and milk, and make pancakes, which she’d smear with margarine and douse with syrup and eat in big gobbling bites. The ice cream left her with headaches that made her feel like someone was driving an ice pick into her forehead, and the pancakes burned her tongue, and she knew that none of it was good for her, but she couldn’t stop. Food filled her and soothed her, and even feeling stuffed to the point of sickness, even getting sick, was better than feeling the shame, remembering the abortionist’s sneer as he told her to keep her legs together next time.
Another four bottles of Metrecal appeared in the pantry. Sarah began serving chef’s salads for dinner and Jo, who’d gotten a job teaching history at a middle school in Detroit, would try to get Bethie to go on walks with her, or on bike rides, or to hit tennis balls at the park. One morning at Hudson’s, Bethie’s old high school friend Laura Ochs walked right past her, on her way to the semi-annual White Sale, and didn’t even recognize her, and Bethie, her face burning with shame, locked herself in the break room for the twenty minutes she figured it would take Laura to buy discounted sheets or towels. She studied herself in the mirror. Her face was round and pale as the moon; her hair hung in lank strands against her cheeks. There were circles under her eyes, and her expression was exhausted, the look of a girl who knew that things were bad and that they would never get better.
My fault, she thought. My fault for dropping acid, my fault for being stoned. My fault for being with Dev in the first place, and believing that he wanted to be with me. That night, she joined Liz and Marcy for drinks at Tangier, a bar down the street from Hudson’s, where the floors were sticky and the barstools’ vinyl seats were torn, and the only nod to anything foreign or exotic was a single faded paper lantern that hung above the far corner of the bar. Bethie ordered a gin and tonic that came in a squat, smeared glass, and drank it as she listened to Liz chatter about her upcoming wedding, and Marcy complain about her husband.
“Uh-oh,” Liz said, her voice low. “Gals, we’ve got company.” Bethie looked up to see Mr. Breedlove, the long strands of his sparse black hair combed across the brown-spotted dome of his skull.
“May I join you ladies?” he asked, squeezing his bulk into their booth. “Bartender, another round!” Another gin and tonic with an anemic wedge of lime arrived. Bethie sipped, breathing through her mouth to avoid Mr. Breedlove’s stale coffee breath. He was telling them about his last trip to Miami, leaning so close that Bethie could see the blackheads that dotted his nose. “The gals there, whew, let me tell you,” he said, and made a fanning gesture, to indicate their sexiness. “Talk about itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny bikinis!” Liz, who needed all the overtime he could pay her, giggled, and Marcy glanced at her watch, and Bethie excused herself to go to the ladies’ room, where she spent another long spell studying her reflection. An idea was starting to come to her. Her face was still pale, but her eyes, instead of looking blank and exhausted, sparkled with mischief and bad intentions. She felt alive again, like a struck match fizzing into flame, the same way she’d felt slipping Uncle Mel’s glass paperweight into her pocket, on the way out of his door. For the first time since she’d laid back on the hotel-room bed, Bethie could imagine possibilities. Doors were opening, and maybe she could walk through.
Mr. Breedlove was waiting for her, right by the telephone booth outside the restroom door. He crowded her into a corner, maneuvering his bulk to trap her against the wall, extending one arm and putting his hand by her head. “Want to grab a bite?” he was asking. Some part of Bethie’s brain must have noticed one of his suit jacket pockets hanging lower than the other, and while her mouth was smiling and saying, “Of course, let me just freshen up,” her hand was easing forward, dipping into his pocket, extracting the wallet and tucking it quickly into her purse.
Mr. Breedlove smiled at her, and gave her fanny a little pat as she disappeared back into the bathroom to powder her nose. Bethie locked herself into the stall and flipped open