Real Bad Things(39)
“Where are you staying?” Georgia Lee asked after she’d run out of things to say about pizza. She wanted to look at Jane, really look at her, take her in. But she didn’t want to stare. She let her eyes bounce from one table to another and then back to her silverware. She recognized no one, thankfully.
“With Diane.”
“Really? I’m surprised.”
“Me too. There was a misunderstanding.” Jane took a sip from her cup. She declined to say more or use a straw. Georgia Lee couldn’t very well use one, the latest harbinger of Earth’s destruction, if Jane didn’t. Ice cubes clinked against her teeth, and soda spilled along the edges of her mouth. Annoying.
Jane studied her. A little smile appeared. Was she making fun of her? Georgia Lee had to look away.
“What?”
“Nothing,” Jane said, tilting her head to the side. “Been a while, is all.”
What was that supposed to mean? “Where have you been hiding all these years?” It’d come out wrong. Like Georgia Lee had been waiting on her to finally make an appearance. Like Jane were a fugitive from the law. She had meant to ask a pedestrian question.
“Boston,” Jane said.
“Boston!” Too emphatic. Nerves. “Fancy.” She picked at a seam on her shirt and let her eyes wander toward Jane’s hands. No ring.
No wife. No girlfriend? She had to focus.
Georgia Lee was a married woman. A happily married woman. Mostly. Sometimes.
Jane shrugged. “Not really. It’s mainly full of people fleeing the sources of their insanity.”
“I imagine so,” Georgia Lee said, trying to sound politely interested. “How’d you end up there?”
Jane considered and then lifted her eyebrows, shrugged. “Bus rides. Free rides. Girlfriends got jobs. Girlfriends broke up with me. Just kept going till I hit the coast, I guess.”
Georgia Lee stalled on conversation topics after that. Jane did not exhibit the same curiosity about Georgia Lee’s life, which disappointed her. She should’ve gone somewhere that served liquor. A drink would’ve done them both good. She could’ve gotten away with it, friend from out of town and all. People did that. Drank after funerals.
“Where’s Jason these days?” Georgia Lee asked. As sorry and low as her spirits had dropped, she hoped Jane would say he was gone. Gone gone. Then this whole mess could be swept away with a quick phone call to John.
“Up in Maud Proper somewhere.”
All that hope, though fruitless, dissolved. “I’m surprised I haven’t seen him.”
“Even if you had, you probably wouldn’t know it. You know how guys are. They barely look the same as they did in high school. Besides, he changed his last name. He goes by Jason Tran now.” Bitterness edged her words, a surprise given how overprotective and adoring Jane had been of him. Georgia Lee had sometimes teased Jane when she fussed over Jason. Called her Momma Jane. The boy couldn’t leave the house without Jane worrying after him, asking if he had his key and where he’d be, what he was going to eat. “He’s an MMA fighter. Apparently.”
Georgia Lee couldn’t place the name, but she knew all about MMA thanks to the boys. That was the one thing they could talk about endlessly at the dinner table. That and football. “I thought he didn’t know his father?”
Jane waved a hand to dismiss the topic. She paused and leaned forward. “We should probably talk about that other thing.”
Georgia Lee straightened a bit in her seat to look around and waved a server over to distract from the topic Jane did want to discuss. Something trickled into Georgia Lee’s thoughts, something she couldn’t put her finger on. She brushed it aside. “Usually they come right over.”
Jane downed her drink and did that not-smiling-but-smiling thing. “What? Can’t talk murder on an empty stomach?”
Georgia Lee whipped her attention around them to see if anyone had heard. The people who’d ogled them when they walked in had returned their attention to their pizza or to reruns of NASCAR races that played from the projector TV over the stage.
“Could you please not use that word?” Georgia Lee had murder in mind with Jane’s attitude. Georgia Lee lacked her ability to find humor, even dark, in the situation. “You seem awful jovial for someone headed to prison.”
“I’ll cry if you prefer that. But seeing as this might be my last meal, I should probably try to enjoy it.”
“So it’s happening then? No updates to the story? No altered confession?”
“Nope,” Jane said. “I confessed. And now there’s a body. The one ingredient that was missing. It’s only a matter of time.”
“I’m sure this will all blow over,” she whispered, swallowing down her guilt. “There’s nothing to be worried about.”
“It’s not going to blow over,” Jane said. “Just promise me you won’t give a different story than the one we agreed to when it’s confirmed that you were my girlfriend.”
Was that a threat? Why else would she mention it? What did she know? Was Jane Lovelace? “No one is—”
About five servers with five different types of pizzas came round to ask if they’d like a slice of this or that. Georgia Lee’s appetite had steadily declined the longer they sat there, but she grabbed slices of ham and pineapple and pepperoni and taco and Buffalo chicken. They’d already paid, after all. And she needed to get food in her mouth. Shove it full. Figure out what to say. Remember how to talk when everything inside her screamed that something was wrong. Something was very wrong. But she didn’t have the words to say what.