uglier than it had to be, as if in defiance.
“Can I have a Dove bar?” asked Amelia.
“No, your mother’s going to slaughter me as it is. I’ll get you a juice box. Don’t move and don’t touch the car.”
“I can drive a car.”
“I’m sure, but not today, okay?”
Paz got out and went into the store. The air was cruelly refrigerated and stank of microwaved tacos. He purchased a six-pack of Miller talls and a box of juice. He sat in the car, popped a can, and drank most of its tasteless fizz in one long swallow.
“That lady has clown hair,” said Amelia.
Paz looked. The lady, an African American, indeed wore a thick helmet of bright orange hair, also tiny blue satin shorts, high-heeled sandals, and a red tube top that served up her large breasts like puddings. There were several other similarly dressed ladies lounging around, chatting to truck drivers and a car full of what looked like Mexican farmworkers. As they watched, the lady with the clown hair walked off with a stocky man in a feed cap and a long trucker’s wallet stuck in his back pocket and fixed to his belt by a chain.
“Is she that man’s wife?” asked Amelia.
“I don’t know, darling. I think they’re just friends.”
“He’s going to let her ride in his truck. He’s a demon.”
“Is he. How can you tell?”
“I just can. I can tell demons and witches. Some witches are good witches, did you know that?”
“I didn’t. What about monsters? Are there good and bad monsters?”
“Of course. The Credible Hunk is a good monster. Godzilla is a good monster. Shrek is a good monster.”
“What about vampires?”
“Daddy, vampires are just make-believe,” explained Amelia patiently, “like Barbies. Look, there’s that lady who had dinner with us.”
Paz looked. Beth Morgensen had just stepped out of a Honda and was talking animatedly with a couple of the road whores. They appeared to be well acquainted.
Paz downed the rest of his beer and started the car, planning on a quick getaway, but the sound of the engine had attracted attention, and Beth walked over, grinning. She gave Paz a fat kiss through the window, holding lip contact a little longer than was strictly required, and then eyed the beers.
“Getting your load on before going home to the wife. How perfectly working-classish of you.”
“Ever the sociologist.”
“Accompanied by the little darling, I see. How are you, sugar?”
“Fine,” said Amelia and sucked loudly on her juice straw. Whatever was happening was grown-up stuff, boring and a little disturbing. More interesting were the funny ladies who now came vamping up to the car, cooing over Amelia in a friendly way. Beth made introductions, as at a garden party. It was all very civilized. One of the whores offered to watch the child while Paz did whatever business he needed to do (laughter). Another offered a lowball price on account of you got such a cute baby. Not that I want another one. More laughter, in which Beth joined. Paz pasted a sickly grin on his face and traded wisecracks until their business called and they drifted away.
“Are you what they call a participant-observer in this study?” Paz asked, with a little edge to it, at which Beth Morgensen chuckled and said, “Oh, no, Jimmy darling, you know I’m a charitable foundation. I just give it away.” She drew a business card from her bag, licked it lazily, and stuck it to the visor above his head. “Call anytime. Sociology never sleeps.”
On the way back, Paz removed the card from the vinyl, and instead of tossing it, his hand moved as if compelled by a mystic force and slid it into the pocket of his shirt.
Eight
Jennifer sat on the floor of the fishpond just deep enough to allow her snorkel to clear the surface, with a coral rock on her lap to counter buoyancy. She had never thought about drowning herself before, but now, after what had happened, she let the idea linger in her mind. She wondered whether it would hurt a lot, whether it was fast, and realized that this was one more thing she didn’t know. Because she was stupid,hopelessly stupid, according to Luna during the tirade she had delivered after the discovery that Moie had vanished yet again. Like she could watch him every single fucking minute! And then Luna had told Rupert, practically ordered him, to get rid of her, and Rupert, instead of his usual mild peacemaking, had looked at Jenny with an expression on his face like that of a spoiled baby who’d just been denied a treat (and Jenny knew that look as well as anything), and he’d said, well, maybe, considering all this, it might be best if you started looking for another living arrangement. But really the worst thing was later when she was alone with Kevin, crying her eyes out, and he’d said, oh well, tough shit, babe, let me know where you end up. And when she said, I thought we were together I thought you loved me, he’d said, oh, yeah, I do, sure, we could still see each other and all. So then she had taken her sleeping bag and moved into Moie’s old shed and had slept there last night.
She held out her hand and fed bread filaments to a horde of jewel-like tetras and cichlids. She would miss this at least; maybe the fish would miss her, too. Did fish miss? Yet another bit of knowledge her stupid head did not contain. The bread gone, the tetras dispersed like flung sequins, and Jenny’s attention was drawn to a large oscar moving slowly in midwater in an erratic manner, like a plate stood on edge and wobbling. It had hurt itself, a common problem in the pool, for the fish were not accustomed to the razor-sharp edges of the coral rock from which the pool was made, coming as they did from an environment where nearly every solid object was coated with mud or soft algae. This Scotty had told her with some irritation, as it was the one feature of the pond he could not control. They sometimes moved quickly in their various mating rivalries and collided with coral and ripped their scales off. He said they should drain the thing and put in a soft porous liner, but this Rupert was unwilling to do, being a cheap bastard, according to Scotty. The oscar turned clumsily, and she saw that it had a red gash behind its little arm fin. She considered emerging and finding Scotty. He had a forty-gallon hospital tank for such cases, but before she could put this thought into action, the red-bellied piranha struck and ripped a ragged chunk out of the wounded fish, and then in an instant there were ten more piranha writhing in a cloud of blood and tissue. Then the piranha were gone, as was the oscar, except for some tiny specks, the center of a cloud of killifishes and tetras, cleaning up the scant remains.
Jenny was out of the water almost before she knew it, standing on the edge of the pool and shivering, although the sun was out already and warm. She stripped off her mask and wrapped a towel around her body. Well, that was out, no drowning, not in that pool, silly really, because what did you care if you were dead, but on the other hand, maybe they would know you were trying to kill yourself, the struggling and all, and what if they decided to eat you while you were still alive? She shuddered, not from the air temperature, and almost ran to the green- roofed shed.
Professor Cooksey was there, rubbing his chin and staring at the ground. Jenny was not pleased to see him. He had offered no support during her condemnation, had looked at her in his usual blank manner, as if she were one of his bugs. But automatically, her gaze followed his to the ground.
“What’re you looking for?” she asked.
“Hm? Oh, nothing. But observe that footprint. Doesn’t it seem odd to you?”
She looked. The floor of the shed was soft earth, from the fall of years of potting soil and humus, and took prints well. This one was human, of a smallish bare foot, the toe and heel marks well defined. It was the only barefoot print on view, the others being shoe prints, either the lugged soles of Scotty’s Merrell shoes, her own cheap flip-flops, or Cooksey’s leather sandals.
“It’s Moie’s probably,” she said. “What’s wrong with it?”
He looked at her briefly and knelt to point. “Why, don’t you see? It’s much too deep. It’s deeper than Scotty’s here and far deeper than yours or mine, although I would have said that you and Moie were of a size. How much do
