“Are you okay?” Darcy said, holding Michelle’s embrace.
Michelle wiped her eyes, releasing her sister. Darcy handed her the box of tissues. “You ready to go home?” Darcy asked.
“I am,” she said.
She was. Then she wasn’t. What would she go home to? Michelle found herself playing out the remainder of her life, something she’d always done with maddening regularity, picturing herself sitting alone in her big home in Atlanta, the blue pool growing green and spoiled with algae, the concrete cracking and crumbling, the roof leaking, the lawn choked with weeds, the electric lights failing and leaving her in darkness.
Michelle tried to shake the images, tried to see herself selling the house, living with Darcy for a while, working at the health food store, getting stronger, starting over. Wasn’t that what she’d wanted all along—to start over? But not without Cassie. She had never reinvented her life without Cassie in it. Cassie was the thread that would hold the fabric of her new life together, the seed that would expand infinitely—children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren. Life would move forward in that way, circumvent the intolerable stasis of a solitary life—Mattie Souder. The name jumped into her head so quickly it startled her. She had forgotten about the strange visit from Pink’s mother. The old woman asking her very pointed questions. Then stopping at the door, writing something on the whiteboard . . .
“You’re shaking, Michelle,” Darcy said, reaching out to touch her arm. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know.” Michelle gathered her things and tried to stand but sat back down to steady herself. Darcy picked up the box of Cliff’s belongings, the one the sheriff had left with her.
“Here, hold onto me,” Darcy said. As they walked from the room, Michelle glanced at the whiteboard, at the name scrawled there: Charlene House.
Chapter 30
Pink felt rested when he arrived at the office, excited about his new scheme to get business percolating again. Clarence’s Jeep sat out front, and Pink was surprised to see him at work so early, especially when there was the perfect excuse of a snowstorm to keep him home.
On the drive in, Pink couldn’t stop thinking about Claire’s crazy husband, Kenny, and Kenny’s equally bizarre friend, Curly. But Pink had to hand it to him—Curly was a marketing genius. Pink couldn’t believe he’d never thought of the scam himself. He was usually pretty good at those things. But Curly was the master.
“Clarence,” Pink shouted as he opened the front door to the office. “I got an idea that’s gonna set sales on fire!” Until this morning, when Pink had tiptoed past Claire sleeping on the sofa, he hadn’t realized how well things had worked out from Kenny’s little deed on the bridge. Because of that, Claire was afraid to go home, and with nowhere to go, Pink now had a full-time, live-in nursemaid to Isabelle, a cook, and a cleaning lady, and more than that, a little Barbie doll for himself. It was almost too perfect, and Pink thought about sending Kenny a thank-you note to show his appreciation.
“Clarence!” Pink shouted again. “Did you hear me? I’ve got a great idea.”
Pink strolled into Clarence’s office. Clarence was seated at his desk, a newspaper spread out before him, his feet propped up above some kind of small, humming machine.
“What the hell is that?” Pink asked.
“A dehumidifier. Doc said my feet are too moist too much of the time. He saw the beginnings of mushrooms growing between my toes. I thought this little gizmo might dry out the fungus. Val-U-Mart had ’em for nineteen dollars. Can you believe that?”
Pink was tired of Clarence’s fungus, and especially disliked that Clarence was always barefoot in the office. “Does it ever make you wonder,” Pink began, “that in the most prosperous time of real estate sales, our sales are actually worse than last year, maybe the worse they’ve ever been?”
“I suppose,” Clarence said, turning the page of the newspaper, the crinkling noise slicing a corner off Pink’s pleasant mood.
“Well, I’ve got an idea that’s gonna change all that. It came to me this morning.” Pink wasn’t about to give Curly credit for the idea. Why should he? Clarence wouldn’t know the difference anyway.
Clarence glanced up from his newspaper, scratched his neck, and turned the page. “Sounds good, Pink.”
“I haven’t told you yet.”
“Well, you always have good ideas. I’m sure this one’s a blue ribbon.”
Oh, it was. Pink recalled Curly’s sign out by Burtran Lake, the drawing of the sexy girl riding the Jet Ski, wishing there was some kind of award offered for the best ad campaign. Pink was sure he’d win.
“Are you listening? ’Cause I’m only gonna tell you once.”
Clarence nodded, then toed the dehumidifier to change the direction of the flow.
“Okay, here it is. I hire a gorgeous tan model in one of those skimpy bikinis, something in white—no! In pink! Of course. Hot pink! Then we have her riding in a boat or something, on the lake, right? A close up so we see her from stomach to face . . . or maybe knees to face, so we see her crotch area.”
“Hasn’t that been done before?”
“That’s not it yet, dammit. Listen to this.” Pink took a deep breath, amazed at the machinations of his own mind. “I hire a couple of high school dropouts, maybe a couple of those kids that work over there at the Game Depot, to go up to my sign at night and paint nipples on the model in the photograph!”
Clarence squinted at Pink, his brain apparently chewing on the details.
“Don’t you get it?” Pink said. “We’ll have the only billboard around with a bare-breasted woman! The law can’t say anything because vandals done it. They can make me clean it up, but I can drag my feet for weeks, maybe months before I do anything, complaining to Fisk and the county officials how the whole damn country’s going in the shitter when kids can deface a man’s advertising, his very livelihood! It’s perfect!
“I’ll have Fisk searching for those damn kids, while I’m calling him everyday whining about how expensive those billboards are, how much the model and photographer set me back, how much it will cost to fix. The whole time, folks from Georgia, Florida, and Alabama will be getting an eyeful of Pink Souder Real Estate. It’s goddamn brilliant!”
“What do bare breasts have to do with real estate?” Clarence asked. “And they won’t really be bare, right, just nipples painted over the swimsuit? Won’t people see that?”
“Not from a distance. Christ, Clarence, you think they’re gonna drive up and inspect the goddamn artwork? And who gives a shit anyway? By the time they figure out the titties ain’t real, my name and phone number’ll be seared into their memory. I mean, if you was courting some woman all night with whiskey shots and finger sandwiches, do you think you’d care if you finally got her in the sack and found out her titties weren’t real? Hell no! Don’t you get it?”