Cannibal jack, p.8
Cannibal Jack, page 8
Those machines had apparently been there since the dawn of time. Barbara saw where the prices had been changed often enough to build up a thick layer of stickers. And the knobs of the snack machine had been worn smooth from use. She plugged two quarters into the soda machine and pushed the cola button. Nothing.
Barbara frowned and pushed again, this time more urgently. Nothing happened. She pushed again, and again, finally pounding the machine with one hand and stabbing at the button with the other.
“Need some help?”
The voice drew a yelp from Barbara. She spun so quickly that her back slammed against the machine, causing it to teeter crazily. She pressed both palms against the cool metal of the machine in an effort to steady it.
“Officer Keene, are you following me?” Her tone was deep, etched with annoyance and anger.
“No, you’re just always a little ahead of me.” There was that boyish grin again, complete with sparkling blue eyes which peeked out from behind a shock of blonde hair. “Sorry. I’m just on break is all. Thought I’d grab a soda and rest my feet. And here I find the city’s newest employee vandalizing the soda machines.”
Barbara’s mouth dropped open and she shook her head vigorously. “I wasn’t that rough with it. I just wanted a soda. It took my money….”
“And didn’t give you the can. I know. This machine has a combination. Watch.” He stepped up next to her, placing one finger on one cola button and one on the other. Barbara felt her face grow hot as his shoulder brushed her. She looked away. “See, you have to press both the buttons.”
“I see,” she muttered, trying to distract herself from the heat which had very suddenly invaded her skin.
“Press the top one and hold it in. Then press the bottom one…like this.” A soda plopped noisily into the tray and he reached for it, proffering it to her in his large hand. “Voila!”
“Thank you.” Barbara took the can and stepped backward. She needed to focus on the opening of that can in order to draw her attention away from Officer Keene. More than that, she needed to ignore his attentions, the way he stared at her, his smile, the soft scent of freshly showered skin which wafted up to greet her whenever he came too near.
“Now, no more vending machine abuse,” he chided, shaking a finger at her. “Otherwise, I just might have to haul you in.”
“I’ll be a good girl, I promise.”
Officer Keene shoved two coins into the slot and produced a soda of his own. “Well, now, that wouldn’t be much fun, would it?”
He grabbed the soda, tossed it into the air, catching it in one hand as he headed for the door. Barbara would have let that last one go, would have ignored the very obvious innuendo, but for the wink he gave her as he walked out the door.
Grace rounded the corner just then, coffee maker carafe in hand. She wore a lopsided grin and glazed eyes and as she approached Barbara she licked her lips. “Mm, mm! The ever-yummy Officer Keene. So, you’re the girl who’s snagged him?”
“What?” Barbara felt her head spin at that. “Snagged him? I don’t think so. We just met this morning.”
“Well, he does seem awfully taken with you. You have to admit that.”
“Oh, he is not! I bumped his car a bit this morning and he was kind enough to show me the way to work. That’s all.”
Grace swung the carafe back and forth in the air as she walked to the sink and turned the water on. “All I know is that a bunch of the girls saw Keene pull up this morning with some hot babe. And they’re all just buzzing like nervous little bees over the way they stood in the parking lot, the way they couldn’t take their eyes off each other, the way he watched her when she walked away, and he got a boner from it.”
“He did?” Barbara asked incredulously, her eyes huge and glazed.
“Ah ha!” Grace exclaimed, reeling to face Barbara and smiling. “So it was you!”
“It was…not.” She sighed dolefully and slumped. “Okay, it was me. But nothing like that happened and he’s certainly not going to ask me out or anything. So, tell your little bee friends that Officer Keene is still on the open market. And Barbara Connolly is not.”
Barbara turned with a quick flounce of her skirt and marched from the room. All of this on her first day was just too much. She wasn’t the sort to gossip about other people. She certainly didn’t like being the subject of that gossip. Stephen had spent their entire married life trying to build a beautiful facade. In the end, it had crumbled under the weight of reality. Barbara wasn’t about to climb back into the rut of hiding herself from the world. Not when she had come so close to actually regaining her self-respect.
Her eyes were glued to the monitor when Grace returned, full carafe in hand and her face filled with shadows. Barbara shifted in her seat, eyes wandering from papers to screen, fingers working furiously at the keys. She felt bad about how she’d behaved. Grace hadn’t deserved such a nasty response. Truthfully, Barbara couldn’t figure out why she’d been so defensive.
Moments drew into years and Barbara transferred the data from the printed sheet to the screen in quick, sharp strokes. The sound of the coffee machine hard at work kept the silence from choking them both.
Suddenly, Grace shoved off from the desk and swiveled her chair toward Barbara. “Look, I’m sorry about back there, ’kay? Sometimes I’m just a big buttinsky. I don’t know when it’s time to quit joking and obviously I struck a nerve.”
“No, I’m the one who should be sorry. You were just joking around, and I took it the wrong way. It’s just that I’m a little…sensitive. After Stephen and all, I mean. He taught me that every single second of my life should be a secret from the world.”
“Say no more. I won’t ask any questions. I won’t pry. I won’t prod. Hell, I won’t even look directly at you, if you don’t want.” The decisive snap of Grace’s gum echoed in the small room.
“Well, you don’t have to go that far.”
“See? That’s the problem right there, sista. You really have to learn when I’m joking.”
Barbara stared blankly at her, a smile slowly crawling onto her face. “Oh, does that mean you will look at me?”
“Naw! It means I’ll still pry and prod. Like a freakin’ crowbar. ’Cuz that’s the kinda gal I am.”
They shared a laugh and Barbara turned back to her screen. A few seconds later, Grace started to hum. Barbara shook her head and giggled.
“What’s so funny?” Grace took a long pull from her coffee, staring at Barbara over the rim of her cup.
“You really are so much like my daughter. She hums that song all the time.”
“Oh. That’s cool. Your daughter must be very hip, then.”
“She thinks she is. She’s just not…” Barbara was struck with the image of Shannon, age ten, lying on a bed in the emergency room with her hand bandaged. Stephen had made the child fill his thermos, then struck her in the back of the head for not being fast enough. The hot coffee had sloshed over her hand, burning it quite severely. Barbara shook it off. “She’s just not wise to the ways of the world.”
Grace nodded knowingly and Barbara returned to her typing. Almost all tax forms and appraisal sheets were the same, she’d come to realize. No matter where you lived, they were the same. A constant, like blue sky or the moon, that one could cling to. But she came across a form code that confused her.
“CBFC? What’s that?” She stabbed one red-tipped finger at the screen and looked askance at Grace.
“Oh, concrete back-filled crawlspace.”
Barbara blinked. “I see. So, I’ll be seeing other forms with this code?”
“Like…fer sure!” Grace snapped her gum and rocked in her chair, one finger reaching out to stab at the enter key. “There! The form is all fixed.”
“Do they do that a lot around here?”
“Well…yeah. I mean, they don’t have any choice.”
Chapter Nine
“Hi, honey! I’m home!”
Laden with grocery bags and coated in sweat, Barbara staggered through the front door. She kicked it shut with one high-heeled foot and hefted the load higher on her chest.
“Uh oh! Mom’s home! Quick, Jen, ditch that beer!”
“Oh, very funny! Ha ha!” Barbara moved on toward the kitchen, bags slipping even as she moved them toward the counter. Once unburdened, she bent to accept kisses from her daughters.
“I got meatloaf for dinner.”
“Aaaaaawwwwww!” came the disgruntled cry, released in instantaneous and discordant tones.
“And macaroni and cheese.”
“Yay!”
She set about putting the groceries away, dragging out the cutting board and knife as she moved. “So, how was your first day of school, little miss?”
“It was okay. I played with a nice girl at recess. And my teacher seems okay. You know, only one head and all that.”
Barbara laughed and shook her head. “Well, that’s encouraging. How about you, Shannon?”
“It didn’t suck. It was…like…touch and go for a while. A bunch of kids gathered around me at the lunch table. They don’t see many kids from California, I guess. They asked had I seen this star and did I know that singer. And I kept saying ‘no’ and they kept leaving the table. I was just about to freak when this one chick noticed the holes from where I had my nose pierced last year. Then everybody came back and before you know it, I was all that.”
“Well, there are worse things than being popular for the holes in your body, I guess.” Shannon burst out laughing, arms wrapped around her sides, oblivious to her mother’s disapproving stares. “You know darn well I didn’t mean it like that!”
“Yeah, but that’s how it came out, Mom!”
“You knock it off!” A cockeyed grin twisted her lips to the side. Silence settled over the room for a moment.
“What’s so funny?” Jen wanted to know.
And again, there was laughter.
“So, how was your first day, Mom? Since you’re grilling us and everything. Spill the tea!”
“Oh, okay, I guess. I like my supervisor. And the girl I work with down in the dungeon is great. In fact, she reminds me a lot of you.”
“Oh man! She must be awesome!” Shannon mirrored her mother’s smirk.
“Funny, that’s the same thing she said when I told her that she reminded me of you. Now, you two go wash up. We’ll eat in a few minutes.”
Barbara rolled over in bed, felt the covers follow her. It was hot and still, and she had had trouble falling asleep. The day, despite its awful beginnings, had ended beautifully. The relief of that had kept her awake.
“Mommy?”
The word didn’t register at first, nor did the voice that spoke it. Barbara shifted again, gravitating toward the center of the bed.
“Mommy!”
“Hmm?” Barbara peeled her eyes open through sheer force of will and blinked twice. “What is it, Jen?”
“Can I sleep with you? I heard weird noises.” A sleepy little girl yawn with the twist of a curl punctuated the sentence.
“Just the house settling. Wood houses do that.”
“No. Crawling noises. Under the floor in the kitchen.”
The next part obvious, the average mother question. “What were you doing in the kitchen?”
“I was thirsty. For milk.”
“Oh.” She was already half asleep.
“And the noises were right under me. So I moved. And they moved.”
“I see.”
“Mom.”
“What, Jen?” Barbara sighed hard and long and propped herself up on one elbow.
“I got onto the kitchen table so it couldn’t grab me. And when I did, it crawled up inside the wall.”
That last took her by surprise. She swallowed and scratched her tousled head. “You know what I think?”
“What, Mommy?”
“I think you were still partially asleep. And maybe you were dreaming a little bit.”
“I was awake. Honest. I woke up when I banged my leg on the table.” She lifted one leg straight into the air in that way that only children can do and yanked up her pajama leg. “See?”
“So you were awake. We might have mice.” She avoided any rat reference, knowing as she did that Jennifer was terrified of rats. “I’ll call the exterminator in the morning.”
“Will he kill them?” Jennifer slipped into her mother’s bed with a sniffle, tucking her little stuffed dog up under her chin.
“Yes. Now go to sleep.” Barbara reached over and pulled the covers over her small daughter.
After a long time spent staring at the ceiling, Jennifer yawned and turned toward her mother. “Will the ’sterminator really kill the mice?”
“Yes, Jen. Now…sleep!”
“Okay.” Another long pause, during which Barbara nearly reached the Land of Nod. “Why can’t he just catch them?”
“Jennifer Marie Connolly, if you don’t go to sleep right this second, I’ll feed you to the mice!”
Jennifer hugged Mr. Taters the dog and sniffled dramatically as she rolled over.
“You look like death warmed over!” Grace declared as Barbara collapsed into her chair.
“Gee, thanks!” Barbara yawned into her hand and shook her head. “I didn’t get any sleep last night. First, I had trouble going to sleep after the excitement of yesterday. Then Jennifer heard noises downstairs and insisted on sleeping with me. Except, she didn’t sleep. She talked.”
“You should have called in sick.”
Barbara’s head snapped up and she frowned. “On my second day? I don’t think so!”
“Here. Have a cup of Joe and wake up. Nothing interesting’s going on today, anyway.”
“Does anything interesting ever go on down here?”
“Well…no. Not unless I make it.” The sound of a door knocking broke free of the computer’s speaker and Grace shoved off from the desk, the chair rolling freely to her station. “My chat pal.” She jerked a thumb at her screen. “I’m going to find out today whether or not he’s leaving his wife.”
Barbara took one look at Grace’s silly grin and decided she didn’t want to know the rest. With a wave of her hand and a slow spin of her chair, she left Grace to her chat pal and slowly made her way down the hall to the break room.
She was about to drop a quarter into the machine, eyes bleary and her lips trembling on the brink of a yawn, when something behind her moved.
“We’ve got to stop meeting like this.”
Barbara spun on her heels, banging her back on the machine in the process. Officer Keene, folded over a steaming cup of coffee, was staring at her.
“You scared the hell out of me!” She pressed one hand to her chest and felt the heavy pounding against her palm.
“Sorry. I thought sure you’d seen me when you came in.”
“Well, I didn’t.” Her tone dripped acid and she wandered toward the table where he sat.
“Try some of this coffee. It’s a lot more palatable than that swill Grace drinks.” Keene rose and poured her a cup, slid the creamer and sugar toward her.
“You sure seem to know a lot about Grace. Were you guys an item or something?” She spooned some sugar into the mug and stirred noisily.
“Jealous?”
Barbara laughed. It was louder and harsher than she had intended, but at least it broke her discomfort. “Not by a long shot. Just curious is all. Everyone around here seems to know everything about everyone else. I was just trying to fit in.” She blew a wisp of steam away from her coffee and took a sip.
“So, I see there’s no ring on your finger.” The suddenness of it nearly made her spit coffee across the table. “I’m hoping no ring means no husband?”
“Ex-husband, actually. He’s doing a five-year stint back in California.”
“I’m…sorry.” Keene studied his shoes and frowned.
“I’m not. Well, I mean, I’m sorry things worked out the way they did for us all. I wish we’d all ended up with that happy little family life that we wanted. But I’m not sorry he went to prison. He deserved it for all that he did…to…. Look, this is still just a little fresh. Would you mind if we didn’t talk about it?”
He flashed a brilliant smile at her and leaned back. “No problem. There’s lots of other things to talk about. Movies, television, your girls, paintball. Okay, maybe not paintball…unless you really like it. And you know what? We could talk about movies all day long. In fact, we could talk about them over dinner tonight.”
“Oh,” she said, sipping at her coffee again as she thought. She stood up, feeling woozy and more than a little awkward. “That’s very sweet. Truly. But I…it’s just that…well…my girls and I are trying to put ourselves back together. We’re trying to fix things. And I just don’t think I’m ready…I mean…all the wounds are too fresh and I’d really…umm…I’d like to give it some more time.”
“I understand. No pressure. But I gotta warn you, I won’t quit asking until you say ‘yes,’ all right?”
Her face flushed and her head swam. She suddenly realized that her hands were shaking, and she tightened her grip on the mug so they would stop. “Okay…I guess. Well, I should be getting back…to the office, I mean.” She cleared her throat, checked her shoes and glanced to the door. “You be careful out there, you hear? I’ll…” She ran a hand through her hair and cleared her throat again, “…see you later.”
She made for the door as fast as she could, high heels clicking on the cheap floor tiles as she rounded the corner and fought not to run down the hall.
The door nearly yanked her into the office as she flung it open, banging it shut and collapsing into her chair. To her horror, she was still shaking. How could this happen? She was practically middle-aged, for God’s sake! Now was a fine time to become the nervous Nelly.
“Well, that’s a fine thing!” Grace grinned at her and rocked in her squeaky chair.
“What are you talking about now?” Barbara sighed and slumped lower in her chair.
“In one day, you get Keene to ask you out. The rest of us have been trying for years. And you say no. You say NO!” Grace threw up her hands in exasperation.
