“What?”
“Sorry. That’s what the Shadow used to say on the radio.”
“Yeah, well, it was bitter enough I didn’t like the taste of it. I told Beth she needed to get this straightened out, that I certainly wasn’t planning on spending any quality time in a federal pen for helping her.”
“Prudent.”
“I thought so. Beth saw it as a kind of betrayal. We were friends, I should be willing to put myself on the line for her, even though she had done something stupid to get herself in trouble in the first place. We had words.”
“Ah.”>
Jen nodded to herself, lost in the memory. “Yeah. The thing was, I had blossomed a bit by the time I got to college. Filled out a little, found there were other music geeks, some of them boys, a whole department full of them. I had acquired a boyfriend. My first love.”
“I’m jealous.”
“Harold was tall, reedy, very talented as a pianist, and, I thought, in love with me. We had discussed engagement, marriage, blending our music careers together, the whole nine yards.”
“But it didn’t work out,” he said.
“No. Beth was really upset with me for not being more supportive. She had also ripened some, and while she never got taller, she had developed some curves and learned how to use them.”
Kent could see where this was going, but he said nothing, letting her tell it in her own way.
“So my best friend seduced my boyfriend and convinced him to run away with her. He left me a note:
“ ‘Jenny, I’m sorry, but Beth and I are leaving together. She needs our support and since she can’t get it here, we think it best that we go. Love, Harold.’ ”
“Ow.”
“Oh, yeah, big-time ‘ow.’ I’d never had a boyfriend before and had never been dumped, much less for my best girlfriend. I fell apart. Had no clue how to handle things. Dropped out of school, went home to Mama, and spent a month locked in my room crying. I lost twenty pounds. Never even touched my guitar the whole time.”
Her hand moved again, still silent on the strings. “Eventually the tears dried up, I started playing again, and picked back up at school, but it was a pretty miserable time for me.”
“I can understand that.” He could see she was upset by the memory, even now.
“Beth used Harold to support her just long enough to find a better ride. She dumped Harold, and married a well-to-do lawyer.
“Harold eventually got a music degree and went to teach somewhere out west—Colorado or Wyoming, like that. He called me a couple times. I hung up on him.” She smiled, but it was a sad, twisted thing. “Beth’s husband was apparently a pretty good attorney. He worked a deal with the Army, and she was discharged dishonorably, but didn’t have to serve any time. A few months later, she called me. She was living a hundred miles or so away. Said she was sorry about what she had done, wanted to make amends, patch things up, get back to being friends.”
Kent shook his head.
“Yeah, that’s what I felt. But I was sweet. Butter wouldn’t melt in my mouth. ‘Sure, okay. Give me your number and address. I’ll call you.’ ”
“But . . . ?”
“The Devil would have been ice-skating in Hell before I ever called her. She tried again a few times, eventually gave it up.”
“You never forgave her.”
“Some crimes earn you a life sentence,” she said. “But I kind of got past the bitterness. We weren’t going to be friends, but eventually I was able to get up in the morning without wishing she’d be hit by a train. I kept a loose kind of track, through mutual family and acquaintances. She had a hard life. Divorced and married three times, four kids, two of whom got into drugs and wound up in jail. Her last husband was a long-haul truck driver. She gave up the cello, drank too much, smoked too much, and got fat.” She paused, her eyes far away.
“One day last month, Beth apparently went out to collect the newspaper, and she had a heart attack and fell over dead in her driveway. Same age as I am.”
Nothing for him to say to that.
“It’s kind of hard to believe,” she said. “She’d been dead three weeks before I heard. I somehow thought I’d sense it if that happened, though I didn’t expect it to happen for a long time. She was my best friend, then my worst enemy, and then just . . . not much of anything to me. She was a huge part of my growing up. My best memories of that age include her; also my worst memories. I still can’t quite wrap my mind around the idea that she’s dead. I mean, we never wiped the slate clean, and on some level I always hoped she would realize how badly she had behaved, and would have come and fallen on her knees and admitted it and begged forgiveness.”
“Would you have forgiven her?”
“I don’t know. I would have liked to have the choice, though.”
He nodded again. He understood.
She sighed. “You know why I told you this story?”
He shook his head.
“So you’ll know I’m not an altogether nice person before we get too far down the road. I held that grudge for a long time. I wasn’t a cosmic, realized being who could look at my friend’s youthful mistakes and just let it go. Eighteen-year-olds aren’t that mature, I wouldn’t want to be judged at that age, but I was angry and I stayed angry, and even now I can get pissed off all over again if I think about it too long.”
He smiled. “What—you’re human like the rest of us? For shame.”
She laughed. “Yeah, I know you had me up on this goddess pedestal and all.”
He took his guitar out of the case and looked at her. “Remind me to tell you the story about my brother’s daughter some time. She married a guy who was a Christian Scientist, she converted, and she later died of breast cancer. At her funeral, I heard him say that it was Susie’s own fault she died—her faith wasn’t strong enough. If he hadn’t been the father of their five-year-old child, I think I might have killed him.”
She shook her head. “Couple of fine old retreads, aren’t we?”
“Take it slow and you can drive a long way on retreads,” he said.
30
Jay had paid off, and now there were four of them outside the prison and on the run. Jethro, who had already given him all he knew; a giant of a man named Gauss; and a grizzled old guy who called himself Reef.
Five hundred meters away from the walls, Jethro stepped into the maw of a flesh-eating plant and was gobbled down in this slow-motion peristaltic spasm that took a while, though the plant apparently injected him with some kind of narcotic so that he was smiling as it ate him. Jay had a handgun, a blaster that fired a charged- particle beam, and he’d started to cut loose on the plant, but Reef said, “Don’t! The guards’ll spot the beam on their sensors this close! Jethro’s already dead anyhow, no point in shooting.”
So Jay, Gauss, and Reef kept running. They wanted to be deep in the swamp before the guards came looking for them.
If they could stay alive for a while—and Jay would make sure of that as best he could—he should get something from the two escapees that might be useful.
A thunderstorm rolled in from somewhere, fast, and lightning and thunder flashed and boomed as a rain so heavy it turned the world into watery grass fell.
“Don’t step on anything red or blue,” Reef said. “Or round,” he added.
Given how hard it was to see anything, much less colors or shapes in the deluge, Jay was trusting to mostly blind luck about that.
After fifteen minutes, the rain stopped, as suddenly as it had come, and the sun burst out and started
