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“Aesthetic issues aside, those breasts amount to almost four per cent of her body fat.” She holds up the almost empty jar. “That’s a lot of arthritis relief, honeybun. Not to mention my sciatica.” She screws on the lid. “So. Have I convinced you?”

He flexes his fingers rapidly, and without apparent pain. “Let’s say you’ve given me food for thought.”

“Good. Now give me a kiss. I have to go downstairs and resume pretending to be a computer illiterate. And you have a riot to watch.”

July 23, 2021

1

Jerome calls Holly at quarter past six from outside the Steinman house and tells her of his adventures. He says he had to take Vera to the hospital himself, because all of the Kiner ambulances, plus those from the city’s Emergency Services Department, were on Covid calls. He carried her to his car, wedged her into the passenger bucket seat, buckled her up, and drove to the hospital as fast as he dared.

“I rolled down the window, thinking the fresh air might revive her a little. I don’t know if it worked, she was still pretty soupy when we got there, but it saved me the expense of getting the Mustang steam cleaned. She vomited twice on the way, but down the side. Which will wash off. That stink is a lot harder to get off the carpeting.”

He tells Holly that Vera also vomited twice while she was seizing. “I got her on her side before she spewed the second time. Which was good because it cleared her airway, but at first she wasn’t breathing. That scared the crap out of me. I gave her mouth-to-mouth. She might have started again on her own, but I was afraid she might not.”

“You probably saved her life.”

Jerome laughs. To Holly it sounds shaky. “I don’t know about that, but I’ve rinsed my mouth out half a dozen times since and I can still taste gin-flavored puke. When I got to her house she said I could take off my mask, she’d had Covid and was chock-full of antibodies. I hope she was right. I don’t know if even a double dose of Pfizer would stand up to that kind of soul kiss.”

“Why are you still there? Didn’t they keep her overnight?”

“Are you kidding? There’s not a single available bed in that place. There was a car-crash guy lying in the hall, moaning and covered with blood.”

My mother died in a hospital just like that, Holly thinks. She was rich.

“Did they do anything for her?”

“Pumped her stomach, and when she could say her name they sent her home with me. No paperwork or anything, just your basic wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am. Crazy. It’s like all the systems are breaking down, you know?”

Holly says she does.

“I got her inside—she could walk—and to her bedroom. She said she could undress herself and I took her word for it but when I looked in, she was lying there fully dressed and snoring. Puke all down the side of my car, but she never got a speck on her clothes, which were nice. I think she dressed for me.”

“You’re probably right. You wanted to talk to her about her son, after all.”

“The nurse said there were also a few half-digested pills in the stuff they pumped out of her. I’m not sure she was trying to kill herself, but she might have been.”

“You saved her life,” Holly says. No probably this time.

“This time, maybe. What about next time?”

Holly has no good answer for that.

“If you could have seen her, Holly… I mean before she went down… perfectly put together, totally coherent. But knocking back gin like they were going to outlaw it next week. I could have left thinking that she was perfectly okay, except for a hangover tomorrow. How is that possible?”

“She’s built up a tolerance. Hers must be higher than most. You say Peter’s skateboard was in his room?”

“Yeah. There was a search party combing the park, looking for him… or his body… and one of them found it in the bushes. I didn’t get a chance to ask her, but I’d bet you anything they found it in the Thickets. Which is not far from where the Dahl woman’s bike was found. I think Dahl and Steinman might be related, Holly. I really do.”

Holly was about to make herself a Stouffer’s chipped beef on toast for supper—her go-to comfort food—when Jerome called. Now she drops the frozen packet into a pot of boiling water. According to the box you can microwave it, which is quicker, but Holly never does it that way. Her mother always said that microwaves were first-class food ruiners, and like so many of her mother’s teachings, it has stuck with her only child. Oranges are gold in the morning and lead at night. Sleeping on your left side wears out your heart. Only sluts wear half-slips.

“Holly? Did you hear me? I said I think Dahl and the Steinman boy might—”

“I heard you. I need to think about it. Did he have a helmet for skateboarding? I should have asked those boys, but I never thought of it.”

“You didn’t think of it because they weren’t wearing them,” Jerome says. “Neither was Peter Steinman, if he was going out to meet his friends that night. They would have called him a pussy.”

“Really?”