you’d like to watch it.”
“Yeah, great, thanks,” said Penelope. She slung her backpack over one shoulder and began to make her way toward the door.
“By the way,” Claudia called after her, “I love the hair. I used to dye mine too. Black.”
Penelope turned back, blatantly assessing her. After a moment, she offered a fleeting, heartbreaking smile that belied the RST CLASS BITC slogan on her shirt. “Thanks,” she said.
Claudia watched Penelope leave, sensing that they’d made some sort of breakthrough. She imagined Penelope and Samuel watching the screener together, perhaps discussing its artistic merits, and felt her body tingle, bristling with life for the first time in weeks. She stood there at the front of the empty classroom and found herself smiling as she listened to the last reverberations of the students vanishing from the corridors. I can do this, she thought. I might even like this. She packed essays into her Amoeba tote, flipped off the lights and locked the door, and ventured back out into the purple maze to try to locate her car.
Lucy Fitzer was what Claudia’s mother would have called a “fireplug.” She was certainly as compact and squat as a hydrant, with the only protuberance being a pair of enormous breasts that strained at her tank top and tipped her slightly forward when she walked. She marched through their house, flipping open closet doors, peering behind curtains, and firing questions like buckshot, while Jeremy and Claudia—slightly stunned—followed a few steps behind. It was almost as if Lucy were giving the house tour instead of them.
“Oh my God, what a gorgeous view,” Lucy marveled. “Can you see it from the bed—look at that, you can! How wonderful. It’s quite a good-sized room, isn’t it. Oh, it’s where you sleep? I see. Love your quilt—did one of your grandparents make that? A thrift store! Don’t you worry about germs? No? I guess I’m just germphobic, comes with my job. Oh, a claw-foot bathtub! Heaven. I adore bubble baths. OK, so this would be my room. Well, it’s certainly cozy. Does it have a walk-in closet? Oh. I guess none of these old houses do. And here we have the kitchen …. Does that old stove actually work? Really? Wow. Well, I have a brand-new toaster oven I can contribute. My mom gave it to me for my birthday last month; she said it was a hint that it was about time for me to get the heck out of her house and find a place of my own. God, mothers. This looks like a comfortable living room, does the fireplace work? I do love a nice cozy fire in the winter! And that’s …. quite a painting. Very modern. I prefer landscapes myself—in fact, I sometimes even dabble with watercolors. Not that I have any talent for art … not like you guys, I’m sure.”
By the time they sat down in the living room for an interview, Claudia was depleted, as if Lucy’s soliloquy had drained her of speech too. They squared off across from each other, Lucy in the armchair and Claudia and Jeremy seated on the couch. Lucy tugged at the knees of her jeans, trying with little success to smooth out the wrinkles that strained across her thighs. Her breasts bubbled over the top of her tank top, softly rippling when she breathed like currents in a waterbed.
“So, Lucy, why don’t you tell us about yourself?” Claudia tried to show some genuine enthusiasm for Lucy’s answer, but mentally, she’d already moved past the woman sitting before them to worry over the other potential roommates that were left on their list. There were only two, and neither sounded particularly promising. One was a forty-four-year-old divorcé who mentioned in his e-mail that he was on step eleven of his AA plan and hoped to enter a “Christian household that would support his ongoing commitment to clean living.” The other was a nineteen-year-old girl, barely older than Claudia’s students at Ennis Gates, and that just seemed wrong.
Their ad had received a dismal response. Perhaps it was the unrecognizable Mount Washington address, or perhaps no one wanted to live with a married couple, but in the three weeks that the ad had been posted online, they’d received only eight responses. Already, they’d met and dismissed a twenty-five-year-old secretary who showed up with a six-week-old infant strapped to her chest, a comic-book-store clerk who spent most of the interview talking about his passion for squirrel hunting, and a skeletal