“I’m done.”
“I’m not,” Happy said. “Sit down.”
She was at her desk, bent over her legal pad, where she had written a list, for Sheila and Silas Klam, of things she wanted incorporated into the new Inn. Buying it had been easy—the owners, plump New Jerseyans, didn’t like the people here, or the public schools, or the profit margin, and had been waiting for her to come and rescue them. It didn’t hurt, either, that she had given their daughter—the church-bound child who danced on the grassy embankment that summer day when Happy thought all this up—a limited-edition Happy Girl and accompanying book: Pioneer Kate, who knew how to shoot arrows and could catch fish with her bare hands. So delighted were the former owners of the Inn that they agreed to be out by the end of the week, and Happy didn’t even have to overpay.
The list, so far, read:
multiple staircases
two restaurants
Edwardian carriage house
Second Empire carriage house
four turrets (charge extra)
50 units min.?
elevator operators (footmen costumes?)
hot tubs (ball & claw?)
period décor accdg. to room theme
knot garden
row of lake cottages—various
“Hey, man, I haven’t got all day. Your boat’s done. I’m leaving.”
She looked up. Kevin Russell had not sat down—indeed, he wasn’t even in the room. He lingered in the hall, poised to go.
“Sit down, I said.”
“I’m finished, lady.”
“I didn’t pay you yet.”
He shook his head. “Paid me yesterday.”
“That was to get you here.” She opened the middle drawer of her desk and took out the hundred-dollar bill she’d secreted there this morning, for this very purpose. She held it up and set it on the desk, then returned to her pad. “Sit down.”
This time he sat down. He waited at least thirty seconds before he reached out and took the bill, but he didn’t dare get up again. Good boy.
When she felt she’d tortured him enough, she pushed the pad aside and met his gaze. It was trained directly on her, and she was surprised to find flashes of intelligence in those dark eyes. He sat straight and alert in the chair, in contrast to the slouch you’d think his body would naturally assume. She had high hopes for Kevin Russell. He said, “You gonna come look at it?”
“The boat,” Happy said.
“Yeah, the boat.”
“Fine.”
They walked down the stairs and out around the house to the lake’s edge. The beach had been muddy and littered with dead fish and rotting branches; she’d had it cleared and covered with sand and stones, and a small dock built. Much better. The boathouse stood a few yards north, underneath a copse of cottonwoods, and beside it the rowboat was propped up on a quartet of cinderblocks covered with towels. He’d painted it sky blue, with a stripe of green along the bow, and the oars were white and gleaming.
“Is it dry?”
“Oh, yeah. I was just replacing the oarlocks. She’s ready to float.”
“Give me a hand,” she said.
They hauled the boat to the beach and towed it alongside the dock. Kevin Russell got in first and Happy hopped in neatly, maintaining her balance with ease.
“You row,” she said, and his “Yes, ma’am” was not without irony.
Kevin rowed them out about fifty yards before he ran out of breath. He sat, panting, leaning against the crossed snub ends of the oars. Happy said, “You should quit smoking.”
“You should quit caring.”
Neither spoke for a few minutes. Eventually Kevin’s breathing grew regular and Happy said, “I have plans for this town, Kevin, I guess you know that.”
His only response was a glare.
“You can glare all you like, because I don’t care what you think of those plans. I don’t care what you think of dolls, girls, books, or this town in general. Your opinion is of no importance to me whatsoever. I’m going to do what I’m going to do regardless of whether or not people like it.” So disgusting, that word, just now, like a hardened cat turd on her tongue. She spat, almost involuntarily, into the water. “I have a feeling that if you were in my position, you’d do the same. That’s why I asked you to come to my house and fix my rowboat. I want you to do things for me, and I don’t want you to think about whether or not you like them. I just want you to do them.”
“What things.”
“Dirty things. Sins. Things you have to sneak around after dark doing. Things I’ll pay you for.”
“You’ll pay me a lot for,” he drawled.
Ahh—now this made Happy smile. “Very nice. I will pay you a hundred dollars for every task you perform. If the task takes more than a day, I’ll pay you at a rate of fifty dollars a day for every extra day. Not many of the tasks will take longer than a few hours. Do you understand?”
“Sure. I bet I can satisfy you faster than that.”
Christ, one of those. “I doubt it,” she said—but what was that in her voice—a lilt? a tease? She had to watch herself. “A hundred, plus fifty a day, got it?”
“In advance, right?” He unrolled a package of cigarettes from his shirtsleeve and lit one. The motion rocked the boat, gently, and smoke rose up over the water.
“Only the hundred,” she said.
He nodded. But it wasn’t enough. There was something else he wanted. She waited for him to demand it, but instead he sucked on the cigarette and looked out at the shoreline. The Crim Hall Tower bell issued a disconsolate bong.
“What,” she said.
“What what?”
“You want something else.” She folded her arms.
He smoked for another moment and then flicked ash into the water. He grinned, leaned close. “I gotta ask. Did you do it?”
She waited, then sighed. “Do what, Kevin.”
He grinned, his eyes narrowing. “Off that old bitch.”
It wasn’t what he said that got to her—it was the conspiratorial glee, the suggestion that, if she had offed the old bitch, he was very impressed. A chill cascaded down her back and lodged in her groin. She coughed.
“Who told you that?”
He shrugged. “People.”
“No,” Happy said. “I did not kill anybody.”
He stuck his chin out, nodded in acceptance. “Welp. Okay, then. So what d’you want me to do first?”
“Do?”
“Like, as your hit man?”
“Row us back to shore,” she said.
A crooked grin unscrolled underneath the drooping mustache. “Tell you what,” he said. “Just to seal the deal, I’ll do that one for free.”
* * *
Happy’s third letter to Jennifer and Bud lay open on the kitchen table for three days before, at breakfast one morning, Jennifer picked it up and threw it in the trash. It was an impulsive move; she had been in the middle of a forkful of eggs, but she could not bear to look at it for another second. It had been opened, by Bud, the day it arrived, and as with the first two he had spent an entire day trying to get her to talk about it, and then a second day sort of giving her beseeching looks about it, and then another day or two avoiding looking at her at all, for fear that he would betray some emotion that would cause her to explode with rage. Buddy and Vince had pretty much given up talking to her at all. They stayed outdoors or, if it was raining, in the den, playing with the GameCube. Fall was always sort of like this in the Treisman house; the first weeks of autumn were generally overcast and wet, and everybody dreaded the impending months shut inside. She sometimes felt like she was living in a family of wolves, or bears: cooped up together in the cave, claws and teeth at the ready.
So she threw out the letter. Before she even sat down again, she realized the futility of the move; it wasn’t like Bud couldn’t pick it out of the trash when she was out of the room. She should have burned it—though another would be coming, soon enough.
The woman actually thought she was going to win—that was the thing that really got her. The bitch was so fucking confident. Where did she get it? Prep school? Boot camp? Or in the belly of the demon that spawned her? And the worst part is that these idiots—Bud and the kids—were taking the bait. They were falling for it, letting Happy Masters get between them and her.
Well, fuck ‘em. She told the kids to get dressed, threw the breakfast dishes in the sink, and put on her coat.
“Where ya goin’, hon?”
“Out, Bud,” she said, grabbing her lighter from the basket by the door.
“Oh, okay, well, I’ll get the kids off to—”
“Great. See ya.”
She paused in the yard to light up, then stalked past the garage and kiosk and out to the road. She looked north, and then south. Nowhere else to walk in this fucking town except the lake, and look what that got her last time. Shit. She trudged south along the sidewalk, sucking the smoke out of the cigarette, occasionally feinting toward a squirrel, to keep them on their toes. Kids passed her, going to school. Her kids’ goddam friends. Some of them said hi, and she forced herself to nod. She’d just passed the Inn—roped off, boarded up, it looked less in the process of renovation than abandoned, another toy left out in the rain—when she heard voices up on the hill. There were some students up there, under the tower, holding signs and yelling. Bored enough to be curious, she scaled the muddy hill, emitting quiet curses.
“What’s all this?” she asked one of them, a squat blond thing who looked like a little man. Her placard read DON’T DALLY, BRING SALLY!
“The stuck-up pervert who works here won’t let this lesbian sex lady come to campus, and we think it’s bullshit.”
“Huh,” Jennifer said. “Well, no shortage of bullshit, is there?”
“Hey—got another of those?” the girl asked. Jennifer fished out the pack and gave her a cig. The others quit chanting and gathered around.
“Jesus Christ, can’t you buy your own? You’re in fucking college.”
“We’re boycotting the market,” another girl sneered. She wore torn clothes and thick white makeup.
“On account of whatshername killing that lady,” said a third.
Jennifer nodded. “Oh, I’m right there with you. No way she could’ve picked up that rock on her own. She was what, ninety?”
“Yeah!” another voice piped up. “This town is full of killers and bigots.”
“You’re the ice cream chick,” the butch girl said. “Jennifer.”
“The one and only,” she replied, and extended her hand.
“April Cort.”
“You know what you ought to do,” Jennifer offered. “You all ought to protest Happy Fucking Masters, that’s what. Once you’re done getting your lesbian, I mean. I’d do it with you.”
“Right on, sista,” came a voice from the back of the crowd.
“You bet,” Jennifer said, actually smiling now, “your ass I’m right on.”