They’re gone.”
That was a lie. It had to be. She didn’t feel like her children were gone. They were in her heart, in her life. If she glanced at her watch right now, she would remember what day this is, and then she would jump into the car and go run an errand for Darleen, pick up the grandkids from daycare, buy something online that Darleen couldn’t afford.
Only she wouldn’t. That was over.
Delilah had said, They won’t know you. Had she signed away her children and grandchildren when she took that contract?
Or had she already lost them in the divorce? It seemed so.
The room began to spin queasily for Beth.
“I’m gonna go out on a limb here and make a guess,” Pog said. “I think you were going to go see Blake and get him all impressed with your new beautifulness. And then at some point you were gonna tear off your whiskers and say ‘Ta-da, it’s me, your wife. Now do you want me?’ Or maybe, ‘Hah, I’ve caught you, you miserable philandering schmuck, you can’t even stay faithful to the woman you left me for.’”
Beth covered her face with her hands. “Yes! Both! Yes!” The truth burned her with acid shame. “I’m pathetic.”
“Beth, I’m gonna explain this a different way,” Pog said more kindly.
Beth cringed. “Explain what?”
Pog slowly sucked down some beer. “I don’t have anything to offer about your ex. Don’t know the guy, don’t want to, he’s just another putz. But this you might want to think about.”
“Yes?”
“You are not wearing a mask that hides you. You are wearing a mask that reveals you. Repeat that?”
Numb and obedient, Beth said, “I’m not wearing a mask that hides me. I’m wearing a mask that reveals me.” What the heck did that mean? She felt battered inside, the way she had after sitting in the divorce hearings.
“She’s glazing over, Pog,” Amanda said from her chair in front of her video game.
Beth started crying. She covered her face again.
She felt Pog’s hand on her shoulder. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Maybe that’s the problem, huh?”
“Maybe,” Beth croaked from behind her hands.
“Weren’t you tired of being a good girl? Aren’t you sorry you did everything right?” Pog’s lips nearly touched her ear. She whispered, “Wouldn’t you like a second chance to go back and do it wrong?”
The spinning kitchen slowed. Beth felt her stomach begin to settle. She drew a shaky breath and wiped her tears off her cheeks with her palms. “Don’t know if I can.”
“Well,” Jee said, speaking for the first time and flashing her a smile full of teeth. “That’s where we come in.”
Pog
Once we got the new girl put to bed, Jee and I went down to the factory deck and settled in the broken lawn chairs to watch Amanda go over Reg’s sneaker prints on her freshly-painted basketball court. She’d changed into sweats and flipflops so she could crawl around with a teeny roller dipped in battleship-gray paint. Jee and I still had on our party-wear.
“Seriously, we can make Reg do that,” I told Amanda between samples o
f Baz’s treasure trove of microbrew. Damn. We’d have to place one big order with the liquor store when this stuff ran out. “He’ll be back soon enough.”
“We’ll try something different next time. This guy can make us miserable if we let him,” Jee pointed out.
“So we don’t let him,” I said, full of beer and optimism.
“Admit it, you kinda overreacted there,” Jee said.
“This is you telling me that?” I said incredulously. “All right. I overreacted.”
“Was that true, what you told Beth?” Amanda said from her hands and knees on the wooden deck. “Will he not remember being chucked off the balcony?”
“I’m pretty sure,” I said. “I’ve admitted I could probably have handled it differently. But he was mauling the new girl, and she was freaking out. I didn’t want her to get the idea that we have to put up with any crap.”
Amanda grunted. “Well, we’ll have to put up with a manager.” She crab-crawled across the floor, now repairing the damage to the black lines.
“No, we won’t,” I insisted darkly. “We will fix this. One way or another.”
“You don’t have to apologize to me,” Jee said. “I’d have killed him.”
“Ah,” I said, “but if you kill him, he won’t learn anything.”
Amanda grunted again. “If he’s got a contract, he can’t be killed.”
Jee smiled wickedly. “Kinda makes it more fun, doesn’t it?” She looked at the beer in her hand. “Hey. This shit is awesome. Have you tried this?” She passed it to me.
I took a swig. It was a nice stout, malty and hoppy with chocolate and coffee notes. I nodded approval with my mouth full.
“Gimme back,” she said, and after another swallow I returned the bottle. She pulled out her phone and took a picture of the label. “I’ll send you this, and you can put it on your shopping list.”
“Awesome,” I said. In the building less than forty-eight hours and already I was Chore Girl. That gave me an idea. “We need a cabana boy around here.”
Jee was about to drink, but she put her beer down and stared at me. “You’re fiendish.”
I was a beat behind her. We have to have an onsite manager.
“Oh.” I smiled slowly. “But how do we motivate him?” I said.
“Leave that to me,” Jee said.
“Here’s another problem. How are we going to know if he remembers anything from today?” Amanda argued. Often she seemed to be out of it, or dumb or bored, but she was tenacious, and she asked the right questions.
I pursed my lips. It had been a long day, and I was sinking into a beercation.
“That’s easy,” Jee said. “Take a firm grip on his arm and lead him toward that door to the manager’s balcony. If he panics, you’ll know he remembers something.”
“Great idea.” I sighed. “I’m crapping out, ladies.”
Jee thrashed her way awkwardly out of her broken lawn chair like a spider with three legs. “Shit, I wish I was drunker. Or soberer. Or asleeper.”
“I’m done,” Amanda said, climbing to her feet. We left her cleaning her rollers at the sink and limped upstairs.
Beth
The following morning, Beth awoke feeling energized, alert, physically fit, and starving. The only garment she could stand to put on out of her sorry suitcase was a kimono she’d bought in Kyoto twenty-eight years ago, when Blake took her with him on a business trip. She wrapped this around herself and shuffled down the hall to the kitchen.
“I’m out of shampoo. Can I use somebody’s?” she said.
Three lady sex demons looked up from their waffles. Then they looked at her feet and broke out in a clamor of advice.
“Don’t go barefoot in there!” Pog said.
“I’ve got some flipflops you can use.” Jee said.
“Do you want hepatitis?” Amanda said.
“She’s safe from infection, but not from the gross,” Pog said.
“I already peed,” Beth said, bemused.
“Seriously, don’t walk in there barefoot,” Jee said.
“Don’t even shower barefoot,” Pog said.
“Get her the flip-flops,” Amanda said. “She needs food.”
Jee gave Amanda a look, but she got up and went out and came back with a pair of black flip-flops with jeweled bands. Beth thanked her and slipped them on. Amanda pulled her into a chair at the big table. Pog put a pile of waffles on a paper plate.
Beth was so hungry, she ate the first three waffles with her hands as if they were toast, without butter or syrup. When Pog put the second batch in front of her, she took the trouble to butter them. They went down the hatch even faster. While she waited for more, she got up, poured herself some coffee, and noticed the half-gallon carton of heavy whipping cream on the counter. “What’s this for?”
“Well, I’m too goddam lazy to whip it for the waffles,” Pog said in a suggestive tone.
“Fuck, that’s what aerosol whipped cream is for,” Amanda said.
“Doesn’t taste as good,” Pog said.
“Has more calories,” Jee said, not looking up from her tablet.
Beth took a deep breath. She had been drinking her coffee black for twenty years, ever since Blake told her it was time she lost her baby weight.
She put her mug down on the counter. She opened her kimono and looked down at herself—a tall, slender, muscular version of herself, or some ideal of herself she’d never realized she had.
Yup. Still skinny and hot.
With another deep breath, Beth poured a big dollop of whipping cream into her coffee. Then she stirred in three spoonsful of real white sugar. “Mmmmmmm. All right, ladies. That was so good, I will whip you some cream for your waffles.”
At that point, breakfast became an orgy of value-added waffles.
Amanda produced a big carton of fresh strawberries and one of blueberries. To Beth’s amazement, she actually hulled the strawberries herself.
Jee dug liqueurs out of the lower cabinet and added them a glug at a time to whatever bowl Beth was whipping, or tucked the bowls into one of the six fridge-freezers along the kitchen wall.
Pog made waffles like a madwoman, until they were stacked in the oven like cordwood. Then she announced they were out of eggs. “No more batter. Let’s do this!”
The four of them sat down and got serious. Waffles layered with fresh strawberries and Framboise-sweetened whipped cream. Waffle sandwiches glued together with fresh blueberries that had been smashed into whipped cream that was laced with birthday-cake-flavored vodka. Waffles piled so high with Cointreau whipped cream and fresh fruit that Beth could bob for berries, getting cream up her nose and giggling hysterically.
“Hey, Beth,” Jee said at some point when Beth was feeling sated enough to use a fork. “Isn’t your husband named Blake?” She was browsing a big tablet with one finger as she licked her hands clean.
“Ugh, you had to mention him.” For a whole night, Beth had forgotten to be angry. At this hour, she felt pretty good, even after scrambling out of barroom toilet windows and running on a twisted ankle in spike heels away from her husband—her ex-husband. Beth blinked. “Hey. My ankle doesn’t hurt today.”
“It shouldn’t. You really have to work at it to mess up one of these bodies,” Amanda said.
“Because somebody has filed a missing persons report on you, and your ex is being sought for questioning. Looky here.” Jee handing over her tablet. “In the Tribune.”
Beth squinted at it. There was her photo, taken at a company party five years ago. “My God, I was fat,” she blurted. She’d been a succubus all of two days and already she was sneering at her old self. Of course, she’d also sneered at herself back when she was...herself. Mrs. Blake Saunders, missing since late last week. If you see her, contact her daughter at this number or email, blah blah and her car’s description and license plate. Right, the car she’d left at the motel, an old beater Audi Blake had given up ten years ago. “What does this mean?”
Jee said,
“He’s going to try to establish your death. Lets him out of the settlement.”
“If they don’t find a body, he’ll have to bank it for you for seven years,” Amanda said.
“He has nothing to bank. He’s in money trouble,” Beth said. Then she remembered the mystery apartment at the Doral. “At least, I think he is.”
“Right, that’s on this morning’s agenda,” Jee said. “Do you have that card he gave you?”
Beth went to her room and found the card. “Here you go.” She gave it a glance. “Wait, it says Blake Shanley. That’s not his last name,” she said, feeling stupid.
“But he gave you the card. He was hoping to get you into that apartment with him,” Jee said.
“I’d say he was counting on it,” Pog said drily. When Beth squinted at her, Pog put out a palm. “Hot young thing gives him her undivided attention for nearly two hours? Oh yeah.”
“Did you wait for me all that time?” Beth said, suddenly remorseful.
“Not wait, exactly. We had the rest of this month to take care of,” Pog said. “Okay, you slackers. Clean up, or you’ll cook your own breakfast tomorrow.”
The other two groaned, but they got up and cleared away the soggy, sticky paper plates.
Beth collected the dirty flatware, which was a sturdy Oneida pattern at least forty years old, and loaded it into the dishwasher, along with the plates out of the waffle iron. She caught Jee and Amanda eying her. “What?”
“I forget, you’ve been a slave for twenty-eight years,” Jee said.
“Excuse me,” Beth said, straightening and putting her hands on her hips. “I was married. I had children. I was a homemaker, not a slave.”
“Were you paid?”
“I had all the money I could spend. For a long time,” she added scrupulously. Blake’s money troubles had begun while the kids were in college.
“But you kept working the same amount, even when the pay went down.”
“I was not paid,” Beth snapped. “I did it for love and because it was my job. My contribution to the family.”
“How many hours a week?” Jee said.
“I don’t know! A lot less when the kids went off to college. It was—I felt—” I felt retired, Beth thought. I felt put out to pasture. She felt sick now. She’d been sent to the glue factory.
Coed Demon Sluts: Omnibus: Coed Demon Sluts: books 1-5 Page 6