“It did,” Doyle said.
Beth glared at him.
Cricket’s gaze fell to her coffee cup.
I saw Beth was about to start in on her again. I said to Doyle, “Okay, you’ve delivered your message.”
Doyle smiled. “Trying to get rid of me?”
“Just—” I looked at Cricket and at Beth, pointedly. “Business over.”
Doyle leaned toward Beth, and I’d swear he put his foot on hers under the table. She was bright red. For a woman who had sex for a living, whenever Beth was around this guy, she acted like a teen virgin.
Doyle turned his full attention to her.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out. “Rats.”
Cricket was on me instantly. “Everything okay?”
“The heat’s out in my dad’s condo,” I said shortly.
“Does he live somewhere cold?”
“Santa Barbara, but now he’s dead. I’ve got somebody watching the place.”
“How long ago did he die?” Sheesh, pesky woman.
“Ten years.”
“Isn’t your mom gonna get cold?”
Shut up, shut up. I didn’t want Beth hearing any of this. She would try to bully me into dealing with it, as she had Reg. “She died first. Give the waitress your order, Cricket.”
“And you haven’t closed the condo?” Cricket sounded curious but not judgmental.
I passed Cricket a napkin. Maybe she’d shut her mouth if she was wiping it. She sent me a grateful look, which I pretended I didn’t see.
She said to our waitress, who was waiting patiently—they know us at Ann Sather—“Gimme some of those pancakes and lingonberries. I want to try that before I die. And a couple of your cinnamon rolls.”
“Pog already ordered two trays,” I said. “May as well eat those when they come and order more later if we want them.”
“Thank you, Pog,” Cricket said, astonishing everybody. Nobody on this team besides Beth has what I would call manners. “That was very thoughtful of you.”
“C’mon, what else?” Jee said.
“I don’t know,” Cricket began helplessly, scanning the menu. “I don’t usually eat much breakfast.”
I cleared my throat meaningfully.
She jumped in her seat. “Oh. Hm. I suppose I am a bit hungrier than usual. I’ll also have the Swedish potato sausage and a Denver omelet. And some creamed spinach. And an order of biscuits and honey. And bring me a pot of coffee. Regular,” she added, looking defiantly around the table. I guessed that she wasn’t allowed too much caffeine back at the old folks’ home. Gosh, I wonder why.
“You can have a quart of red bull and vodka for all I care,” Jee growled. “Are you done? I’m starving.”
Cricket smiled at Jee. “I like your young man,” she said. “I’m sorry he had to go back and see to his mom’s house.”
Jee had a strong personality, but Cricket didn’t seem the type to crumble under it.
I held my breath.
Jee actually smiled back at her. “So am I.”
The waitress looked at me, and I quickly put in my order for a five-egg, four-cheese omelet, a double stack of Swedish pancakes with lingonberries, six slices of ham, and creamed peas, which was actually a lunch item but they know me. “And coffee, thanks.”
The waitress hurried off before we could order anything else.
While I’d been ordering, Doyle had brazenly turned from Beth to Cricket again. She chattered away to him. Pog looked across the table at me, sending some kind of message with her eyes.
I’m not good with that stuff, but I could guess what was on her mind. Cricket had no filters. She just opened her mouth and out it all came.
“—Can’t wait to find out what being a hooker is like,” Cricket was now saying, and I reached under the table and squeezed her knee. She shut up instantly. Her eyes got round. She sent me a quick look and said to Doyle, “Now tell me about yourself. Are you married?”
I thought Doyle would deflect that one, but he looked at Beth and said, “Nope.”
“Got a girlfriend, then?”
Doyle smiled. “Kinda.” He was still looking at Beth. Beth’s blue eyes got rounder and yet stabby.
“Faint heart never won fair lady, buster. You should get off the dime. Suppose she meets someone else?
“I think she meets all kinds of guys,” Doyle said, and Beth’s brow creased. “But they don’t matter. They don’t see in her what I see in her.”
Cricket cackled, watching all this with those sharp, sparkly eyes. I bet she caught on in that instant to everything Beth had been avoiding talking about for the past six weeks.
Doyle’s coffee came in a paper carry-out cup. He handed the waitress a couple bucks and stood. “Well, I’m not here to ruin your breakfast, ladies,” he said. “Maybe you can get Mrs. Smartypants here to finish leaving her family. I’m sure they’d be glad to know she’s, uh, healthy and having fun.”
“I always have fun, sonny,” Cricket began, and I squeezed her knee again. She didn’t look at me this time, but again, she shut up. Whew.
I left my hand on her knee until Doyle said, “See you at the library,” to Beth, toasted us all with his coffee, and left.
“He has a nerve,” Beth stormed under her breath.
Pog ignored this. “Now you see why we want you to make yourself look younger,” she said to Cricket.
“But I look forty years younger,” Cricket protested. “I think that’s a big enough change for one day.”
“Not if nosy cops are going to be hunting for you, dead or alive. We went through this with Beth,” Jee said.
Thank goodness, the cinnamon rolls arrived. Everybody focused on food. I drowned myself in smells of cinnamon, hot sugar, fresh-baked bun, butter, and lard.
Of course Beth wouldn’t leave it alone. When we got back to the Lair, she and I chased Reg away from the laundry machines long enough for us to do a load of delicates apiece. Cricket sat on a plastic lawn chair in the laundry area, which we had installed down in the locker room, and chattered to Beth about Doyle.
“Seems like a nice young man. Are you seeing him?”
Seeing. I was getting the hang of Cricket’s euphemisms.
“Kind of,” Beth said shortly.
Cricket’s eyelids lowered, as if registering Beth’s dodge. “He’s cute. A policeman! That’s so interesting. Have you ever seen him arrest anybody?”
Beth’s lips twitched. “My ex-husband.” She dumped her laundry on top of a washing machine. “Have you thought about what kind of closure you want to do for your family?”
Cricket groaned. “I don’t wanna.”
I smiled as I sorted my sports bras and cotton undies from my work lingerie.
“How about a video?” Beth said. “You could tell them you’re going to Brazil. You disappear ‘off to the cruise’ and then you fake your death.”
“They know I wouldn’t do that.” But Cricket suddenly had a thoughtful look.
I wished Beth would shut up.
She sorted the plastic hangers by color. “And you ought to let the people at your old place know you’re all right. Where you were living before. Wasn’t it the Loriston Home? That’s supposed to be a very nice facility.” Beth herself was only fifty. She probably saw the Loriston Home as a godsend for rich people her age with still-living parents. “Oh dear, this blue hanger is broken.”
“I’m not going back there. Not even for a visit.” Cricket was very definite about this.
“But Cricket, honey, the staff there will be frantic. They’re responsible for you.”
“No, they’re not. I’m competent. Ninety-eight years old and I’m still competent. Nobody likes it but me,” she said triumphantly. “Screw ’em.”
“I’m sure you are,” Beth said insincerely, and stopped. Even she must have noticed that Cricket didn’t look ninety-eight anymore. Cricket’s resistance to switching her body over to hot-young-chick like the rest of us was messing with all our minds. She talked old.
/> That’s a demon thing. I’m forty, but I feel about twenty-eight, which is how old I was when my Dad died, and a couple years later I joined the Regional Office. Beth adored looking nineteen, but nobody could get the mom out of her. I wondered if Cricket would ever come across as a native of the 21st century.
Reg came in to turn over his whites load. We have three washing machines, which is fine if it’s just Reg doing the laundry, but Beth and I do our own delicates. The slackers who lived here before we moved in didn’t have any laundry machines at all. I think they burned their socks and jeans when they got dirty.
Beth wasn’t giving up. “Reg, tell Cricket she has to get closure with her family before she disappears on them.”
“There’s blood on that,” Reg said instead. He grabbed the fancy bra out of Beth’s hands. “What happened there?”
We don’t have our periods any more. Halleluia, sex demon bodies.
“Blood?” Beth took back her bra and turned it over, frowning. “Darnit.”
“Nobody hurt you, did they?” Reg said, bristling.
“Monday. Guy punched me in the breast after I serviced him,” Beth said briefly.
“Shit!” Reg reached out, yanked Beth’s top up, and inspected her naked chest.
Beth said, “Hey!”
Reg grunted. “Huh. You look okay.” He added warmly, “I’da killed him.”
“I broke his nose,” Beth said, pulling her shirt down. “It’s his blood on my bra. Next time I’ll break his arm. And that’s inappropriate behavior, Reg,” she added half-heartedly. “What do you think? Baking soda and water?”
“Somebody punched you?” Cricket said with shock.
“Sorry.” Reg smoothed Beth’s shirt over her chest, copping a feel in the process, and then grabbed a squirt bottle off the shelf. “Here, use this. It’s fucking awesome with tough stains.” Then he reverted to Beth’s remark. “Thing is, Cricket, people like their loose ends tied up.”
“Ugh,” Cricket said.
“That’s a thought,” I said. “Have a family meeting.” I was getting the idea that for some reason Cricket was uncomfortable about her family.
“That’s kind of clinical, isn’t it?” Beth said, wrinkling her nose as she spritzed and rubbed her blood-stained, two-hundred-dollar bra. “Wouldn’t a nice party be better?” She brightened. “How about a celebration of life? They do that now instead of funeral receptions. A small ceremony at the graveside just for family, and a big celebration of life for everyone.”
Cricket shuddered. “I’ve been to too many of those, thanks. Pictures curling up at the edges on the bulletin board, and speeches. I don’t wanna hear any speech anybody makes about me.”
But Beth wouldn’t let it alone. When we gathered in the kitchen for a snack of pulled pork sliders on pretzel rolls that Pog threw together, Beth put her proposal to the rest of us: should Cricket give her family a party, just to get them used to the idea that she was moving on? And then we could fake her death.
“Are you sure you want to leave that life behind?” I wanted to be sure for her.
Cricket pshawed at that one. “Good grief, yes. I love them, but not enough to put off new adventures so we can have lunch once a month. And what would I tell them I was doing with my time? Look at me. I’m not good with lying. Believe me.”
We all looked at Cricket. I, for one, believed her.
“They might not care if she’s dead,” Pog stated. “They might only care about what she does with her estate.”
Cricket looked really unhappy. “My estate’s all set up in trusts. Irving and I did that when we got married in our seventies.”
I could see this whole conversation was freaking her out. What had she thought—she could walk out of the Loriston Home without a word and never see her family again? I wondered which of her descendants she was avoiding meeting.
I remembered then how I’d walked away from my parents’ house after my dad died. Just stayed at work and let the mail pile up back home. I sympathized. But I knew Beth and Doyle were right.
In the end Cricket agreed to get the whole family, or such members of it as cared to show up, into a room at a hotel somewhere, nice big reception suite, catered food, guest book, vats of champagne, and say goodbye. She could work the Brazil angle—she could say she was going on a world cruise until she died, and she wanted to say goodbye now in case she croaked on the ship or fell overboard or something.
“I guess that’ll work,” Beth said, although clearly she wanted to extort more sentiment from Cricket’s family. Considering the kind of sentiment Beth’s own family had exhibited when she vanished into our team, I was surprised she couldn’t tell that Cricket was dreading this. Beth still has a streak of conventionality that gets in the way of her grip on real life. Between us and the job and Doyle, we’re wearing that conventionality down. Habits die hard, though. Beth wouldn’t let it alone until she had planned Cricket’s celebration of life to the last minute. “I can help,” she said unnecessarily.
Cricket’s face was a mask of discomfort. “I guess.”
“You need clothes,” I said to Cricket, as if the conversation was over. “Let’s go shopping.”
She brightened. “Shopping?”
“Oh hell yeah,” Jee said, as if someone had finally said something that made sense.
“Reg, clean this up,” Pog said.
“Gimme ten minutes. I’m coming shopping too!” Reg said. He leaped up and bustled around the kitchen like an octopus on crack.
CRICKET
Cricket went with the team to Lincolnwood Town Center, a mall in what Jee called the hinterlands of Skokie. They walked up and down the endless zig-zagging edges of the big atrium, going into four jewelry stores, all the shoe stores, and the kind of stores Cricket had never, ever patronized, stores with names like Pink and @titude and Femme Fatale.
The other girls brought her clothes and she tried them on and put them in the keeper pile, no matter what her opinion, because whenever she picked something out for herself, everyone exclaimed against it. They chose dresses, shoes, handbags, jewelry, makeup, hair ornaments. Cricket was surprised there were no hats in the pile, but apparently nobody wore hats anymore except Orthodox Jews.
She also bought some spandex duds like Amanda’s. She felt kind of foolish trying to dress the same as a mighty athlete. On the other hand, it seemed that the more bright-colored spandex Cricket tried on, the younger and stronger she looked in the mirror.
Jee paid for everything. She seemed to enjoy it. She handed over her credit card like a queen and signed without looking. And she seemed appalled when Cricket promised to pay her back.
That girl was poor once—really poor. Cricket filed this information with all the other things she was learning about her new friends.
They broke for a snack, working their way like soldier ants around the arc of the food court. Amanda and Cricket shared the largest bowl of frozen yogurt possible, loaded with fruit, chocolate sprinkles, chopped cookies and candy bars, gummi bears, nuts, and butterscotch syrup.
The group scattered inside Carson’s. Pog and Reg peeled away at the chef supply department. Beth vanished into the bookstore. Jee dragged Cricket and Amanda to the jewelry counter, as if she hadn’t raided four already, and bought Cricket the diamond tennis bracelet she’d been hunting for.
But as soon as she learned that Amanda proposed to take Cricket to a bike store, Jee announced that she would hail a cab.
“You don’t have to go!” Cricket protested.
Jee shuddered. “Uh, thanks, I can see where this is headed.”
“Jee’s not a fan of the great outdoors,” Amanda said. “Besides, we’ll need the van.” She phoned the others and warned them that they’d need to find their own way home from the hinterlands.
So Amanda and Cricket went alone to see Gretchen, a wiry young person who was very kind to Cricket and found her a bike that perfectly fitted her tiny body. Gretchen didn’t seem to think it was odd at all that someone her age
wanted to ride. Cricket ordered lots of accessories, to thank her for her patience: gloves, shoes, front lights, back lights, a lock, and a water bottle holder. At one point she caught Gretchen looking at Amanda, and realized that she wasn’t the only one who admired her magnificent roommate. Probably because they were both bikers. Both Amanda and Gretchen had those strong-looking calves.
Amanda seemed to think Cricket needed even more accessories: panniers, and a complicated speedometer computer. Cricket wondered if the girl’s credit card could handle all this. After all, she wasn’t as pretty as Jee. Maybe she didn’t make as much money from “the Regional Office” for servicing men and getting punched in the boob.
“How much was the bike and all that stuff?”
Amanda tried to wave it away.
“Nuh-uh,” Cricket said firmly. “Jee likes to splash her money around. I can tell I’m doing her a favor to let her buy me stuff. I’m buying this bike.”
“You don’t have any money yet,” Amanda said.
“Yes I do. I’m loaded. How do you think I afford—afforded the Loriston Home?”
Amanda just looked at her.
Then Cricket remembered she’d run off without even her handbag.
The handbag would be on her kitchen counter back at the Home.
Ugh.
She took a long, deep breath and swallowed. “Guess it’s time I went back there and got my credit card.”
Amanda sent her a shrewd glance. “You sure?”
What a nice girl. She got it without being told. “Sooner done, sooner over,” Cricket said.
“Good. You can have a bike ride tomorrow for a reward.”
“I like how you think.”
Amanda smiled again. “Should we take the bike home first?”
Cricket smiled too. She had a friend. “Nah. I won’t want more than a suitcase.”
Amanda turned the van around and headed out to the burbs.
The closer they got to the Loriston Home, the more anxious Cricket felt. “Maybe I can sneak in and out, and nobody’ll see me.”
Amanda glanced at her from the driver’s seat. “Think so?”
“No.” Cricket slumped.
“You do have your keys, right?”
Coed Demon Sluts: Omnibus: Coed Demon Sluts: books 1-5 Page 61