“There were some Hares that went to school with us. One of them was a girl, I think. Can’t remember her name. What does she have to do with the fellow dying outside the Zig Zag?”
“She disappeared,” the detective replied.
“Didn’t she run off with some fellow?” Frank asked. “Some ex-hockey player.”
The detective nodded. “How about a Joseph Begin? Have you heard of him?”
Frank shook his head.
“What’s all this about, Officer?”
“Missing persons.”
Frank’s eyes dropped. “Our son disappeared,” he said, his voice tentative.
“Yes, I know.” The detective spoke softly now. He didn’t want to go through another meltdown with Frank.
“Ruth, she never got over it. Keeps thinking Johnny will come back.
He ain’t coming back, Detective. We would have heard something from 105 him, if for no other reason than to bum money off us. Johnny was a loser.
He was never good at anything. Looks and personality, but no character.
He was my son and I loved him, but he was a bum.” Margaret
“What did you do?” Adelle asked Cathy, her eyes wide with anticipation.
Cathy leaned across the restaurant table in the booth the two girls occupied. “I kneed him in the balls!”
Adelle clapped her hands, leaned back, and laughed. Cathy smiled.
“Nobody is going to try that crap on me.” Cathy’s voice was sharp and bitter. “You were right though. The guy is a creep and to think I let him touch me. God, it makes me feel so sleazy to think that I touched…” Margaret arrived at the table to take the girls’ order. With her hair pinned up, her thin bosom-less body, and the low sarcastic voice that slipped out of the side of her mouth, she was, for the girls, the anti-fe-male. The girls looked up with disgust. Couldn’t she see that they were talking? The girls ordered.
“You dragged me over here for a Coke and two straws?” Margaret said with a snarl.
Cathy looked up and smiled with as much charm as she could garner.
“We are having a conversation,” Cathy said, enunciating each word as if she were speaking to someone who did not understand the English language.
Adelle turned and raised her eyebrows, giving parenthesis to Cathy’s declaration.
Margaret tapped her pencil impatiently on her ordering pad, leaned to one side, and smiled. “We are running a business,” she replied. And then leaning over the table, added, “And if you ladies give me any more of this snotty business, you’ll no longer be welcome in this establishment.” The two girls were silent for a brief moment before Adelle added, “I’ll have toast.”
Margaret returned to the counter.
“Where is she coming from?” Adelle cried.
“What a bitch!” Cathy whispered.
“No wonder there’s never anyone in this place,” Adelle added, her eye on Margaret. “I would never talk to a customer like that. Mr. Leblanc would fire me on the spot. She must be going through the change. My mother’s like that. The other day she went into a rage because I used a 106 bit of her makeup. There was hardly anything left in the tube of face cream and she blames me because it’s all gone. Like it’s my fault that she didn’t buy more. She uses my tampons and I don’t scream at her. Why do women become such witches? If I turn out like that, promise me you’ll have me put down.”
Margaret returned with the girls’ Coke and toast. Both girls smiled at the waitress. Margaret shook her head.
“Why did you go to the beach with him?” Adelle asked once Margaret had departed.
“I didn’t go to the beach. We just ended up there,” Cathy explained as she placed her straw in the Coke. “I was feeling sorry for the guy. It was kind of obvious what he had in mind once we got there, but I felt this ob- ligation to be fair with him. Why do we bother? No matter what I said, he wouldn’t let up. At least when I ask Terry for space, he gives it to me.
But Johnny thinks he’s owed something. Like I should drop to my knees and do him. I am not his right hand.”
Adelle giggled. “You are terrible. Not his right hand. I’ll have to remember that one.”
“We started to argue. You know how boys are. He thinks he’s the one being reasonable and I’m being this incredible bitch because I want to talk about certain issues. What is a relationship if you can’t discuss things like adults? He starts telling me I’m yelling. Trying to paint me as hysterical. I was just so bloody frustrated trying to get him to talk. And then he gets physical with me. Pushes me to the sand and starts to undo his pants. When he tried to fuck me, I gave him the knee. He barfed. I rolled away but still got some on my hair. Yuck! What an asshole! How could I have ever let that slug between my legs? You warned me but I couldn’t see it. It’s like you’re so in love with someone that you don’t see them for who they really are.”
“You’re love blind,” Adelle added, pushing the toast to one side. Taking the second straw, she placed it in the coke and began to sip.
“Exactly.” Cathy nodded and paused to take a mouthful of Coke. “It makes you think that you can’t ever trust them. No wonder some chicks become lesbians. Women understand women. But men! It’s like you’re dealing with an alien species.”
“I could never do that,” Adelle said.
“What?”
The two girls sucked on the drink, their foreheads pressed against each other.
“The lesbian thing,” Adelle explained.
Cathy laughed. “You didn’t think I-”
“Of course not,” Adelle interrupted. “Just a point of information.
We’re stuck as heterosexuals. Like, I don’t care how desperate I was, I couldn’t become a lesbian. I’d rather enter a convent. Anyway, I’m still sort of a virgin.”
Cathy giggled. “What’s sort of a virgin?”
Adelle blushed, then whispered in Cathy’s ear.
“You don’t swallow!” Cathy roared with laughter.
“Not so loud,” Adelle cried with tears of laughter in her eyes.
When Adelle had recovered from laughing, she asked, “What happened next?”
“After Johnny upchucked?”
Adelle nodded.
Cathy continued. “He drove me home. He didn’t talk. He looked kind of sickly to tell you the truth. I was really pissed. I guess I laid it on kind of thick on the way back. He deserved it. Even after he dropped me off, I was in a state. Then my mother starts yelling at me about how she didn’t know where I was and all of my friends were out looking for me and that she had half a mind to ground me. I told her she had half a mind.”
“You didn’t!” Adelle gasped.
Cathy shook her head. “But I felt like it. God, she can be so annoying.
Your mother can’t hold a candle to mine in the nagging department. Sometimes I wish my father would slug her. I took a shower and washed Johnny out of my hair. And then I phoned Terry.”
“You didn’t!”
Cathy nodded. “I had to tell someone. He said he was going to kill Johnny. Fat chance of that, eh. Johnny was on the college wrestling team.
Until he got kicked off for drinking at a meet.”
“Don’t you feel kind of guilty now?” Adelle asked.
“About what? Terry getting beaten up? I warned him not to go after Johnny. He is so stupid sometimes. I can take care of myself. I don’t need Terry going around acting like Sir Lancelot.” The two girls leaned over the table and finished their drink. They looked at the toast.
“I am definitely not eating that,” Adelle said, making a face of complete revulsion. “It’s dripping with calories.” Cathy grabbed the toast. “I’m famished,” she said.
Detective Kelly sipped at his coffee as he sat at the counter.
