There were no menus or place mats to write on, and then she looked down at her left hand and the paper. Of course. She put the paper on the counter, wrote “LIST” at the top of the blank side.
Or at least “LIST” was what she intended to write. Instead, she wrote “KING CITY.”
“No,” she said, to her own hand. She crossed out what she had written and wrote “LIST.”
Except that it still looked a lot like “KING CITY.”
“No,” she said again. She would not accept it. Not this too.
Maybe it was the surface. She pushed the paper aside (where it immediately sprang back, the marks from the pen completely gone, into her left hand) and wrote directly on the counter.
“Hey,” said Laura, the waitress, as she walked by. “I’ll have to clean that later.”
Laura had many branches growing from her body, laden with fruit.
“TEST,” Jackie wrote on the counter. And again it came out as “KING CITY.” She yelled in frustration. The man with the long forehead and the woman with the clipboard glared at her. Teenagers don’t usually write things while yelling, they thought, worried.
“Shhh,” said a voice from under the man’s hat.
Even if she did go to the pawnshop, she wouldn’t be able to write tickets for the customers, or price tags that said “$11.” She felt utterly defeated, and this feeling made her angry and defiant. What had she done to deserve this? She punched the counter, and then held her aching fist.
Her phone rang. She pulled it out, and the woman next to her slipped in an earpiece so she could listen along.
“Hello, Mom?”
“Hello, dear!” Her mom didn’t quite grasp that phones bridged the distance between people, so shouting was unnecessary.
“I’m sorry, Mom. I’m busy at work right now.” The woman with the clipboard, one hand on the earpiece, raised an eyebrow at her, and Jackie waved it off. “Do you need something?”
“I can’t just call my child? I have to need something?”
“Of course you can, Mom, that’s not what I—”
“But now that you mention it…”
“See?” Jackie mouthed to the woman with the clipboard. The woman shrugged.
“What is it, Mom?”
“I need to talk to you.”
“I’m glad we could talk then. Was there anything else?” Jackie wrote “KING CITY” on the counter again and cringed.
“No. I need to talk to you in person. It’s important. I have something to tell you. It’s about… Well, it’s better if you just come and we can talk about it.”
Jackie’s eyes burned. She wasn’t sure if it was an allergic reaction. She couldn’t remember ever feeling this sensation. She touched the corner of her eye. It was wet. There was water coming from her eyes and trickling down her cheeks, and she knew she was crying but she wasn’t sure if she had ever cried before. She let all the air that was in her out, without using her mouth to make that air communicate anything. This lack of communication communicated a great deal.
“Jackie, are you there?”
“Yes, I’m wherever I am. Here I am. Mom, have I ever… I mean, do you ever remember a time when I…”
She looked up and froze without actually stopping movement. The freezing happened inside.
One of the cooks was staring at her. He was tall and blond. His smile was wide and warm, and it unnerved her. He was flipping burgers (who was ordering burgers this early in the morning?), but he wasn’t taking his eyes off of her, so the burgers were landing on the floor, in the sink, on the edge of the griddle, in a haphazard splash pattern starting from where his spatula tossed them. His smile was so wide and so warm. Jackie didn’t feel safe.
“Jackie, come on over. I think this is a good time to tell you.”
“Okay, Mom. Okay, I’ll be there. I just have a few things I need to do first.”
She shut off the phone and her mom was gone.
She would need to start somewhere. Old Woman Josie had mentioned that the angels wanted to see her, and even though no one could legally acknowledge their existence, they did tend to know what more legally existent creatures did not. It was, if nothing else, somewhere to start at. She got up to leave, glancing back to the kitchen.
The cook was still staring at her, a burger in midflip. Her quick glance did not take in its landing, and so, in her mind, it was always in the air, tumbling, never landing, never consumed, only spinning and falling, spinning and falling.
Chapter 6
Catharine’s office had two plants, three chairs, two desks, one hutch, six personal photos in standing frames, one of those clichéd motivational posters on the wall that had two crows tearing out the insides of a reasonably sized forest cat with the cheesy inspirational caption, “Unremittingly, you must stare into the sun,” and a clay paperweight most likely made by Catharine’s daughter (it was signed
by your seed
in adorable small-child handwriting).
Diane sat in one of the chairs that had no wheels. The other two chairs were empty. The computer was humming and glowing. Flashes of colorful dots disappeared and reappeared on the screen. A phone was ringing somewhere in the cubicle area. A phone was being answered in the cubicle area.
A tarantula inched between the keyboard and mouse, as if it were playing the game where it can only move one leg at a time, which is a popular game with tarantulas. Tarantulas are simple creatures, Diane’s house thought, but no one was home to receive that thought. Josh was at school, not thinking about tarantulas. Diane was in the office, trying not to think about Josh.
The door opened and Catharine said, “Sorry about making you wait so long,” but she said it in a way that a person says, “Sorry about the loss of your pet.” Catharine was either expertly empathetic or completely disingenuous. It depended on what you needed a boss to be. In this way Catharine was a good boss.
Catharine sat down in the chair that had wheels and was between the two desks. She shoved papers and their paperweight out from the center of the desk, creating a small, clean triangle of oak desktop between her and Diane.
“How’s Josh?” Catharine asked.
“Josh?” Diane was not expecting small talk. Nor did she expect Catharine to remember her son’s name. She had always gotten along fine with her boss, but they had spoken only once or twice in her entire time with the company. Catharine had always seemed fair and kind, as things go, but also stressed and distracted.
“Josh, right? Your son? How is he? Still taking different physical forms all the time?”
“Oh, he’s fine. Just fine.”
“That’s unspecific, but I will not press you for more if you do not wish to mix work and home lives,” Catharine said, without moving her neck or eyes. “I legitimately am interested in Josh. I met him a couple of years ago, when we saw each other at the Ralphs. You were looking at different cereal packages, and Josh that day had—oh, I remember—such long fingers and ears, big dark eyes, and beautiful black wings. He was a handsome boy.”
“Yes. He is a handsome boy.”
“And I was buying metal cleaner and a thirty-two-pack of meat thermometers. I remember that day well.” Catharine frowned, her eyes briefly sad before she was able to compose her face back to neutral. “How is he doing at school? He must be fifteen now. Is he dating yet?”
“I think maybe he has an interest.”
“You don’t have to answer that if you do not wish.” Catharine raised one hand in the air, fingers together, palm facing Diane.
Diane looked at Catharine’s forceful but caring gesture, and then up a bit along her arm. The tarantula, which had been near the computer earlier, was now on Catharine’s shoulder. It had one leg in the air, pointing toward Diane. It was possible that the creature was still walking slowly, but Diane hoped it was instead mimicking its owner’s arm gesture.