Desperate to the Max

by JB Skully

  "You two were good friends, weren't you?"

  "We talked sometimes,” he admitted cautiously, one hand behind his back, the other still clutching the nylon strap of his pack.

  "Did you like her even though she was fat?” Her question was blunt, almost painful, and better to dig out the truth. Bethany shriveled several dress sizes inside her.

  Freddy shot up straight. “She wasn't fat. She was..."

  What were the words Ladybird had heard him use? “A cheap fat bitch, maybe?"

  Freddy leaped back, tripped over the edge the curb, stumbled, then caught himself. “I never said that."

  "Not even to your friends?"

  "Well...” A car whooshed by, traveling far too fast for a parking lot. Freddy looked at his bike, then licked his lips. “A guy's gotta do what a guy's gotta do."

  "Did you tell her that's how you saved face when your little pals made fun of your job and your boss?"

  "Bethany didn't expect me to defend her. We were friends on the...” Again, he truncated his words. “We didn't have to broadcast it to the world.” A world that didn't understand what it was like to be an outcast. Or a teenager.

  God forbid he should admit any of this to his buddies or his parents.

  "You used to spend hours on the phone with her, didn't you, or e-mail, when you were supposed to be studying up in your room?"

  He swallowed, his Adam's Apple bobbing along his smooth throat. “Yeah, we talked on the phone, played with e-mail. There's nothing wrong with that."

  "What'd you talk about, Freddy?” She spoke softly, moved in for the kill, stopping her slow forward momentum when she was within two steps.

  "Just stuff.” Again, the nervous swallow. He stared at the building facade, the concrete at his feet, and the stinking trash can behind her left shoulder.

  "What kinda stuff?"

  He looked at her then, straight into her eyes, suddenly and unexpectedly defiant. “You already know. She told you. I can tell. So what are you asking me for?"

  No, Max didn't know for sure. From the red seeping into his cheeks and the flush creeping up his neck, she had a damn good idea. She did not, however, say a word. She let Freddy hang himself.

  His nostrils flared. He stood taller, then leaned closer. He might have believed Bethany betrayed him, but still he defended her, looking over Max's shoulder to make sure he couldn't be overheard, lowering his voice. “We didn't talk about sex."

  Then again, maybe he was defending himself.

  Max closed her eyes a moment, listened to all the voices in her head, past and present. Bethany on the phone with Achilles, with the other men, Max's own voice seducing an unseen man in the cab of her imaginary Dodge Ram.

  Understanding Bethany the way she did, Max lowered her voice as Freddy had and took a stab at home base. “She described the best way to go down on a woman, Freddy. She wanted to teach you to do it right. Wouldn't you call that talking about sex?"

  He sucked in a breath, hurt fogging his eyes. “She talked to you about me?"

  "Not about you, Freddy. Not to hurt you. She cared very much about you. She was...” She played Freddy's own game, cutting herself off, forcing him to ask.

  "She was what?"

  "She was concerned that you were so young. That she..."

  "She what?"

  "That you might be thinking you and she could be more than ... friends. That you could actually meet her sometime."

  He bit down on his inner lip, pulling it in. His gaze turned inward. Then he swallowed and looked back at Max. She knew she was right. He'd never even seen Bethany. She'd paid him by check, through the mail. She'd called him to run an errand, or sent him an e-mail. She'd been a seductive voice on the phone, beguiling words on a screen, and a prurient fantasy in a teenage boy's mind.

  "How did you know she had a weight problem, Freddy?"

  He took a deep breath, his nostrils flaring. “She told me.” He paused. Max waited. “Some guys in the neighborhood saw her when she first moved in. So I knew before she said anything."

  She doubted he believed in Bethany's real size. He'd convinced himself his friends had exaggerated, that Bethany herself had exaggerated. “Did you ask to see her?"

  He answer indirectly. “I knew she didn't like how she looked. That she was ten years older than me. That my friends would have beaten the crap out of me for even thinking about her. That my parents would have had her arrested for statutory rape ... or something, if they found out ... what we talked about."

  "You loved her anyway, didn't you, and you wouldn't have cared what anyone said if she just opened the front door to you?"

  Lips half closed, he clenched his teeth and drew in a deep breath between them, but he didn't balk at her use of the word love. “She never did let me in.” At least not into her house. Again, Freddy hesitated; again Max waited for him to go on. His eyes clouded with a hint of tears. “She was the sweetest, kindest person I ever met. And she loved me. She never expected anything from me. She never talked down to me. She always answered my questions without acting like I was stupid. She ... taught me things just by telling me how to do them. It was innocent stuff, just talking."

  Yeah. Bethany was the sweetest, kindest person. Yet she'd been teaching a beautiful, mixed up, underage kid how to intimately pleasure a woman.

  It was frightening, all the more so because, inside her, Bethany didn't even understand what she might have done.

  Had Freddy known about her late night activities? Had he somehow engineered a way to call her without anyone finding out?

  Could he possibly be Achilles?

  Or was he a jealous kid who killed her when he found out she was doing the real man of her dreams nightly on her phone sex line?

  * * * *

  Witt hadn't called.

  Parked outside Prunella Scales's office, Max took the cell phone out of her purse and stuck it in the glove box where she usually kept it. Wouldn't do to have the thing going off in the middle of the group session.

  Why hadn't he called?

  Not that she'd wanted or expected him to. She'd slept with lots of guys who hadn't called the next morning. She hadn't wanted them to, of course.

  She didn't really want Witt to call either. He'd yell at her about ... something. Better to leave the phone off and in the glove box. Better not to hear his silly questions about she pushed him away or why she didn't know how to make love. Why, why, why.

  So why wasn't she completely and utterly happy that he hadn't called?

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Prunella Scales’ “therapy” room, for lack of a better title, was cool, too cool for the fall day. Max, though she'd chosen to sit on the sunny end of the sofa, pulled on her black blazer over the sleeves of her white shirt.

  She'd been the first to arrive. Three more had straggled in. At 102 pounds in her stockinged feet, Max outweighed them by a good twenty pounds. She almost felt fat.

  Three girls, ranging in age from early to late twenties. Girls. Funny how one always referred that way to females as small as these three, but they were women, though almost sexless in their thinness. Not likely to be blood relatives, they were sisters in the way their skin stretched to cover their cheekbones and bare throats, identical in their short, shaggy haircuts, their baggy dress code, their gangly wrists devoid of jewelry, even a watch, their fingers unadorned, as if the extra weight couldn't be tolerated. Hair and eye color was what differentiated. Without that, these “girls” could have been triplets.

  Max couldn't remember their names. One, two, three, they'd entered, been introduced, looked her up, then down, silently guessed at her weight, glared at her, and finally taken a place on the blue velour sofa, the overstuffed chair, and the plushly carpeted floor. Different positions, different places, all three had grabbed a pillow and hugged it to their bodies. For comfort. For disguise.

  Max wanted to do the same thing. A pillow would hide the size of her stomach. It wasn't self-consciousness. It was Bethany. Anorexia terrified h
er in much the same way obesity terrified Prunella's current patients. Terror that they could some day, some way, be what the other one was.

  It was all about comfort zones. It was all about food.

  Watching them, Max realized the afternoon sun through the windows didn't quite reach them. She also realized they probably wanted it that way.

  Dr. Scales still wore the pink and black suit, but she'd removed the jacket, the rose-colored blouse beneath soft and feminine. She glanced at her watch. Max did, too. Five after three. She wondered if Jada was chronically late.

  Just as Prunella opened her mouth, presumably to speak, the door burst open. Jada flew in, flung herself across the room, and landed in the chair opposite Max's seat on the sofa.

  Sitting forward on the edge of her seat, Max glanced from Jada to Prunella and back again. She tilted her chin forward, did her best imitation of shock and hoped to hell it worked.

  It took Jada a full ten seconds to notice her. A helluva long time, Max's facial expression felt frozen to her bones.

  The emotions washed across Jada's gaunt features. She did a double take, her mouth fell open, and her eyes widened. Shock, wonder. Then came pissed. She narrowed her gaze, her brown eyes flared, and her lips thinned.

  Her voice, when it came, was brittle as glass. “Did my mother send you here?"

  "Your mother?” Of course, that was the last thing Max had expected her to say. She couldn't help the repetition.

  "You two know each other?” Prunella. It was unexpected turn for her, too.

  "She's gonna marry that cop."

  "The one next-door?” one of the three popped out with.

  So they all knew about Witt, had probably heard tales of his naked, gleaming chest in the hot sun while he slaved at dusting the leaves of his mother's plastic plants.

  "What other cop do I know?” Jada answered with a lacing of sarcasm.

  "Ladies, why don't you let Max talk?” Ah, Prunella, giving her fledgling patient the chance to sink or swim.

  Max looked straight at Jada as she spoke. “Your mother doesn't have anything to do with this. I had a problem, I took it to the good doctor, she let me come here. End of story.” She sounded defensive, which she figured was exactly how she'd sound if this had truly been divine coincidence.

  Jada swept her gaze from head to foot. “Why don't you stand up and show us how much of a problem you've got?"

  Max was ready to do it. She wasn't ashamed of her weight, at least not most of the time.

  Prunella Scales figuratively stepped in. “I invited her, Jada."

  Jada glared. “Well, you didn't ask us."

  Prunella met the glare head on and kept her voice soft but firm. “Just like I didn't ask the others a few weeks ago when you came here right out of the hospital. I make those decisions."

  So Jada had been in the hospital. Well, that provided an answer to at least one of Max's questions; the reason why she hadn't attended Wendy Gregory's funeral. Perhaps the reason why Virginia hadn't either. She was looking after her youngest daughter.

  "Now let's move on.” Sitting in the only straight back chair in the room, the doctor crossed her legs in a let's-get-down-to-business gesture. “I'd like to devote this session to you, Jada. I think your feelings about what happened to your sister bear talking about.” You, your; Prunella's carefully chosen words kept the focus on Jada, not Bethany. That's what she'd gone through umpteen years of schooling to learn.

  "Bethany? What the hell for?” Jada's words were harsh, her tone flippant.

  "Your mother told me she died on Wednesday.” Jada's lip twitched at Dr. Scales's mention of Virginia. “How do you feel about that?"

  She took a deep breath, turned to look out the window, and then, like the others, she pulled a pastel pink pillow across her middle. “We didn't get along. I'm sorry she's dead. But we weren't really friends.” She tipped her head and looked Prunella in the eye. “Do I lose points for not being distraught?"

  Prunella didn't get a chance to answer.

  "You know you hated her.” That from the first arrival, Number One.

  "You're probably glad she's dead.” Number Three.

  "Of course I'm not glad,” Jada snapped. “But I'm not going to pretend I'll miss her."

  The doctor took control. “Would you like to share your feelings with us, Jada? Maybe we could help. Dealing with death is tough, perhaps worse when it's murder."

  "Murder?” That from all three at once, reaction in triplicate, awe, fascination, curiosity.

  Jada's lips remained in that thin, set line, ignoring the other members of the group. “I don't have any feelings about it."

  Max remembered the pained screams when Jada discovered her sister's body.

  Number Two laughed. “Yeah, right, you hated her guts.” She raised her tone, did quite a good imitation of Jada, her bony shoulders moving in time with the tilt of her head. “She gets all the attention. It's Bethany this and Bethany that. What about Jada? No one thinks about Jada.” She stopped, narrowed her eyes. “Maybe you even killed her."

  Spitting mad, Jada leaned into her. “I didn't care enough to bother killing her."

  Number One. “You're such a liar, Jada. You've always been pissed at her. She's all you ever talk about in here. I think you could have done it."

  "You're a bunch of fucking bitches."

  Prunella let them go on biting and snarling at each other. Was this part of constructive therapy?

  "How'd she die?” That from Number Three, but they all leaned forward en masse, like walls closing in on Jada.

  Jada's glaring arrogance faltered. Her anger and apathy was nothing more than a mask.

  Max, knowing exactly what she'd seen in that house, felt sorry for her. She, too, leaned forward, but with compassion in the hand she held out. “Do you want me to tell them?"

  For a moment, a spark of relief and gratitude lit the girl's eyes. Only a moment's worth, then she shut down again. “It's no big deal.” Again her tone lacked a ring of truth, but she pushed on. “Someone bashed her head in."

  "With what?"

  Max didn't even turn to see which of the three had asked. She watched Bethany's sister.

  Jada's brow furrowed in confusion. “I don't know. I didn't ask."

  There were only three possibilities surrounding that answer. She was an extremely good actress. She didn't remember. Or she'd had nothing to do with her sister's death.

  "Good answer with just the right inflection,” Number One quipped. “You'll be perfect when they call you in for questioning.

  "I didn't kill her.” Jada reverted to a snarl.

  Max glanced at Prunella, whose face remained serene yet alert. Why didn't she stop it? This hounding couldn't possibly qualify as therapy. It was cruel.

  Max couldn't stand for it. “I don't think you did it, Jada.” She threw a frosty glance around the room. “From what Witt says, I don't think the cops do either."

  "Ooh, see how she calls him Witt,” Number two crooned. “I thought he was interested in you, Jada. Someone's always beating you out, aren't they? First your sister, now her."

  Max had never seen nor felt such anger, a palpable cloud in the room. She could almost reach out and touch its haze. With each breath, she sucked it in, felt it permeate her blood vessels, her nerves endings, her hair follicles.

  Still Dr. Prunella Scales didn't put an end to it.

  Jada clutched her pillow closer, her fingernails digging like talons into the material. “The bastard can go fuck himself, for all I care. I never liked him. He was the one that came on to me."

  "You're such a liar.” It could have been any of the three, as one, their thoughts, feelings, and words bombarded the room. “Just like you're lying about how you felt about your sister."

  The whites of Jada's eyes turned blood red. “All right. You want the truth, I'll tell you. She got all the attention when she was alive. Now she's got it when she's dead. She's probably looking up from hell and laughing at me."

&nbs
p; Bethany was looking all right, but she wasn't laughing. Inside Max, Bethany cried, a pale, keening sound that forced Max to clamp her mouth shut. She could not let that horrible sound out.

  "She was a pig. She was fat and she was ugly and I hated her. I always hated her. I made sure she didn't have any friends. I made sure my mother saw how fat she was getting. I made sure I stayed skinny so everyone would see how extra fat she was.” Jada was not a demonstrative person. She sat in her chair, the pink pillow clutched against her breasts, her legs pulled up against the cushion. Only her lips and face moved, only her eyes showed how close she was to complete manic meltdown.

  "But they loved her better anyway, didn't they?” Someone whispered the words, it might have been Prunella, it might have been Max herself.

  "Yeah. Always. No matter what I did. She was their darling, their pet. Mother always made her favorite desserts, always hugged her when she cried, always told her nothing was her fault. I wanted them to look at me, just once. But they never even noticed. Never.” Her head gave a sharp little jerk as she said the word, the ligaments of her throat stretched. “They always said she was the prettiest and the sweetest. If she would just lose a little weight. I never even gained, not an ounce, not a pound, but did they ever see that?"

  Jesus, Max felt sick. Was that why the girl starved herself—she looked around the room—why they all starved themselves?

  Jada went on, gestureless, throwing all her feelings out in words and mobile facial muscles. “She was always the special one. They never cared about me. Now she's dead. And she's going to be a fucking saint, a goddamn martyr forever. I can't do anything about it."

  They, they, they. Who the hell were they? Mother? Father?

  Uncle Bud?

  "Is that why you killed her?"

  Jada stared at Max, eyes wild, specks of white foam in the corners of her mouth like a rabid dog.

  Voice so low the words barely carried on the air currents, Jada answered from the heart. “I thought about it. A lot.” She puffed out a breath. “But then her dying really didn't do any good. Now they'll always think about her first, won't they?"