“Sorry for what?” the director said.
For wasting county funds, Cora said. For buying something this expensive sight-unseen. She thought she was getting a good deal. Now the county would be stuck using the old rag dolls for another year. The county was stuck, and these dolls would have to be destroyed.
And Director Sedlak said, “Don't be silly.” She combed her fingernails through the girl's blond hair, saying, “I don't see a problem.” Saying, “We can use these.”
But the dolls, Cora said, they were too real.
And the director said, “They're rubber.”
Silicone, Cora said.
And the director said, “If it helps, just think of each one as a seventy-pound condom . . .”
That afternoon, even as Cora pulled the new clothes onto the boy and girl, detectives came by her desk, asking to check them out. For intake interviews. For investigations. Asking to reserve them for some hush-hush off-site evaluation. For overnight, to use them early the next morning. For the weekend. The girl, preferably, but if she wasn't available, then the boy. By the end of that first day, both the dolls were booked solid for the next month.
If someone wanted a doll right away, she'd offer the old rag dolls.
Most times, the detective said he'd wait.
All this flood of new cases, but nobody submitted a single new case file to her.
For almost that whole month, Cora only saw the boy and girl for a moment, only long enough to hand them over to the next detective. Then the next. And the next. And it was never clear who did what, but the little girl arrived and departed, one day with her ears pierced, then her belly button, then wearing lipstick, then reeking with perfume. The boy arrived, at some point, tattooed. A chain of thorns around his little calf muscle. At another point, with his nipples pierced by little silver rings. Then his penis. At some point, his blond hair smelling sour.
Smelling like marigold flowers.
Like the bags of marijuana in the evidence room. That room full of guns and knives. The bags of marijuana and cocaine that always weighed a little less than they should have. The evidence room always the next stop for a detective after he checked out one of the dolls. The girl tucked under one arm, he'd be fumbling with a bag of evidence. Tucking something into his pocket.
In the director's office, Cora showed the expense receipts that detectives would submit for reimbursement. One receipt for a hotel room, the same night the detective had taken the girl home for an interview the next morning. The hotel room was a stakeout, the detective had said. Another detective the next night, the girl again, one hotel room, one room-service meal. An adult movie ordered on the television. Another stakeout, he said.
Director Sedlak had just looked at her. Cora standing there, leaning over the director's wooden desk, shaking so hard the receipts fluttered in Cora's fist.
The director just looked at her and said, “What's your point?”
It was obvious, Cora said.
And, sitting behind her wooden desk, the director just laughed and laughed.
She said, “Consider this tit for tat.”
“All those women,” the director says, “all chanting and protesting against Hustler magazine, saying porno turns a woman into an object . . . Well,” she says, “what do you think a dildo is? Or donor sperm from some clinic?”
Some men may only want pictures of naked women. But some women only want a man's dick. Or his sperm. Or his money.
Both sexes have the same problem with intimacy.
“Stop fussing about some damned rubber dolls,” Director Sedlak told Cora. “If you're jealous, go out and buy yourself a nice vibrator.”
Again, it's what human beings do . . .
Nobody could see where this was headed.
That same day, Cora went to lunch and bought some Superglue.
And the next go-round, when the dolls came back to her, before she handed them off to another man, Cora squeezed Superglue inside the girl's vagina. Inside both the kids' mouths, sealing their tongue to the roof of their mouth. To seal their lips together. Then she squeezed glue inside them both, in back, to weld their butts shut. To save them.
Still, the next day, a detective was asking: Did Cora have a razor blade he could use? An X-Acto knife? A switchblade?
And when she asked, Why? What did he need it for?
Then he says, “Nothing. Never mind. I'll find something in the evidence room.”
And the next day, the girl and boy were both cut open, still soft but covered with scars. Carved open. Dug out. Still smelling like glue, but more and more smelling like the ooze inside Breather Betty at home, leaking spots on Cora's sofa.
Those spots, Cora's cat would sniff at for hours. Not lick, but sniff like Superglue. Or evidence-room cocaine.
It's then Cora goes to lunch and buys a razor blade. Two razor blades. Three razor blades. Five.
The next go-round, when the girl gets back to her desk, Cora takes her into the bathroom and sits her on the edge of a sink. With a tissue, Cora scrubs the rouge off her pink cheeks. Cora washes and combs the girl's limp blond hair. With the next detective already knocking at the locked bathroom door, Cora tells the girl, “I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry . . .” Saying, “You're going to be okay.” And Cora tucks a razor blade up, deep inside the soft silicone vagina. Into the hole hollowed out by some man with his knife. Tilting the girl's head back, Cora tucks another razor down deep inside her silicone throat. The third razor blade Cora tucks just inside the girl's hacked-out, whittled-open butt.
When the boy arrives back at her desk, just dropped there, flopped facedown over the arm of her desk chair, Cora takes him into the bathroom with the last two razor blades.
Tit for tat.
The next day, a detective comes in, dragging the girl by her hair. He
