“Jez, honey, who don’t?” the black woman answered. “But what you gonna do?”
Vanessa still carried the. 38 in her purse. A few people at the camp had gone postal. One guy gunned down seven of his tent-mates before somebody brained him from behind with a baseball bat. For a nasty instant, Vanessa savored the brief, scarlet joy of flipping out like that. If the alternative was worming forward an inch at a time till you got to talk to some dumb fuck who couldn’t have cared less.. Sighing, she wormed forward another inch. Maturity and sanity sucked sometimes. They really did.
Half an hour later, she scraped the mud off the bottom of her Nikes on the sharp edges of the aluminum steps leading up to the administration building. Those edges already had a lot of mud on them, from others who’d done the same thing before her. The instinct not to track dirt inside remained strong, even when there was next to no inside and what seemed like all the dirt in the world.
A sign on the glass doors said PLEASE KEEP CLOSED. The administration building had a real heating system, not a half-assed propane heater in the middle of a tent. Nothing too good for the folks helping our refugees. The building had power, too, and computers and phones and broadband Internet and everything else Vanessa was missing except when she got in the line even longer than this one to go to the charging station to give her cell more juice.
In due course, she reached a counter behind which sat a thir-tyish dweeb with glasses and a broken front tooth. Before she could get down to brass tacks, he asked for her name, her Social Security number (only he called it her “Social,” which she wouldn’t have understood if she hadn’t already heard it from other pen-pushers), and her tent number. “And the nature of your difficulty is…?”
“It’s not just mine,” Vanessa said. “It’s everybody’s except for this one woman named Loretta. She has three horrible brats. They’re going stir-crazy, they’ve got no video games to play or TV to watch, and they drive everybody nuts. You can’t even sleep at night, ’cause they scream and fight for the fun of it. If you don’t do something about it, somebody’s going to pinch their little heads off.”
He fiddled with a computer. “That would be Loretta Baker, it seems. What do you want me to do?”
“Move her and the monsters out of there,” Vanessa said at once. “If you can’t do that, get me the hell out.”
“You realize conditions may be no better in the tent to which you are reassigned?” he said. Her heart sank. He wouldn’t move Loretta and the snotnoses, which was what she really wanted.
Sighing, she said, “I’ll take my chances.”
“It might not be so easy to make the adjustment.” He eyed her over the tops of his specs. “An attitude of cooperation would be expected.”
“What does that mean?” Vanessa figured she knew what it meant. Make nice for Mr. Federal Functionary and he’ll help you out, too. Don’t make nice and stay stuck where you are.
“Why, what it says, of course,” he answered primly. The son of a bitch had practice at this. He wouldn’t come out and tell her Fuck me or get lost. That might land him in trouble. But if you were that kind of bastard, you had to have opportunities galore in a place like this. Chances were he got laid a lot.
Vanessa got up from her uncomfortable folding chair. “Forget about it,” she snarled, thinking again of the revolver in her handbag.
The guy with the broken tooth only shrugged. “The choice is always yours, Ms. Ferguson. If you change your mind, consult with me again. I promise you excellent service if you do.”
And how did he mean that? Just the way it sounded, no doubt. Vanessa stormed out of the administration building. What really worried her was, those little assholes of Loretta’s were so very appalling, she feared she might come back and come across if somebody didn’t murder them first. She’d worried about this kind of thing before. Now, if push came to shove… She swore louder than the bearded guy had when he gave up on the line.
“It’s so wonderful!” Miriam Birnbaum gushed, and reached out to straighten a lock of Kelly’s hair that didn’t need straightening.
“Mom!” Kelly pulled away. She wished more and more she’d just gone through a simple civil ceremony with Colin. Her folks had almost given up on the idea that she’d ever get married. Now that they had the chance, they were trying to turn the wedding into a production number.
Well, they were footing the bill. That gave them a certain right to have things their way. Only to a point, though. It wasn’t their wedding, even if they were paying. It was hers and Colin’s.
“I’m happier than I know how to tell you,” her mother said, and either proved that or gave it the lie by crying.
“Don’t do that!” Kelly exclaimed. “You’ll mess up your makeup!” She dabbed at Mom’s cheek with a Kleenex. It repaired most of the damage, anyhow. Her father-one of the best dentists in the South Bay, if he said so himself (and he did)-put an arm around her mother.
“It’s okay, Miriam,” Leonard Birnbaum said. “Colin’s a good guy.”
“I wouldn’t be crying if he wasn’t,” Mom said, which might have made sense to her but left Kelly mystified.
She was also gobsmacked that the lecturer’s slot at Cal State Dominguez Hills fell into her lap right after her parents hired the hall here. Whether she was obsolete or not, they wanted her. She would have had second thoughts about taking the job most of the time. If the University of California system was hurting, the California State University system was on the critical list. But CSUDH wasn’t more than fifteen minutes away from San Atanasio. As long as any gas at all got into the L.A. area-and as long as any money at all got into the Cal State system-she could go teach.
She wondered if Geoff Rheinburg knew the gal who ran the Dominguez Hills Geology Department. That would explain a lot. It would also be odds-on the best wedding present she got.
One side of the hall was packed with her relatives and friends. The other side was mostly cops: square, solid men in suits that had been stylish a while ago or maybe never. How many of them had shoulder holsters under their jackets? Marshall was there, of course. I’m a stepmother, Kelly thought in bemusement as she went up the aisle on her father’s arm. She hoped Colin’s other two kids were doing all right.
Next to Marshall in the front row sat Colin’s sister, Norma. Kelly’d never set eyes on her before. She and her husband, Earl, both worked nights, though, and didn’t show themselves when most people did. Kelly didn’t think there were any hard feelings between her and Colin, but they weren’t exactly close, either.
Colin waited under the chuppah with a Reform rabbi, Wes Jones, and Kely’s first cousin, Loreen Samuels. Damned if Wes didn’t wink at her as she came near. There’d be never a dull moment living across the street from him. He wore a yarmulke with as much ease as the rabbi did. Colin’s kind of stuck up on his head. He’d agreed to a Jewish ceremony with good grace, but nothing would ever make him look Jewish.
Some chanted Hebrew prayers, some marriage advice that was sensible but perfectly ordinary, Colin’s shoe coming down on a cloth-wrapped glass to remember the fall of the Temple, a ring, a kiss
… It was official. She’d have to start getting used to her new last name. Well, she wouldn’t have to, not these days, but she intended to. Kelly Ferguson? For once, it sounded as if her first and last names went together.
After champagne toasts at the reception, Colin said, “I saw a study that showed guys who marry younger wives live longer and are happier.”
“Oh, yeah? Wonder how come that is,” Gabe Sanchez said. Everybody laughed. Gabe struck Kelly as a slightly rougher, Hispanic version of the guy she’d just married. He went on, “Congratulations, man. Looks like you got a real good one. Gives us all hope, y’know?” His heavy-featured face clouded. Kelly remembered Colin saying Gabe had gone through a divorce even uglier than his own. Evidently he hadn’t found anyone new since.