The only real decision I can remember making that week had to do with Jeroma’s chair. I absolutely could not put my ass where hers had been when she choked on the Cough Drop of Doom. I rolled it into the bullpen and brought in what I thought of as ‘my’ chair, the one at the desk by the Thanksgiving poster reading PLEASE SHIT WHERE YOU EAT. It was a far less comfy perch, but at least it didn’t feel haunted. Besides, I wasn’t writing much anyway.
Late Friday afternoon, Katie swept into the office clad in a shimmery knee-length dress that was the antithesis of her usual jeans and tank tops. Her hair was in artfully tumbled beauty shop curls. To me she looked … well … sort of like a prettier version of Jeroma. I had a passing recollection of Orwell’s Animal Farm, and how the chant of ‘Four legs good, two legs bad’ had changed to ‘Four legs good, two legs better.’
Katie gathered us and announced that we were being purchased by Pyramid Media out of Chicago, and there would be raises – small ones – for everybody. This occasioned wild applause. When it died down, she added that Georgina Bukowski would be taking over Speaking Ill of the Dead for good, and that Mike Anderson was our new kultcha kritic. ‘Which means,’ she said, ‘that he will spread his wings and fly slowly over the landscape, shitting where he will.’
More wild applause. I stood up and took a bow, trying to look cheerful and devilish. On that score, I was batting .500. I hadn’t been cheerful since Jeroma’s sudden death, but I did feel like the devil.
‘Now, everybody back to work! Write something eternal!’ Glistening lips parted in a smile. ‘Mike, could I speak to you in private?’
Private meant Jeroma’s office (we all still thought of it that way). Katie frowned when she saw the chair behind the desk. ‘What’s that ugly thing doing in here?’
‘I didn’t like sitting in Jeroma’s,’ I said. ‘I’ll bring it back, if you want.’
‘I do. But before you do …’ She moved close to me, but saw the blinds were up and we were being closely observed. She settled for putting a hand on my chest. ‘Can you come to my place tonight?’
‘Absolutely.’ Although I wasn’t as excited by the prospect as you might think. With the little head not in charge, doubts about Katie’s motivations had continued to solidify. And, I have to admit, I found it a little upsetting that she was so eager to get Jeroma’s chair back into the office.
Lowering her voice, even though we were alone, she said, ‘I don’t suppose you’ve written any more …’ Her glistening lips formed the word obits.
‘I haven’t even thought of it.’
This was an extremely bodacious lie. Writing obits was the first thing I thought about in the morning, and the last thing I thought about at night. The way the words just flowed out. And the feeling that went with it: a bowling ball rolling over the right diamond, a twenty-foot putt heading straight for the hole, a spear thunking home in exactly the place you aimed at. Bullseye, dead center.
‘What else have you been writing? Any reviews yet? I understand Paramount’s releasing Jack Briggs’s last movie, and I’m hearing it’s even worse than Holy Rollers. That’s got to be tempting.’
‘I haven’t exactly been writing,’ I said. ‘I’ve been ghostwriting. As in everyone else’s work. But I was never cut out to be an editor. That’s your job, Katie.’
This time she didn’t protest.
Later that day, I looked up from the back row, where I was trying (and failing) to write a CD review, and saw her in the office, bent over her laptop. Her mouth was moving, and at first I thought she must also be on her phone, but no phone was in evidence. I had an idea – almost certainly ridiculous, but weirdly hard to shake – that she had found a leftover stash of eucalyptus drops in the top drawer, and was sucking on one.
I arrived at her apartment shortly before seven, bearing bags of Chinese from Fun Joy. No shorts and filmy top that night; she was dressed in a pullover and baggy khakis. Also, she wasn’t alone. Penny Langston was sitting on one end of the sofa (crouching there, actually). She wasn’t wearing her baseball cap, but that strange smile, the one that said touch me and I’ll kill you, was all present and accounted for.
Katie kissed my cheek. ‘I invited Penny to join us.’
That was patently obvious, but I said, ‘Hi, Pens.’
‘Hi, Mike.’ Tiny mouse-voice and no eye contact, but she made a valiant effort to turn the smile into something a tad less creepy.
I looked back to Katie. I raised my eyebrows.
‘I said I didn’t tell anyone about what you can do,’ Katie said. ‘That … sort of wasn’t the truth.’
‘And I sort of knew that.’ I put the grease-spotted white bags down on the coffee table. I didn’t feel hungry anymore, and I didn’t expect a whole lot of Fun Joy in the next few minutes. ‘Do you want to tell me what this is about before I accuse you of breaking your solemn promise and stalk out?’
‘Don’t do that. Please. Just listen. Penny works at Neon Circus because I talked Jeroma into hiring her. I met her when she still lived here in the city. We were in a group together, weren’t we, Pens?’
‘Yes,’ Penny said in her tiny mouse-voice. She was looking at her hands, clasped so tightly in her lap that the knuckles were white. ‘The Holy Name of Mary Group.’
‘Which is what, exactly, when it’s home with its hat off?’ As if I had to ask. Sometimes when the pieces come together, you can actually hear the click.
‘Rape support,’ Katie said. ‘I never saw my rapist, but Penny saw hers. Didn’t you, Pens?’
‘Yes. Lots of times.’ Now Penny was looking at me, and her voice grew stronger with each word. By the end, she was nearly shouting, and tears were rolling down her cheeks. ‘It was my uncle. I was nine years old. My sister was eleven. He raped her too. Katie says you can kill people with obituaries. I want you to write his.’
I’m not going to tell the story she told me, sitting there on the couch with Katie next to her, holding one of her hands and putting Kleenex after Kleenex in the other. Unless you’ve lived in one of the seven places in this country not yet equipped for multimedia, you’ve heard it before. All you need to know is that Penny’s parents died in a car accident, and she and her sister were shipped off to Uncle Amos and Aunt Claudia. Aunt Claudia refused to hear anything said against her husband. Figure the rest out for yourself.
I wanted to do it. Because the story was horrible, yes. Because guys like Uncle Amos need to take it in the head for preying on the weakest and most vulnerable, check. Because Katie wanted me to do it, absolutely. But in the end, it all came down to the sadly pretty dress Penny was wearing. And the shoes. And the bit of inexpertly applied makeup. For the first time in years, perhaps for the first time since Uncle Amos had begun making his nighttime visits to her bedroom, always telling her it was ‘our little secret,’ she had tried to make herself presentable for a male human being. It sort of broke my heart. Katie had been scarred by her rape, but had risen above it. Some girls and women can do that. Many can’t.
When she finished, I asked, ‘Do you swear to God that your uncle really did this?’
‘Yes. Again and again and again. When we got old enough to have babies, he made us turn over and used our …’ She didn’t finish this. ‘I bet it didn’t stop with Jessie and me, either.’
‘And he’s never been caught.’
She shook her head vehemently, dank ringlets flying.
‘Okay.’ I took my iPad out of my briefcase. ‘But you’ll have to tell me about him.’
‘I can do better.’ She disengaged her hand from Katie’s and grabbed the ugliest purse I’ve ever seen outside of a thrift-shop window. From it she took a crumpled sheet of paper, so sweat-stained it was limp and semitransparent. She had written in pencil. The looping scrawl looked like something a child might have done. It was headed AMOS CULLEN LANGFORD: HIS OBITUARY.