Ding, ding.
The fishing line fluttered. The rod rocked in the chair and tumbled to the ice.
"Shit, hang on," Josh told her, swinging his legs off the sofa.
"You have got to be kidding," Sherry said.
"Help me," he said, jerking on the line, his jeans around his ankles, his shaft still ready for action.
Sherry sighed. "That's what I was trying to do." She added, "Don't let your thingy get sliced off, okay?"
He battled the fish for several minutes, until it was close to the surface.
"Take the pole," he said. "Keep it pointed up."
"That's what I was-oh, never mind." She took the fishing rod and held it while Josh grabbed a pair of gloves and reached down into the hole.
"Reel in some more line," he told her.
"What am I, Supergirl? This thing is heavy."
She cranked the reel, and the line wound in slowly. It felt as if she were pulling up a boat anchor on the other end.
"Almost got it," he said.
Suddenly, Josh yelped. He unleashed a girlish scream and fell back on his ass. His erection deflated. With his hands on the ice, he scrabbled away from the hole. "Shit!"
Something black bobbed out of the ice like a gopher in a carnival whack-a-mole game. Sherry cranked the reel and inched closer, repelled but curious. When she saw it, she screamed, too.
Matted black hair danced up and down at her feet. The smell, released out of the water, was rank; she covered her face. Invisible gases fouled the air. She watched through slitted fingers and saw a human head now, snow-white and hideously swollen, peeking above the ice. More of the body was trapped below. Mud and weeds clung to its skin. Its eyes were open but cloudy, like marbles. Its mouth was slightly open, and the splashing and sucking of the water made it sound as if it were talking. As if it were alive when it was obviously dead. The head said over and over, "Let me out, let me out, let me out, let me out."
PART TWO. ALPHA GIRLS
20
Helen Danning could see her reflection in the window of the gift shop, and every few seconds, her face lit up like the glow of a wild fire as northbound traffic off the highway shot their twin beams through the glass. To Helen, the car lights were like the white tunnels of searchlights, wending back and forth across a field, hunting for her. When a car slowed and pulled off the road, she flinched. The headlights grew huge in the window as the car parked outside the shop, and Helen pushed her chair back and got up, leaving a half-drunk chai tea and her white Mac laptop open on the cast-iron table. She backed up between the oak shelves, which were stocked with Yankee candles and potpourri.
The shop door opened, and Helen felt as if the night were spilling inside. A burst of chill made her shiver. She glanced at the corridor leading to Evelyn's stockroom, where a back door butted up to frozen cornfields. Irrationally, she wanted to run, but she saw that the people coming into the shop were harmless. A man in a Minnesota State Fair sweatshirt ordered two coffees from Evelyn at the counter, while his wife browsed the sale-priced Christmas ornaments. Helen ducked her head and kept her face hidden.
She waited until their car was back on the highway before she sat down at the table again. When she took a sip of her sweet tea, her fingers were trembling. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and continued the methodical work on her laptop, opening each of the entries in her blog and erasing them. Her slim finger hovered over the Delete key as she reread a posting about the show Miss Saigon. She had seen the show dozens of times, as she had seen most musicals that came through the Ordway Center in Saint Paul. As an usher, she saw the performances night after night, and she could spot the nuances in every actor, song, costume, and set. She lived the shows almost as if they were more real than her own life. Some people became obsessed with soap operas, but Helen's obsession was Phantom, Les Miz, Rent, and all the other touring shows that ran over and over on the stage. Her blog was her outlet to pour out her thoughts about the characters.
She called her blog "The Lady in Me." She had come across a Shania Twain CD called The Woman in Me years earlier and bought it because she liked the title. The phrase became a kind of anthem to her. It summed up what she had lost in college and what she had been searching for her whole life. She even had the initials TLIM tattooed on her ankle, like a secret message she carried with her.
She didn't realize back then that she was making a mistake, that someone who wanted to find her could figure out who she was and where she worked by carefully reading the posts to her blog. She had just never dreamed that anyone would want to find her.
Helen looked up as the piano music playing overhead stopped. The gift shop went silent.
"Time to run, honeybun," Evelyn called. She was closing up the shop, cleaning out the coffeepot, toting up the register. Evelyn always seemed to do five things at once. She didn't walk. She bustled.
Helen shut down her laptop and waited. Evelyn was right. It was time to run, and that was what Helen was doing. Running.
With a flounce, Evelyn sat down in the chair opposite Helen. She had poured herself the dregs of the coffee. She took a sip and pushed her unruly, squirrel-colored curls out of her face. Under the table, she kicked off her Birkenstocks and wiggled her toes.
"How about we go home and feed Edgar?" Evelyn asked.
"Sure."
"You know, you're like my cat," she said, noticing Helen's nervous green eyes. "She's more scared of birds than the birds are of her."
"Every time someone comes in, I think it's going to be him," Helen told her.
"I understand."
"I promise I won't be in your hair too much longer."
Evelyn shrugged. "Stay as long as you like. We don't do it often enough, honeybun. What's it been? A couple years? The last few days have been like college, ordering pizza and chugging down cheap wine. Makes me forget all this gray hair."
In addition to running the gift shop, Evelyn was a painter, poet, and gardener, who lived alone in an old house on five acres near the Mississippi in rural Little Falls. They had been best friends since their days as roommates at the U of M. Several times, Evelyn had invited Helen to join her in the small central Minnesota town, but Helen was scared of open places, nervous about emptiness. She liked the anonymity of the city, where she could lose herself in crowds and live silently in the midst of the noise.
"You think I'm overreacting, don't you?" Helen asked.
Evelyn retrieved a bowl of wasabi soy nuts from the shop counter and placed it between them on the table. She took a green nut and crunched it in her mouth. "Yeah. I guess I do. But so what? You met this guy, not me."
"His name was Eric."
"Okay, Eric."
"He tracked me down, and a couple of days later, he was murdered."
"It could be a coincidence."
Helen shook her head. "He knew what happened to me."
"So?"
"So Eric was going to confront the bastard. I told you that."
Evelyn looked at her skeptically. "The papers said Eric's wife was the one who killed him."
"Well, I think they're wrong."
Evelyn sighed. "If you're so sure, honeybun, why not go to the police?"
Helen stuck out her tongue. "The police are no help. You remember last time?"
"They treated you badly."
"They told me it was my fault," Helen said. "I don't need to go through that again. They'd just dredge up what happened and in the end, they wouldn't do a thing. They'd say I was crazy or out for revenge."
Helen stared out the window at the highway. Evelyn reached out and covered Helen's hand. "Do you really think you're in danger?"
"I do."
"Then you need to tell someone," Evelyn insisted. "What if this guy is stalking someone else? Do you want another woman to go through what you did?"