Lingerie For Felons (3 page)

‘PTSD,' Heidi sniffed. ‘Bastards.' Then she seemed to remember where we were and wrapped me in a hug again. ‘You sure you're okay?'

‘Guys, I'm okay, really. They've been treating me fine.'

I tried to extricate myself from the hug but Heidi clung on. When I finally pulled away, I saw a tear run down one of her cheeks.

‘Heidi,' I said, shaking her. ‘What's all this about?'

‘Well,' Heidi said, with a pretty sniff. ‘It's just, we wondered how you were really doing. I mean, you keep saying you're okay, you've been saying that for two weeks, but…'

Oh great. Now I knew what this was about. ‘Well, I'm fine, thank you,' I bit out.

But Heidi was on a roll. ‘Because, you know, it was only a year and stuff, but you guys seemed so happy. Well, okay, maybe happy's not exactly the right word. You screamed at each other half the time. But so crazy about each other. And he was your first —'

‘Aha,' I said, cutting her off. I didn't need to think about firsts. ‘See? Screaming. People who scream at each other are not happy. Not meant to be together'.

‘Oh, Loll.' It was Steve's turn. ‘It wasn't real screaming. Not I-hate-your-guts screaming. Or, worse, I-don't-give-a-shit-about-you screaming. Or that other awful one. The you're-such-a-loser-why-can't-you-organize-your-life-better screaming.'

He stopped suddenly, realising Heidi and I were looking at him.

‘Wow,' Heidi said. ‘Women really hate you, don't they?'

‘Yep,' he sighed. ‘But anyway, that's beside the point. Point is, you guys screamed at each other in that getting-to-know-each-other kind of way. Passionate. Like...foreplay. Anyway,' he sniffed. ‘You did most of the screaming. He only screamed back when you said something really mean. Or when you took a breath.'

I couldn't deny it. Wayne and I had spent a large proportion of the previous year arguing. Usually when I was trying to explain something to him, and he didn't get it, or disagreed with me, or, worst, asked questions I couldn't answer or that kind of changed the complexion of how I understood an issue. ‘Look guys, I'm only going to explain this one more time. Some people are just too different. Hey, I know I'm not easy to be with. But there must be someone out there who gets it.' Something squeezed inside me and for a moment I wondered if I might faint. I dug a fingernail into my palm. ‘Who gets me.'

Heidi looked beseechingly at me. ‘But Wayne was starting to get it, don't you think? And it's not like he thought you were stupid for believing the things you do. You could tell he actually really liked it. It's like your Mom always says: “good raw material
”.'

I glared at Heidi. She should know never to invoke my mother in an argument. But she charged right on. ‘Look, Lolly, he'd never been exposed to any of the stuff you believe before he met you. Man, you've had 24 years to become who you are. He only had one year to try to get up to speed.'

‘Yeah,' Steve chimed in. ‘It's like Rainman.'

I looked Steve right in the eye. ‘Just a warning, in this analogy you are about to use, Wayne had better be the Dustin Hoffman dude and not me.'

‘Course, Lolly. It's like…he's this guy whose mind works in a totally different way to yours. And he's really brilliant, but he just finds it hard to understand your brilliance all the time, like how Dustin Hoffman found it hard to communicate with normal people.'

‘My God, Steve.' Heidi rolled her eyes. ‘You can't say “normal people”.'

‘Whatever,' Steve returned. ‘But y'know what I mean. It's like he speaks French and you speak American.'

‘English, Steve.' Heidi interrupted. ‘We speak English. Geez, how many times do I have to tell you that? We live in America, but we speak English.'

She sat beside me, quiet for a moment, holding my hand. ‘Oh, remember the first time we met him? Remember, Steve? He invited us over and he made those pizzas…?'

‘Oh yeah,' Steve agreed, smiling at Heidi and rolling his eyes back in his head. ‘With the cashews, and the green stuff.'

‘Spinach, Steve,' Heidi berated him. ‘And then we played
Pictionary
‘til three in the morning, and he beat us all with those crazy cartoons.'

‘Yeah.' Steve again. ‘And Lolly was so pissed off, competitive bitch, because she'd teamed him with you, thinking he'd be useless at anything creative'.

Heidi laughed. ‘Oh, that's right. And remember when he threw that drag party and then came as Josephine Baker the banana dancer, but by midnight he was tearing off bits of his costume to make banana daiquiris for everyone?'

‘Ahem.' I cleared my throat. ‘I am still here, you know. And can we all please get some perspective?' I sniffed. ‘I don't have that many memories of my entire childhood.'

‘Oh, sorry, Lolly.' Heidi smiled at me. ‘I thought you were off in Math World.'

God, they were even using his terminology. I don't think I realized until that moment how completely Wayne had permeated our collective psyche. It hit me like a punch to the stomach. I had to get rid of them. I needed some air.

‘Ok, guys, look. You head off. I'll call you when they release me, and we can go have a drink. A small one. Maybe you two should get a room in the meantime and work off all that pent-up Wayne love, huh?' Neither of them said anything, but something sizzled in the air. I eyeballed them both, my eyes narrowed. What had I missed, between them, while I'd been all strung out on Wayne?

Steve broke first. ‘Ok, Lolly. Well, call us when you're out. I saw this really cool place across the street. With karaoke and everything. Got a great happy hour menu. One of them was called Jailhouse Rock. First round's on me.'

I took my glasses off and tried to wipe them with Monica's wispy dress. ‘Okay, but just one. And if you get up and sing
Please Release Me
it's the end of our friendship.'

They left, Heidi blowing kisses at me all the way down the corridor.

***

I looked at my watch but found it hard to focus on the numbers. I'd been picked up at the demonstration at noon, and it had been warm, for March in the City. Now it was 5pm and it was raining again. My senses were stretched to snapping point, waiting for the next knock on the door. When it came, I knew it would be him.

‘Wayne,' I croaked, wrenching the door open with a snarl.

‘Nope, just me,' Public Defender Guy said, rubbing his eyes. ‘I'm ready for you now,'

Poor guy. He looked beat. And he had such nice blue eyes and such floppy blond hair.

‘Okay then.' I reached for my bag.

‘Wait just a fucking minute!'

The piercing shriek could only come from one person. It resonated with the authority of my mother and the undercurrent of pure bitchiness that had to have been passed down through the genetic chain from my grandmother.

‘Hello, Emmy,' I said.

My sister was only halfway down the corridor when she emitted the shriek. The Leprechaun was tailing her with a look on his face that said this really was the worst day he'd had in a long, long time. And, coming up the rear, was my brother, Luke, scowling magnificently and swinging a briefcase like a schoolboy who'd just been elected head prefect.

I took a moment to register the small, unhappy conga-line.

Then everyone started speaking at once.

Firstly, the Leprechaun remembered he was the ranking officer and decided visiting hours were over. ‘I'm sorry, Ms Murphy,' he said to my sister, ‘but visitors are not allowed back in —'

‘Dr Murphy to you, you fascist,' she spat, rounding on him with eyes of pure venom. ‘And don't think for a moment my sister is seeing this,' she prodded Hugh Grant in the chest with a scarlet fingernail, ‘government limpdick until she's spoken to her own lawyer.'

She pointed jerkily at my brother, who managed to debunk the whole conventional wisdom about men and multi-tasking by looking horrified and pleased with himself all at once.

I started trying to explain that Hugh Grant Public Defender Guy was my ticket out of here. Emmy was snorting in disbelief and refusing to hand me over. The Leprechaun was making a reasonable fist of standing up to my sister. Luke weighed in, talking about due process and civil rights. And somehow, through the din, the quiet, authoritative voice of reason rang through.

‘Erh… Sergeant Burrows, perhaps we could give Ms Murphy some time with her representatives in the conference room instead?' Public Defender guy sounded tired. He smiled disarmingly at Emmy and Luke. ‘But perhaps you could keep the conference brief? I do need to be out of here soon and Ms Murphy is the last discussion I'm scheduled to have tonight. I could grab a coffee and come back in, say, fifteen minutes?'

To my amazement, Emmy yielded, and the Leprechaun stood back to let us use the room. I glared at my brother and sister, imagining Emmy's thinly veiled delight as she'd rubbed her hands together, called Luke and told him we needed to ‘lawyer up'.

‘Right,' Emmy started. ‘First things first.' She reached into her handbag and for one, wild moment I thought:
Oh my God, she's got a gun, she's gonna kill someone
.

When we were kids — well, she was 14 and I was ten — she actually blew up the mailbox of some guy who dumped her best friend. She wrote away to get a mail order bomb-making pack and set the whole thing up herself. I was with her and when I asked what we were doing she patted my head, told me not to worry and said we
were rehearsing for the fourth of July. I was so gullible I believed her. I was always Vince Capone — the uptight, do-gooder sibling — to her Al.

This time all she pulled out was a brightly colored rectangle. She slid it across the table.

‘I stopped at Zuckerman's.'

I considered the packaging. It was unfamiliar. ‘Swiss?'

She nodded quickly.

I toyed a second longer with the wrapping. ‘Fair traded?'

She clucked her tongue briskly. ‘For fuck's sake, Lola, just open it so we can move on.'

I ripped off the wrapper quickly, and for long seconds, the only sounds in that little room were our contented moans as the stuff worked its magic.

‘Should I leave the room?'

Luke.

Men don't get chocolate. Happy to have a piece or two after a nice meal, kicking back on the sofa, watching TV, but they don't get it. It doesn't lift their mood and invade their thoughts.

It doesn't bring them closer to God.

And of all the men in the world, Luke is the least likely to even try to understand it.

I smiled at him, even though it kind of hurt my face. ‘So, how's tricks, GI Joe?'

Luke sighed, returning my vicious smile. ‘I'm at court more than the range, Lola,' he said.

‘You missed Mom,' I said. ‘Shame. You know how much she loves a man in uniform.'

Emmy held her hand against her diaphragm and sang in Mom's shaky contralto:

‘I did not raise my son to be a soldier.

I brought him up to be my pride and joy.

I did not put a musket on his shoulder,

To kill some other mother's darling boy.'

Luke drummed his fingers on the table and stifled what I was sure was a fake yawn. I applauded politely and Emmy bowed neatly. ‘So, are you okay, honey? They haven't hurt you?'

I sighed. ‘No, of course not, Emmy. Anyway, Mom's been here. They wouldn't dare. They're not even going to charge me. That lawyer just needs to talk to me before I'm released.'

‘Ah, yes,' Luke weighed in, sniffing noisily. ‘Public defender. You didn't need to be rude to him you know, Emmeline. He's on her side. I've had a sitrep from the officers. She's right.'

‘What. The. Fuck,' Emmy barked at Luke. ‘What the fuck is a sitrep?'

‘Situation report.' He had the good grace to shuffle a little under her gaze.

‘For fuck's sake, talk like a human,' she barked at him. And then, lighting a cigarette and blowing the smoke towards the big red ‘No Smoking' sign, she turned back to me. ‘Fuckin' military. Every time they send him to the freakin' Gulf I think “please don't let him die”. Then he comes home and he's the same pompous motherfucker and I think “why didn't they blow his arrogant head off?”' She laughed
and patted Luke's hand limply. ‘You know what I mean, darling. I love you, baby. Just no more of that weird military talk, all right? We're not in freaking Kuwait.'

That off her chest, Emmy seemed disappointed. ‘No charge then, huh?'

I shook my head. Luke shook his head. She pressed on. ‘No court? No jail?'

I humphed. ‘Do you
want
me to go to jail?'

‘No, no, of course not, baby,' she reassured me. ‘It's all good, really.'

But even Luke looked kind of flat. ‘Well, I might be off then,' he grudgingly muttered.

I felt cool relief wash over me. Three sentences are generally about as much as Luke and I can manage being civil to each other. Ever since that school concert, all those years ago.

‘Oh, one last thing,' Luke added. ‘Mom mentioned about you and Wayne. You, um, okay?'

‘Oh good one, Luke,' Emmy erupted. ‘Jesus Christ you're an insensitive prick. Bedside manner of the Gestapo. She's in prison, and you bring up the a-hole who just dumped her!'

Luke reddened under the force of Emmy's attack.

‘It's fine, Luke, honestly,' I managed. ‘And anyway, Em, I broke up with
him
.'

‘What?' She turned around to me. Her natural blonde curls were scooped in a fetching chignon. I squashed a smile, remembering all the years she'd resisted them, shearing her hair off almost to the bone and dying it green. ‘No. No way.' She raised her eyebrows at me and I nodded quickly. ‘You dumped that gorgeous man. Who took you all the way to the other side of the freakin' world.' She shook her head. ‘What the hell for?'