That she’s considering going back to school.
That she never eats dessert.
That she always takes her vitamins.
“Are you feeling okay?” one of the girls asks her. She should’ve had a coffee during her lunch break, something choked with caffeine, because this is an important question at this job. If you’re sick, you cover it up, make yourself radiant. You can’t sell makeup to anyone if you look like shit.
“I’m fine.” Lie.
“You sure?”
“I’m just tired.”
This is the truth, although she knows everyone will assume she has the beginnings of the flu, because it’s winter and it’s retail and no one uses enough hand sanitizer or sneezes into their elbows like they should. She’s tired, although she went to bed early and slept like the dead, and the truth doesn’t seem like a good enough excuse, but it’s all she’s got.
“You didn’t get enough sleep?”
“I don’t know.” Sammie looks at her hands. The nail on her thumb is cracked all the way down to the bed, sore and swollen, but she can’t stop fiddling with it. She wishes the girl would shut up because her thoughts are all a jumble, she can’t get them straight. She wishes she were at home, looking through her files on Seever, figuring out what to write about.
“Everything okay at home?”
“Yeah, everything’s good.” That’s the thing about working with all these women, she’s come to realize. They never shut up. They never stop asking questions. They want to know how you’re doing, if you’re angry, if they’ve done something wrong. And if there’s a juicy bit of gossip there, something they can use against you, they’ll do it. It’s like snake handling. You never know if the damn thing is going to turn on you, sink its fangs right into your hand, and watch you die.
“You’re not sick? I have vitamin C in my purse. The chewy kind.”
“No, I’m fine.”
She folds a stick of gum into her mouth and turns away, heads back onto the floor. It’s been busy in the store, even before opening there was a line outside, customers waiting to be let in. There’s nothing worse, she thinks, than eager retail shoppers, pounding on the glass and foaming at the mouth to get at the merchandise. There’s something so embarrassing about it, so tacky, and she can’t stand to look when they first come streaming in, giddy with excitement. There’s a bigger crowd than usual today, because there’s a new line of products being released—eye shadows and lipsticks and blushes, all limited edition, which will work the crowd into a frenzy, because everyone wants what they might not be able to have.
“I’d like to try that one,” one customer says, sitting down on Sammie’s stool. She’s wearing Crocs and pushing a stroller, and the baby inside is red and ugly and squalling. The woman’s pointing at a bright-blue eye shadow, one that she’ll probably buy and never wear again. “It’d be good for the office, don’t you think?”
Some women are defined by their husband, some by their children, but Sammie had always thought she was defined by her work, by the words she’d put out into the world. And the Seever case—that’d put her at the top of her game, she’d had reporters from all over the country calling, wanting to horn in on her success. She could’ve gone anywhere after those days, should’ve taken one of the offers at the bigger papers in Philadelphia or New York, even L.A., but she’d stayed because she felt a loyalty to the Post. Denver had become her hometown even when it wasn’t, because it was where she wanted to be. But instead of moving up she’d gone to this, one woman after another in her chair, every one of their faces running into the next, so there were times when she’d look around the shop and be unsure who she’d already spoken with.
“What are you wearing?” the next customer asks. “You’re so pretty. What’s that lipstick you have on?”
“It’s this one right here, one of my favorites,” Sammie says, picking up a tube. “Let’s put some on you. It’s called Liar.”
Seever had made her career, and he could do it again. Remake her. She still thought about him often, still flipped through the scrapbook she’d made of all her articles on him, her name in bold print under her blurry photo. Thirty-one victims were found on his property. Twenty-six of them were female. Seever preferred women, but he’d happily taken whatever had come his way.
“You don’t have something with fuller coverage? I can still see that scar.”
“I don’t see anything.”