“Got ’em.” Cricket waited, but Amanda said no more. She thought of things, but she didn’t fuss. Cricket appreciated that.
“Anyone there you want to say goodbye to?”
“Honey, we’re old. We say goodbye to each other every night.”
Outside the van, the suburbs got nicer and nicer. The knot in Cricket’s stomach tightened. Her phone chirped a couple times, like a smoke detector saying, open a window. She ignored it. I’m headed into the fire.
They pulled up the wide, long driveway to the property. “You remember how to make yourself look old again?”
Cricket thought about that. “I don’t wanna look too old. Not like I’m about to croak. They’ll fuss extra.”
Silently Amanda flipped the passenger visor down and uncovered the mirror.
Cricket checked. She thought she looked plenty old already. She felt like she could run and run and run.
“Want me to come in?” Amanda offered.
“Heck, yes.”
They pulled around back into the guest parking lot. It was late afternoon, naptime at the Home. A few people were out on the sidewalk, people who looked familiar to Cricket, but in her stunned and wall-eyed state she couldn’t remember names. I’m gonna seem gaga. She sat in her seat a moment, motionless, sucking her energy in tight around her until she felt like a hard, shiny, Cricket-shaped shell full of fear.
Finally she said, “Do I look all right?” All her new duds had gone home with Jee, and she was again wearing Beth’s tennis skirt and Amanda’s tee shirt, which hung almost to her knees.
“Compared to what?” Amanda gestured out the windshield.
Her former fellow-inmates crawled around the sidewalk outside the building, wearing whatever they’d imagined looked good this morning, or maybe forty-five years ago. Cricket took heart. “Let’s do this.”
Gripping her keys as if she were walking into a dark alley, Cricket got out and went into the building.
Amanda was right behind her.
They took the back stairs, partly because they wouldn’t meet anyone in the stairwell and partly because Cricket lived on the fourth floor, not too long a climb. Somebody would be delighted to get that apartment when she moved out. The stairs seemed much easier today. Cricket’s demon legs took them two at a time. They boogied wigglebutt but did not run down the hall. She and Amanda got all the way to her apartment door before a door opened at the other end.
Someone came out into the hallway and said, “Cricket?”
Then Amanda whisked her safely into her apartment.
Cricket shut the door and locked it. “We have five minutes,” she said breathlessly.
“Suitcases?”
Cricket pointed to the closet.
Amanda put Cricket’s big suitcase on the bed and opened it, and then went to listen at the door.
The sight of her tall, vigilant form reassured Cricket. She set about pulling things out of drawers. She didn’t need much, bearing in mind Jee’s passion for dressing other people up. Passport, jewelry box, a wad of cash she kept for tipping the staff, a bowl of keepsakes, her address book, a favorite winter scarf.
Staring into the nearly empty suitcase, Cricket realized that she was getting some much-needed closure herself. A little too quickly and high-adrenaline, maybe.
Better that than the slow, dismal, dark-of-night recognition that nobody wanted this junk and nobody wanted her.
She looked around at the chachkes on the dresser top, the photos on the walls. Somebody might want those photos. Most of them were of her husbands or their children. In the keepsake bowl she saw her grandmother’s ani l’dodi ring, I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine. Cricket took it out of the bowl and put it on. Then she took the whole bowl out of the suitcase and set it on the dresser again.
A knock fell on the door outside. “Cricket?”
She looked up, panic making her heart thump.
Amanda set her shoulders against the door and nodded slowly, as if to say, You’re doing okay. Get on with it.
Cricket couldn’t move. She couldn’t breathe.
“She’s not there,” someone said outside the apartment door.
“I saw someone go in.”
“Call her,” the first speaker suggested.
After a breathless moment, Amanda nodded again. She moved to the bedroom door. “Pillow?” she said, after a look into the suitcase.
Gasping, Cricket snatched her favorite pillow off the bed, a long, thick, body-sized pillow, suitable for cuddling in the middle of the empty night. It filled the suitcase. Suddenly the whole room was threateningly full of stuff she needed, stuff she had to keep. Her heart tore. She wished she could transport it all to the Lair. No, she wanted to stay, stay here with everything she knew—her heart skipped a beat—everyone she knew—
—Was dying. Her husbands, her kids, her step-kids, many of her grandkids. Everyone here at Loriston Home.
The phone rang.
This time Amanda jumped. Cricket stood utterly still, her heart leaden in her body.
It rang again. Amanda glanced at her.
“I’ll get it,” Cricket said, more calmly than she felt. “Hello?”
“Mrs. Immerzang! You—you’re back!” It was the staffer she shared with twenty other residents as her personal contact—translation, her keeper—at the Home.
“Just for an hour, Helen. I’ll be traveling. I had to pick up a few things.” In her head, Cricket pictured Helen scrambling for a way to keep Cricket in the Home, healthy, contented, and controlled.
“Can you stop by the office for a minute?” Helen’s voice was rising.
Darn. Had she guessed that Cricket had moved out?
“Just for a minute. We’re kind of on a schedule today. I need this suitcase for the trip.” There, that ought to reassure her.
“I see. Thank you. That would be great. See you shortly?”
“Any minute,” Cricket promised. She hung up. Then she ran to the bedroom, dumped the keepsake bowl into the suitcase, and slammed the suitcase shut and zipped it. “Get me out of here,” she said, looking Amanda in the eye.
“You have to talk to her now.”
“I know. But if the word gets out, I won’t—someone might—” Suddenly Cricket’s fear seemed so conceited that she couldn’t say it. In her head, she had pictured a mob of her fellow inmates outside Helen’s office, trying to make her stay, asking her why she looked so young.
Who was she kidding? They wouldn’t look. They wouldn’t want to know anything about her. They’d want to retell her their oldest hard luck story, or air their latest grievance against their doctors or their families.
As if she had heard all these thoughts, Amanda nodded. She lifted the suitcase off the bed.
Thinking of how empty the suitcase really was, for a moment Cricket almost told her to leave it behind. But Helen would feel better because Cricket said traveling and had a suitably large suitcase. A suitcase meant a trip. Boxes meant moving out.
Cricket led the way out and locked the door carefully behind them.
They took the elevator. No point hiding now.
Down in the office, Helen, a big woman with fake yellow hair and too much makeup, surged out of her chair to greet Cricket. “Oh, I’m glad to see you! Nobody’s heard from you since yesterday! When Mrs. Wardner called, I didn’t know what to tell her.”
“I’m sorry,” Cricket said, patting at her in an effort to avoid a smothering hug.
One of the annoying things about being old was that you became someone else’s responsibility. Naturally, they felt a need to get you under their control, so that worrying about you didn’t inconvenience them.
Nevertheless she played up to Helen’s mostly-sincere concern.
“You must have been worried.” She waved to Amanda. “This is my late husband’s sister’s—or my daughter-in-law’s—niece—or are you her grand-niece, honey? So complicated!” Cricket giggled. “Anyway, Amanda, meet Helen, who takes such good care of me.”
Amanda smiled slightly and hefted the suitcase.
Helen noticed the suitcase now. “Oh, you’re traveling. You said.”
“Brazil,” Cricket said crisply. “Rio first, then wherever the wind takes me.”
“A couple of weeks, then?” Helen hazarded, eyeing the suitcase.
“Months. I’m considering visiting my grand-nephew in St. Thomas for the winter. You know how Chicago winters get to me.”
“Horrible, aren’t they?” Helen said. “Worse and worse.” She seemed to want to prolong this conversation.
Someone is coming, Cricket guessed. Her blood froze. “Well, I’ll just pick up my mail, then, and be going. The office can hold my mail while I’m gone, right?”
“Of course,” Helen began. “Only your grandsons called, too.” I’ll bet they did. “And Patti, and Donna, and Mrs. Wardner’s sister. I thought you might—”
Cricket bounced over and, holding Helen’s massive arms off with her small hands, gave the bigger woman an air-kiss on the cheek. “Thanks, cookie. Mwah! I’ll send you a postcard!”
And they escaped.
“The nerve! Who does she think she’s kidding?” Cricket fumed under her breath. “She’s just called Sharon. She’s supposed to keep me talking until the brat gets here.”
There were still thirty feet of foyer to go, and the front door, and the long walk under the portico to visitor parking. Oh, drat, and the mail. Now that she’d mentioned the mail, she’d have to pick it up after all.
Wanda Toot caught her at the mailbox. “Cricket! You’ll never guess who went to the second floor. And they’re putting her apartment up for rent!”
Another friend down the oubliette. Cricket tried not to listen.
Wanda rattled on. “—Collapsed over Sunday brunch, I couldn’t say a word! I was so shocked! The pea soup just dribbled out of her mouth onto the tablecloth! And that nurse from the second floor, you know, the one with the mean face, well, she said to me—”
Cricket yanked open her mailbox, pulled out her mail, stuffed it in her purse, and slammed the mailbox shut. While she struggled to get the key out of the lock she heard Amanda say, “We have that donors’ reception at the Aquarium tonight, Cricket.”
“Right, right.” Cricket blindly crammed her keys into her purse full of mail. “Wanda, honey, say buh-bye to Zilla and everybody for me!” she gabbled. “I’m off to Brazil on a cruise! I’ll send you a postcard! Bye-eee!”
Wanda paused in her litany of horror. “Oh, a cruise!” Her mouth fell open.
But by then Cricket and Amanda were out the front door, the suitcase rolling like thunder behind them. Cricket didn’t care if she was walking too fast for a ninety-eight-year-old woman.
“You okay?” Amanda said when the van was a mile away, and Cricket was clutching her purse to her chest, trying to talk her heart out of jumping a foot sideways.
“I guess so,” Cricket grumbled. An intense jolt of something shot through her chest. After a moment, she realized it wasn’t a heart attack. “My phone’s ringing.”
“Don’t—” Amanda began.
Cricket shook her head. “It’s not over.” She pulled out the phone. “Oh. It’s Lauren. She’s Sharon’s daughter. Hi, Little Squeak.”
“Hi, Big Squeak!” said the voice of Cricket’s favorite descendent. “What’s this I hear you’re going to Brazil?”
“What’s this I hear your mother is in cahoots with that dim bulb at the Loriston Home?” Cricket countered. “Sheesh, I can’t visit some friends without the cops coming after me?”
“She called me, too. I think she called everybody.” Lauren said. “Did the cops really come after you? They made me give them a picture of you.”
“Interrupted my breakfast and started flirting with me, right in front of the waitress.”
Lauren laughed. “Only you, Big Squeak.”
“Shocked the poop out of me.” Cricket softened her tone. “Thanks, cookie, but I’m trying to get this trip going, and I’ll probably get enough hassle from everybody.”
“You’re really gonna do this!” Lauren’s voice was gleeful. “I knew you weren’t demented!”
Cricket’s heart sank. “Who said it this time?”
“Duh. Mom.”
Cricket sighed. That party of Beth’s looked more and more inevitable. “Look, I’ll—I’ll call you soon. I got a lot of arrangements to make.”
“You better. I need my Big Squeak fix before you run away to Brazil. Love ya!”
“Mwah! Love you too, cookie.”
Cricket stuffed her phone in her purse, ignoring the fact that it had a dozen new voicemails and texts on it, and loosened her seatbelt so she could pull her knees up to her chin and wrap her arms around her head.
She felt Amanda’s eyes on her like the gaze of a dispassionate guardian angel.
There really was a reception tonight, apparently. Everyone was back in the Lair, getting dressed up fancy. Cricket watched Amanda sort efficiently through her wardrobe, and just as efficiently wipe on about fifty-seven beauty products, until she appeared a lot more like a supermodel and less like a basketball star.
Cricket liked Amanda better in her uncompromisingly athletic guise. But she’d been through this with granddaughters.
“You look very nice,” she said dutifully. Amanda was showing a lot of leg under a little beige-plaid dress that looked like the inside of a raincoat. “Is this where we go looking for men to tempt them and drag them down to hell?”
“We don’t drag them to hell,” Amanda said, dabbing at herself with powder. “Broom closet, maybe. Hit ’em with a little succubus mojo if we need control.”
“Oo. Succubus mojo. What’s that?”
“It’s—” Amanda twisted her mouth around her lip liner. “It’s part of what we are. It works like a cattle prod, only it feels better. A lot better.”
That sounded exciting. “Can I do the mojo too?”
“Probably.” She glanced over at Cricket. “But you’re not coming until you fix up your face.”
Turning to the mirror, Cricket was forced to acknowledge that she wasn’t exactly a hot slice of fuckberry pie yet. Look how hard a tomboy like Amanda worked to get sexy. “Can’t I just watch?”
Amanda put down the powder puff and looked at her, expressionless but patient.
Cricket peered into the mirror from behind her. “I guess not. I guess guys don’t get hot for grandma.”
“You don’t think of yourself as grandma,” Amanda said with gentle irony.
“Well, no. I guess I never have. And I’m a great-great-grandma. But I still look like one, don’t I,” Cricket said, crestfallen.
Amanda sent her a little smile. “You’ll get there.”
Cricket tried to imagine a benefit at the Aquarium, and pictured herself tempting guys into broom closets. “I bet they can’t get hard if grandma is watching. That’s probably worse, isn’t it? Their weenies would shrink right up if they saw grandma looking on while they try and pick up a hottie. You do look very nice.” She tried to imagine a man coming up to a nice girl like Amanda and, well, touching her, and frowned. “Is Reg your pimp? What about that man who punched Beth? Did Reg go after him? Does that happen a lot?”
“No. Reg is our houseboy and Jee’s personal pet. That only happened because Beth hasn’t gotten over being somebody’s mom from the North Shore. She’s too nice.”
“But he hit her!” Cricket thought about this. “Was it because she charged too much?”
“The men get fucked for free. The Regional Office pays us.”
“Then why did he hit her?”
“At a guess? Because she scared him,” Amanda said, pulling her mouth out of shape while she drew on more color. “We scare most of them. Thank goodness.”
“Because you’re beautiful tall sex demons?”
“Because we’re women.”
With her life experience of the dominant sex, Cricket could see the male logic in that. “I bet nobody tries to hit you,” she ventur
ed.
Amanda snorted. “No.”
Cricket believed her. Dolled up, Amanda had a very aggressive appearance, with all this makeup and jewelry and clothes and oh my goodness those shoes. She wore something extra, too, something invisible, something like Jee’s you-want-me-but-you-can’t-have-me challenge. Amanda had swagger.
“You could look nice, too,” Amanda said without any judgment in her voice at all.
Cricket looked at Amanda in the mirror and then at her own face, forty years younger than usual, not quite sixty even, yet so far from this lacquered young beauty that she began to realize the magnitude of her new life.
Not only was she going to live, but she didn’t have to be old.
Her chest felt very hot suddenly. She burst into tears.
They sat there in front of the mirror, side-by-side, Cricket’s tears rolling silently and quickly down her face, and Amanda looking on.
Then Amanda put a hand out. “Don’t panic.”
Breathing hard to keep from opening her mouth wide like a crying baby, Cricket squeezed the hand. After a moment she could speak. “Sorry I’m so slow on the uptake.”
“Takes as long as it takes.”
It felt really nice to hold Amanda’s hand. The warmth in Cricket’s chest spread over her whole body. She felt alive in a way she had forgotten about. Had passing ninety dulled her senses so much?
She squeezed Amanda’s hand again and gave it back. “I’ll look younger faster. I promise.”
Amanda actually smiled! “You worry me when you promise stuff.”
Cricket smiled back through her tears. She’d got Amanda to admit to feelings! She was getting through to Amanda!
For some reason this filled her with a soul-satisfying relief. Cricket didn’t like to think of herself as manipulative, although of course she was, you didn’t get to ninety-eight without a smidge of self-knowledge, but she’d been worried that she was imposing on these girls and Amanda in particular. Poor kid, having to give up her private room like this.
Which was awkward. Because Cricket felt more and more like an orphaned baby duckling. Amanda had drawn the short straw. New girl imprinted on her. Cricket knew she was falling into that baby-duckling state of emotional attachment, but she couldn’t help herself. This was a big change she was making. It was now more important than anything in the whole world to keep Amanda happy. She was going to need this kind, quiet girl to help her stay steady.
Coed Demon Sluts: Omnibus: Coed Demon Sluts: books 1-5 Page 62
