American Girls(30)

I told my sister that I wanted to go shopping.

“Sounds like sister talk,” Dex said. “I think I’ll excuse myself.”

“Are you making that much money?” Delia asked, knowing full well what the answer was.

“I thought you could help me; we could make it my Christmas present.”

“I’m confused,” she said, joking but not. “I thought all of this was your Christmas present.”

She’d pulled some leftover chicken wings out of the kitchen, and as she ate them, the delicacy of her fingers next to the bugs painted on her face almost made me dry-heave.

“Are you going to keep your makeup on?” I asked. “It’s kind of freaking me out.”

My sister waved me off and cleaned the chicken wing down to the bone.

“What’s wrong with the clothes that you have?”

“Nothing.”

She chewed her chicken slowly, and I swear I could hear her thinking.

“Is this about one of the twins?”

“No,” I said, embarrassed that she’d said it out loud. “Why, did Dex say something?”

“I don’t need Dex to spot puppy love. Plus, you get all misty now when we pass the cookie aisle.”

“Very funny,” I said. “And I’m not in love. I just want to look, you know, better.”

My sister narrowed her eyes and stared at me like I was a day-old doughnut, the fate of which was suddenly in her hands.

“Stop it.”

“I think you’ve lost weight,” she said. “Seriously. You do need new pants, and”—she lowered her voice—“Roger wants to see you. He had some questions about the write-ups you’ve been doing. I’m sure he’ll pay you something, and I can cover the rest. Within reason.”

From the bathroom, the toilet flushed.

“If,” she whispered, leaning in and pausing for dramatic effect.

“What?”

“You have to let me know which twin.”

I covered my face with both hands and told her.

“Knew it,” she said. “He’s the keeper.”

Dex emerged from the bathroom and went into the kitchen.

“So we’ll go shopping tomorrow afternoon,” she said loudly. “You can tag along with me and we’ll hit some of the boutiques on Melrose. I think they’re your style.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

*

The next afternoon we met Roger at a vegan restaurant on Sunset Boulevard, the same Sunset Boulevard that I had seen watching old detective movies with my dad, though it didn’t look anything like it had back in the day. Old-movie Los Angeles always seemed more glamorous than dangerous, full of snappy dialogue and women in tight dresses, not douche bags ordering black bean burgers with their kale juice. Any femme fatale worth her salt would have arched her eyebrows and ashed a cigarette on Roger’s plate in disgust. Any femme fatale except for my sister.

“You are in a good mood, no?” Roger asked. He was shooting a commercial nearby, and his hair was growing in. He looked the way I imagined someone might if they’d been slated to go to the electric chair and grown their hair in when they got a pardon.

“I’m taking her shopping,” Delia said.

Roger smirked. He considered all shopping other than his own bourgeois.

I ordered something that was supposed to approximate a hot dog and sweet potato fries, Delia ordered the flower-power salad, and Roger ordered black coffee, extra annoying since he had insisted on meeting here. He could have ordered that on the moon.

“So,” he said, leaning across the table and pretending like he was gazing into my soul. “Tell me. Do you now have a favorite Manson girl?”

That was Roger, always with the most disgusting way of saying anything. Boxers or briefs? Bundy or Dahmer? Fromme or Atkins?

“No,” I said. “They’re all pretty weird.”

“Understatement,” Delia said, picking at her salad. “Don’t play coy, Anna. You’ve been reading every night. Roger was thinking that maybe my character is reincarnated, or possessed, so it doesn’t have to be literal. Tell him what you know.”

“Well,” I said. “For one thing, he made all the women throw away their birth control, so if you wanted her to be someone’s niece or granddaughter or something, it wouldn’t be hard or anything. Did you know that Susan Atkins and Charles Manson had a kid?”

“Susan Atkins,” Roger said. “She was a Manson girl?”

It dawned on me that Roger might not have read a single word that I had sent him. Nada. Not a one.

“Yes,” I said. “But she’s too crazy. I mean, they’re all too crazy, but she was extra too crazy. And then she became a born-again Christian, so I don’t really think that would fit.”

“No,” said Roger, like fundamentalists were more repulsive than serial killers. “None of that.”

I took a bite of my hot dog, which was salty but nothing a normal person would confuse for meat. Birch could have done better with a pile of mushy grains. The fries were okay, though, because it’s hard to mess up fries, and they didn’t have to pretend to be something else like the rest of the menu. At the table next to us, a greasy-haired thirtysomething dude was eating alone, fingering his food like he couldn’t remember why he ordered it, all but spraining his neck to listen in on our conversation. He kept staring at Delia like he knew her, but she didn’t seem to recognize him.