Heart-Shaped Box (Claire Montrose Series) (26 page)

“
Thanks,” he said, stuffing them into the front pocket of his jeans. “Oh, and I forgot to warn you not to let anyone take off your head. For some reason, guys like to try it. Once I almost got de-headed by two drunk guys at a football game, but I managed to get away.”

Thinking that she had more motivation not to be revealed than he would ever guess, Claire agreed not to let anyone take off her head.

“
And high-five people, because if you shake their hands, they try to take off your fingers. Oh - and watch out if there are any kids around. You can’t really see anything below about waist level, so the first thing you know about there being any kids is when one of them runs into you full speed.”

“
Okay, okay. I don’t have to worry about that tonight. The event is adults only.” Claire was impatient to go back to the party and see if her ruse would work. When he started it launch into a recital of the finer points of belly bumping, she opened the door and shooed him out.

Dante helped Claire out of her dress. She let him sneak a few kisses, but she was too eager to get back to the dance to let him do more. First she slipped on the dark blue Lycra pants. They were thick with padding, the outside slick as satin, except where it had been snagged by the various Velcro fasteners that held the costume together. Then came the heavily padded shirt, again dark blue, which zipped up the front. These two pieces formed the backdrop for the miner’s costume. Next came a huge flannel shirt and then oversize denim overalls sized to fit about a four hundred pound man. She was finding it harder and harder to move, so Dante snugged the straps so they wouldn’t fall down.

The Miner’s big black boots had been fashioned over men’s high top tennis shoes. Claire slipped her feet in them, for once grateful that she wore a woman’s size ten. She waddled into the bathroom to look into the mirror. A laugh spurted out of her. Her head looked puny, perched on top of her now outsize body.

She maneuvered her way back to the bedroom (remembering to lift her feet high off the ground so she wouldn’t catch the big boots on the carpet). The dark blue hood came next. It reminded her of a medieval knight’s garb, a single piece that flowed over her head and shoulders, with an oval opening cut out for her face. Finally she lifted the miner’s head and looked inside it. It had been built around a bike helmet. She lowered it in place and fastened the strap under chin. Inside the head, it wasn’t as stuffy as she had thought - the huge eyes were made of some kind of black mesh, with glued on felt dots for the irises. Dante helped her pull on the two four-fingered hands, much larger than her own, handed her the foam-rubber pick, and then they were ready to go.

Claire quickly discovered that she could only see by looking at something at a slight angle, so the pupils of the fake eyes didn’t get in the way. She had no peripheral vision to speak of, and what vision she had was dimmed about thirty percent by the mesh of the eyeholes. The costume probably weighed thirty pounds, and she was beginning to baste in sweat. And as the costume heated up, it began to release the faint but lingering smell of vomit.

When they reached the door of the Westward Ho! banquet room, Dante went on ahead of her, to deflect suspicion. Claire tried to open the door herself and found that first, she couldn’t see the knob, and second, that after she finally found it that she couldn’t open it with her outsize hand.

“
Let me help you with that, good buddy,” a voice said. She turned. Wade. He opened the door, then propelled her forward by slapping her on the back.

At first, Claire found herself smiling at people whose gaze met hers. A social smile, lips pressed together, accompanied by a little nod. All of it invisible under the costume. The costume required broad gestures, she began to find. The big wave. Chopping her pick wildly. Arms held out wide for a hug. A certain walk seemed right, too, exaggerated, pumping the arms, raising the knees a little higher than necessary. The head was already growing unbearably heavy. The weight certainly encouraged her to stand up straight - her back hurt too much if she did otherwise. You could break hardened criminals down by simply making them wear the costume for a few hours, she thought as yet another man punched her playfully on the shoulder, almost knocking her over. Didn’t people realize that there was someone underneath the foam rubber?

Claire remember seeing rainbow-haired clowns forced to wave at intersections to draw attention to store openings, or avoiding the Fred Bear who occasionally roamed the Fred Meyer store, dressed in an oversized blue shirt. Next time the Fred Bear guy wanted a hug, she would give it to him. It was too embarrassing to find yourself acting for someone you thought was standing right next to you, only to turn your head and figure out they had left.

But all the downsides of the costume were balanced by one giant upside. While she walked around the perimeter of the room, occasionally accidentally running the edge of her miner helmet into the wall, her fellow graduates treated her - or her alter ego, the Minor Miner - as if she were invisible.

Claire saw Alex Fogel lay down a twenty-dollar tip for one of the barmaids, as a woman looked on admiringly, and five minutes later she saw him come back and pocket the tip before the barmaid got to it.

She overheard Cherie and Todd Walter, the pet psychics, arguing about whether Cherie had had too much to drink. Todd left the room, and a few minutes later Claire saw Cherie sweet-talking another man who didn’t seem to mind her half-mast eyes and the way she slurred her words.

From the other side of the room, Claire saw Tyler answer his cell phone. He didn’t say more than a few words, but his expression froze and his face turned purple. Before she could make her clumsy way in his direction, he hurried out of the room.

Hidden inside her costume, Claire was free to wince as Tomisue tried her hand at karaoke, warbling off-key through
Stand By Your Man
.

Claire watched Maria and Sunny, who sat in one corner of the room, turn down every request for a dance, preferring to reminisce with each other. She saw Wade leaning in close to whisper to Rebecca. And Claire witnessed Jessica flirting with Richard, laughing up at him, touching his shoulder and then the nape of his neck, leaving him with a slightly stunned look that mingled dizziness and delight. Layers within layers, Claire thought, as she caught sight of Martha watching Richard fawn over Jessica. Martha’s open face was unable to hide a faint frown of envy. And all the while, she saw Dante circling from group to group, person to person, trying to get someone to confide secrets in a stranger.

People treated Claire as if her costume was reality, as if there was nothing inside the foam, no human being with ears. Now as the evening wore on and the drinks flowed, they wanted to include the Minor Miner in their festivities. They made chopping motions with imaginary picks whenever they saw her. One guy she didn’t recognize pulled her on to the dance floor, and she danced for a few minutes while Jim growled out “Satisfaction” in a passable imitation of Mick Jaggar. Some of the men, the drunker ones, began to shout and grab at her and bang on her head. Claire realized she had no way to indicate distress, that her mascot face would keep right on smiling happily no matter what they were doing to her.

When it got particularly bad and she began to worry about losing her head, Dante rescued her by inviting the ring of men around her to accompany him back to the bar for a free drink. Afterward, her bladder sent up a distress signal, the same one it had been making for at least an hour, increasingly urgently. She would have to take a break and go to the restroom. With luck, she could manage to pee without taking off too much of her costume.

Out in the hall, she headed for the women’s room.

“
Hey, where you going, big guy?” Someone grabbed her arm. Brian Jones, another of Minor’s old football heroes, was grinning at her, his face relaxed as she had ever seen it.

Wade stood next to him, weaving slightly. “Don’t want to give the ladies a scare!” Together, they took her by the arms and walked her toward the men’s restroom. At first, Claire wanted to resist, but then she realized she wasn’t a person anymore, she was something more, something which didn’t automatically fit into a category. She just hoped that the men’s restroom had stalls like the women’s.

Trying to fit it into the stall, she banged her head a few times, but finally managed by inching in sideways. Behind her the two men were laughing and joking. Leaving her head on, Claire took off only the costume’s hands and carefully laid them over the toilet paper dispenser.

“
Where’d get you get this, anyway?” Brian’s voice. Claire narrowly missed dropping one of the overall straps in the toilet.

“
Same guy we went to twenty years ago. Only now he’s got three kids to support.”

Claire managed to tug the pants down to her knees. The costume was so bulky she couldn’t really sit, but even squatting, the relief was worth it.

Afraid that one of the two men might decide to pop their head over the stall, Claire finished peeing and tried to get herself back in working order as fast as possible.

“
So where were you last night, man?” Brian’s voice again. “I looked all over for you and I couldn’t find you for at least twenty minutes.”

Wade snorted. “You’re not going to believe it, man!”

Brian was already laughing. “What?”
“That little minx Jessica was giving me a blowjob in the bathroom!”

“
No way!” Brian’s voice mixed incredulity with admiration. “Someone would have seen you!”

“
Nah - we went in the handicapped stall and Jessica sat on the edge of the seat. But get this - she insisted on putting one of those paper covers on it first!”

While both men exploded into laughter, Claire realized that this explained so much - Wade’s absence the night before, and even the sounds Alex Fogle had heard coming from the bathroom stall.

When she came out, Wade and Brian were still laughing, heads close together over a small silver hand mirror that lay on the counter. Three lines of white powder remained.

“
Hey, not in front of the mascot,” Brian said, elbowing Wade in the ribs.

“
Maybe he’d like a little taste.” Wade knocked on her head. “How about coming out of there and joining us? On the house.”

Claire shook her mascot head and waved her four-fingered hands to show she wasn’t interested. To her horror, she noticed that she hadn’t quite managed to pull the right one down in place (it was hard to do the second, once the first was on) and that a strip of pale, nearly hairless - and definitely not masculine - skin was showing.

PB4UGO

Chapter Thirty

Before she slipped the card key into the slit, Vanessa fingered the side of her throat with a private smile. It felt tender, and even a little raised. She’d bet there was a suck mark there. Wait until all the girls at school saw that - and heard that she now not only had a boyfriend, but that he was two whole years older! The one thing she wouldn’t tell them was that they hadn’t really gone all the way. She would just smile and look mysterious.

Junior had wanted too, of course. They had rolled around on one of the two wide beds. Vanessa had even let him pull up her top and touch her breasts - but nothing more. He had thought she was afraid, but it wasn’t fear of getting AIDS or a reputation that stopped her. What if she didn’t do it right? What if not only didn’t do it right but did it all embarrassingly wrong? So in the end, they hadn’t done it, although low in her belly it felt full and hot and achy.

When they had heard Junior’s father laugh right outside the door, Vanessa had had about a second to scramble into the bathroom, clutching her bra and top. Hurriedly, she had pulled her clothes on and then looked in the mirror. Her face was scarlet, her eyes small and guilty. It took all her courage to turn the handle and walk out of the bathroom.

But the adults hadn’t seemed to mind. Not only was Junior’s father there (some old guy with a paunch) but there was a woman with Wade, a woman named Rebecca who smiled up at him from the shelter of his arm. Vanessa was shaking by this point, but they never asked what the two of them had been up to, and they didn’t lift an eyebrow when Junior said he would escort Vanessa back to her room.

He had kissed her in every alcove and deserted hallway on the way back, but when they got to her hallway, she told him he had to go. It was two in the morning, and her mother was going to be furious. It wasn’t exactly the right time to make introductions. They would see each other in the morning, she said, and between kisses they agreed to meet at seven a.m. at the Feed Trough. All the hung-over adults wouldn’t be up yet, and they would have the place to themselves in peace. And maybe, she had finally agreed, just maybe, if Wade came down for breakfast, then the two of them could sneak back up to his room. Actually, she thought she might be even more frightened of things in the daytime (what if he took that hard lump out of his pants?) but when she had said it Junior had grinned ear to ear and called her beautiful. For that moment, she had decided it was worth it.

The light above the handle glowed a steady green. Vanessa pushed open the door to the room she shared with her mother.

At first, she thought Belinda was sleeping. But as Vanessa’s eyes adjusted to the dark, she could see that while her mother was lying down, she wasn’t under the bedcovers. In fact, her bathrobe was open.

“
Mom,” Vanessa whispered, but it came out so soft even she didn’t hear it. “Mom?” she tried again, a little louder. Her mother didn’t move, and there was something about her stillness, the chest and the belly not rising and falling, that Vanessa could not deny, no matter how much she wanted to.