Real Bad Things(19)
Lightheadedness swept through Georgia Lee. She straightened her sunglasses, smiled, and speed walked out of the store and to her car. She fumbled with the keys, unlocked it, threw herself into the seat, slammed the door, and gripped the wheel.
Fuck.
Seven
JANE
Adult contemporary pop played low on the radio. As soon as Jane turned the dial to a country station, Diane told her, “Turn that shit off.” Jane conceded rather than fight.
The songs weren’t that bad. Seemed there was a station like that in every region of the country, no matter how small, usually with Magic in the name. Fitting, as the tunes lulled Jane into almost forgetting about the phone call from the detective, her impending imprisonment, and the fact that the car she drove had belonged to Warren, another thing Diane kept around because it required no payment other than regular servicing when it broke down. Or maybe she had an emotional attachment to it. Jane got that. She still had a friendship bracelet Angie had made her.
The AC didn’t work, so she let the hot highway wind envelop her. Diane responded by throwing a hand to her freshly shellacked hair. She had asked Jane to drive on account of a headache. Jane wondered if she’d already started drinking. Not that driving would stop that.
The wind also helped to air out the lingering smell of Diane’s cigarettes and White Shoulders perfume, a smell Jane would forever associate with desperation and hunger and another breakup. Diane back on the hunt, back at Crawdaddies. She could almost hear the click of Diane’s cheap black heels down the hallway. See her open the fridge to pull out a beer from among the empty shelves and condiment containers. She could see herself there on the floor. Pen marks on the tips of her fingers. Strands of hair stuck in the dried sauce of her SpaghettiOs. And Jason there, too, beside her, his little digits clutching the crayon in his fist, not looking up from the storm of dark colors he’d circled over and over on the page. Little bits of paper torn off from the violent swirls. Humming the whole time.
And there in the kitchen, Diane downing the beer and dropping it into a paper bag under the sink, where it clocked the bottle she’d drunk after she got home from work. Diane facing the empty cabinets, hands on hips, looking for a quick bite to eat that wasn’t there because she’d neglected to go to the store. Diane pausing, noticing the quiet, the fact that she wasn’t the only one in the room. Looking over her shoulder, seeing Jane there, and pausing to take in this girl, her girl. A pen in each hand, head up, mouth drawn tight. Thinking about doing harm. Plunging those pens into Diane’s throat. A thought so bright and clear, like it was the right and true thing to do.
“Sonofabitch,” Diane muttered.
Jane glanced at her in the passenger seat. Diane sighed loudly, typed out a message on her cracked phone with its fake crystal case, and then sighed some more.
“Everything okay?”
Diane nodded and then stared out the car window, not saying anything more.
“Maybe we could head over to Jason’s after. See if he’s up for lunch or something.” Still no word from him after multiple calls and texts, which worried Jane. It was one thing to ignore her when she lived hundreds of miles away, another when she was in Maud because their dead stepfather’s body had been found. If she knew Jason—and she did, in that deep, familial way that didn’t dissipate no matter the minutes or miles that separated them—he was avoiding her for one particular reason. “You got his address?”
“Not since he moved.” Diane looked up, pointed at the road, and then returned to her phone. “You missed the exit.”
Diane insisted on a casket instead of the much cheaper option, cremation.
She also insisted Warren be treated like a real person with a family, not some homeless guy. Jane would’ve been happy to toss the remains in with the other unaccounted-fors in the city plot.
Chuck didn’t meet Jane’s expectations of a funeral home guy. He was too young, too tanning bed tan, too talkative. He wore a short-sleeve polo shirt tucked into heavily pressed khakis. She wanted the guy she always saw on TV, the one with a welcoming smile and kind eyes. A Wilford Brimley type who not only listened patiently but also offered mourners condolences and hard candies from a glass granny bowl. Not a former high school football star who pity smiled at Diane too much and was super interested in “the case” and having a true crime celebrity as a client—even if he didn’t quite understand how she and Diane could be in the same room together. But according to the Yelp reviews, the price was as right as they could get in Maud Bottoms.
As for the case, it was all over town now. Jane had pored over the news items all morning, addicted to other people’s opinions on whether or not she deserved to die. Most seemed to think she did. A local Facebook group called Let’s Talk About Maud provided the most comments and votes for her demise after a “little bird” who claimed to be close to the family “revealed” that Jane had been planning to kill Warren for weeks as evidenced in “as-yet-unreleased journal entries!”
One. Jane didn’t fucking journal. Two. They weren’t a family. There was no such thing as getting or being close when it came to them.
As if reading Jane’s thoughts, Diane positioned herself across the room from Jane in a stiff wooden chair, glared, and let Jane do all the talking. Jane examined a laminated copy—for the tears, Chuck explained—of package deals.