The PMS Outlaws: An Elizabeth MacPherson Novel (26 page)

First you swallow the pills, and then the pills swallow you, she thought.

She went through the cafeteria line without even noticing what was put on her plate. From force of habit she wandered over to her usual table. Emma O. was surrounded by chattering women. Elizabeth heard one of them say, “Dan Quayle! He can’t be as stupid as the media makes him out to be. He has a law degree, for God’s sake!” Another one said, “Kato—oh, never mind.”

Tomorrow’s letter in the making, Elizabeth thought. At the last moment she turned aside, and headed for the table near the door, where Hillman Randolph sat alone.

“You!” he said with an unwelcoming grunt. “I suppose you want to keep on playing twenty questions with me.”

Elizabeth stared down at her plate. “No.”

She thought she heard an intake of breath. Then the sound of a fork being set down on the plastic tray. “We had a deal,” he said. “I may be crazy—though I doubt it—but I do keep my word.”

“It doesn’t matter any more,” said Elizabeth. “You were wrong, that’s all.” She began to push the mashed potatoes around, trying to obliterate the soggy green peas.

“What do you mean I was wrong?”

She shrugged. “Mistaken, then. There were developments in the case after you were injured. Apparently nobody bothered to inform you. Here. See for yourself.” From the pocket of her sweater, she pulled out the fax from Geoffrey. She had crumpled it up in her pocket during therapy and had never bothered to take it out again. She hadn’t felt the need to reply to it.

Hillman Randolph scanned the pages with the scowl of impatience that Geoffrey’s prose style usually evoked in the estrogen-challenged. Elizabeth found that Mr. Randolph’s reaction interested her no more than the tasteless food congealing on her plate. She took a sip of iced tea, wondering if anybody would check to see how much she’d eaten. Well, let them. She was a voluntary patient. And since she was nobody’s idea of too-skinny, she thought it might even help if she skipped a meal every now and then. If she had to be around for another fifty years or so, she might as well look good.

Hillman Randolph looked up from the fax message. “He is still alive,” he whispered.

“Apparently so,” said Elizabeth. “But I think he got put in jail a while back, so your efforts weren’t altogether wasted.
Anyhow, I have no more questions for you, but if you’d like my Jell-O, you’re welcome to it. I’m going to my room.” Without waiting for a reply, she swept out of the dining room without a backward glance.

Hillman Randolph sat still for a long time, staring at the last page of the fax message while his untouched coffee grew cold.

T
he young man in the campus snack bar took deep breaths and tried not to appear nervous. He could feel cold sweat in his armpits. They say that dogs can smell fear. What about foxy ladies? He looked at the two small blondes who had positioned themselves on either side of his bar stool. There probably wasn’t any scent of fear attached to them, but it would be hard to tell anyway under all that perfume. Two of them. He had no pickup lines equal to that situation, but then he didn’t appear to need one. He couldn’t believe his luck. He’d stopped in at the local watering hole after the fraternity party to take a pre-study break, with no further plans for the evening beyond two beers and a chapter of anthropology, when suddenly these two young ladies had cut him out of the herd like a couple of Border Collies after a lamb. He wondered if he could find out—in
a roundabout way, of course—just what it was that attracted them to him. His haircut? His blue shirt? Was he wearing aftershave? He had managed to down two beers in five minutes, more or less in shock, and their effects were not doing anything to enhance his powers of deduction. Women had never appeared to find him irresistible before, more’s the pity. Why now?

An unpleasant thought crossed his mind. “Um … no offense, ladies, but, you two aren’t … um … professionals, are you? I mean, not that you look it.…”

They didn’t look it. They looked like a couple of undergraduates from upper-middle-class homes, but that was the whole point, wasn’t it? Couldn’t hookers assume whatever persona the customer required? And presumably in a college hangout …

“Are we professional?” The sturdy-looking one with the boyish features laughed softly. “Experienced, yes. Professional, no.”

“Good, because I haven’t got much money.” He blushed at having to mention such a delicate subject. Money. “I could stand a round of drinks, though.”

The pretty one, who smiled like she had to be reminded to, shook her head. “Nothing alcoholic for me,” she murmured. “Do they have bottled water here?”

“Probably.” Trust a woman to make a drink of water expensive, he thought. But who was he to argue? He was being picked up by two nubile young blondes, when most nights he couldn’t even get the time of day from the snack bar’s resident cat. Go figure.

“Nice ring,” cooed the other one. “Fraternity letters, hmmm?”

“Oh. Yeah. I’m an anthropology major, really. I never thought I was the fraternity type, but …”

The two women looked at each other. He caught only a glimpse of the look, but it wasn’t the mellow, wide-eyed gaze they had directed at him for the last ten minutes. This look carried more words in it than a microchip. In a remote corner of his skull a few brain cells flashed him a warning signal, but by the time that thought had threaded its way through a cerebral swamp of alcohol-fueled lust, the warning had all the urgency of a lightning bug in a thunderstorm. The young man dodged the cautionary flare from his higher brain, and went right back to thinking with quite a different part of his anatomy, an organ which was presently contemplating the etiquette of the threesome.

“I hear your fraternity has interesting parties,” said the sharp-eyed one, tracing the Greek letters on the onyx stone of his class ring.

He shrugged. “Just a bunch of guys out to have a good time,” he mumbled. “They’re a little coarse sometimes. Typical coming-of-age tribal rituals, male bonding …” In his nervousness, he found that he was quoting his anthropology textbook. He gulped and began again. “I mean, the socializing makes a nice change from studying until your eyes glaze over.”

“Oh, don’t be modest,” said the solemn one. “A girl we know attended one of those parties recently. She said it was absolutely unforgettable.”

They looked at each other again. That odd look, that seemed to say more than their sentences did.

He felt that he had somehow lost the thread of the conversation.
Something was being said between the lines, and he wasn’t getting it. It was like being hard of hearing at a Jonathan Demme movie—good luck figuring out what was going on in the film. But maybe men were always hard of hearing when women talked. He wished he hadn’t added beer to the spiked punch he’d already had at the party.

“What do you say we get out of here?” said one of the women. “Go someplace more private?”

“A bonding ritual,” said the quiet one, with a smile that looked genuine for a change.

Oh boy. Now what? He took a deep breath, blinked a few times, and tried to focus on something less abstract. “What did you ladies say your names were?”

“You can call me Trish,” said P. J. Purdue, taking his arm in a firm grasp. “And my friend here is Amy.”

For once in her life, A. P. Hill did not object to the use of her first name.

W
e are going to try something rather different in therapy today,” Warburton announced. “Elizabeth, you still are not coming to terms with your problem.”

“That’s what pills are for,” said Elizabeth, with a little sigh of contentment. She had just taken her new medication and was waiting for it to kick in. “Reality-lite. Skimmed. All of life’s fat emotional content has been eliminated for … your … prot-tec-tion. Innit marvelous?”

“We’ll see about that,” muttered Clifford Allen.

Warburton knew a good opening for group discussion when she saw one. “Are pills and sedatives the answer, ladies and gentlemen?”

“Depends on the question,” said Richard Petress, smirking at the nurse.

“We should not become chemically dependent on drugs to solve our problems. They are a crutch.” Lisa Lynn was into being the Good Child that day. The word was that she was due to be released soon. She basked in Warburton’s beam of approval.

“But crutches are fine for temporary problems,” said Elizabeth, with a note of irritation creeping into her mellow mood. “Broken legs, for example. Then you heal, and you throw the crutch away. Same with pills. So, when Cameron comes back …”

“I’d like to say something about that,” said Clifford Allen.

“Clifford, hush!” said Rose Hanelon, shaking her head.

“Let him talk,” said Emma O. “That’s what we’re here for, isn’t it? To clean out our wounds?”

“You cannot possibly know anything about marine biology,” said Elizabeth. “You are a burglar.”

“That’s right,” said Clifford, tipping his chair back on two legs. “I’m a burglar.” His slouch became less pronounced, and his smile less pleasant. “In fact, I’m not just a burglar, I’m a certified nut case. I use other people’s living rooms for a litter box, and I can’t stop, and I don’t know why. I’m crazy, all right. But at least I’m not stupid.”

Elizabeth gasped. “What do you mean by that?”

Several other members of the group tried to silence Clifford. They all began to talk at once, in an effort to drown him out, but raising his voice as loud as you could get before the orderlies came bursting in, he called out, “Have you seen the movie
Titanic
?”

Elizabeth emerged from her grief with a snarl. “That again?
Why does everybody keep asking me what movies I’ve seen lately?”

Clifford Allen smirked at her. “And you’re the Ph.D.,” he said. “In science, yet. So answer the question. Did you see it? Surely you cannot be the only person in North America who did not see
Titanic
?”

“Of course I saw it. So what? What on earth does that movie have to do with anything?”

“Quite a lot, judging by what you’ve told us of your husband’s disappearance. His boat went down off the coast of Scotland, you said. Now, think about that movie. Ship goes down in the North Atlantic. Handsome young man is pitched into the cold sea. And he survives how long?”

Elizabeth hung her head.

The rest of the room fell silent.

“How long?”

“Less than an hour,” whispered Elizabeth at last.

She heard her friends—Rose, and Lisa Lynn, and Seraphin, and even Emma O. let out a collective sigh.

She shook herself as if she felt the coldness of the water. “But … the other character in the film … the girl who climbed onto the floating debris … survived.”

“And she was rescued after how long?”

“Couple of hours,” said Emma O. As emotionless as ever. “I read a book once on World War Two. It said pilots who were shot down in the North Sea only survived for a matter of minutes because of the low water temperature. Sorry, Elizabeth.”

She didn’t look sorry. She looked pleased with herself for being able to trot out a few relevant facts. Emma O. would
always love trivia more than people, but at least she had remembered to proffer an apology when she said something devastating. It was progress.

Clifford Allen nodded. “I’ve heard that story about the pilots, too,” he said. “So, Elizabeth, since
Titanic
was only a movie, it is just within the bounds of possibility that Leonardo DiCaprio, the actor, might drop in on you here some afternoon.
People
magazine claims he’s a charitable guy who sometimes visits the sick in hospitals. Leo is alive and well, because his North Atlantic was a tank of warm water on a soundstage. However, you cannot reasonably assume that someone who actually did meet that fate in the real North Atlantic could survive to come back to you, no matter how much you might wish it would happen. People don’t come back out of the North Atlantic. The film was quite specific about that. Everybody knows it.”

There was pity on the circle of faces around her, but not one look of surprise. Everybody did know it.

Elizabeth had covered her face with her hands. She waited for the other members of the group to go on talking. Self-centered creatures that they were, it was usually only a matter of seconds before one of them hijacked any given conversation, and turned it into an examination of his or her own concerns. Not this time, though. Now, when she would have paid Richard Petress to launch into a discussion of the symbolism of nail polish colors, or for Emma O. to prattle on about the aristocracy of beauty, all was quiet.

Elizabeth took a deep breath. She knew that everyone in the room was watching her, waiting for a reaction. A cathartic storm of tears, perhaps. But there isn’t really any rage to be
mined out of a certainty. She had known for a long time now, even while she talked of hope and uncertainty. Or were the new pills simply dulling a pain that she would feel at full force at some later date?

At last she said, “So that’s what Hillman Randolph meant when he asked me if I had seen the movie.” She looked around, to see if the old man was smiling triumphantly at her through his scarred lips, but she could not find him.

“Where is Hillman?” she asked Warburton, remembering that they were supposed to use first names in group.

“He can’t be with us,” muttered the nurse, looking away. “Why don’t we focus on our problems instead of someone else’s?”

Matt Pennington, who remembered everyone today, announced, “Hillman has gone over the wall!”

Elizabeth gasped. “Really? At his age?”

He sighed. “Not literally, dear. I meant he has left the building. Escaped, I guess you could say, except that I’m not sure they had any legal authority to stop him. Anyhow, he took his car keys and drove off without a word to anyone.”

“Oh, right.” Elizabeth felt somehow that this ought to matter to her, but it all seemed rather far away, like a television movie she had dozed through and couldn’t quite recall. “Can you do that in Cherry Hill?”

Matt shrugged. “Who’s going to stop you? Unarmed guards making minimum wage? Nobody in here is supposed to be dangerous anyhow. They figure he’ll be back.”