Nicole Peeler - [Jane True 01] (2 page)

And if Tracy made heads turn, Grizelda practically made them spin
Exorcist
style. Grizelda was not Grizelda’s real name. Nor was Dusty Nethers, the name
she used when she’d been a porn star. As Dusty Nethers, Grizelda had been fiery
haired and as boobilicious as a
Baywatch
beauty. But in her current
incarnation, as Grizelda Montague, she sported a sort of Gothic-hipster
look—albeit one that was still very boobilicious. A few times a year Grizelda
disappeared for weeks or a month, and upon her return home she and Tracy would
complete some big project they’d been discussing, like redecorating the store
or adding a sunroom onto their little house. Lord knows what she got up to on
her profit-venture vacations. But whatever it was, it didn’t affect her
relationship with Tracy. The pair were as close as any husband and wife in
Rockabill, if not closer, and seeing how much they loved each other drove home
to me my own loneliness.

“Yeah, Grizzie’s back. She’ll be here soon. She has something for you…
something scandalous, knowing my lady love.”

I grinned. “Awesome. I love her gifts.”

Because of Grizzie, I had a drawer full of naughty underwear, sex toys,
and dirty books. Grizzie gave such presents for
every
occasion; it
didn’t matter if it was your high school graduation, your fiftieth wedding
anniversary, or your baby’s baptism. This particular predilection meant she was
a prominent figure on wedding shower guest lists from Rockabill to Eastport,
but made her dangerous for children’s parties. Most parents didn’t appreciate
an “every day of the week” pack of thongs for their eleven-year-old daughter.
Once she’d given me a gift certificate for a “Hollywood” bikini wax and I had
to Google the term. What I discovered made me way too scared to use it, so it
sat in my “dirty drawer,” as I called it, as a talking point. Not that anyone
ever went into my dirty drawer with me, but I talked to myself a lot, and it
certainly provided amusing fodder for my own conversations.

It was also rather handy—no pun intended—to have access to one’s own
personal sex shop during long periods of enforced abstinence… such as the last
eight years of my life.

“And,” Tracy responded with a rueful shake of her head, “her gifts love
you. Often quite literally.”

“That’s all right, somebody has to,” I answered back, horrified at the
bitter inflection that had crept into my voice.

But Tracy, bless her, just stroked a gentle hand over my hair that
turned into a tiny one-armed hug, saying nothing.

“Hands off my woman!” crowed a hard-edged voice from the front door.
Grizelda!

“Oh, sorry,” I apologized, backing away from Tracy.

“I meant for Tracy to get off
you
,” Grizzie said, swooping toward
me to pick me up in a bodily hug, my own well-endowed chest clashing with her
enormous fake bosoms. I hated being short at times like these. Even though I
loved all five feet and eleven inches of Grizzie, and had more than my fair
share of affection for her ta-ta-riddled hugs, I loathed being manhandled.

She set me down and grasped my hands in hers, backing away to look me
over appreciatively while holding my fingers at arm’s length. “Mmm, mmm,” she
said, shaking her head. “Girl, I could sop you up with a biscuit.”

I laughed, as Tracy rolled her eyes.

“Quit sexually harassing the staff, Grizzly Bear,” was her only comment.

“I’ll get back to sexually harassing you in a minute, passion flower,
but right now I want to appreciate our Jane.” Grizelda winked at me with her
florid violet eyes—she wore colored lenses—and I couldn’t help but giggle like
a school girl.

“I’ve brought you a little something,” she said, her voice sly.

I clapped my hands in excitement and hopped up and down in a little
happy dance.

I really did love Grizzie’s gifts, even if they challenged the tenuous
grasp of human anatomy imparted to me by Mrs. Renault in her high school
biology class.

“Happy belated birthday!” she cried as she handed me a beautifully
wrapped package she pulled from her enormous handbag. I admired the shiny black
paper and the sumptuous red velvet ribbon tied up into a decadent bow—Grizzie
did everything with style—before tearing into it with glee. After slitting open
the tape holding the box closed with my thumbnail, I was soon holding in my
hands the most beautiful red satin nightgown I’d ever seen. It was a deep,
bloody, blue-based red, the perfect red for my skin tone. And it was, of
course, the perfect length, with a slit up the side that would rise almost to
my hip. Grizzie had this magic ability to always buy people clothes that fit.
The top was generously cut for its small dress size, the bodice gathered into a
sort of clamshell-like tailoring that I knew would cup my boobs like those
hands in that famous Janet Jackson picture. The straps were slightly thicker,
to give support, and crossed over the
very
low-cut back. It was
absolutely gorgeous—very adult and sophisticated—and I couldn’t stop stroking
the deliciously watery satin.

“Grizzie,” I breathed. “It’s gorgeous… but too much! This must have cost
a fortune.”

“You are worth a fortune, little Jane. Besides, I figured you might need
something nice… since Mark’s ‘special deliveries’ should have culminated in a
date by now.”

Grizzie’s words trailed off as my face fell and Tracy, behind her, made
a noise like Xena, Warrior Princess, charging into battle.

Before Tracy could launch into just how many ways she wanted to
eviscerate our new letter carrier, I said, very calmly, “I won’t be going on
any dates with Mark.”

“What happened?” Grizzie asked, as Tracy made another grunting
declaration of war behind us.

“Well…” I started, but where should I begin? Mark was new to Rockabill,
a widowed employee of the U.S. Postal Service, who had recently moved to our
little corner of Maine with his two young daughters. He’d kept forgetting to
deliver letters and packages, necessitating second, and sometimes third, trips
to our bookstore, daily. I’d thought he was sweet, but rather dumb, until Tracy
had pointed out that he only forgot stuff when I was working.

So we’d flirted and flirted and flirted over the course of a month.
Until, just a few days ago, he’d asked me out. I was thrilled. He was cute; he
was
new
; he’d lost someone he was close to, as well. And he “obviously”
didn’t judge me on my past.

You know what they say about assuming…

“We had a date set up, but he cancelled. I guess he asked me out before
he knew about… everything. Then someone must have told him. He’s got kids, you
know.”

“So?” Grizzie growled, her smoky voice already furious.

“So, he said that he didn’t think I’d be a good influence. On his
girls.”

“That’s fucking ridiculous,” Grizzie snarled, just as Tracy made a
series of inarticulate chittering noises behind us. She was normally the
sedate, equable half of her and Grizzie’s partnership, but Tracy had nearly
blown a gasket when I’d called her crying after Mark bailed on me. I think she
would have torn off his head, but then we wouldn’t have gotten our inventory
anymore.

I lowered my head and shrugged. Grizzie moved forward, having realized
that Tracy already had the anger market cornered.

“I’m sorry, honey,” she said, wrapping her long arms around me. “That’s…
such a shame.”

And it was a shame. My friends wanted me to move on, my dad wanted me to
move on. Hell, except for that tiny sliver of me that was still frozen in
guilt,
I
wanted to move on. But the rest of Rockabill, it seems, didn’t
agree.

Grizzie brushed the bangs back from my eyes, and when she saw tears
glittering she intervened, Grizelda-style. Dipping me like a tango dancer, she
growled sexily, “Baby, I’m gonna butter yo’ bread…” before burying her face in
my exposed belly and giving me a resounding zerbert.

That did just the trick. I was laughing again, thanking my stars for
about the zillionth time that they had brought Grizzie and Tracy back to
Rockabill because I didn’t know what I would have done without them. I gave
Tracy her own hug for the present, and then took it to the back room with my
stuff. I opened the box to give the red satin one last parting caress, and then
closed it with a contented sigh.

It would look absolutely gorgeous in my dirty drawer.

We only had a few things to do to get the store ready for opening, which
left much time for chitchat. About a half hour of intense gossip later, we had
pretty much exhausted “what happened when you were gone” as a subject of
conversation and had started in on plans for the coming week, when the little
bell above the door tinkled. My heart sank when I saw it was Linda Allen,
self-selected female delegate for my own personal persecution squad. She wasn’t
quite as bad as Stuart Gray, who hated me even more than Linda did, but she did
her best to keep up with him.

Speaking of the rest of Rockabill
, I thought, as
Linda headed toward romance.

She didn’t bother to speak to me, of course. She just gave me one of her
loaded looks that she could fire off like a World War II gunship. The looks
always said the same things. They spoke of the fact that I was the girl whose
crazy mother had shown up in the center of town out of nowhere,
naked
, in
the middle of a storm. The fact that she’d
stolen
one of the most
eligible Rockabill bachelors and
ruined him for life
. The fact that
she’d given birth to a baby
without being married
. The fact that I
insisted on being
that child
and upping the ante by being
just as
weird as my mother
. That was only the tip of the vituperative iceberg that
Linda hauled into my presence whenever she had the chance.

Unfortunately, Linda read nearly as compulsively as I did, so I saw her
at least twice a month when she’d come in for a new stack of romance novels.
She liked a very particular kind of plot: the sort where the pirate kidnaps
some virgin damsel, rapes her into loving him, and then dispatches lots of
seamen while she polishes his cutlass. Or where the Highland clan leader
kidnaps some virginal English Rose, rapes her into loving him, and then kills
entire armies of Sassenachs while she stuffs his haggis. Or where the Native
American warrior kidnaps a virginal white settler, rapes her into loving him,
and then kills a bunch of colonists while she whets his tomahawk. I hated to
get Freudian on Linda, but her reading patterns suggested some interesting
insights into why she was such a complete bitch.

Tracy had received a phone call while Linda was picking out her books,
and Grizelda was sitting on a stool far behind the counter in a way that
clearly said “I’m not actually working, thanks.” But Linda pointedly ignored
the fact that I was free to help her, choosing, instead, to stand in front of
Tracy. Tracy gave that little eye gesture where she looked at Linda, then
looked at me, as if to say, “She can help you,” but Linda insisted on being
oblivious to my presence. Tracy sighed and cut her telephone conversation
short. I knew that Tracy would love to tell Linda to stick her attitude where
the sun don’t shine, but Read It and Weep couldn’t afford to lose a customer
who was as good at buying books as she was at being a snarky snake face. So
Tracy rang up Linda’s purchases and bagged them for her as politely as one can without
actually being friendly and handed the bag over to Linda.

Who, right on cue, gave me her parting shot, the look I knew was coming
but was never quite able to deflect.

The look that said,
There’s the freak who killed her own boyfriend
.

She was wrong, of course. I hadn’t actually killed Jason. I was just the
reason he was dead.

CHAPTER TWO

I
was
already stripping off my clothes by the time I got to the secret cove that is
my little sanctuary. I was way too pissed off to bother with the wetsuit.

Fuck Linda
, I thought, as I tore off my shirt and
bra.

Fuck Rockabill
helped propel me out of my jeans and
panties.

And fuck me
accompanied my shoes and socks, and then
it was a short sprint into the ocean, whose waves reared up and enveloped me
the way my mother’s arms had when I was a little girl. In fact, swimming was
all I had left of my mother, really. Her real face, the face in my memories,
had begun to fade years ago, leaving behind only details I’d memorized from
photographs. But I would never forget our clandestine nightly swims. The little
secret that bound us together when I was a child.