back. Once again he felt that maddening sense of recognition, like a name that dances impudently on your tongue, darting back every time you try to catch it. Did he know her? If only his head wasn’t aching—
She still had her oversized purse, the one which looked more like a briefcase, and she was pawing around in it. What you looking for, Fat Girl? Norman thought. Couple of Twinkies? A few Mallow Cremes? Maybe a—
And suddenly, just like that, he had it. He’d read about her in the library, in a newspaper article about Daughters and Sisters. There had been a picture of her crouched down in some asshole karate posture, looking more like a doublewide trailer than Bruce Lee. She was the bitch who told the reporter men weren’t their enemies ... “but if they hit, we hit back. ” Gert. He didn’t remember the last one, but her first name had been Gert.
Get out of here, Gert, Norman thought at the big black woman in the red jumper. His hands were tightly clenched, the nails digging into his palms.
But she didn’t. “Lana!” she called instead. “Hey, Lana!”
The white-haired woman turned, then walked back to Fat Girl, who looked like The Fridge in a dress. He watched the white-haired woman named Lana lead old Dirty Gertie back into the trees. Gertie was holding something out to her as they went. It looked like a piece of paper.
Norman armed sweat out of his eyes and waited for Lana to finish her confab with Gert and come down to the toilet. On the other side of the grove, in the picnic area, desserts were now being finished up, and when they were gone, the trickle of women coming down here to use the bathroom would become a flood. If his luck didn’t change, and change soon, this could turn into a real mess.
“Come on, come on, ” Norman muttered under his breath, and as if in answer, someone came out of the trees and started down the path. It was neither Gert nor Lana the Yogurt Pop lady, but it was someone else Norman recognized, just the same—one of the whores he’d seen in the garden on the day he’d reconned Daughters and Sisters. It was the one with the tu-tone rock-star hair. The bold bitch had even waved at him.
Scared the hell out of me, too, he thought, but turnabout’s fair play, isn’t it? Come on, now. Just come on down here to Papa.
Norman felt himself getting hard, and his headache was entirely gone. He stood as still as a statue, with one eye peeking around the corner of the building, praying that Gert would not pick this particular moment to come back, praying that the girl with the half-green, half-orange hair wouldn’t change her mind. No one came out of the trees and the girl with the fucked-up hair kept approaching. Ms. Punky-Grungy Scumbucket of 1994, come into my parlor said the spider to the fly, closer and closer, and now she was reaching out for the doorhandle but the door never opened because Norman’s hand closed on Cynthia’s thin wrist before she could touch the handle.
She looked at him, startled, her eyes opening wide.
“Come around here,” he said, dragging her after him. “Come on around here so I can talk to you. So I can talk to you up close. ”
12
Gert Kinshaw was hurrying for the bathroom, almost running, when—wonder of wonders—she saw the very woman she’d been looking for just ahead. She immediately opened her capacious purse and began hunting for the photograph.
“Lana!” she called. “Hey, Lana!”
Lana came back up the path. “I’m looking for Cathy Sparks,” she said. “Have you seen her?”
“Sure, she’s throwing horseshoes,” Gert said, cocking a thumb back toward the picnic area. “Saw her not two minutes ago.”
“Great!” Lana started in that direction at once. Gert cast one yearning glance at the comfort station, then fell in beside her. She guessed her bladder would hold a little longer. “I thought maybe she’d had one of her panic attacks and just fired on out of here,” Lana was saying. “You know how she gets.”
“Uh-huh.” Gert handed Lana the fax photo just before they reentered the trees. Lana studied it curiously. It was her first look at Norman, because she wasn’taD& S resident. She was a psychiatric social worker who lived in Crescent Heights with her pleasant, non-abusive husband and her three pleasant, non-dysfunctional kids.
“Who’s this?” Lana asked.
Before Gert could answer, Cynthia Smith walked by.