Goody One Shoe (20 page)

BILLIE HIT THE SEND
button
and closed her laptop. First freelance job complete. Money in her bank account.
Or at least her PayPal account. She guzzled what remained of her tepid tea and
checked the stove clock.

Plenty of time to shower and put on her best business suit.
The one she’d never worn. Never had a reason to. But today was different. Today
blossomed with possibilities. Today she was going upstairs to be interviewed.
Her chance to vault out of the proofing pool and lounge by the side, champagne
glass in hand, with the other editing elite.

After that? The perfect topper to the day. Her regular
Friday dinner with Bruce. Not that they were on a schedule anymore. He slept
over at her house, and she at his. They went to the gym together any day of the
week they felt like it, met for a quick lunch when he had meetings in her end
of town. Her normal scheduled existence had become life by the seat of her
pants. It scared her at first, but she’d grown into the randomness of it. But
Friday dinner, that was a staple. No matter what. And that tiny slice of
schedule brought her a huge helping of peace and comfort.

Two hours later, she sat at her desk, licked her fingers,
and glued a stray hair to her head. She’d worn her hair in a high ponytail, but
not confined to a bun. Bruce’s recommendation. He said it made her look sleek
and professional, but not uptight. She dabbed rose gloss across her lips and
used one fingernail to separate a clump of mascaraed lashes. She’d never felt less
uptight in her life.

She blinked against her new contact lenses. It was like
there were shards of glass in each eye instead of malleable plastic that didn’t
hide her beauty behind thick rims. Bruce meant well, but Billie couldn’t
reconcile beauty with brains. Contact lenses with accomplishment. But he had
more experience climbing ladders than she did, corporate or otherwise.

“Are those pants?”

Katherine had snuck up on her, stealthy despite her clunky
Guess heels and her jingling jewelry.

Billie cleared her throat. “Yes. A suit.”

Katherine’s doom brow shot up. “Huh. Looks nice.” She
twirled one pointed finger in the general direction of Billie’s face. “I like
the lenses.” Katherine walked away.

Billie sat in stunned silence. No zinger? No threats to her
safety? Was that an actual … compliment? Her hand trembled. It was a bad omen.
The calm before the shit storm. Katherine had pulled some nasty trick and
doomed Billie’s chances at the job. Undermined her, cut her off at the pass.

Breathe, Billie. She closed her eyes and gripped the edge of
the desk with her fingertips. There was a chance that Katherine was being
sincere. That she simply liked Billie’s suit.

When 7-Eleven closes on Christmas Day.

She opened her eyes and shot red ink poison darts through Katherine’s
open office door.

A calendar reminder popped up on Billie’s screen. Fifteen
minutes until the interview. She gathered her editing samples and tucked them
in her briefcase alongside references from authors and the editor of Dreckula’s
business card.

She clicked the case shut, tossed a piece of gum in her
mouth, and chewed it one hundred times before spitting it into the garbage. She
stood, smoothed the front of her suit jacket, and shook her leg. The rayon of
her pants dislodged from the sheath. She knew there was a reason she didn’t
wear pants.

“You’ll be great.” Jeffrey came out from behind his cubicle
wall and looked her up and down. “Twirl.”

Billie giggled and did as he asked.

“Whew, honey, your ass looks hot in those slacks. You ought
to ditch the librarian garb and update your closet.”

“Well, if I get this job, that’ll be first order of
business.” She’d wanted to expand her choices, add some figure-flattering
tight-fitting clothes. Bruce seemed to think she had the body for it.

“It’s a date!” Jeffrey clapped his hands.

“A date?”

“You don’t think you’re going shopping without me, do you?
Girl, I can hook you up.”

Billie nodded. “All right. A date. I’m ready to be hooked.”

“I didn’t stumble once, didn’t say um or er or any of the
obvious nervous tells, and she kept zinging questions my way and I fielded them
all, deflected the onslaught with my gold bands of justice,
ptiu, ptiu, ptiu
.”
Billie held her arms up and mimed Wonder Woman’s patented wrist action.

Bruce laughed. “I’m not surprised. I knew you’d kick ass.
When do you hear back?” He shoved a big bite of rare steak, dripping blood and
juices, into his mouth. He gestured to the waiter, tapped his empty beer bottle
and Billie’s mostly empty glass of Petit Verdot with his fork.

“They interview through Tuesday, thin the herd, and bring
the shining stars back for one more interview. With the editor-in-chief.”

“Right to the top dog. This must be quite the position.”

“Well, if I do get it, I’ll be catapulted about three rungs
ahead of where I am. A few years later, who knows? Maybe I’m the
editor-in-chief.” She wiggled her eyebrows.

The waiter set a full bottle of beer in front of Bruce and
another half-carafe of wine next to Billie’s glass.

“Jeffrey is so sure I’ll get it, he’s already planning a
shopping trip so I’ll have the right wardrobe for the position.”

Bruce screwed up his face. “Jeffrey? Isn’t that the weasel?”

Billie nodded and swallowed a mouthful of prawn risotto.
“He’s not so bad. Ever since I stopped him from getting beat up, he’s kind of
become my best friend.”

“I thought I was your best friend.”

“Okay, he’s my gay best friend.”

Bruce raised his bottle. “To Billie. Future editor-in-chief.
Superhero to Grantham’s victims of crime.” He reached across the table with his
other hand and brushed a thumb across her cheek. “Woman of my dreams.”

Her face flushed with warmth and she averted her eyes. “Aw,
gee. Thanks.” She clinked her wine glass to his bottle. “Cheers.” She downed
the remaining wine and filled her glass. “Can we have pie?”

BILLIE STARED AT
the police
artist’s rendering on the front page. A sketch of two suspects in a string of
robberies and assaults on women, including one rape.

She scanned the article, her finger traversing the
newsprint. Police were concerned that the dynamic duo would escalate and end up
murdering someone in the commission of one of their crimes. Women were warned
to avoid dark streets or alleys, never walk alone, keep their purses close to
their bodies.

It’s always up to the women to change their habits. To avoid
becoming a victim. How about the cops catch the perpetrators and the courts
actually prosecute them for their crimes and keep the streets safe for
law-abiding citizens? That would be a nice change.

She eyeballed the familiar tribal neck tattoo and the
bandana. That was new. She opened the page to find grainy screen grabs from a
shitty security camera. No matter the quality of the pictures, they were easily
recognizable. Bat Head and his disciple. What was his name? Tom or Tim or …
Todd. That was it. But Todd had walked away from Bat Head the day he’d
assaulted Billie on the subway. Maybe bullying a woman with one leg wasn’t
enough for Todd to risk arrest, but clearly Bat Head was in charge and Todd had
fallen right back into step.

She read the article three times. They had no fingerprints,
only eyewitness testimony and a few security videos. Anyone who knew Bat Head’s
swagger and his habit of yanking his pants up every other step might recognize
him. Or might write it off as just another anonymous teenager, like so many
others roaming the streets after dark without proper parental supervision.

But Billie knew. It was him.

She dialled Bruce’s number. “You aren’t going to believe who
made the morning paper.”

“So, what’s his fate?” Bruce sat at her breakfast counter
hunched over the newspaper. “The little bastard has really taken a bad turn.
Rape?” He shook his head. “Shit.” He reached across the counter and snatched a
red pen from her pencil cup.

Billie put her hand over the pen and pushed it away from the
paper. “No editing, remember? If I do, and something happens, it might prove
it’s me.”

“And if we don’t, and something happens, what does that
prove?”

Billie shrugged. “That I’m not a murderer?”

Bruce put the end of the pen between his lips and sucked on
it. “Vigilante superhero, remember?” He touched the red tip to the page. “Come
on. You know you want to.”

Oh, yes, she did. “He needs real jail time. He’s a
good-looking kid. He’d find out soon enough what rape is.”

Bruce nodded. “I like it. An eye for an eye. Theoretically
speaking.” He winked, and began to edit.

“Or maybe he should meet the same fate as those clowns.
Except for the dying thing.” Though that wouldn’t be so bad either.

BILLIE VIEWED THE
sidewalk as
if through a glass tunnel. The periphery blurred, shadows jumped, and light
refracted, her focus laser sharp on her target. Gold Tooth sat hunched in the
same spot he’d occupied for more than a week. Perhaps longer, but had he been
there before, she’d never noticed. His presence only became clear when she was
overwhelmed by her own guilt, by the possibility she was no different, no
better than him.

If she had murdered, it hadn’t been with intent. And if Gold
Tooth really had saved her life, if he hadn’t pulled the trigger that killed
her parents and took her leg — how could she judge him? The courts had already
done that. And he still had to answer to God.

She stopped two steps beyond his rumpled form, took a deep
breath, turned back, and plopped down on the pavement beside him, her eyes
firmly on his face.

He smiled at her and shook his cup. He cocked his head and
squinted. “Saw you the other day.” His voice was old and gravelly. “You never
help a poor man out.” He shimmied the cup again.

“Help you?” Her voice spat from her mouth. She took a
breath. “Why should I help you?” She couldn’t hold his gaze. She looked away
and stared at an ad on a bus stop bench across the street. She focussed on the
hefty bosom of a scrawny model selling vodka and struggled to keep her breath
steady, to keep her butt planted on the cement. To not jump up and flee.

She could feel his googly eyes boring into her.

“I know you?”

She cut her eyes his way then refocused on the boobs across
the street. “I think you do.”

“You work in a shelter?”

“No.”

He shifted his weight and extended his legs. One real leg.
One peg leg. He tapped her prosthesis with his. “Me too.”

Her heart sank. Did he have that back in 1993? She scoured
her memory and tried to focus her eleven-year-old’s eyes away from the blade,
away from the bandana and the tooth, away from the barrel of the gun. But she
just couldn’t see anything else.

She swallowed. Sympathy would be the last thing this monster
posing as a regular man deserved. He must remain a monster. If he wasn’t, her
whole life was a lie.

“How’d it happen?” She mustered a hoarse whisper. Her red
pen drew a pig’s nose over his, though his wasn’t much better. He had the
bulbous, open-pored, glowing proboscis of a lifetime drunk. She added ink fangs
protruding from his mouth. Gold ones.

“Lower extremity arterial calcification.”

She gawked at him. “Excuse me?”

“Don’t make me say it twice, lady.”

“No, of course not.” She tugged at the hem of her jacket.
“When?”

“Five years back. Doc hacked it off in prison. Can’t afford
no fancy foot like you got.”

She nodded, returned her eyeballs to tits and vodka. “Why
prison?”

“I done something real bad.” His voice cracked.

Billie gave him a sideways glance. “What was that?”

“I was messin’ where I shouldn’ta been messin.’ Cop and his
lady died. Little girl got sho-.” His body went rigid. He inched his head
around until his eyes met hers. “Oh, no. No way.”

She raised one hand and gave him a tiny wave.

Tears sprung from his eyes and left clean tracks on his
dusty cheeks. “Is it you? Is it really you?” He rested the back of his head on
the brick wall behind him and squeezed his eyes shut. “Wilma? Willie?”

“It’s Wilhelmina. I go by Billie.”

He nodded, his eyes still shut, a crooked grin on his face.
“Billie. I remember now.” He opened his eyes and turned to her. “He was gonna
kill you.” He looked away and wiped his face with one hand.

A man in a suit that probably cost a month of Billie’s
salary dropped a toonie in Gold Tooth’s cup. He smiled and nodded at the man
who didn’t even slow down. “Fuck you. Fuck you very much.”

Billie snorted. “You are saying that. I couldn’t tell before
if it was thank or, well, that other word.”

“Fuck. Go ahead, little girl, say it. It don’t bite.”

She rubbed her palms together. “The Crown Prosecutor, Mr.
Robbins, said you’d found God. Had you lost him before?”

“Oh, yeah. Lost him big. I’d been doing everything wrong.
Thinking that God was watching all that? Well, I couldn’t deal with it. So I
just let him go.”

“You found him in prison?”

He chuckled. “Nah. I found him in my heart. I was just lying
on the exercise yard floor with a shiv in my gut when it happened.”

“But you say that word out loud. He doesn’t like that.”

“Well, my God likes it. Out loud is honest. And I like it
too. Says everything all in four little letters. Now don’t get me wrong. I
appreciate the cash. But most folks ignore me or dig a quarter out of their
pocket. Five buck coffee in the other hand. So that’s my sanity keeper. Mumbled
thanks that flips ‘em off at the same time.” He grinned wide. Next to his gold
tooth, the rest were rotted, some down to stumps.

“How long have you been out of prison?”

“Ah, they didn’t tell you, did they?”

She shook her head.

“Paroled a while back. Been three winters.” He swallowed and
wiped fresh tears from his face. “I always wanted to tell you how sorry I was.
But you never came to any of the hearings.”

“I wasn’t invited.”

“Well, I still am. Sorry, I mean. More than ever. If I
hadn’t been doing that deal in that alley, you’d have parents. And a leg.”

She wiped her own cheeks dry. “Too late for that.” She dug a
five-dollar bill from her purse and tucked it into the cup. “Well, Mr.
Dickinson. I’ve got to get to work.” She stood.

He fished the bill out and handed it back to her. “Call me
Tony. And I don’t need your money. Don’t deserve your kindness. I’ve taken
enough from you.”

She took the money and tucked it in her pocket. “Most
everyone deserves kindness.” She turned and walked away.