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MORE THAN A WEEK HAD PASSED since my encounter with Julia in the Beauty Closet. She wanted the email addresses of every girl who’d written to Kitty since I’d started my job. There were at least 50,000 of them. When I asked Julia why she wanted them, she said she had her reasons. “It’s for a good and noble cause,” she said, “but it’s better that you don’t know the particulars. Then you’ll never have to lie.”
I knew I could get in trouble if I gave her the addresses, which I couldn’t afford, since losing my job and my health insurance before the surgery would derail my plans. I had tried to stop thinking about Julia’s request. There was nothing in it for me and it was reckless to even consider it, yet I’d been turning it over, unable to forget our meeting. Julia, Leeta, and Verena’s book had disrupted the rhythm of my days.
To distract myself, I heated up a slice of my turkey lasagna (230), then turned on the television, placing my plate on the coffee table in front of me. The Cheryl Crane-Murphy Report was on. She was discussing the murders of Simmons and Green, as every news channel had been doing for days. The Harbor Freeway interchange was a familiar sight.
“Do I think they deserved to be murdered? Well, as a committed Christian I believe murder is wrong, but at the end of the day I’m not shedding any tears over these thugs. Sue me.” Cheryl Crane-Murphy was like a middle-aged male politician with a comb-over, except that she was a woman and the comb-over was more of a metaphorical one. Her actual hair was short and dark blond, teased and sprayed into place, stiff like whipped meringue. She spoke with faux folksy charm, the camera lens in front of her a peephole to America that she peered through from her desk in New York as if to say, I can see you, I’m one of you.
I scrolled through the channels, looking for something else, and landed on one of the Austen stations, catching sight of Kitty being interviewed.
There was no escaping Kitty.
“Earlier, I showed you how to pose for photographs so that your hips will appear slimmer,” she said. “Now we’re going to camouflage . . .” I clicked back to Cheryl Crane-Murphy, who said, “We should pass a law stating that any serviceman who rapes a servicewoman should be castrated—without anesthesia. I swear, I should run for Congress.” I ate my lasagna and watched Cheryl pounding her desk, her eyes wild.
A yellow BREAKING NEWS banner appeared at the bottom of the screen. Cheryl adjusted her earpiece and announced that preliminary autopsy results on Simmons and Green had revealed that each man had a wadded-up piece of paper stuck down his throat with the name Jennifer written on it.
“Who is Jennifer?” Cheryl Crane-Murphy wanted to know.
The thought of the paper in the dead men’s throats made me queasy, and I pushed my plate aside. I switched off the TV and reached for the phone to call my mother. We spoke every couple of days. If I didn’t call, she worried.
“Who is Jennifer?” she asked upon answering the phone, knowing it was me. My mother never missed Cheryl Crane-Murphy’s show. “Did I ever tell you that your father wanted to name you Jennifer? Practically every girl was named Jennifer back then.” She went on discussing the crime and how she’d been delayed in traffic on the day the bodies had been found.
I let her talk. Since Delia had moved to a retirement home, she was lonely in the house on Harper Lane. I had encouraged her and Delia to sell the house, to rid our family of that horrible place, but they were both too attached to it. No matter how much I emphasized its value as the former home of Myrna Jade, neither of them was persuaded. To them it was home. I had visited Harper Lane so many times in my mind while reading Verena’s book that I felt as if I had just been there, but I hadn’t set foot in that house for four years.
“I have my own mystery,” I said, cutting off her chatter about the murders. I offered her an edited version of recent events in my life. I needed to say it out loud to another person to make sure I wasn’t going crazy. I kept the beginning of the story to myself—the story of Leeta was too odd—but I told my mother about the Beauty Closet, Julia Cole, and her request.
There was silence on her end, and then she said, “Are you making this up?”
“Which part?”
“All of it. Is this Beauty Closet for real?”
“Imagine Madison Square Garden filled with cosmetics. That’s how big it was.”
“I don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself mixed up in.”
“I didn’t mix myself up in it. They just . . . found me.”
“What’s the worst that could happen if you give this Julia person the email addresses?”