Goody One Shoe (7 page)

BILLIE SLAPPED THE SNOOZE
button
for the fifth time. She opened one eye and glared at the red digits. Almost six
o’clock. Time to get out of bed already.

She sat up and stretched. An ache shot through her shoulder
and down her back. She arched her spine and turned side to side. A lovely crack
eased some tension. She rubbed at her eyes. They just didn’t want to open
fully. It was as if she hadn’t slept at all.

She reached for Peg Leg but he wasn’t in his usual place.
She swung her legs over the side of the bed, grabbed the horse-head cane that
rested against the wall next to her headboard, and stood. She yawned, her mouth
so wide open that her jaw cracked too.

Coffee. That would fix her.

Her foot caught on something and she pitched forward,
flailed the cane in front of her and grasped the edge of the dresser. She
righted herself and inspected the floor, which should be spotless. She never
left anything out that she could trip on.

The carpet was littered with clothes. She prodded a mound of
black material speckled with cat hair with the brass tip of the cane. She
snagged one of the garments and lifted it in the air.

It was her father’s hoodie. She gasped, dropped the cane and
sat on the carpet. She gathered his favourite hoodie, the one with his alma
mater emblazoned on the back, into her arms and cradled it next to her cheek.
She inhaled and squeezed her eyes shut. That hoodie used to keep her warm at
night, but the remnants of his scent, British Sterling cologne and Irish Spring
soap, had been overtaken by her own cocoa butter body lotion and vanilla bean
deodorant. She’d tucked his things safely in the bottom of her closet hoping to
make the smell last forever. Even after it had disappeared, she couldn’t bring
herself to throw them away. It would be like burying him all over again.

She turned to the cat. “Peg Leg, you naughty boy. Spent the
night digging in the closet, eh?” Maybe she should have put them up high and
out of reach of three-legged cats that can’t do vertical jumps. “His clothes
smell like cat litter. And something else.” She sniffed again, scratched at a
dried stain on the sleeve. Probably cat spit or snot. “Maybe I should wash
them.” She bit her lip and stroked the hoodie. If she did that, would every bit
of him be gone? Eliminated? He’d been eliminated once too often.

She wagged a finger at Peg Leg. “You stay out of my closet,
young man.” He purred and ran his body against her stump. She sighed and rubbed
between his ears. It was impossible to be mad at him. He was the only one who
stayed with her, alive and in the flesh. He hadn’t meant any harm. And she and
the Lord knew the cat had no boundaries.

She ran a lint roller over the clothes and folded them into
a neat pile. She tucked them on the top shelf of the closet and went to find
caffeine.

New members at the gym always stopped and stared. Billie was
so over it. She used to look away, blush, explain her circumstance so they’d
stop looking at her. Now they could just flap in the confused wind. Maybe they
weren’t confused. Perhaps they were totally freaked out. Whatever. They weren’t
the first. And they wouldn’t be the last.

She wiped sweat from her brow before it dripped into her
eyes. Her reward for marathon gym sessions was the saline trail of her own
exertion that dangled from her chin before dropping into her cleavage to tickle
her breasts. The puddles of perspiration that soaked her underarms and dampened
her crotch. Sweat was her gold medal in long-distance running. Proof that her
heart still beat. But getting that salty liquid in her eyes burned like
hellfire. The one time she wore a headband to prevent it, the regulars teased
her about listening to Olivia Newton John and doing the Jane Fonda workout. The
vague eighties references barely registered. She knew what they were talking
about, but she was only a baby in that decade. Far more involved with Rainbow
Brite and Teddy Ruxpin than leotards and aerobics.

It was oddly comforting to be chided, as if she were one of
the gang. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt part of a group. She
secreted her pleasure at being teased for something other than missing a foot,
for being stared at for wearing a headband instead of a running blade. At least
she had control over her wardrobe. Though she never wore the headband again.
Even gentle teasing from people that had grown accustomed to her presence shone
too bright a spotlight on her. She’d rather be as invisible as possible in
baggy, grey athletic gear, her hair in a ponytail high and wrapped into a bun
so it didn’t bounce between her shoulder blades. Sweat-soaked hair became as
sharp as a leather whip at seven miles per hour.

Her shoulders ached through the run, her back tight. She
almost didn’t bother. But it was Tuesday, and that meant she went to the gym
before facing the subway, the office, the weasel, and the witch. That damn
six-hundred-page behemoth of shit had already screwed with her schedule. Cost
her four workouts and ruined the first Sunday sermon she’d attended in months.
She had to get back on track. Back to ordinary. For Billie, ordinary meant
strict adherence to the plan. To her daily outline. Her story and plot. She
knew the narrative of her life. She knew the outcome. And vampire dreck and
distractions like Bruce What’s-his-name didn’t fit. Freelancing. That was the
new plot. Freedom from the manacles of Katherine’s employ and undesirables on
the subway. That was her happily ever after.

Her earbuds slid against the sweat that pooled at the entrance
to her ear canals. She wiped the sweat, poked the buds back in, and flipped
through the early morning gym-TV choices. She’d loved the day the gym popped
for new machines with personal screens. No more satellite soaps or being forced
to watch Dr. Phil. She scanned through national news, music channels, and old
sitcoms — too old — before finding a local news broadcast. She didn’t need the
big, wide world. She wanted to know what was going on right here. Right now.

A picture of two clowns popped up behind the newscaster. The
two who had raped that little boy. The ones from the newspaper article. The
same guys she saw outside Doc Kroft’s office.

Billie turned up the volume and slowed her pace.

“Colin Jenkins was murdered. Roger Graves, with the rainbow
wig, was castrated.” The news anchor cleared his throat.

Billie turned the treadmill off and stared at the tiny
screen.

“Police are looking for a man wearing a dark hoodie and
dark, oversized pants.” The man seemed to be struggling to keep his serious newsman
face on. “If you have any information, please call the tip line at the bottom
of your screen.”

A lump in Billie’s throat refused to go down no matter how
many times she swallowed. She ran to the locker room, raced to remove her
running blade, and hastily returned her flat-shoe prosthesis to her stump. She
tossed her gym gear into her locker, snapped the lock over it, and ran out,
hurrying up the block to her apartment.

Once inside, she pulled the recycling container from the
pantry. She ripped empty takeout containers, all washed and dried and stacked
neatly, out of the bin and tossed them on the table, followed by a wine bottle
and the flattened and stacked empty boxes her favourite chai tea came in.

Peg Leg mewed at the mess, backed away, and slinked under
the couch.

About halfway down she found the newspapers. She flipped
through them until she came across the one she was looking for. She ran her
fingers over her red-ink edits.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.

The anchor’s story matched her edited version of what
happened. Though not castration. Full on penile excision. But no one was
supposed to die. She fell back onto a kitchen chair and ran her hand over her
damp hair. Nausea rolled up her body. She dashed to the kitchen sink and
vomited, her hands gripping the counter’s edge. She ripped a section of paper
towel free from its roll and wiped her mouth. She rinsed the sink, stared at
the chunks of her breakfast swirling in a vortex of puke-water and disappearing
down the drain.

She wiped the sink dry, gathered the newspaper, ripped it
into tiny bits and tossed it into the stainless-steel tub. Matches. Where were
the matches? With the emergency candles in the cupboard over the microwave. She
found two packs, lit one match after another after another and threw them on
the paper. She watched the evidence of her imagined justice burn. Flames danced
and black smoke curled into the air until each red mark was devoured and turned
to char.

The smoke alarm screeched above her head. She covered her
ears. “Damn it all to hell.” She turned on the cold water, stepped her good leg
on the chair to boost herself up and twisted the smoke alarm off its base. She
ripped the battery from its gut and pitched it onto the counter, raced to the
window and threw it open. She leaned out into the fresh morning air, her heart
hammering and her legs unsteady.

Bruce’s face jumped into her mind, layered overtop the
description the news anchor gave of the castrator. Could he be behind this? Was
he living up to his namesake. Was he … Batman?

Laughter shook Billie’s breasts. She wiped her brow with
trembling fingers and shook her head.

Get a grip. Editing the news for proper justice was one
thing. But maybe she’d better stay in the shallow end of the fantasy pool, not
dive into the deep end and drown.

THE SUBWAY CAR CAME
to a
jerking halt. Billie scanned the platform for high school thugs, but not a one
darkened the station. Perhaps they chose to walk to avoid running into Bruce.
She grinned at the image of him in her head. Her own personal hero. Even if he
did only save her once. And he would have done it for anyone. It wasn’t as if
he liked her or anything. How could he? Plain, boring, dismembered Billie.
She’d probably never even see him again.

She pulled the newspaper into her lap and stared at the
headline, read the article about the fate of those damn clowns for the eighth
time. Her fingers itched to pull out her pen and fix the sloppy writing,
elevate the grade level. But the outcome, the ending, this time, was like Baby
Bear’s bed. It was just right. Those clowns would never harm another child.

The plastic seat jolted and creaked with the weight of
another passenger’s butt. All those empty seats and the idiot has to sit right
beside her?

“Hey, I read that this morning.” A thick finger poked at her
newspaper.

She held her breath at the rumble of bass vocals and did
something she always tried to avoid. Made eye contact.

“Morning, Billie.” Bruce’s wide grin exposed a
mostly-gleaming set of teeth with some evidence of years of smoking — evidence
she could smell in his clothes. The crowded ivories on the bottom of his mouth
were crooked. Perhaps his parents could never afford dental work. She ran a
tongue over her own cramped teeth.

“Good morning.” She looked at her lap, unable to hold his
blatant stare, to return his gregarious smile.

He tapped the paper. “A little crazy, hey?”

She shrugged. “How so?”

He leaned his head next to hers, his wiry curls brushing
against the smooth surface of the hair at her temple, pulled tight into a bun
and sprayed smooth. She sniffed a slow, deep breath. His subtle cologne found
its way past the cigarette smoke and filled her head. Was that … British
Sterling? No, her mind was playing tricks on her. Did they even make that
anymore?

His warm breath kissed her cheek. “Because they were
castrated,” he whispered.

Her knees went cold and her stomach hollowed.

“It’s just like you wrote. Like your edits. Wild, right?” He
sat up straight and extended an arm across the back of her seat. The warm
pocket of air he’d created between them cooled.

“I guess it’s a little wild.” She’d never described anything
she’d done as wild before. “But,” she dropped her chin and twisted her head to
look back at him. “Just coincidence.” She focused on his face, on any cues to
his involvement. Any twitch of his eye or clench of his jaw. “Right? Just
coincidence?”

He let out a guffaw. “Well yeah, unless by night you’re some
editing vigilante, righting wrongs that the justice system couldn’t. Fixing the
cops’ fuck-ups.” He put his other hand over his mouth. “Sorry. That was rude.”

She grinned. Her, a vigilante. That’s a stretch. But at
least he didn’t seem to know about it. Just a coincidence. But a damn freaky
one.

“So, I was wondering.” Bruce leaned forward and put his
forearms on his thighs, rocked on his toes. “Maybe one night, you and me.” He
leaned back and looked at her out of the corner of his eye. “Maybe we could go
to dinner or something. Maybe a movie?”

Billie stared at him. What kind of mean joke was this?
“Why?” She didn’t know what else to say.

He scrunched his brows and snorted. “Well, because I kind of
like you. You’re cute behind those old-lady spectacles, and all that
librarian-chic clothing.”

She squinted. “Was that supposed to be a compliment?”

He put one of his big paws over his face and shook his head.
“Shit. I’m sorry. I’m not very good at this sort of thing.”

“What sort of thing?”

“You know. Dating. Relationships.” He looked around the
subway, his lips pursed. “I get it if you don’t want to. Hell, you hardly know
me.”

“No.”

“Okay. I won’t bother you again. No hard feelings.” He
stood.

“No.” She reached out and touched his hand. She expected his
skin to be rough, dry. As weathered as his face. But it was as soft as Peg
Leg’s fur. “I mean. Yes.” Her face was on fire and she couldn’t meet his eyes.
But the only other place to look was right at the zipper of his pants.

Look at him, Billie. Just damn well look at him.

She raised her chin. “I’d like that. To go out, I mean.” She
looked away, a small giggle escaping her lips. A giggle. Of all things.
“Clearly, I’m not very good at this either.”

He dropped back into the seat beside her. “How about a
movie? Then maybe a coffee or two.” He took a stray strand of her hair that had
sprung free from its incarceration in her bun and tucked it behind her ear.

An inkling of warmth twitched down her spine and her breath
caught in her chest. Her head bounced in a shallow, if not too vigorous nod.
“Yes. That would be lovely.”

“How about Friday? Pick you up at seven?”

She shook her head and tore a strip of newsprint off the
front page, fished her red pen from her purse, and scratched out her name and
phone number. “I can meet you. Just let me know which theatre.” She handed him
the paper.

“You’re a smart one, Billie. And sensible. See, that’s one
of your charms.” He beamed. “Your many, many charms.” He tipped his imaginary
red fedora and skipped out of the subway car.

She stared at the closed door and smiled on the inside. Her
many charms. Just what did he see that she couldn’t?